Don't Scream

by Wendy Corsi Staub

  Yes, he encounters at least one Danielle every semester. Sometimes she’s someone he’s initially overlooked; sometimes she’s a blatant Coeds Gone Wild candidate.

  And sometimes, he thinks grimly, she’s a sophisticated Boston blonde whose blood is bluer than her eyes.

  Yes, and now, that blood has been shed in the most horrific murder case to strike Back Bay in years.

  The police reportedly do have a suspect, thank God.

  But what if they start delving into Matilda Harrington’s past?

  What if they come knocking on Garth Saddler’s door?

  You wouldn’t have to worry about that at all, he reminds himself, if it weren’t for what happened in June.

  Yes, there are certain things a married man just shouldn’t do.

  “Listen, Ray. It’s time for you to tell us what you know.” Deb keeps her voice as level as her gaze, so as not to jolt Wilmington when he’s teetering on the brink.

  “It’s okay, Ray,” Mike tells him, just as evenly. “We know you want to get this off your chest.”

  The man remains silent, chewing his lip, clearly deliberating whether to elaborate.

  For his part, Quincy fights the urge to grab his skinny shoulders and shake it out of him, whatever it is. If not a confession, then some kind of revelation.

  They’re forced to wait for a long time, though, for a response. So long that Quincy has given up on a potential break in the case today.

  Then Ray unexpectedly announces, “She had…someone.”

  “You mean Matilda Harrington,” Mike clarifies, and Ray nods.

  Now that we know who we’re talking about, Quincy wants to say, what are we talking about?

  “She had someone in her life? A man?” There, Deb gets it. Quincy will let her do the talking for now.

  Ray is nodding.

  Deb asks, “Who was he?”

  Another hesitation.

  Ray ignores the question, saying instead, “I saw him one night, going into her house. He had his own key.”

  “When was this?” From Mike.

  “I don’t know. A few weeks ago. Right around the time I found out about her party.”

  “The birthday party she didn’t invite you to?” Quincy asks—a little too harshly, his impatience spurred by his furiously cramping stomach.

  Dammit. Ray looks skittish.

  “What was this man doing there?” Deb asks quickly. Gently.

  “How should I know? All I know is he went in late and he came out when the sun was coming up.”

  It’s pretty clear, then, Ray, what he was doing there, isn’t it? Quincy almost feels sorry for the poor bastard.

  “You stayed there all night,” Deb asks, “just watching the house?”

  Ray nods. It isn’t even a sheepish nod at this point, merely resigned.

  “And you don’t know who this man is.”

  Deb isn’t asking a question, per se…Yet Ray is nodding as if in answer to one.

  “You do know who he is?” Quincy asks.

  Wilmington shrugs.

  Quincy’s patience is wearing thinner than Ray Wilmington’s hair. He gets in Ray’s face and barks, “Tell us, dammit!”

  Wilmington’s slack jaw clamps shut like a clam that’s just been overshadowed by a predator.

  And Quincy can tell by the stubborn gleam in the suspect’s eye that the moment is lost.

  Dozing on the couch, Brynn hears the front door start to open, only to be caught by the thick brass chain.

  Startled, she sits up on the couch and in a second, confirms that the boys are still right in front of her, on the floor, absorbed in the Disney DVD she put on for them when Caleb got home from school.

  In the next second, she sees that dusk has fallen beyond the picture window, remembers Tildy’s murder, and panics at the sound of someone pushing the door against the chain.

  Then she hears Garth’s voice. “Brynn? Open up. It’s just me.”

  He’s home early.

  Today, of all days.

  “Coming,” she calls, standing and catching her disheveled reflection in the mirror above the couch.

  She looks rumpled, pale, exhausted…

  But not pregnant.

  Garth will never know…unless she tells him. And she won’t tell him today. Or tomorrow.

  She won’t tell him until she’s had a chance to absorb the news herself, and figure out the easiest way to break it to him.

  Easiest way?

  Ha.

  Least excruciating way would be more like it.

  As she hurries toward the door, she remembers, with a pang, the night she told Garth she was expecting Caleb. She found out around Memorial Day but somehow managed to keep the news to herself until mid-June.

  Early on a Sunday morning, she presented Garth with breakfast in bed.

  “What’s the occasion?” he asked groggily.

  “It’s Father’s Day.”

  “But I’m not a—”

  He broke off, seeing the look on her face. Then he exploded in an exhilarated frenzy of bear hugs and questions, phone calls and plans.

  He was almost as excited the second time around. It was Caleb who broke that news, informing his father that, “I’m gonna be a big brudd-ah.”

  Brynn has a momentary lapse of joy, imagining two big brudd-ahs leaning over her shoulder to see a precious bundle cradled in her arms.

  Then she realizes she forgot to insert Garth in her imaginary picture. And when she does, he’s in the background, arms folded, mouth set in a straight line.

  Which is ridiculous of her. He won’t be that way after the baby’s born. He’ll love it as much as he loves his sons.

  And he’ll still love me, Brynn assures herself.

  Of course he will. He’s her husband.

  She just hopes he’ll believe that she didn’t do this on purpose.

  But you don’t have to worry about that yet.

  She glimpses a wedge of Garth’s face through the crack in the door. “Sorry,” she calls, and pushes the door closed so that she can unfasten the chain.

  Opening it, she steps aside to let him in. “You’re home early. Really early,” she realizes, grabbing his arm and turning it so she can check his wristwatch.

  “I was worried about you.”

  Their eyes collide.

  He’s not talking about the pregnancy, she reminds herself. He’s thinking about her and the boys being alone in the house after what happened to Tildy. And, maybe, he’s thinking about the dead bird on their countertop.

  But she doubts he’s thinking that it has anything to do with what happened in Boston.

  He did mention, that first day, how coincidental it was that something so unnerving had happened here on the night of Tildy’s death. But he said it in passing.

  And he hasn’t brought it up again, other than to tell Brynn at one point that he called Officer Demuth to see if the police had uncovered any leads.

  Of course they haven’t.

  The Cedar Crest police aren’t concerned with finding the culprit in a minor neighborhood prank; they have their hands full, with the Stonebridge semester in full swing and Greek rush season kicking off as well.

  They did say that they had tested the blood they found on the counter, and that it had come from a cat.

  “You know, you don’t have to leave campus early every night to come running home to me and the boys,” Brynn tells Garth, secretly glad he has. She doesn’t like to be alone here after dark now, and she’s dreading tomorrow, his late night.

  “I know I don’t have to, but I can’t help it.” He leans over and kisses the top of her head, brushing her hair back from her eyes. “You look worn out.”

  “I’m fine,” she says quickly. “Just tired. I’m upset, you know…”

  “Do you want me to stay here this weekend, so you can go to Boston for the funeral by yourself?” he offers, not for the first time.

  “No,” she says firmly. “I’m driving out to the Cape on Friday wh
en Caleb gets out of school and my father and Sue will watch them Saturday. You have to go to Arizona and present your chapter at the symposium. That’s important for you to do.”

  “It’s not as important as you are.”

  She shrugs, smiles. “Publish or perish, right?”

  “Right.” Garth returns her smile, but his smile doesn’t reach his eyes.

  CHAPTER 14

  Wake up, run to bathroom, vomit, rinse.

  The vicious daily cycle has begun, and Brynn doesn’t expect it to let up until after Christmas, if at all. With her first pregnancy, the nausea plagued her for the duration. With the second, it eased after the first trimester, which, according to a couple of well-meaning friends from Caleb’s playgroup, was supposed to indicate that she was carrying a different gender. Of course, she wasn’t.

  This time, she’s not even going to second-guess. She’ll be thrilled with a third son or with a daughter.

  What about Garth? she asks herself, as she makes her way out of the bathroom and toward the kitchen in the house where she grew up.

  Garth won’t be thrilled either way.

  Well, at least he’s not under the same roof this morning. The past few days, it’s been a challenge to muffle her morning sickness.

  But Garth was still clueless when he went off to Arizona yesterday, distracted as usual by his fear of flying.

  “I’m just glad you aren’t going to be here alone while I’m gone,” he said, giving Brynn a last tight hug before he dashed out the door.

  So is she, although there are places she’d rather be than in her childhood home…or at the looming memorial service for an old friend.

  This weekend is something to be endured, she thinks, as she steps into the kitchen and sees her stepmother. Sue is lean and outdoorsy with a perpetually ruddy complexion, her blonde hair always kept short, in an attractive cut.

  In contrast, Brynn’s mother was soft and curvy, with porcelain skin and black hair she wore in waves that fell to her shoulders.

  And I miss her so much I feel sick, Brynn thinks now, even after all these years. She should be standing there first thing in the morning, with the sun streaming in the windows, the way she used to.

  Sue is drinking from a sports bottle of water and wearing a sweat-dampened T-shirt. On the counter beside her, the coffeemaker is hissing into action.

  “Good morning, Brynn.” Sue is still breathless, probably from a morning run. “Did you sleep okay? It was a little chilly and I forgot to tell you there was an extra blanket on the top shelf of the hall closet.”

  I know there’s an extra blanket on the top shelf of the closet. There’s been an extra blanket on the top shelf of the hall closet much longer than you’ve lived here.

  Brynn says only, “I was fine, thanks.”

  “Are the boys still asleep?”

  “They must be.” Caleb and Jeremy are in bunks in the upstairs dormered room that once belonged to Brynn’s brothers. The house is a classic Cape: two bedrooms up and two down. The three boys were upstairs and Brynn’s room was on the first floor, next door to the master bedroom.

  When Sue moved in with her father, Brynn moved upstairs to get away from her, camping with her brothers until she went to college. Her girlhood quarters are still intact down here, right down to the high school photos tacked to the bulletin board. It’s the one room in the house Sue hasn’t dared to change.

  Brynn crosses the recently installed tile floor—Mom always longed to exchange the worn linoleum for tile—and glances out the window where a pair of frilly white Priscillas once hung. Now there are only vertical blinds.

  Marie Costello hated blinds, vertical, horizontal…all blinds, Brynn remembers as she sees the sun’s promising glint on an array of golden branches, and notes that it’s going to be a beautiful day.

  A beautiful day for a funeral.

  She turns away, toward the stove, and realizes there’s no tea kettle on the back burner.

  “Can I help you find something?” Sue asks, behind her.

  “I was going to make some tea.” Since I can’t drink coffee again until next summer, she thinks grumpily.

  “Oh, you’re going to love this. Look.” Sue turns a lever at the sink, and steaming water comes out of a side tap. “I just had this put in. See? Boiling water on demand.”

  Brynn murmurs an appropriate comment, opens the cupboard, and begins hunting through a row of boxes for something herbal: chamomile, or apple…

  “We’ve got all kinds of tea in there.”

  “Any decaf?”

  “Decaf? I don’t think so…” Sue comes to look over her shoulder. “But, oh, try this one. It’s really good. Your father doesn’t like tea, but even he—”

  “No, thanks.” Brynn turns away from the box her stepmother proffers.

  I know my father doesn’t like tea. You don’t have to tell me that. He’s never liked tea.

  She feels a gentle touch on her arm. “Honey, I’m so sorry about your friend. What a terrible, tragic thing to go through.”

  To her horror, Brynn is overwhelmed by a sudden impulse to cry. Because of Tildy, because of her pregnancy hormones, because of Sue’s kindness, because she’s the wrong person standing here offering comfort and sympathy.

  It should be my mother, not you.

  “Do you want me to go to the memorial service with you today?” Sue offers, her hand now weighty on Brynn’s shoulder. “I hate the thought of you driving there alone and going through that ordeal by yourself.”

  “I won’t be by myself. My friends will be there, Fiona and Cassie.”

  She hasn’t seen either of them in over a week, nor have they spoken other than to make brief arrangements to meet in Brookline today. Brynn has thought more than once of calling each of them, not just to discuss Tildy and Rachel but to unburden her pregnancy news. But she couldn’t bring herself to do it.

  “Well, you’ll be in good hands if you’re with your sorority sisters, then,” Sue says, lifting her hand from Brynn’s shoulder at last.

  Brynn is surprised—and, all right, touched—that Sue remembers their names and that detail about Brynn’s relationship with them.

  “I was never in a sorority but I always considered my friends to be my true sisters. I was closer to them than I ever was to my blood sisters,” Sue adds, and Brynn’s temporary spark of warmth toward her evaporates.

  Right. Sue was close enough to one friend in particular that she moved right into her life the moment she was gone.

  Brynn tries to imagine one of her own “sisters” doing that, should anything ever happen to her.

  Nah. Workaholic Fiona would never want to deal with the kids. Cassie is embarking on her own domestic adventure with Alec. Tildy—

  Oh, God. Tildy is gone.

  The ugly truth hits her all over again, and with it, the fear that her own life might still be in danger.

  She’s been trying to convince herself that the chances of that are remote. But she can’t ignore the dead cardinal, the card…

  Or that Tildy died on her own birthday.

  If the Boston police knew what Brynn and the others know, they wouldn’t be looking among Tildy’s coworkers for the killer.

  They’d be looking for a woman who supposedly died ten years ago.

  Dressed in a black suit, Isaac stands over the bed, watching Kylah sleep.

  This lying and sneaking around can’t go on any longer. He’s going to tell her the truth. Tonight.

  After he gets back from Matilda Harrington’s memorial service this morning in Boston.

  He wasn’t planning to go, at first. Especially when Puffy told him it’s being held today, of all days. Kylah’s cousin Amy is getting married this afternoon; she’s in the wedding party, of course.

  But he’ll make it back to New York in time for the reception later. He booked a round-trip flight on the shuttle. After boarding the plane this morning, he’ll be in Boston in less time than it takes him to make it across the Triborough Bridge during
rush hour.

  “I’m glad you’re coming,” Puffy told him. “Tildy was a good friend of Rachel’s.”

  No, she wasn’t. Not really.

  Rachel never clicked with Matilda Harrington the way she did with her other sorority sisters. Isaac remembers Rachel mimicking her snobby airs…but only for him, of course. To Matilda’s face—and in the presence of the other sisters—she was always her warm, upbeat self.

  That’s the best thing about Rachel. Having weathered her parents’ bitter divorce and subsequent multiple remarriages, she learned not to make waves. She treated everyone in her life as though she was crazy about them, regardless of how she really felt inside.

  That’s also the worst thing about Rachel.

  You could never really be sure where you stood.

  It’s different with someone like, say, Kylah. She wears her heart on her sleeve.

  I should appreciate that about her, Isaac tells himself, instead of always comparing her to Rachel. It isn’t fair to her.

  With a twinge of guilt, he turns away from his sleeping girlfriend and makes his way through the early-morning shadows to the door.

  He’ll tell her tonight about Rachel.

  And maybe, he thinks hopefully as he strides toward the elevator, Matilda Harrington’s memorial service will be cathartic.

  Maybe it will even enable him to let go at last, after ten years.

  Ten years of keeping his own weighty secret…

  And Rachel’s.

  Ashley Hagan likes to sleep in on weekend mornings, but her mother never lets her. When she wakes up in her own bed at home on a Saturday or Sunday morning, it’s to a bleating alarm clock, same as on weekdays.

  Mom doesn’t believe in lazy self-indulgence.

  Daddy does.

  And, luckily for Ashley, she wakes, lazily, to find herself in the brand-new, almost-bedroom he built into a corner of his apartment.

  “I had to make it so that the wall can come down when I move out,” he explained last weekend, when he first revealed her new quarters.

  “When are you moving out?” Ashley asked, momentarily alarmed.

  “Probably never, so don’t worry,” Daddy said. “At the rate I’m going, I’ll never be able to afford a condo.”