The Borrowed and Blue Murders (The Zoe Hayes Mysteries) (9 page)

Before I could answer, he’d absently planted a kiss on my cheek and moved on to get a beer, and his brothers trailed him, leaving Molly and me alone with Luke, who was gumming a fold of blanket. Molly remained oddly quiet as she plopped onto the blanket beside him, lay down and covered him with her arm.

“Lukie, Lukie.” Her affection was strained. “Sweet Little Lukie.” She rolled him onto his back, tickling his tummy a little too energetically.

“Molly. Be gentle.”

She continued to tickle him, her voice a little louder, sharper.

“Stop tickling, Molly. Just cuddle him.” Not that he seemed bothered. Luke stared at his big sister with delighted, adoring eyes. But something about Molly wasn’t right. Her smile was off-balance, distorted. “Molly? What’s going on?”

She didn’t answer. She revved it up a notch. “Tickle tickle, Lukie. Tickle tickle.”

“Molls?”

“Tickle tickle tickle.” Her eyes gleamed, and her tickles became jabs.

“Molly, stop.”

But Molly didn’t stop. She escalated. “Tickle tickle tickle tickle.” The pitch of her voice rose, became cloying, and her hands formed little claws, fingers stiff and wriggling.

“I said stop.” I grabbed her arm, but she pulled it away and went after Luke again

“Lukie, Lukie—” Defying me, she pawed at his belly. Luke looked confused and, predictably, dissolved into tears.

“Molly. Cut it out.” In a one movement, I swooped at her, yanking her by the arm away from Luke and up into the air. She screamed, a window-rattling, nerve-piercing sound. I caught her, tried to hold on to her, but she squirmed away and bolted out of the room, cradling her arm, wailing, and Nick came running in, leading the herd of Stiles brothers, asking, “What happened? What the hell’s going on?”

By then, Luke was howling. Upstairs, Molly slammed her bedroom door. In the dining room, Nick, Sam and Tony gaped at me, asking questions. My head throbbed. I wanted to cry or scream, to disappear altogether. Instead, I picked Luke up, cuddling him so he’d quiet down. “It’s okay. It’s nothing.”

I couldn’t tell Nick that Molly had tried to hurt our son, couldn’t quite believe it myself. In all of her six years, I’d never seen Molly be mean to anyone, much less a smaller child. In fact, Molly and I had never before had a really angry, let alone a violent, moment. But, suddenly, poof. For no apparent reason, she’d snapped and attacked a baby. And I might have dislocated her shoulder.

“What’s with Molly?” Nick wasn’t going away. “She having a tantrum?”

I rocked Luke. “You could say so.”

Nick nodded at the baby. “Because of him?”

I blinked, absorbing the question. “Why?”

“She’s been too cool about having a baby brother.”

She had?

“I mean you’d expect her to be a little jealous, wouldn’t you?”

How would I know? I didn’t know much about siblings.

“You were jealous, growing up.” Sam grinned, punched Tony’s ear.

“Apparently, you still are.” Annoyed, Tony swatted Sam’s belly.

Nick smirked. “Both of them have always been jealous of me. I was the oldest and Dad’s favorite.”

“You?” Sam’s mouth dropped. “In your dreams.”

“If anyone was jealous, Nick, it was you. Who used to whine that Mom never got mad at me?”

“Well, she never did. It was pitiful.” Sam’s eyes weren’t laughing. He was only partly joking. “’No matter what you did, you never got in trouble. Poor little Tony has the sniffles. ‘Let me fix you a hot cocoa, Tony.’ Or how about, ‘Tony, let Mom buy you a new car’?”

“Oh, cut it out. You guys got cars, too.”

“What? A ‘74 Pacer? Nick and I got a pile of rusted scrap metal on wheels. But not baby Tony. Little Tony got a brand-new Toyota—”

“I saved for that—”

“You paid, what? A hundred bucks?”

“Face it, Tony.” Nick folded his arms. “Mom spoiled you rotten.”

“Well, why not?” Tony shrugged, a smug grin spreading across his face. “I was the baby—”

“Actually,” Nick interrupted, “you were the baby. But Eli was her favorite.”

“Eli? She was always pissed at Eli. She grounded him ninety percent of his childhood—”

“Because she expected him to be perfect. She had her eye on him always. No, for sure. It was Eli. I was Dad’s favorite, and Eli was Mom’s.”

“No way.”

“You’re full of crap.”

Tony pouted. Sam snorted. Nick snickered.

Sibling rivalry, I guessed, was as common as siblings. I’d read about it, studied it in family psychology courses. I should have recognized it, prepared Molly better for it. But having been raised alone, I’d been insensitive to sibling issues, and now I’d let Molly down. Her world—the world she and I alone had shared—had been invaded, turned upside down by a little alien. And only six years old, she couldn’t know why she felt the way she did, couldn’t be expected to deal with her conflicted feelings. Molly was understandably jealous: Luke was tiny and cute and grabbing all kinds of attention that would otherwise have been hers. And I had been completely oblivious, not anticipating the feelings of my own daughter.

“Here.” I handed the baby to Nick, left the brothers to their squabbling and hurried upstairs to Molly. I wasn’t sure what to say. Nick and his brothers would be better qualified to explain this phenomenon than I was. But at least I could reassure her, remind her how much I loved her and how incredible a person she was. But, as it turned out, words didn’t really matter.

Molly must have heard my steps in the hallway, because before I got to her door she burst out of her room and ran into my arms, clutching onto me, sobbing. “I’m sorry, Mommy. Don’t be mad. I’m sorry.”

A
FTER WE FINISHED HUGGING
and drying tears, the rest of the night was just us girls. First, we tackled her school project, which turned out to be, aptly, to make a family tree. We got markers, old photographs and poster board and traced her ancestry as far back as we knew, which was only two generations back. We talked about family as we worked, and I asked how she felt about having a brother.

“It’ll get better.” She was probably assuring herself. “We’ll have more fun when he can do stuff. Now he just cries and sleeps.”

“And he takes a lot of my attention.”

“It’ll get better, Mom. He’s not going to stay a baby forever.” Now, she was reassuring me. She concentrated on drawing a line connecting Nick’s name to Sam’s.

“Molls, do you ever miss the times before he was born? You know, when it was just us?”

Molly looked up from her work. “Not really.” Her eyes were solemn. “I’m bigger now. It’s Luke’s turn to be the baby.”

Oh dear. Once again, Molly’s thoughts went deeper than I’d imagined. We pasted on pictures of our family members, admiring our design.

“But how do I finish it?” Molly frowned.

I didn’t know what she meant. “It isn’t finished?” We didn’t have photos of Nick’s parents or my mother, but we’d made silhouettes for them. The thing looked done to me.

“No. What about my other family?”

Her other family? Oh God. How could I have been so insensitive and obtuse? Molly was adopted. She had a whole other biological family.

“Aren’t I supposed to make them a tree, too?”

Oh dear. “I suppose, except we don’t know their names.”

“Right.” She stared at the poster, and I thought she seemed sad. “Maybe I can do that some other day.”

Molly had her bath, then, and we blew her hair dry and painted our finger- and toenails. When they were dry, we went through my jewelry box and I gave Molly a locket I’d worn as a child. We cuddled up and read books we hadn’t looked at in years, her favorite picture books from her early childhood,
Where the Wild Things Are
and
Goodnight Moon.
We snuggled on her bed until she was about to fall asleep. Then I put my mouth to her ear and whispered, “I’ll always love you, Molly. No matter what.”

“I know.”

“You were my first baby. You always will be special to me.”

“Uh-huh.”

“You can always talk to me if you feel unhappy. Or jealous. Or mad.”

“Okay.”

“There’s no one else like you. You’re beautiful. And smart. And funny. And kind. And cuddly and huggy. And—”

“I get it, Mom.”

She did?

“I get that you love me.” She yawned, repositioned her head on her pillow so she could look at my eyes. “It’s just that—don’t take this the wrong way, but you always pay more attention to Luke. Don’t deny it. You send me off to play with Emily or to the zoo with Uncle Sam, but you take Luke for walks and you’re always holding him, and when I want to tell you something you’re either taking a nap or Luke’s hungry or crying, so I can’t even talk to you. I know he can’t help it because he’s just a little baby but sometimes he makes me mad.”

I kissed her forehead, smelled vanilla shampoo. I couldn’t argue with her. She was being honest, and it was all true.

“Here’s what I’d like to do, Molls.” I took her hand. “I’d like us to make special time for just us.”

“You mean like make play dates?”

“Kind of. More like ladies only dates.”

She grinned. “No boys allowed dates?”

“Exactly. Mom and Molly dates. Once a week. Okay?”

“Okay.” She held up a pinkie. I linked mine around hers, a pinkie swear, more binding than a signature. I kissed her good night and started for the door. “Mom?” Her voice was sleepy. “It’s a piggy bank. I made Luke a ceramic piggy bank. For when he’s bigger.”

“He’ll love it.”

She didn’t answer. I think she was already asleep.

N
ICK WAS WAITING IN
the hall with Luke, who was hungry again.

“Everything okay?”

I nodded, taking the baby. “She’s asleep.”

Nick followed me into the bedroom, asking about Molly, waiting while I positioned myself and Luke began nursing. Nick sat beside us and I felt a wave of tenderness. The moment was precious and intimate, with just the three of us in the bedroom. No brothers. I realized that, except to sleep, I hadn’t been alone with Nick since Sam or Tony had arrived. Nick and I hadn’t really talked, hadn’t taken time to connect with each other. Everything was for Tony or Sam, Sam or Tony. Nothing was for us.

“Tony wants to use your office to do some work. Okay?”

Naturally, the first time we were alone in days, Nick’s first words would be about one of his brothers. But I was confused. Sam and Tony had both been using my office all week, and no one had asked my permission before. Why now? “I guess.”

“Thanks for being so patient, Zoe.”

“They’re family.” I wanted to feel that way, realized I was having my own brand of sibling rivalry.

“But I know it’s a lot for you, all at once.”

Nick sat beside me, kissed my neck. “I called the hospital.” He began massaging my shoulders. “No news on Edmond.”

No news. Well, at least that meant he was still alive. I closed my eyes, letting a small moan escape as Nick worked away the tightness at the base of my neck. Actually, my whole body felt sore. The tenderness in my milk-swelled breasts melded with that in my shoulders and back; a single ache spread over me from the bump on my head to the bruises on my hip where I’d landed after Bryce shoved me. Nick’s touch was soothing, and I wished he’d keep it up, move his strong fingers down my back, my calves and ankles and feet. But he stopped at my shoulders, whispering, “I’ll be downstairs.”

Slowly, I opened my eyes, saw Nick’s shadow passing outside the bedroom door. Luke purred and gurgled, happily drawing nutrition out of my body. And I lay back on the pillows, miserable.

I told myself that I had good reasons to feel that way. In fact, I listed them. I was still dealing with the double shocks of the murder and the hit-and-run, plus the minor injuries I’d sustained in the latter, plus I had fluctuating levels of postpartum and milk- making hormones, and probably some postpartum depression. Not to mention nerves about getting married. As if those items weren’t enough, there was the matter of my home. My house wasn’t a private domain anymore. Anna and Ivy worked there, rearranging stuff, putting it where I’d never find it. And police still appeared on the patio, and so did the press. That morning, Sam had caught a guy peeking over the back fence, taking pictures of the yellow tape surrounding the bloodstained deck. And speaking of Sam, he and Tony were everywhere. I’d found Tony moving furniture in the living room, looking in desk drawers in my office. And even though Sam had a suite at the Four Seasons, I doubted he’d spent ten minutes there since he’d arrived in town. The brothers were always underfoot. Their toiletries and dirty socks or shirts were everywhere. No used bath towel went un- dropped. No toothpaste glob got rinsed from the sink, no dirty dish got put into the dishwasher, unless, of course, the dishes in it were clean, in which case they’d unerringly mix clean and dirty together—

Stop, I told myself. Don’t start this again. Nick’s brothers were visiting for just a week. It was a chance for us to get to know each other. They felt at home here, and I should be glad about that. I was focusing on them because they were non-threatening and their issues weren’t frightening. It wasn’t my houseguests, Tony and Sam, who were upsetting me; it was my own sense of security. My home, normally a place where I felt safe, had been the scene of a hideous murder.

Admitting that to myself calmed me down. I assured myself that, after next week, the murder would be history, maybe even solved. The press would move on to another story, and the brothers would go back to their own lives. Nick and I and Molly and Luke would have a chance to attain a sense of normalcy.

I leaned back, picturing what it would be like. Normal. I saw Nick going to work in the mornings. Molly getting on the school bus, or going to tea with me at the Pink Rose Cafe. And Luke— what would normal be for Luke?

I looked down and saw him staring up at me, gazing with dreamy, loving eyes. His body was fleshy and so yummy that I had the urge to bite him. Lord, he was intoxicating. I wondered did he look like me at all? His eyes weren’t brown like mine, but they were more almond shaped and a deeper blue than Nick’s. Luke’s hair was pale baby down, glistening, not dark like my brunette. His nose was still undefined, a rounded pinch of flesh, and his cheeks were fat and solid. I couldn’t see either Nick or me when I looked at Luke. All I saw was a perfect baby boy. When he was finished eating, I lifted him to my face and slowly, gently, pressed my mouth against his cheeks, his eyes, his chin, his tummy. I smelled his sweet milky breath as he sighed, and I saw his eyes roll, overcome with sensation. I kissed him again. And again, watching him react each time with the same intensity.