She blinked. Seriously? The chief of police was taking time from his day to see how she was coping with finding a body? Of course Gramma would check, and the crew going into the backyards with her had been their way of checking, but what kind of police officer did that? What kind of chief?
“I—I’m okay.” She confirmed the words with a shrug that felt jerky rather than assuring. With some sort of obligation pressing her, she went on. “I still see...you can’t unsee... But it’s—it’s all right.”
Did that sound as bad to him as it did to her? Embarrassment flushed her face, heat creeping down her throat. A man was dead, and no matter that she hadn’t known him, it wasn’t all right. She’d never known any of those women when she was a kid, and their deaths would never be all right.
But she felt responsible for their deaths. With Evan Carlyle, she’d just been in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Chief Douglas seemed to understand what she meant. When she sneaked a look, there was no censure in his eyes. “No problems sleeping? No nightmares?”
“A few.” She avoided his face and took another step back. She wasn’t lying, though it felt like a lie. She’d had two nightmares, waking soaked with sweat, Gramma at her side and Poppy resting her head on her thigh. But the nightmares hadn’t been about Carlyle. Seeing him had triggered them, but the faces in her dreams were women whose names she’d never known and the parents she wished she’d never known. If she’d been a regular person, finding Carlyle’s body would have been nothing more than a blip on her radar.
Poppy banged the door hard, and Mila gestured that way. “The baby really needs to go out. Do you mind...?”
She meant Can you say what you want and go? He interpreted it as Can you give me a moment, then we’ll talk? With an expansive gesture, he pointed toward the door. “Go ahead. I’ll wait here.”
Her breath grew tight again. She unlocked the door, then, out of habit, opened it just enough to slide through. Poppy had never met a stranger at the house before, and though Mila was pretty sure the sweet puppy didn’t have it in her to bite someone, she wasn’t so sure about knocking them to the ground and loving them to death.
“Hey, Poppy, baby,” she greeted, rubbing her hands over the dog’s ears and face and shoulders. “I know I’m late. Do you need to go out? Please need to go out because if you don’t, that means I’m gonna be finding puddles somewhere. Come on, sweetie. I’ll race you to the door.”
Chapter 3
Everything was my fault. They told me that every day, that I was a bad girl, that I made them do bad things, that everything wrong in their lives was because of me, but they never told me what I was doing wrong. If they had, I would have fixed it. I would have changed. I didn’t want to be bad. I didn’t want to make them be bad.
I didn’t want anyone else to die because of me.
My father liked to play a game with me. He stood me against a wall, the heels of my shoes pressed against the baseboard, my shoulders against the Sheetrock. “Don’t you say a word,” he said. “If you do, I’ll have to punish you. Do you understand?”
I knew what was going to happen next. I racked my brain to find a way around it, to avoid the slap that would jar my teeth so they felt like they’d come loose in my jaw. I obeyed him. I didn’t say a word. I just nodded, slowly, because I knew it was the wrong thing to do but it was also the only thing I could think of.
He bent, his face inches from mine, his breath smelling of beer and whatever food he’d last eaten. “Do you understand?”
Tears of fear and dread and helplessness started forming. I nodded again, and he bent so close his nose practically touched mine.
“I don’t know why you make me do this. Your mother says you’re stupid, but I don’t think you’re stupid. I think you do it on purpose. I think you like to make me mad. You know I don’t like yelling at you, and I damn sure don’t like punishing you, but you do it anyway. You make me do it anyway.” By then, his eyes were glittering with hate and insanity. He was a mean man and a crazy man, and I didn’t know which one was worse.
“One more time,” he breathed, his voice more dangerous the softer it got. “If you say a word, I will punish you. Do...you...understand?”
I couldn’t hold it back no matter how I tried. I knew, no matter what my choice, the result would be the same, whether I said a word, whether I didn’t. “Yes!” I cried.
The next thing I knew, I was on the floor, certain that this time he’d broken my jaw, my cheekbone, a tooth or two. He stood over me, staring down at me with such disgust. “One simple thing,” he said, and he called me by whatever name they’d given me that month. “I just wanted you to do one simple thing, and you couldn’t. It’s your fault. It’s always your damned fault. But you’d better learn, brat. You’d better learn good, because next time I won’t go so easy on you.”
Then he walked away, leaving me on the floor, crying as quietly as I could. He was right. It had happened so many times. I should have been able to figure out the right thing to do by now.
But I was stupid. I was bad. And everything was all my fault.
—Excerpt, The Unlucky Ones by Jane Gama
Listening through the door, Sam smiled. So Milagro might not be polished at human interaction—or maybe it was man/woman or cop/woman-who-didn’t-like-cops—but she obviously adored her dog. He hadn’t had a pet in a long time, but he believed that, in general, people who loved pets couldn’t be all bad.
Sure, and now he would meet up with a serial killer who volunteered at the animal shelter and adopted and lovingly cared for all the animals his budget could afford, while carving up people as if they meant nothing.
After Poppy thundered away from the door, Sam took a seat in one of the rockers. He didn’t mind the heat of the day so much. It was summer in Oklahoma—expected. It was when they reached this part of summer, when the temperature after 10:00 p.m. was still in the eighties and the humidity was just as high, that he got tired of it and started wishing for fall. Trouble was, neither spring nor fall lasted nearly as long in Oklahoma as they should. Some years, sleep in late and you missed them.
He hadn’t intended to wait for Milagro when he stopped by half an hour ago. Knock on the door, exchange a few quick words, then home to shower, dinner and maybe an entire evening in front of the TV in his boxers. But some part of him had decided to wait while sweat began breaking out all over. The back of his shirt was soaked, and if he took his shoes off, he would leave wet prints wherever he went.
And still he’d waited.
This was a much nicer place to wait. The chair was comfortable, old and creaky, probably a family antique passed through the generations. The flowers filled the air with a dozen fragrances. Two brilliantly colored hummingbirds darted from bloom to bloom, the larger one trying to commandeer the smaller one’s choices. When the little guy whirled and scolded him before chasing him away, Sam laughed. He always rooted for the little guy.
“Well, aren’t you a handsome addition to the garden.”
Sam shifted his attention to the woman standing on the walk to the side of the house. She wore a sleeveless shirt, yoga pants in eye-popping colors and running shoes in enough hues to match something in everybody’s closet. Her gray hair was pulled back from her face with a band, and a turquoise activity monitor circled her left wrist. She was pretty, fit, older than his parents and twice as spry.
“I appreciate the compliment.”
Instead of walking to the corner and around to the gate, the woman carefully swung one leg over the fence, found good footing, then swung the other over. “Mila hates when I do that. She thinks I’m going to hurt something. I don’t know whether she worries it’ll be me or her plants.”
“Mila?”
“Milagro. Spanish for miracle. Did you know that?”
“I didn’t.” He’d seen a lot of things in his career involving kids. It was sw
eet to think that a pair of parents had loved their baby girl enough to name her Miracle. Though he liked the nickname, too.
She wove through the beds before climbing the steps and plopping into the other rocker. “I’m Jessica Ramirez. Mila’s gramma.”
Ah. Sam took the hand she offered and found her grip strong and her squeeze firm.
“This, young man, is where you say—”
Grinning, Sam interrupted. “I’m Sam Douglas. It’s nice to meet you, Ms. Ramirez.”
“See, I knew you’d get it with a nudge. Is she home? No, she must be, or Poppy would be dismantling the front door.” She rocked a few times, her head tilted to one side. “Why are you here this evening, Chief?”
“I just stopped by to...” To see if Mila was all right, and she’d said she was. He’d asked about nightmares, and she’d admitted to a couple. That really was the end of their conversation, unless he could come up with something else before she walked out the door. He could throw together a couple of quick questions of a cop-ly nature, nothing really important but enough to satisfy her and her grandmother.
Jessica was still looking at him, one thin brow arched high. “You stopped by to...?”
“Sorry. I got distracted.”
Her broad smile hinted that she’d already guessed at reasons for him to be there and was happy with the one she’d chosen. She didn’t comment on how pretty her granddaughter was or mention that she was single, though. Instead, she replied from a totally different angle. “If you kept lists like that nice young Detective Little Bear does, you wouldn’t get distracted so easily.”
Sam’s eyes widened. “You know Detective Little Bear?”
Quietly in the background came a rattle, then the door opened and Mila stepped out. When she saw her grandmother, Sam wasn’t sure whether it was dismay or resignation on her features. Was Jessica the type to embarrass her with old stories or on the constant search for a potential bridegroom whether Mila wanted one or not? Sam’s aunt Leah was in year three of a campaign with no end to get her five daughters married off, and her behavior had gotten downright desperate.
“I work at one of the antiques stores downtown,” Jessica said. “Called A Long Time Ago. We had a couple of incidents that Detective Little Bear took care of for us.”
Sam remembered: two cases of malicious mischief. Two teenage girls had left nearly a thousand dollars’ of damage in their wake, then posted pictures of themselves in the midst of the mess on Facebook.
“You never mentioned that, Gramma.” Mila went to lean against the porch post. When Sam started to rise to offer his chair, she shook her head.
Jessica lifted her chin and smiled smugly. “I do not tell you of all my interactions with lawmen. Or with men in general, for that fact. A grandmother’s got to have some secrets, don’t you agree, Chief?”
“If people didn’t keep secrets, I’d be out of a job.”
Jessica’s smile broadened at his words. Mila’s eyes darkened, and she stared down at the floor.
Sam had assumed Mila just wasn’t a social person until he’d met Jessica. Then he’d thought maybe, with a grandmother so friendly and larger-than-life, Mila had never had the chance to develop conversational skills. When Jessica was around, he doubted there were many moments for anyone else to jump in on a subject.
“None of my secrets are policeworthy, I’m afraid, are they, sweet girl?” Jessica went on. “More along the lines of that old bat living next door to me will never know that these baby blue eyes aren’t my natural color, and I will deny having a face-lift until the day I die. And if you forget to bury me in my Spanx and my five-inch red high heels, Mila, you’ll have to wear them for the rest of your unnatural life.”
Jessica’s accent was more Southern than the women in his family, but Sam could practically hear his aunts Loretta and Leah and Goldie in her. It was thanks to them that he even knew what Spanx was. The only good thing about acquiring the knowledge was they hadn’t tried to show him. Goldie would have—“They cover as much as my shorts do!” she’d protested when his mother made her stop.
Thank you, Jesus.
“If you’re not here, you’re going to have trouble making me wear those red torture devices.” Mila slid to the top step, her back against the post. “Besides, you’re not dying for a long while, Gramma.” There was a hitch in her voice, a little quaver, and a responding hitch to Jessica’s smile.
Instead of making a big deal about it, though, Jessica laughed. “I tell you, Mila, heaven’s not ready for me and hell can’t handle me, so I’m going to be around a good long time. Now...all three of us are sitting here in slightly less than pristine states, and I don’t know about y’all, but my stomach’s reminding me it’s about dinnertime, so here’s my suggestion. Let’s each of us go to our own homes, clean up and meet back here, and I will provide dinner. Does that work for you, Chief?”
“Sam.”
“Thank you. You can call me Jessica.” Sam hesitated. There wasn’t a single reason why he should have dinner with the Ramirez women...and more important, no reason why he shouldn’t. Yes, Mila was very loosely involved on the very periphery of a case, but it wasn’t even his case. He got invited to dinner by people in town more often than he really wanted just because he was chief, and if he could eat with the mayor and his wife—who was the most abysmal cook in the entire county—he could share a meal with Jessica and Mila. He could assure himself that Mila wasn’t just giving the right responses to his questions, that she really was doing okay or if she needed help to cope.
“I’m older than your mama, son. I don’t think the gossips will find anything to talk about,” Jessica said. “Just agree and give me a ride home so I can get back with the food.”
He looked at Mila, whose expression was somewhere between normal, resigned and panicked. Yeah, he would bet on his cop instincts that Jessica was looking for someone to share Mila’s life, even if Mila did seem perfectly happy with Poppy and no one else. But if she didn’t absolutely hate the idea...
She looked up, caught his gaze on her and gave the tiniest of shrugs. It wasn’t a glowing agreement—oh, sure, great, stay and have dinner with us—but it wasn’t a frantic please go away signal, either.
“Come on then, Jessica,” he said. “I’ll give you that ride.”
* * *
“What do you think they’ll talk about?” Mila watched the pickup drive away, Gramma leaning forward to wave, then closed the front door. Poppy watched her, posture alert, ready to spring this way or that, even drooling a bit in anticipation of a treat.
Gramma had tried over the years to push her into some friendships. A person needed to be around people their own age, she’d insisted as she gently, lovingly shoved Mila forward. It’s the normal way of life.
Mila and normal didn’t belong, no matter what the age.
“Don’t you want a best friend?” Gramma had asked in frustration. “Don’t you want a boyfriend someday?”
Mila had lied, told her no. It wasn’t that she didn’t want. It was that she didn’t know how to be a best friend or a girlfriend. Relationships required trust, and the only person Mila had ever trusted in her entire life was Gramma.
And now Gramma wanted her to be friendly with Chief Douglas.
Her stomach flip-flopped. She did her best to never let Gramma down, but encouraging any sort of relationship between her and the chief seemed a one-way trip to disaster.
Vaguely queasy, Mila showered, dressed in a summer dress, dried her hair, then with Poppy on her heels, she made a round of the living room. She swept an entire bookshelf clean of files, correspondence, printed pages and notebooks. In the tiny second bedroom, she crabbed sideways between the bed and the wall to dump her load into the mostly empty closet. There was a box, filled with copies of a single book; a file box with documents and statements; and a battered old photo album.
Her secrets.
Her life.
She closed the door, feeling marginally safer. This weekend she would put a dead bolt on that door. Then she wouldn’t have to worry about anyone who came here learning a single thing about her. She’d been tortured by the details of her life forever. No one else deserved to suffer.
Stepping outside onto the back porch, she debated whether it was cool enough to eat there. There really was no option inside for three people, especially one who seemed to take up as much space as...Sam, she tried experimentally. It was a nice name—strong, no-nonsense. And like most first names, it felt very personal to her. Maybe she would stick with Chief.
With the ceiling fan turned on, the porch was bearable. She did a quick sweep of the old floorboards, then dragged over a stepladder to stretch out the mosquito netting that hung at the four corners, puddling the creamy net on the floor.
With lights hanging around the perimeter of the porch, the fan and the sweet, luscious fragrances of the flowers, the space was welcoming. A little cramped, but with Gramma there, it would be bearable.
She had just put the stepladder away when Chief Douglas knocked at the front door. She knew it was him because Poppy was howling excitedly and because Gramma never knocked; she jiggled the doorknob even though she’d been the one to teach Mila to always, always lock her doors.
Her breath caught in her chest. She’d talked more in the last two days than in the past month. Her sparse supply of words was used up. Why couldn’t Gramma have asked him to pick her up on the way back? She could talk to anyone.
Another knock pushed Mila through the kitchen and to the front door. She grabbed Poppy by the collar, twisted the lock, then backed away, dragging the dog with her. “Come in.”
The chief opened the door and stepped inside slowly, careful to close it before Poppy had a chance to escape. His gaze went from her to the eighty-pound dog straining hard to check him out, her barks turning sharp, her nails digging into the floor as she tried to twist free. “Hey, Poppy.” He crouched, a sensible distance between them. “You’ve got a big voice, don’t you, sweetie? What are you so excited about? Are you not used to having strangers come to your house?”
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