Finn flipped open his cell to make his call.
“These cherries are delicious,” Deena whispered. “What do you do to them?”
“Trade secret,” I replied with a smile.
Just then the little bell over the shop door tinkled. A guy in a yellow-and-orange courier uniform stepped in, a Tyvek envelope crisscrossed with preprinted green tape clutched in his hand. Sweat dripped from beneath the band of his billed cap, and the heat had turned the acne on his cheeks to a raging, painful crimson.
“Can I help you?” I said, crossing to greet him.
“I’ve got a package for Bree Michaels,” the young courier said.
“I can sign for it.” I reached to take the envelope, but he pulled it back.
“No, ma’am. This has to be signed for by the addressee. No exceptions.” He sniffed and hitched up his belt. This was as much power as a courier got to wield, so I let him enjoy his moment.
“Well, Bree’s on the schedule for this evening. She’ll be in at five thirty. Do you deliver that late?”
“Yes, ma’am. Until six.”
He was talking to me, but his eyes were on my display freezer.
“Would you like a cone to go?” I asked. “On the house.”
“Really?” He frowned. “I still can’t give you the package.”
I struggled to keep a straight face. “I wouldn’t dream of asking you to compromise your integrity.” He blushed, his poor acne-marked cheeks turning an even angrier shade, almost the color of ripe mulberries. “Just a scoop of chocolate, to say thank you for braving the weather.”
“Strawberry?”
I did laugh then. “Sure, strawberry.”
By the time I’d dipped up the kid’s strawberry cone and sent him on his way, Finn was off the phone.
“So?” I said. “Who’s suing Tucker?”
Finn frowned. “Not sure. There’s a lawsuit, and Jackson and Ver Steeg is listed as the counsel of record who filed the complaint. Specifically, Kristen Ver Steeg. But the file itself is sealed.”
“So there’s no way to find out what it’s about?”
“Not really. But I asked my friend why a civil suit might be sealed, and she said the only two reasons she knew about were if there were big-time trade secrets involved or if the case involved a juvenile. I can’t imagine a youth pastor having access to important trade secrets. But access to youth? You bet.”
Holy crap. Maybe Eloise was right about Tucker having a thing for teenage girls. And maybe one of those girls’ families had hired Kristen to take Tucker down.
Which meant Tucker had at least as big a motive to kill Kristen as Bree did.
chapter 16
The Ferris wheel climbed its halting circuit until our car hung high in the sky, just short of the summit. Distance obscured the grime and general disrepair of the midway, so the carnival rides looked like glittering toys beneath us.
Lifted far above the blanket of asphalt that held the sun’s heat throughout the night, I felt a breeze against my face for the first time in weeks. Cool, it was, with the faint electric scent of ozone.
“Feels like a storm,” Finn said.
On the horizon, a band of darker night sky hinted at gathering clouds.
“That would be nice,” I said. “Been so dry.”
Beneath us, the safety bars clattered and the car gates squeaked as attendants ushered off the last group of riders to make way for the new.
We shared the car with the giant stuffed green elephant Finn had won for me by hurling rings over the necks of old milk bottles with a delicate flick of his wrist. As a result, I didn’t have to slide my hand far before I found Finn’s fingers. I caressed him softly, and he turned his hand to clasp mine tight, our fingers entwined like teenagers’. The view was magical, but not as wondrous as that moment of closeness. We’d spent the whole evening acting as if we didn’t have a care in the world, eating hot dogs and funnel cakes, riding the rides, listening to the bluegrass band playing in the amphitheater.
Now sated, exhausted, and holding my man’s hand in my own, I closed my eyes and sighed softly, content if only for an instant.
“Tally?”
“Hmm?”
“These last few months have been . . . incredible.”
I felt a smile creep across my face, and I gave his hand a gentle squeeze.
“I don’t want this to end,” he said.
I cocked one eye open. “Why would it end?”
“It won’t.” He turned his face forward, not looking squarely at me, and I saw a ripple of uncertainty pass over his features: a slight furrowing of the brow, and thinning of the lips. Finn, usually so glib and carefree, seemed positively tongue-tied. “I mean, that’s what I’m trying to say. I want to make sure it won’t end.”
A curious lightness invaded my limbs as I tried to puzzle out what he was saying.
Out of the corner of my eye, I caught a flicker of lightning in the distance. And then my stupid phone rang, the William Tell Overture tinkling into the silence between us.
I fumbled in my purse until I found it, glanced at the screen: Bree. I rejected the call. Indictment be damned. Bree could wait.
When I looked up, Finn was watching me, a smoldering heat in his shadowy green eyes. Whatever uncertainty he’d been feeling must have melted away, because even in the half-light I could see a rock-solid resolve in his face. My breath caught.
“I was so angry when I left Dalliance all those years ago. I drove all night, blaring Nine Inch Nails on my cassette player. But then I stopped the next morning in Memphis, got a cup of coffee and watched the sun come up, and I thought, ‘Oh, hell, what have I done?’” He smiled his crooked smile, and a gust of wind—redolent of rain—ruffled the swoosh of hair that fell across his forehead. “I spent two days in Memphis, touring Graceland and eating barbecue and trying to decide whether I should come back.”
My phone rang again. “Dang it,” I muttered.
This time I flipped open the phone.
“Tal—”
“Not now, Bree. Seriously.”
“But, Tal—” I flipped the phone shut.
“Sorry.”
He waved off my apology. “What I’m trying to say is that I always wondered if leaving that night was the biggest mistake of my life.”
I felt a bubble of joy welling up in my chest.
“But now I know it was exactly the right thing to do.”
The bubble burst.
“Oh,” I said. I mean, what else can you say when your boyfriend tells you he’s glad he dumped you? Or, worse, glad that you dumped him. I pulled my hand back into my own lap.
“Tally.” Finn’s fingers stroked the soft skin beneath my jaw, forcing me to tip my head up to look at him.
“Tally, I had to leave you, be away all those years, so I could grow up. And I had to miss you like crazy so I could appreciate having you back in my life. I loved you then, but what I feel for you now is so much more. So much better.”
Beneath us, the Ferris wheel stuttered to life, shifting us slowly up and over the apogee of the arc. Another blast of wind, cool and wet, set the car swinging gently. As we moved through space, I gripped Finn’s hand again, held it tighter.
It felt as if something had shaken loose in my chest. As if maybe I’d been holding my breath since the minute I saw Finn Harper sitting on my front porch the year before, and now I could finally exhale. As if the dam of emotion I’d built was going to break with the weather.
“This thing between us,” he said, “it’s the real deal. I love you.”
“I love you, too,” I said. But my words came out on a breathy sigh, and I couldn’t be sure he heard me over the calliope chaos of the fair below, the grinding of the wheel’s gears, and a distant rumble of thunder.
The Ferris wheel cleared the top of its cycle and then stopped again to allow another group of passengers to board.
“Tally, maybe this is crazy, and maybe we should wait. But I’m through with waiting. Life’s
so short, and when you know what you want . . .” His voice trailed off, and I saw his throat move as he swallowed hard. “I know what I want. I want you.”
He raised our clasped hands to his lips and kissed my fingertips, one by one. Then he looked me square in the eye, a question in his gaze. He opened his mouth—
—and my phone, still resting on my knee, rang again. Without thinking, I glanced down to turn it off. This time, the screen told me it was Alice calling.
A million ugly possibilities flitted through my mind at once. The A-la-mode had burned down. Sonny had killed Bree. Bree had killed Sonny. Bree had been arrested . . . again.
“Oh, sugar,” I cussed. I glanced at Finn, an apology in my eyes. “Alice. It might be an emergency.”
A rueful smile tipped one corner of his mouth. “It’s all right. You and your family are a package deal. That’s one of the things I love about you.”
I flipped open the phone. “This better be good, Alice.”
“Tally, this is really important.”
I sighed. “Dang it, Bree, I told you I was busy. Can’t I have just five minutes here? We’re sort of in the middle of something.”
“You and Finn?”
“Yes,” I hissed. “Something real important.”
She was quiet for just a beat, and when she spoke again I heard something in her voice, a thread of despair I’d never heard from Bree before.
“Tally, I got the DNA results today.” Of course, the courier that afternoon with his supersecret, superimportant envelope. “I stared at that envelope for hours before I could bring myself to open it.” She paused, but from her tone and urgency, I could already guess what she’d say next.
“Sonny isn’t Alice’s daddy.”
“Oh. Oh my. Bree, how’s that possible? Who else could it be?”
Beside me, Finn quirked a brow in question. I mouthed “D-N-A.”
He grew very still, and he nearly crushed my hand in his grip. I knew he was thinking what I was: not only would this drive a wedge between Bree and Alice, but it would add fuel to the prosecution’s case against Bree for Kristen’s murder. It wasn’t just shame that made Bree mad at Kristen. She legitimately had something to hide.
“Tally,” Bree said. “There’s something I have to tell you.”
I felt my heart grow cold at the gravity of her tone. For an instant, I thought maybe she did it. Maybe she killed Kristen to protect her secret. Maybe she was about to confess.
As quickly as the thought popped into my head, it fled. Bree might be a bit irresponsible and a whole lot of trouble, but she’d never do anything so hurtful or dishonest. Never.
“Tally, you have to believe me. I didn’t sleep with anyone after I met Sonny, I swear. I really thought Sonny was Alice’s daddy.”
“Of course you did.”
“But now that I know he isn’t, well, I guess the doctors must have been wrong. Alice must have been conceived in May, not June. She wasn’t premature, just tiny.”
She paused again, but I let her work through whatever she was working through. I knew there was more, and she’d tell it in her own time.
She made a choked sound. If I didn’t know Bree better, I’d have sworn it was a sob.
“Tally, I only slept with one guy in the months before I met Sonny. A month before I met Sonny, actually. The night after your wedding. There’s only one other person who might be Alice’s father.”
“Who?”
“Tally, I’m so sorry. The only person it could possibly be is Finn.”
At that moment a gust of wind blew across the fairgrounds, rocking the car in which we sat and jarring my hand from Finn’s. I looked at him across the handful of inches that separated us, saw the resignation in his eyes. The sadness.
He knew what Bree had told me.
I had a sudden image of Finn the first night he’d returned to Dalliance the year before, the night he showed up on my front porch. In my mind, I saw again the subtle widening of his eyes, the look of barely contained shock on his face, when he first saw Alice.
Had he suspected even then? Had something in the slant of her cheekbones or the angle of her jaw resonated with him on some elemental level?
I felt the phone slide from my fingers, heard it clatter on the floor of the Ferris wheel car, but I couldn’t move.
And that was when the storm hit, a crack of lightning striking close. At that moment, the lights went out in Dalliance, plunging the fairgrounds in darkness and stranding me at the top of the Ferris wheel with the one person I wanted most to flee from.
chapter 17
It took twenty minutes for us to get off that Ferris wheel. And the minute my feet hit the puddles forming on the ride’s platform, I hightailed it across the fairgrounds.
I raced through the parking lot, but skidded to a stop when I saw Bree leaning against the side of the van. The sepia-tinted light from an overhead streetlamp turned her hair a mellow copper, and when she raised her head at my approach, the light deepened the shadows around her eyes.
“Not now, Bree.”
“Tally, please. I’m so sorry.”
“Sorry? Some stuff, sorry doesn’t cover.”
“I didn’t mean to hurt you,” she pleaded. “We were both drunk.”
I laughed, a sharp and ugly sound echoed by a crack of thunder overhead. “There it is. The cheater’s hat trick—‘I’m sorry,’ ‘Didn’t mean to,’ and ‘I was drunk.’ You take lessons from Wayne?” Invoking my tom cat of an ex-husband wasn’t really fair, but I didn’t care much about fair at that moment.
The barb hit its mark. Bree drew herself up. Even without her high heels, she had a couple of inches on me. She took a step in my direction, forcing me to tip my head back to look her in the eye, but I didn’t back down.
“Cheater?” she snapped. “Who were we cheating on? Finn and I were both free agents.”
“On me! You were cheating on me! Breaking my heart by screwing around. You knew I loved him, Bree.”
“Sure. Loved him so much you dumped him and married another man. Remember that? You had just promised to love, honor, and obey someone else, Tally. Were your vows nothing but lies?”
“Of course not.”
“Well, you can’t have it both ways. You chose Wayne over Finn. Your choice, Tally. No one else’s.”
“You think I don’t know that?”
She narrowed her eyes. “Of course you do. And that’s why you’re so mad at me. You made a choice, and now you know it was the wrong one.”
“Yeah, well, you made a choice, too. You chose your own libido over everything we’d shared. Like all our history, yours and mine and mine and Finn’s, didn’t matter a lick compared with a few minutes of mindless pleasure.”
Bree staggered back, collapsing against the side of the van as though I’d physically attacked her. I felt a stab of pain as a flash of lightning illuminated the raw anguish on her face.
“That’s not fair,” she said, the fight gone out of her.
“Nothing about this is fair,” I snapped.
I turned on my heel and ran off as fast as my legs would carry me. By the time I made it to the entrance to the parking lot, the skies had opened up again. Billowing sheets of warm water fell to the ground, instantly soaking me to the skin.
Fairgoers shrieked and laughed as they fled the storm and a flood of cars bottlenecked at the entrance to the lot. I moved between them, peering through windshields and searching for a familiar face, until I finally hitched a ride home with some guy I barely recognized, someone I’d seen at the Bar None a time or two.
At home, I made my way to the tiny first-floor room we’d turned into a cozy TV den, wrapped myself in one of Peachy’s old quilts, turned off my cell phone, and hunkered down to brood.
I heard Alice traipse in around midnight, her step unmistakably heavy for such a little thing. She stomped up the stairs and slammed into her room. I didn’t know if Bree had told her about the paternity results. Even if she had, I didn’t have the em
otional resources to help her. I knew I’d end up feeding into her anger rather than soothing it.
Peachy and Bree both came in a bit later. They each took a turn at the door to the den, calling my name, but I didn’t answer. I wanted to be alone with my pain.
While the storm raged outside, I seethed quietly inside. I spent the night curled on the couch watching ShopNet on the television, Sherbet perched on my hip, occasionally making biscuits on my thigh. Usually the mindless patter of the shopping channel hosts drowned out the babble of my own anxious thoughts and allowed me to drift off to sleep. But that night, all the leather handbags and porcelain collectibles and mineral makeup in the world couldn’t silence my bitter internal monologue.
Finally, the storm broke, and as the first hint of dawn brightened the living room window, I nudged Sherbet to the floor and made my way to the front porch and stretched out flat on the swing. The storm had carried in a wall of cool air even more welcome than the rain. I tipped my head back to allow the mild breeze access to my throat as I stared up through the frame of the swing’s chains.
Very little grew in our yard. The Texas climate is not naturally conducive to green lawns and ornamental plants, and we didn’t have the time or the money to bend the vegetation to our will. The one plant that seemed to thrive was the cherry laurel at the corner of the house. From the street, the elegant emerald leaves and the graceful arc of the small tree’s trunk appeared vital. But from my vantage point, I could see a tracery of bare limbs, the fine net of twigs left naked by the plant’s instinctive allocation of energy to the branches in the sun.
I gazed into that brittle web and let my eyes go unfocused.
The front screen door opened with the soft whine of unoiled hinges and slapped shut.
“I thought I heard you stirring,” Peachy said.
“Didn’t sleep.”
“It was that kind of night.”
She tapped me on the knee, so I swung up into a sitting position. She joined me on the swing’s terry cloth cushion.
“This family needs you to hold it together.”
“I’m not sure I’m strong enough, Gram.”
“All my girls are strong. Just how I raised ’em.”
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