Love and Death in Blue Lake (17 page)

She smiled, happy little girl being praised by her beloved Papa. “So it’s okay not to feel bad?” But she did feel bad. Not that her cousin was dead, not exactly. But that he’d somehow ruined her for Bob. He’d made her different from other people. She’d killed someone and when you did that, you changed inside. It wasn’t that she’d gotten cold or ruthless or insane. Just different. Outside the circle of normal.

“Guilt is a wasted emotion,” Papa said, draining his glass again and glancing at his watch. He put his hand in his pocket, and Lily held her breath. What if he killed her right here? Right now? But Dean wouldn’t let that happen. Papa pulled out a cell phone.

“Our little reconciliation scene has gone well, but I’ve got business.”

Yes. The mechanic. He’d have to figure a way out of that one. He would. He always did.

Damn. He was phoning his driver. “Can you open the gate at the back?” he asked, but it wasn’t really a question. He’d expected her to do this for him. Then he spoke to the driver. “Pull in when you see the gates open. I’ll come out the back.”

Double damn! No confession and he was heading into the dining room, straight toward the kitchen at the back of the house. And Dean.

Lily hurried to the arch opening into the dining room and grabbed her father’s arm. “Papa, wait.” They were still in camera range. Just.

He shook her hand off his arm, but he stopped. He patted her shoulder. She tried not to shudder.

“I just wish you could stay longer, that’s all.” She pulled at his hand, hanging back. If he left video range, voice range, all of it would be lost, a waste. Part art, part truth, zero result. Papa had not killed the mechanic. Someone else, someone professional and probably out of the country by now, had done that.

“Need to use the facilities?” She’d try anything to keep him from leaving camera range.

“I’m good.”

“Your driver hasn’t pulled through the gate yet.”

“Well, you need to open it for me. Where’s the keypad?”

“I, uh, they told me, and I’m trying to think…” She pressed the heel of her hand to her forehead. “I’ve been medicated.”

“They’ve got you well protected. You may get off with a slap on the wrist. Powerful friends with too much money. I should have such problems. You did well, little girl. Probably keep your gun in the pocket of those blue jeans, huh?”

Eyes down, she nodded. “When I have it.” She turned slightly so she wouldn’t block the camera on the mantel. It was nestled into a hollowed out wooden owl. “I’m sorry Papa—not for killing him—he took my place in your heart.” Ha. Like he had one. “And for that, well, it’s like I said, I can’t feel sorry he’s dead.”

“No great loss,” Papa said. But he stayed. She knew he liked flattery. Almost as much as bourbon. The stuff should be working on him by now. Loosening his tongue. Think, Lily. What could she say to get him to spill? He’d been crazy about her cousin. Why would he say it was no great loss?

“Mom was a loss to me,” she said.

“I already told you why I did it. She was going to leave. Sue me.”

He didn’t seem to realize that he’d just admitted to murder. She was sure the owl caught it.

And then he was gone, out the back door, Dean and his laptop disappeared. She ran outside for one last look, and to see if Dean was out there. Her father, no need for the Papa charade anymore, had never seen him. But still. She didn’t want them to meet.

The tinted window glided down. “When you get your gun back, be careful not to shoot your ass off,” her father said. He laughed, and she tried for a rueful grin. Dean stood by the door and used a subtle thumbs-up to punch the code from the garage wall. The minute the taillights cleared the wrought iron gates, he led her into the house.

“He’s got some scrambling to do,” Dean said. Lily smiled.

After she’d freshened up inside, she came out back, where the gates were now open and the family sat behind a bank of wide tables. Dean escorted her to a chair near the middle, next to Bob. He sat on her other side. Dr. Fass was there. Ruby, too, brave girl. A guy Dr. Fass knew from her other life was making preliminary statements. Lily would answer no questions until her exclusive interview with a national magazine, directly after which she had another interview on live local television. She felt like she had to do this stuff for Dr. Fass and the Bryman family. For Ruby. Everyone could get closure, Dr. Fass said. Lily just wanted it over.

Dr. Fass answered a few questions, just general things about PTSD and how Ruby was doing. Dean played the voice part of the taped confession. He didn’t explain where it came from, but everyone in town knew Lily was a videographer. It was not a felony to practice your craft. And the questioners had stopped calling her a “shooter.” She was now a young woman who had avenged her mother’s death and stopped the rape of an innocent girl. She was a hero. But she didn’t feel like one. She felt empty. Numb.

****

Bob watched as Dean pulled out of the state park next to Blue Heaven. He sat in the gazebo above the lake, waiting for Lily. She’d been avoiding him, had moved back into the bungalow last night but then asked to see him this morning. There was one highway that led out of town, and Dean was on it. Somehow, it didn’t lessen the tension in Bob’s gut. Dean headed west, toward Lake Michigan. He didn’t wave good-bye.

Lily came out just as Dean’s tail lights were fading from view.

“It’s not what you think with him,” she said, sitting next to Bob and taking his hand.

“I don’t think anything. I don’t know what to think. You need time. I love you. I can wait.” He knew he had to shut up or lose her. She already seemed gone, far away with her own thoughts, looking out to the big water. Which had been the moment he’d lost her? When she shot the gun? When Dean got to town? Before? He’d never ask, never know. Maybe, if she stayed, someday…

“I’m leaving,” she said. “Gonna chill someplace random for a bit.”

He nodded because he couldn’t speak. He watched her walk away, get in her car, and head down the same highway Dean had just disappeared into. With a shiver of relief, Bob noted that Lily turned east instead of west.

Chapter Ten

When Courtney was a little girl, she’d been playing tag, fallen onto a tin can and cut her knee. It didn’t hurt. Her skin opened up, split in two, looked like peanut butter and jelly all the way across her leg, just under her knee bone. A few of the girls screamed and ran home. Other kids helped her cross the street to her own house because her leg wasn’t working right.

Her mother had been at the grocery store, so her dad had to take her to Doc for stitches. Thirteen of them. That didn’t hurt either. Not even when Doc gave her a shot. What hurt was having to stay on the front porch and watch the other kids play. She lasted a day. Two. But, on the third day, the tension was so great it made her move. She jumped up and went across the road to Cheryl Tanner’s house. Cheryl’s dad had just put up a fence, a wood one, with a top the size of a balance beam like Courtney had seen on the Olympics. It was three feet tall and none of the kids could walk it. Courtney just knew she could balance, stitches or no.

And she had walked that fence until Old Man Tanner came out and yelled at her to get off his goddamn fence. He yelled so loud she fell again. That broke a couple of stitches, but it didn’t hurt. Her mother shrugged and dabbed at the beads of blood with cotton and peroxide.

“What am I going to do with you?”

“Mom, I can’t stay on the porch all summer.”

Her mother had kissed Courtney’s head. “I know, baby.”

Courtney was not a baby. But she didn’t protest. Her mother had given silent approval for play to resume. Within a week, she’d broken every stitch. She even pulled them out herself because they were gross and stiff with blood. She still had the scar. It was silver now, and the faint traces of the stitches were there too, to remind her that she was tough. She didn’t hurt easy.

But here she sat, in the same room Doc had once slept in with his wife, and she didn’t feel tough. She’d gotten through the ordeal with Lily. Ruby had the same stuff as Courtney; her girl was tough, too. They’d both been okay as long as they were helping Lily. Now Ruby was pretending to be okay, but a trial was pending because the DNA evidence was conclusive: Papa Van Slyke had killed the mechanic. He’d hired a cleaner, but before the guy could get there, the three civilian men, Lily’s protectors all, had shown up. And Papa had pulled the trigger himself. There wasn’t going to be a second count for killing his wife, even with the confession splashed all over the internet and print papers. The YouTube sensation made front page news, and possibly Lily’s career, but it was inadmissible in court.

Lily was not being charged with a crime, and Harlan had given her permission to leave town, as long as she stayed in contact. There was still the matter of the family fortune, and it was unclear if that would become part of the case against Papa Van Slyke or simply be ironed out by lawyers. Courtney didn’t know where Lily had gone. Nobody did. Lily had promised she would call Ruby when she settled somewhere. So that was Ruby’s focus, still, days later. “I wonder if Lily will call today.”

Courtney glanced at the clock. Three a.m. Of course. It was like her body knew when Edward was heading home. Ruby had not mentioned Edward, not since Courtney had burst into tears the day Lily left town, and Ruby wondered if they could stop in for a burger and say hi. The tears had surprised Courtney, who was always strong for her daughter. Always. Without fail. Except that once. Ruby had turned white under her summer tan. “Never mind, Mom,” she’d said. “Who needs that old coot anyway?”

Courtney laughed because Ruby never used words like “coot.” Or she pretended to laugh, and choked back the tears and wondered what the hell was happening to her. She only let herself think of Edward after Ruby was asleep. She read the letter, over and over, the one he’d written her when they were kids.

In a way, it helped her get over the baby. It helped her cope with Ruby’s horrible experience. Now that she was out of therapist mode and back to being Mom, she was having a hard time. For the first time in a long time, she remembered what hurt felt like. And she couldn’t keep peanut butter and jelly in the house.

So Edward was a coping mechanism. Nothing more. Fantasies of what might have been kept her from other, worse, might-have-beens. She traced events backward. He’d gone off her because of the lie. About the baby. It had been a terrible lie. She didn’t know the part of herself that was capable of telling such a lie. She understood Edward’s horror. She had to forgive herself for that lie. She worked on it a little bit every day. It hurt worse than a busted stitch, worse than peroxide on raw skin, but she held herself in compassion for what she had lost. Why couldn’t Edward hold her in compassion, too?

If Edward forgave her, if they could become a family, it would help Ruby. Her daughter would feel secure, she’d have music and laughter and a man around the house. Yes, Edward should forgive her for Ruby’s sake, at the very least. She glanced at the letter, puckered with dried tears. She knew every word by heart. They were all lies.

Stop it, she told herself. But then she remembered how she’d called Edward every day since Ruby had been assaulted. She’d texted him. And he had not returned her calls or texts or in any way acted as if she were a person living in the world. Living in a world of hurt for a long time.

Maybe she didn’t know Edward at all. Maybe it had all been false, right from the start. She was confused; she should be able to figure this stuff out. She had a couple of degrees in human psychology, after all. Turns out, she didn’t know as much as she thought she did. All she knew how to do was be kind. She was very kind to Ruby. She even treated herself, when she remembered, with kindness.

And she knew, deep inside, that she would never ever heal until she could think of Edward with kindness too. She had to forgive him for not loving her. She couldn’t quite do it yet, but she would get there. As soon as she didn’t need someone to blame for her ruined life anymore, she’d forgive him. As soon as the pain went away, the baby pain, the Ruby pain, the Lily pain. As soon as that faded, she could erase the Edward pain and not even leave a scar.

****

Eddie wiped down the bar and then buffed it to a shine for the final time that night. Three nights since Lily had left town. Two nights since he’d seen Courtney’s face on the television set. One night since he’d imagined Ruby being raped and lost his ability to count change. She hadn’t been raped. That was what he had to remember so he could hand dollar bills back to his wait staff.

He didn’t think about those calls and texts and things. Had erased them all without even looking at them. He’d been alone too long, and he liked it that way. He didn’t need a house full of women around with their rose colored walls and flowered furniture. Ruby would be fine. If Courtney couldn’t cure her own daughter, well, Courtney could. She was a tough broad. The toughest.

As his staff filed out one by one, nobody asked about Ruby. This was the first night not one person had said her name. Not even a customer. Not to him, anyway. Hungry vultures had not left him alone since the shooting. It was better if he could say he didn’t know how Ruby was and leave it at that. It was better he not get mixed up in all that mess. Let the Brymans deal with it. Let Courtney’s family help. Eddie didn’t want any part of it. He couldn’t even bring himself to drop those damn divorce papers in the mail. They stared up at him from the bottom of his safe every night when he prepared the bank deposit.

Tonight was no different from any other night of his life. He hung the wet towel to dry on a hook he’d hammered for just that purpose, locked up and pulled the cash drawer out of the old-style register he refused to replace. It felt so heavy. Either he was feeling his age, or the vultures were making him rich. He took the drawer into the office.

He opened the safe and ignored that damn envelope the same way he ignored Courtney’s texts and phone calls. He was good at ignoring stuff. Had a lifetime of practice. Courtney was not the first persistent lover he’d had to shake loose.