“Excuse me, but I am allowed to express my concern for my son with my friend.” Vicki’s emphasis on “my” increases with each utterance. “Between you and Jake, it’s like I can’t have anything to myself. Peace of mind, a bag of kitchen supplies, hope for a goddamn normal life.”
She’s glaring at her husband now and gritting her teeth. It feels almost like a silent dare. Nadia is reminded so much of how her mother would goad Jim that she can almost feel herself shrinking back into a much younger form, watching helplessly as two adults who should have known better spun each other up into a mutual rage, and then by the end of it demanded that she pick a side.
Ron’s face goes the color of a beet, but he miraculously keeps a lid on it for now. In the silence, Nadia thinks of those old nuclear bomb test reels, and how eerily placid everything looked right before the light flashed and the mushroom cloud appeared. Vicki takes a deep breath, holds it in, and turns back to her. “Sorry. It’s been a day.” She laughs wildly. “Or maybe more like a month. Or a year. Who am I kidding? My whole fucking life.”
“It’s going to be okay,” Nadia reassures her, wondering if that’s what Phoebe would have done. Vicki doesn’t look like she believes her much either way.
“I’m done,” Ron says, and for a moment Nadia thinks he’s referring to his ability to hold on to his temper. But she understands he means his little surgery when he snips the suturing material and begins wrapping Wyatt’s hand. He’s clearly rattled and keeps dropping the gauze roll, but once he’s cut it and secured it with tape, he wipes his brow and declares, “Good as new.”
Wyatt lets out a sigh that Nadia reads as clear relief, because now they can leave. “I really appreciate it,” he says.
“Just keep it dry. Change the dressings every couple days. In two weeks, I’ll remove them for you. Need anything for pain? I can give you a few Vicodin.”
Wyatt shakes his head. “That’s not necessary. Thank you, though.”
“If you change your mind, just ask.”
For a moment no one says anything, like they’re waiting for another shoe to drop. Then Nadia stands. “Well, we shouldn’t keep you from dinner.”
“Ah yes, a woman’s work must continue,” Vicki says glumly.
“Nice meeting you, Wyatt,” Ron says, and then turns away to start cleaning up. He doesn’t even acknowledge Nadia.
Vicki walks them to the door. She looks at Wyatt. “Hey, big guy, can I borrow your wife for a sec? Important girl stuff to discuss.”
Wyatt and Nadia exchange a quick glance and he nods. “Of course. I’ll be on the porch, babe.”
Once he’s gone, Vicki turns to her. “Aren’t you two nice and cozy now.”
Nadia’s chest feels tight. This is what it’s like to flail in the deep end without a life preserver. “We’re working through things.”
“That’s great. Really great. Good for you both.”
Nadia touches the doorknob, and Vicki places her hand on her shoulder.
“I was really upset with you this morning for ditching me.” She sounds a little shrill and wobbly, like she had to force herself to admit this. That makes at least a couple people who were upset with Phoebe this morning, and Nadia knows she has to tread carefully.
“My stomach was pretty upset too, believe me.” She smiles, but Vicki isn’t smiling back. This time the snarky-bitch angle isn’t going to cut it.
“Ron says I always expect too much out of other people. I’m starting to think maybe there’s something to that.” Her eyes well up with tears, and she swipes them away almost violently.
Even under the best of circumstances, Nadia has always sucked at finding the right things to say to people in distress. Right now, she feels like her tongue is stapled to the roof of her mouth, and it takes physical effort to pry it loose. “I really am sorry.”
“Don’t apologize,” she snaps. “I really hate the sound of those words right now. They make me feel like shit.”
Nadia recoils at the force of her words. It’s impossible to read Vicki’s face in the deepening shadows, but she senses a nakedness in her eyes that wasn’t there a moment ago. It’s something bordering on hate. Or is Nadia reading into things?
“Go home to your husband, Phoebe.”
Nadia exits the house and flinches as the screen door slams shut behind her.
■■■
INTERLUDE
I’LL NEVER FORGET the moment you died. Or when you came back.
As you were struggling to take your last breaths, I told you it would be okay. I think you must have heard me, because a second later, you stopped fighting and let go. It went so fast. Only a few seconds from the moment the knife went in. I think you knew at the very end that you were free, like all of us want to be, and your face became so peaceful. I think I helped you.
No one else would understand that. They’d say I murdered you and that I deserve to pay for it. But I think I must be paying already, because here you are, alive again, and I don’t know how to handle it. I know she isn’t really you, but my feelings can’t tell the difference, and my eyes barely do, either. She even sounds like you. Hearing her talk made me want to crawl out of my skin.
How does anyone move on from something like this? Death is hard enough, but it’s even harder when the dead don’t stay dead.
CHAPTER 17
TEN MINUTES LATER, they’re both sitting in the living room and still panting from the adrenaline rush of it all. For the first time, she wants some of what Wyatt is sipping from his glass, but she guzzles down water, instead.
“I can’t believe that worked,” Wyatt says.
“Are we sure it actually did? It felt to me like we were all putting on a performance.” She tells him about the short conversation she had with Vicki at the door.
He thinks about it. “Do you think it means anything?”
“Hell if I know. My nerves are shot right now.”
“Same. There were moments over there where I felt completely unmoored from reality.”
“I see more of that in our future. So what did you find on your little recon mission?”
He frowns. “What recon mission?”
“Duh, when you conveniently said you had to use the bathroom. Did anything jump out to you?”
“Oh. I really did have to go to the bathroom.”
She can’t hide her disappointment, but they can’t all be snoops like her, she supposes.
“The bathroom is as bare as the rest of the house, if that helps.” He throws back another gulp of whiskey. “Who do you think looks the guiltiest?”
“Let’s both name someone after the count of three.”
Wyatt nods.
“Okay,” she says. “One . . . two . . . three . . . Jake.”
“Ron.”
Nadia raises her eyebrows. “Ron? Really? Why him?”
“I’ve seen a lot of guys like him in my practice over the years. High-pressure jobs, unhappy marriages. They’re bombs waiting to go off. Ron seems like he’s on the . . . severe side.”
She nods in agreement. “Yes.”
“He sees his wife getting a little too chummy with the woman next door, and we already saw how he doesn’t like Vicki airing their dirty laundry. Who knows what she and Phoebe have talked about. Ron decides he’s had enough of Phoebe’s interference. Comes over, maybe flies into a blind rage.” His face reddens with anger of his own, but he lets it go in a long breath. “We know the rest.”
She can’t deny the theory is solid. After all, Ron was her number one guy too, and his likely knowledge of something going on between Phoebe and Jake provides another motive that she isn’t sure Wyatt needs to know about right now. Ron also went out of his way to avoid interacting with her the whole time, like her mere presence was a strong irritant. That could have been due to basic dislike, though, rather than his aversion to seeing a dead woman
resurrected. “I think you could be on to something, but after seeing Jake . . .”
Wyatt sighs. “Yeah. That reaction, the marks on his face. I admit, it doesn’t look good for him, either.”
“I sense a ‘but’ coming.”
“But I can’t quite see the motive. I suppose he could be a Ted Bundy in practice, but he didn’t ping my psychopath radar.”
She’s been dreading this part, but it’s too important to keep to herself. Same with the blackmail note, but she hopes to hold off on telling him about that one a bit longer, if not forever. Her initial worry that he might already know about the note has dissipated. Given their mutual level of distrust, Wyatt certainly would have brought it up by now as a reason to doubt her character, and if he found out about it now, and the event that drove her to write it in the first place, he might never trust her at all. Phoebe likely kept it to herself, like the rest of her secrets, it appears. “So . . . here’s the thing that makes Jake a bit more suspect. I was waiting to see if you already knew, but I guess you don’t.”
Wyatt’s frowning. “Knew what?”
“I’m nearly a hundred percent certain that Jake and Phoebe . . . were up to something. Together.”
His face goes slack and he blinks. “I’m sorry, what?”
“Well, he was over here a lot. Mowing the grass, doing odd jobs around the place.”
He gives an irritated shrug. “Just because she hired him to do chores doesn’t mean anything else was going on.”
“No, but he was around . . . a lot.” She speaks gently, hoping not to upset him more since he’s already on the defensive. But now he looks like he just took a bite out of a lemon.
“Look, our marriage was far from ideal, but even if Phoebe was having an affair, I doubt it would have been with a goddamn kid, okay?”
Okay, so we’re firmly at denial, Nadia thinks. She supposes she can’t blame him, but he can’t remain there anymore, not if he really wants to get to the bottom of what happened here. “I also watched him storm out of your house a few days ago while Phoebe stood in the doorway. It looked like they’d had a bit of a, you know, lovers’ quarrel.” Wyatt opens his mouth to reply, but she holds up her hand to stop him. “She was basically naked.”
He closes his eyes and props his forehead against his balled fists. Seconds pass, and he doesn’t say anything, but the slump in his shoulders seems to hint at acceptance. “Did you see anything else?”
Isn’t that enough? she nearly asks, but it would only sound cruel. “No. And look, I don’t think we should count out Ron, either. For all we know, he might have seen the same thing I did that day, and that would give him plenty of motive. We just can’t overlook Jake, because of the possible jilted, um, lover angle. He’s also the only one who reacted strongly to seeing me tonight.”
“Not true. Vicki didn’t exactly roll out the welcome mat when she answered the door, either,” Wyatt reminds her. “She looked like she’d had the fright of her life. I saw the way she studied you. And you said anyone who looked like they’d seen Phoebe’s ghost was probably the killer.”
Nadia can’t argue with that. “I can’t blame her for noticing the differences, though. She was Phoebe’s closest friend. And she did seem to warm up a little.” At least until the very end, when she was nearly out the door.
“Yes, she loosened up some once she realized you weren’t going to give her the plague. If you buy the mysophobia excuse, anyway.”
She stares at him. “What’s that?”
“Sorry. I got clinical for a second. Fear of germs.”
“Ah, yeah, that. I don’t know if that was real or not, but it’s easier to believe she was afraid to let a sick person in the house than it is to believe Jake got those scratches from anything other than fingernails. Phoebe fought her attacker.”
Wyatt sighs. His hands make a rasping sound against his stubbly cheeks as he rubs them. “I don’t think that trip over there got us closer to the truth, did it? We have three people who might have done it but nothing more concrete than that they’re acting a little weird, and nothing pointing to why. Unless you can think of anything else.”
Nadia hesitates for a moment and then tells him about the packed bag she’d discovered in Phoebe’s closet. “It’s possible she was about to leave town. Could factor in somehow.” Oh, it most certainly does factor in. Do you think the shut-in housewife you’d been spying on for weeks suddenly made travel plans before she received your note? Not impossible, but it seems unlikely. She was probably going to run away because you threatened to spill her secret. The mystery is who else found out, and what did they do about it?
After a contemplative silence, he says, “This is unbelievable.”
“I’ve told you the truth about everything I know.”
“It’s not that. It’s just that if you’d asked me a day ago what I thought the odds were of Phoebe leaving this house for more than groceries, I would have said a million to one. Now I feel like I barely knew this woman at all.”
“We all have blind spots.”
He shakes his head. “Feels a lot bigger than a spot. I’ve just been blind, period. She told me as much this morning. Of course I argued with her about it. But she was right.” He sighs. “I want to have a look at that bag.”
Nadia looks out the window to find the sun going down on this very long, weird day. Too bad it’s only about to get weirder. “There will be time for that later. Right now, we have something more important to take care of.”
Wyatt runs his hand back through his hair. “I guess you’re right.”
“I’ll give you the address for your GPS, but just do your best to stay behind me. And it’s probably also a good idea for you to drive my car.”
“Why?” He looks immediately suspicious.
Because they aren’t looking for a middle-aged white guy in a blue Ford Focus, she thinks. “It just seems easier this way. For you.”
He closes his eyes and sighs. “It’s not going to be easy, regardless.”
“Listen, the hardest part will be the trip down. Once we’re there, the rest is just coasting downhill.” She knows she’s oversimplifying it. The actual disposal part won’t be any picnic, either, but that’s no way to give a pep talk.
“All right. Fine. I just want this day to end.”
“That makes two of us. Now, let’s get going. We can talk on the phone on the way down. Maybe it’ll make everything feel a little less . . .”
“Terrifying?” he asks.
“I’ll go with that.”
* * *
—
ONCE THEY’RE ABOUT twenty miles out of the city, traffic opens up and her dual worries about having a body in the trunk and the cops’ taking notice of her car fade to background noise. All they need to do is keep the cruise control set to the speed limit and drive between the lines, and they’ll get there without incident. When the last vestiges of pink fade from the western sky, her phone rings through the car’s Bluetooth system, which displays Wyatt’s name.
She answers. “How are you doing?”
“Wishing I was anywhere but here,” he says.
“Same.”
“I’m not sure I can do this whole drive with only my thoughts for company. Do you mind if we just sit on the phone?”
“Sure.” She’s glad of the distraction, something to keep her guilt about her half sister at bay. There’s a long silence, so long Nadia almost thinks they’ve been cut off.
“No offense, but your car is crap.”
She grins. “Careful. That’s my house you’re talking about.”
“Wait. You lived in here?”
“Cheaper than a studio apartment. Fewer roaches. No roommates.”
“Good point. I’ve lived among roaches a few times. I wouldn’t recommend it.”
They don’t speak for a few minutes and she wonders if h
e’s going to hang up. “So this place we’re going, you’re from there originally?”
“Yes. Monticello, Indiana, born and raised. Though I was conceived in Chicago, so part of me feels like I’m really from there.”
“So . . . how did your mother end up in the path of Daniel Noble, anyway?”
“She emigrated from Serbia back in the nineties, during the war over there. Got a job with some catering company that happened to do work for a lot of his functions. They met at one of those.”
“Ah. Daniel always did have a soft spot for the help. Phoebe had a lot of nannies in addition to stepmothers after her mom passed.”
“Yeah, well you can imagine how much interest he had in my mother after he got her pregnant. He wanted her to get an abortion, but she was way too religious for that. When one of his people took her to the clinic, she snuck out the back and hooked up with some other immigrant friends of hers, who put her in touch with a widowed farmer in Indiana who was looking for a little help around the house. That’s where I was born. Eventually she married that farmer, probably out of some sort of sense of obligation. Jim’s his name. I never got the feeling that she loved him all that much, but she took pretty good care of him until she died of liver failure a few months ago. One of the last things she told me was who my real father was.”
“That had to have been a shock.”
She snorts. “Honestly, I thought she was delirious. Then, not even a month later, Daniel died. And all of a sudden, his name was everywhere. It felt almost like my mother sending messages from beyond the grave, if I believed in that kind of thing. So I started paying attention. I’d heard the name Daniel Noble, knew he was some famous rich guy, but had no reason to care before. Didn’t even know what he looked like until I started clicking on the various headlines.”
“Bet you noticed a resemblance,” Wyatt says.
“Definitely. The Noble genes are strong, it seems. It didn’t exactly make me feel good at the time, mind you. Still doesn’t. Maybe it’s not as bad as finding out you’re Charlie Manson’s kid, but you know, same ballpark.”
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