At her request, Patrick brought her a club soda with lime.
“You want a shot in that?” he asked her.
“I’d rather face my troubles than drown them,” she said.
“What’s up?”
“I don’t think I got that job working at the college,” she said.
“I don’t know why you’d want to work with that bunch of snobs, anyway,” he said.
“I like the people I’ve met,” she said. “I would be great at that job; I’m good at what I do, and I think I would be a good teacher.”
“So what’s the snag?”
“They want me to get Sloan Merryweather for their film festival.”
“So ask her.”
“I can’t afford to,” Claire said.
“Why? What’s it gonna cost ya?”
“My soul, probably. And even if she agreed, she’d probably cancel at the last minute just to spite me.”
“So work for Sean.”
“It’s so boring,” she said. “Plus Melissa wants the job.”
“She told me about the online class,” he said, and shook his head.
“You don’t think it’s a good idea?”
“I think trying to be somebody you’re not is always a mistake.”
“It’s okay to improve yourself to make something more of your life.”
“Except you got her hopes up,” he said. “Now if she doesn’t get the job she’ll feel worse than she did to begin with; plus things will be weird between her and my brother.”
“I’m sorry,” Claire said. “I thought it would help.”
“Maybe it will,” Patrick said. “I want her to be happy and I don’t want her to get hurt.”
“I wish I had someone like you on my side,” Claire said. “I could use the support.”
“Laurie’s a good guy,” he said. “You could stand to be patient with him for a little while.”
Claire shrugged. She thought of Laurie lying there in a pool of piss and vodka, snoring his head off.
“Looks like old Ed’s got himself a little family now,” Patrick said. “That Eve’s a piece of work.”
“Even bitches have sorrows.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It’s something I’ve been thinking about,” Claire said. “I’m going to try to cut everyone some slack. We all have our troubles.”
“Listen,” Patrick said. “I could use a partner here, and Melissa can’t do it on account of her parole. I heard Meredith’s been to see Trick; she’s so broke she has to sell the tea room. I wanna buy it to expand this place, but I haven’t got the dough for the down payment. Whadda ya say?”
“I’ll think about it,” she said. “Did you hear about Knox?”
“Of course,” he said. “The scanner grannies knew before the police did.”
“That’s probably my fault,” Claire said, thinking of her frantic cell phone call to the station.
The scanner grannies were a group of elderly people in town who kept their ears glued to their old-school police scanners, now illegal, which could pick up on even more than radio transmissions. Claire had taken to doing more texting than calling since she’d been home on account of the likelihood that any cell phone calls she made were being monitored by the local blue-haired version of the NSA.
“What are you hearing?” she asked him.
“They’re after your ex,” he said. “The idiot shouldn’t have run off like he did; makes him look guilty.”
“I don’t think Pip did it,” Claire said. “Not that it matters what I think.”
“The back door was unlocked and they found footprints in the mud to and from the woods.
“Pip went in and left through the front door.”
“Poor old Pip; always in the wrong place at the wrong time; like that time he married you.”
Claire balled up the cocktail napkin and threw it at him.
“He’s probably halfway to Mexico,” Claire said. “That’s his usual response.”
“Well, Knox’s wife number two is in town, so she might have done it; Anne Marie’s in California, so wife number one’s in the clear.”
“Unless she hired it out,” Claire said. “I overheard Trick and Knox having an argument behind Machalvie’s. You think Trick would kill his brother?”
“A few years ago I would happily have killed my eldest brother, but someone else did me the favor,” he said. “Nothing would surprise me.”
“The ex-mayor was worried about Knox talking too much,” Claire said. “There’s a federal case being built against them.”
“Another fine suspect,” Patrick said.
“Plus whoever was in that car Knox was throwing rocks at.”
“That was very entertaining,” Patrick said.
“Are there any payphones in town?”
“Why?”
“I need to report something to the police, anonymously.”
“Care to share?”
“No,” she said. “The less people who know the better.”
“There’s a payphone down at the post office,” he said.
“Thanks for the drink.”
“Think about what I said. You could manage the events and food. You’d be great at it. You could also sing anytime you wanted. I remember when you used to want to do that for a living.”
“Not anymore,” she said. “I’m done traveling and I’m too old for the band bullshit.”
“You could team up with Laurie,” he said. “Piano and vocals.”
“I don’t think I can depend on Laurie,” she said. “I will keep the partner idea in mind, though, thanks, Patrick.”
As Claire got up to leave, she was surprised to see Eve enter the bar.
“Do you have a minute?” Eve asked.
“Sure,” Claire said, dismayed to find her heart racing.
She hadn’t done anything wrong; why was she so scared of Eve?
They sat down at a table by the window, the furthest from the eavesdropping locals. Eve waved away Patrick’s offer of something to drink.
“I thought it would be good for us to have a talk,” Eve said. “My husband told me how fond he is of you and how close you’ve become, so I imagine you weren’t too happy to see his pregnant wife come back to town.”
“I don’t think of you two as husband and wife,” Claire said. “Obviously, for the past ten years, neither have you.”
Eve dropped any semblance of friendliness.
“Listen,” she said. “I can’t help what happened. We’re just trying to do what’s right for our baby.”
“Your baby, obviously,” Claire said. “But I’m guessing the father must be somebody pretty inconvenient.”
“I strongly suggest,” Eve said, “that you back off and leave Ed alone. You don’t know me very well, because if you did, you’d be much more careful.”
“What exactly are you threatening to do to me, Eve?” Claire said. “You obviously think I’m pretty stupid, so you can’t be surprised you have to spell it out for me.”
“I have connections in Hollywood,” Eve said. “I made a few phone calls this afternoon, and one of them was to a private investigator. If there’s anything you wouldn’t want Ed to know about your time out there, or that you wouldn’t want the board of trustees at Eldridge to know, I suggest you watch your step.”
The look on Eve’s face was pure malice spiked with self-entitlement. Luckily for Claire, she had twenty years of experience dealing with rich, powerful sociopaths.
“Here’s the thing I learned in the film industry about blackmail,” Claire said. “The only way to stop a blackmailer is to hit them back hard with your own blackmail. I know quite a few people in your industry, the kind nobody pays attention to, the ones who see and hear everything because they’re not considered important enough to be discreet around. If you wanna play that game with me, Eve, then you should know who you’re dealing with. You may wound me, but I can destroy you.”
Claire said what she did
with a friendly smile, using the same tone she would’ve used if she were sharing an amusing anecdote. The achievement of her intended effect was evident in the micro-expression of fear that flitted across Eve’s face. It was gone quickly, but it was proof that Claire’s counterpunch had landed.
“So here we are,” Eve said, “at an impasse.”
“Except that I have little to lose compared to you,” Claire said. “I can always go back to cutting hair, and I can always find another boyfriend. I wonder, however, if you could afford to bear what I could do to your career. Not blatantly, of course, but through my connections at all the tabloid magazines, gossip sites, and entertainment television shows. Think of all the media mileage they could get out of guessing who the real baby daddy is. You better hope that kid has blue eyes and a bald head instead of the brown eyes and dark hair of a certain senator.”
An expression of blatant fear was now firmly established on Eve’s face, along with the fury of one used to getting her way through guile and intimidation being thwarted by an opponent she has fatally underestimated.
“How much is it going to cost to make you go away?” Eve asked.
“Confess to Ed before I get to him,” Claire said.
“I’ll see you in hell first,” Eve hissed as she struggled to get up.
In her haste to leave, she knocked over a chair, and everyone in the bar turned around to look.
“Let me know when the baby shower is,” Claire called out after her. “I can’t wait to see the sonogram pictures!”
“What was that about?” Patrick asked as he righted the chair that had fallen.
“Just another clever bitch who thought I must be stupid because I’m from here,” Claire said.
“Yeah, I hate when that happens,” Patrick said.
Claire walked down Rose Hill Avenue toward the post office. She was all wound up from her fight with Eve, and feeling queasy about how vicious she had been, even if it was in self-defense. Claire tried to put herself in Eve’s place, and imagine what she would do in the same situation, but she had nothing to lose compared to Eve, with her public image and nascent media career threatened by a scandalous affair with a married politician. Claire couldn’t imagine being in that situation. It must feel awful, though, after all Eve went through to get where she was.
It was so common it was a cliché to fall in love with the wrong person, and then do even more stupid things as a result. Claire could easily imagine doing that, because she so often had.
Claire decided that Eve’s predicament was the most convincing evidence yet that bitches could indeed have sorrows. They were still bitches, though, even if they were pregnant.
As she crossed the street she looked down Pine Mountain Road toward the river and saw the lights were on in Ed’s office. She did an about-face and walked down there. He was sitting at the computer, typing something. She tapped on the window. He smiled and jumped up to let her in.
“How goes the newspaper business?” she asked him.
“I’ve been calling you,” Ed said. “I thought maybe you weren’t speaking to me.”
Claire took a seat on the other side of the work table, and refused the beer he offered.
“I’m sorry I’ve been such a bitch about the baby,” Claire said.
“I don’t blame you for being sore,” Ed said.
“Is Eve going to stay here in Rose Hill for a while?”
“No,” he said. “She wants to have the baby in Atlanta, where she thinks the hospitals are better. She’s going back next week. I’ll go down there when she’s due so I can be there when it’s born.”
“Are you thinking about moving to Atlanta?”
“No,” he said. “I’m a Rose Hillian, born and bred. Besides, Tommy’s in school here, and I’ve got the job at Eldridge and the Sentinel to think about. Eve will go wherever her career takes her and I’m not cut out to be a camp follower. We’ll work something out.”
“You could bring up the child here,” Claire said. “It takes a village, I hear, and Rose Hill’s one of the finest.”
“Eve wants more than we can give it here,” Ed says. “Private schools, you know, a college covered in ivy, and so forth.”
“Last I looked Eldridge was covered in something, but it may be kudzu.”
“I think she has something more prestigious in mind.”
“Like Hogwarts.”
“That’s the one.”
“So what will your role be, exactly?”
“Father as needed, I guess,” he said. “Daddy on call.”
Claire started to say something and then shut her mouth.
“It’s convenient, you were going to say,” he said. “You think she’s using me.”
“What’s it matter?” Claire said. “The child will have a great father; that’s more important than any baby mama drama.”
“That’s what I think,” he said. “I know it’s more about what’s best for her career than having any kind of real relationship with me. I know all that, but there’s a chance it’s mine, you know? And even if it isn’t, it will be. I love Tommy, but we both know I’m only a stand-in for Melissa. This could be my only shot at having a child of my own.”
Claire stood up, more as a response to that last comment stabbing her in the heart than anything else. Tears stung at the back of her eyes but she sniffed them back.
“I’ll let you get back to work,” she said. “Are you writing about Knox?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Trying to get it in tomorrow’s Pendleton paper. Do you mind telling me what happened?”
Claire sat back down, told Ed everything that happened, and he took notes. She took out her phone and gave him the times of the calls and the owners of the phone numbers.
“Sarah doesn’t know I have this information,” she told him. “I can call Anne Marie; she may be willing to tell me what Knox’s call was about. I’ll let you know what she says.”
“I won’t put any of this in the Pendletonian,” he said. “I’ll follow up on all of the other calls and use what I find out in Sunday’s Sentinel. That should give Sarah enough time to disseminate the information among the ranks, which will clear you, and still give the Sentinel the scoop.”
“Pip didn’t kill him,” Claire said.
“I’m calling him a person of interest,” Ed said. “Sorry, but that’s as innocent as I can make it sound when he took off like that.”
“Pip’s an idiot, but he’s a passive idiot,” Claire said. “He doesn’t have it in him to kill anyone.”
“I hope you’re right.”
Claire was irritated by Ed’s refusal to take her word for it, that Pip did not kill Knox. It felt as if the chasm between them, created by Eve’s pregnancy, was widening further by the minute. Claire now felt like an old girlfriend Ed was distantly fond of, instead of the role she had played a few weeks ago, when he was pledging to see her through what turned out to be a pregnancy false alarm of her own. He was already driving down the road to fatherhood with Eve riding shotgun, and she was left behind, coughing in the dust as they sped away.
Claire had the ammunition to shoot the tires off of that car, but there was a baby to consider. It was bad enough she had just verbally threatened a pregnant woman, albeit one who had tried to blackmail her. That kid might be born with a lightning bolt on its forehead and it would be all Claire’s fault.
Claire left Ed’s office and walked up the hill to the crossroads of Pine Mountain Road and Rose Hill Avenue. The lights were on in the Little Bear Bookstore, and Eldridge orientation attendees were congregating in groups on the sidewalk between there and the college. The air was crisp and clean smelling, a steady breeze coming off the Little Bear River. There were bright stars in the dark sky and an almost full moon had crested the hills to the south east.
Claire felt as lonely as she had ever felt, even more so than when she was on the other side of the earth from what she thought of as home. Now she was home, but with her mother and cousins away at the beach, Ed work
ing things out with Eve, Laurie drunk to the point of unconsciousness, one ex on the run from the law and another in the arms of her ex-employer, who cared where she was or what she was doing?
Melissa had Patrick, Eve had Ed, Maggie had Scott, and Hannah had Sam. Even Kay, who hadn’t had a date in years, now had two brothers vying for her heart.
‘I don’t have anybody,’ Claire thought.
She knew she was sinking into the quicksand of self-pity but she didn’t care. She felt a kind of perverse satisfaction in being proved unworthy. At least you knew where you stood in the scheme of things, instead of hoping life would somehow miraculously get better.
Some days being optimistic took too much effort.
Claire used the pay phone to dial 911, gave the operator all the information she had about the meth lab, refused to supply her identity, and then headed home. As she passed Ed’s house she avoided looking through the uncovered window into the lighted front room.
Why didn’t people draw their curtains at night? Didn’t they know the effect their belly cupping and supportive hugging could have on an old spinster? Well, technically, a divorcee, but she felt more like a spinster.
She even had the requisite cat.
Barren.
Unloved.
Unemployable.
Willing to stoop low enough to threaten a pregnant blackmailer.
And she couldn’t even shop online lest she go broke before her lonely old age set in. It was pitiful. All she needed now was a hearing aid and she could be a junior scanner granny.
Inside her parents’ house, her father was snoring in his recliner. Melissa was working on the laptop, and waved hello. Mackie Pea was curled up beside her, and Junior the cat was stretched out on the carpet near them.
“I saw the cat chase the dog,” Melissa said.
“What?”
“I always say ‘I seen’ when I should say ‘I saw.’ ”
“That’s right,” Claire said. “How’s it going?”
“It’s hard,” she said. “There’s a lot to remember.”
“You’ll get there,” Claire said.
“Listen to this,” she said. “Fitzpatrick Legal Services, Melissa speaking; how may I help you?”
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