If She Should Die

by Carlene Thompson

  “You had that look.”

  “Oh,” Rey said sarcastically. “That look.”

  “I considered calling the police to look for you, but I didn’t want to embarrass you.”

  “At least one of us is considerate.”

  Tess sat down at the table and put her face close to his. “Rey, I love you, but I can’t put up with behavior like last night’s. You were acting like a crazy person.”

  Rey glared at her and raised a trembling hand. “Don’t ever say that about me.”

  “Why? Because your father wasn’t the picture of mental stability?”

  “You shut up about him.”

  “Rey, I wasn’t comparing you to him. Mental illness is not inherited.”

  “I don’t want to talk about my father!” Rey stood up, his whole body quivering. “Jesus, Tess, do you have to bring him up now? After all of this?”

  “After they’ve found the body, you mean. For God’s sake, Rey, you don’t even know if it’s Dara.”

  “It is. I know it is.”

  “Dara,” Tess said coldly. “Dara. Always Dara. I am sick to death of Dara Prince.”

  “Why? I don’t talk about her.”

  “No, but you’re always thinking about her. I can tell. She’s always here, always with us, even in bed. I feel like you’re making love to her, not to me.” Tess took a deep breath. “Dara was a tramp, Rey. A selfish, spoiled, immoral, unprincipled tramp who never did anything but play you for a fool—”

  The sting of Rey’s hand on her face knocked her back two steps, not from force but from shock. Her hand flew to her reddening cheek, and tears flooded her eyes. Rey glared at her, his eyes burning in his pale, taut face.

  “You’ve . . . you’ve never touched me in anger before,” Tess managed shakily. “Never. You’re not that kind of man, Rey. You’re not violent. You’re not cruel. You . . . are . . . not . . . your . . . father.”

  “Oh yeah? Well, maybe I am,” Rey ground out before stalking from the kitchen. “Maybe I am and you really don’t know a damned thing about your own husband.”

  CHAPTER 7

  1

  Christine dozed fitfully until dawn. As the birds began to chirp, she sank into a deep sleep. An hour later Jeremy stood at her bedside. “Christy,” he said, touching her shoulder. “Christy, it’s time to get up.”

  “No, it isn’t,” she mumbled. “My alarm hasn’t gone off. What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing. I want to go to the store.”

  “We don’t open till ten today.”

  “Please, Christy? I gotta get my cell phone.”

  “You can do that later.”

  “And there’s something I want to work on. I should have finished it yesterday. I want to surprise Rey and have it done when he comes in.”

  Christine groaned and put the pillow over her head. “Do you have to be so conscientious?”

  “I couldn’t understand a word you said under that pillow.”

  “I said—”

  “I want to go to the store.”

  “In a couple of hours.”

  “You don’t have to take me. I can ride my bike. It’s not raining.”

  Christine knew argument was useless. When Jeremy decided he must do something, he became maddeningly tenacious. She took the pillow off her head. “You can’t ride your bike. It’s too far.”

  “But I have to go, Christy. I have—”

  “Something important to do.” She looked closely at his expression for some sign of the disturbance last night to account for his burning desire to get to the store, but he appeared placid. And determined. She said in resignation, “Okay, but I need some coffee before we go and you need some breakfast.”

  “I can fix it. You want an omelet?”

  “Jeremy, your talent does not extend to the kitchen. You are a terrible cook.” He grinned. “You open a can of food for Rhiannon. I’ll be down in five minutes.”

  “I’ll go ahead and make the coffee,” Jeremy said.

  “No, Jeremy, wait—” He was gone. In ten minutes she would be drinking coffee strong enough to remove varnish from wood. “Oh, crap,” she muttered. “What a wonderful beginning for the day.”

  She started to get up, then fell back onto the bed as the events of the night before seemed to rush at her and hit her with the force of a blow. Dara had been found.

  And her father had seen her after she’d lain in the river for three years.

  “Oh, Ames,” Christine moaned, knowing the hell he must have endured last night. She wondered if he’d even want the store opened today. It was certainly too early to call. Perhaps she should drop by the house around nine to see how he was getting along.

  Immediately she knew that would be the wrong thing to do. If he’d only fallen asleep near morning, as she had, she didn’t want to disturb him. And she didn’t want to deal with Patricia right now.

  And she really didn’t want to see Ames before she turned over Dara’s diary to the police. Being with him might weaken her resolve to do something she knew was necessary, although hurtful to Ames. No, she would take Jeremy to the store, go in at ten when Ginger and Rey would be there, and then give Ames a call. She would not see him until later in the day, after she’d done what she felt was her duty with the diary.

  She got up, walked stiffly into the bathroom, and gazed gloomily into the bathroom mirror. She looked awful. She’d clearly slept on her abdomen and face, and the pillowcase had left creases on her cheek. Her eyes were slightly bloodshot and wreathed by dark circles, her skin was pasty, and even her lips seemed to have lost color.

  She glanced at the shower, then decided to put off bathing until she’d had a long-overdue bout at the gym. She might be able to get her mind off Dara and the diary for a while, and she certainly looked as if she could use a workout.

  Christine washed her face, brushed her teeth, applied some pink gloss to her pale lips, ran a wet comb through her hair, trying to make her bangs lie down, and slipped into a sweat suit. After her workout, she would come home and prepare for the day.

  When she got downstairs, she saw that Jeremy had opened the vertical blinds across the sliding glass doors. She gazed out almost fearfully, only to see her familiar backyard. It looked cheerless and messy, but not at all menacing. She was a bit ashamed of the terror she’d felt only a few hours ago when she thought someone lingered in the mist.

  When she knew someone lingered in the mist.

  “What are you saying?” Jeremy asked.

  She realized she must have spoken her thought aloud. “I said I didn’t get much sleep last night.”

  “That’s not what you said. You said something about mist—”

  “I’m going to the gym after I drop you off at the store,” Christine interrupted. She wasn’t going to say a word that could frighten or upset her brother. “Gee, I’ve always loved black toast, Jeremy.”

  “The toaster doesn’t work right.” He looked at his own toast with distaste. “I think we need a new one.”

  “I think we need to push the adjustment back from dark to light. Here, let me make some more.”

  “No, I want to make the toast. Put the knob in the right place. And I couldn’t find any of Aunt Wilma’s jam.”

  “So she’s gotten you to call her Aunt Wilma. She’s been working on me, too, but I can’t get used to it.”

  “She’s like an aunt. Like Mom’s Great-aunt Peony.”

  “The one who said children were evil and she’d rather take in two wolves than us after Mom and Dad died? The one who wore that bag of stinky herbs around her neck to keep germs away? The one who took a bath once a month because she was afraid she’d catch a cold and die? That Aunt Peony?”

  “Well, I guess not,” Jeremy said slowly as he brought the old harridan forward in his mind. “Anyway, there’s no jam.”

  “We ate it all. We’ll have to wait for summer when Wilma makes some more. Right now it’s Welch’s grape jelly or nothing, sir.”

  Five minutes later
, Christine told him he had jelly on his chin. He dutifully wiped his face as she fished in her purse for the store keys and handed them to him. “Now, Jeremy, I want you to be very careful with these. If you lose them—”

  “Somebody could rob the store.” Jeremy growled low in his throat. “You only tell me that every time I look at a set of keys.”

  Christine sighed. “You see what comes from getting up too early? We’re cranky.” He gave her a half-smile. “You do your important work at the store and I’ll exercise at the gym, and in a couple of hours we’ll feel great.”

  As they walked outside to the car, Christine noticed that the rain had not resumed. Nevertheless, the cool air still felt weighted with moisture. An ashen sky hung low and bleak. Atop a telephone pole a lone black crow cawed with loud harshness into the dreary morning.

  “A lookout crow,” Jeremy commented. “I wonder where his friends are.”

  “Back in the trees planning a day of meritorious duty,” Christine said. The crow cocked his head, looked at her with beady eyes, and cawed sharply. “I don’t like you, either,” she called to him, and Jeremy laughed. How she loved that sound, especially after his misery of the night before. He hadn’t mentioned Dara this morning, and Christine wanted to keep the subject at bay. “I’ll be glad when it’s summer.”

  “It seems like it’s been winter for about a year,” Jeremy commented as he tucked his large frame into the small car and fastened his seat belt. “I don’t think it’ll ever be hot again.”

  “You won’t be saying that in August when it’s in the nineties every day.” A sharp gust of wind blew wet leaves across the hood of the car. Christine pulled her jacket tighter and tossed her gym bag into the backseat. “And to top it all off, we have a flood. Bad for the town, not to mention our business.”

  “I thought you said we did a landfill business at Christmas.”

  “A landslide business, thanks to that lingering slick snow that kept people from going to the mall in Charleston. At least this year’s accounting books won’t reflect the slump we’re in. I want to prove to Ames I’m doing a good job as manager.”

  “He knows you are, Christy.” Jeremy smiled encouragingly. “I heard him tell Patricia so the other evening.”

  “Really?” Christine backed out of the driveway onto their deserted street, Cardinal Way. “And what did Patricia say?”

  “I don’t remember.” Which meant she’d said something nasty that Jeremy didn’t want to repeat. Oh well, Patricia’s opinion didn’t matter anyway.

  At six-fifteen the downtown area was deserted. Christine pulled into the alley that ran behind one block of Third Avenue’s stores and stopped at the back door of Prince Jewelry. She handed Jeremy her gold-plated key holder. “Now be sure—”

  “Not to lose them,” Jeremy said, beating her to the punch. “I will guard them with my life. Maybe I’ll even swallow them after I get the door open.”

  “I don’t think such drastic measures will be necessary,” Christine said wryly. “Don’t work too hard.”

  “I’m not kissing you good-bye here in front of everybody,” Jeremy announced.

  Christine looked around. “No one is here, Jeremy, but I understand that you have an image to maintain. See you later.”

  She pulled out of the alley and headed north. The gym, more properly known as the Winston Fitness Center, sported only two cars in the parking lot near a row of winter-ravaged shrubbery. The vehicles no doubt belonged to Danny Torrance, the manager and onetime neighbor of the Princes, and Marti, the fitness trainer. Christine had a suspicion they were lovers and spent nights in the small apartment at the back of the sprawling building that had been erected only five years ago. The owner didn’t mind. Their constant presence discouraged prowlers and writers of graffiti that might deface the structure’s cream stucco facade.

  Christine parked her car at the side of the building to avoid the vehicle being covered with soggy leaves the sharp breeze brought down. When she entered the fitness center Danny stood behind the half-moon counter. “Hey, Christine, kind of early for you, isn’t it?” he asked with a smile displaying perfect teeth.

  “Ames is opening the store late, so I have some extra time,” Christine answered, wondering how he could look so unbearably alert and cheerful at this time of morning.

  He turned serious: “I heard about the body that was washed ashore yesterday. It isn’t Dara, is it?”

  Christine looked at him. To most people she would have given a vague answer that shut off further questions. But Danny had grown up beside the Princes. He’d known Dara all of his life.

  “Ames went to Charleston last night. He says the body is Dara’s.”

  Danny closed his eyes and shook his head. “Damn. I can’t believe it. I mean, I can. It never made sense that she’d just run off and not come home for three years. But I hoped . . .”

  “We all did.”

  “She was murdered, wasn’t she? I mean, if it was an accidental drowning, she wouldn’t have been wrapped in plastic.”

  “No, she wouldn’t have been. But I don’t know how she was murdered. Stabbed or shot or . . .” Christine drew a deep breath, feeling queasy.

  “Enough talk about Dara,” Danny said briskly. “Go do your workout. You need to get some color in those cheeks.”

  “I need more than color in the cheeks. Today I feel like I need a whole makeover.” She signed in, noting that hers was the only name on the register. “Looks like I’ll have the equipment to myself.”

  “Business has been off the last few days, but I can understand it. People are thinking of more important things than working out. They’re trying to ward off the flood. If the Corps of Engineers orders us to start putting sandbags in place, I’ll have to turn the place over to Marti and go do my civic duty,” he informed her, referring to the attractive trainer. “I hope it doesn’t come to that, though.”

  “You want to miss out on all that exercise?” Christine said lightly. “It would be good for you to be out in the trenches instead of working out here in the lap of luxury.”

  “You’re a sadist, Christine,” Danny laughed.

  “I try. But honestly, if we need to sandbag, Jeremy will be right in the middle of the action. He’s strong and eager and he could be a big help. I won’t try to stop him. But I’d appreciate your keeping an eye on him.”

  “He could probably handle twice as many sandbags as I could and think it was fun. You’d better ask him to look out for me.” Danny grinned at her. “But sure. I’ll work by his side, even if I can’t keep up with him and he’ll make me look bad.”

  “You’re a fine and gallant man, Danny Torrance.” Christine laid down the pen and picked up her gym bag, forcing a smile. “Off to the wars.”

  “Are you going to do your usual routine, or do you want help with something new?”

  “Nothing new today. I don’t have the physical or mental enthusiasm.”

  “Okay. Enjoy yourself. Marti and I were just sharing some juice and bran muffins in the back. If you need anything, give a yell.”

  As Danny disappeared again, Christine walked through the empty exercise room and back to the dressing rooms, where she placed her gym bag. No need to secure everything in a locker, she thought. There weren’t many chances of theft on such a slow morning. She put an elastic band on her right wrist she’d broken when she was nine and fell out of a tree house. To her frustration, she’d never regained full strength in that wrist.

  Next she climbed on the scale. At five-ten, she’d felt like a clumsy giant next to the diminutive, sylphlike Dara with her delicate bone structure, but the scale topped at 135. According to the fitness experts, she was maintaining a good weight. Still, she’d never shaken her teenage wish that she were shorter and thinner.

  She remembered being astonished when the devastatingly cute Sam Parks with his sleek body and wavy dark hair had asked her to the freshman prom. At fifteen, she’d already reached her full height, while Sam remained a stolid five-foot-six. H
er mother had bought her a new dress, an exquisite aqua creation that exactly matched her eyes, and she’d felt like a princess walking into the dance. Then she’d heard a cluster of guys snickering to Sam, “So what are you doing here with her?” And blushing, Sam had replied, “Our mothers are friends. My mom told me if I didn’t bring the Incredible Hulk, I’d be grounded for a month.” Christine had never told anyone what she’d overheard. For the next few weeks, though, hurt feelings and humiliation had sent her into silent tears after she went to bed.

  Oh well, the indignity was long past, Christine thought. Besides, she’d had the satisfaction of running into Sam when he was twenty-two and still five-foot-six with an extra thirty pounds packed around his waist and his wavy hair already thinning. “There really is justice in the world,” she murmured to herself before padding back into the exercise room in heavy-soled aerobic shoes.

  She caught a glimpse of herself in a mirror and cringed. Some women came to the gym looking like they were ready to tape an aerobics video with perfect hair, careful makeup jobs, and colorful scanty Lycra outfits. Christine always opted for gray sweatpants and shirt. She was here to work out, not look glamorous, and the loose clothes allowed for more comfortable movement. Still, on a day when she already looked tired and colorless, the drab outfit did nothing to help. She hoped she could finish before anyone else came in.

  Danny, a firm believer that everyone exercised better to music, preferably songs of the eighties, had turned on the sound system. Wang Chung’s “Everybody Have Fun Tonight” boomed through the large exercise room. As Christine did her warm-up yoga, she found herself bouncing along to the music in spite of her best efforts to hold her stances without motion. Dispensing with the yoga, she moved on to livelier activity.

  She mounted one of the stationary bikes, pedaling rapidly to Robert Palmer’s “Addicted to Love.” The bikes faced the large front windows. She looked out at the nearly empty parking lot where a few dead leaves, an orange Frisbee, and a yellow-and-red disposable cup blew wildly in the rising wind. Across the street a small deserted park lay dotted with puddles. A rusty swing set sported swings whipping violently back and forth as if possessed by riotous ghostly children. Among the play equipment, trees lifted skeletal limbs to the darkening sky. Another storm was coming.