The Cinderella Hour (8 page)

“Sick bastard.”

Jared laughed. “What did I tell you? The truth.”

“I should report you to the police.”

“Here’s the problem with that, boyo. Everyone loves me. I’m a
hero, remember? But you—you’re troubled, Luke. Deeply disturbed. A pathological
liar. The entire town knows it. I’ve made sure of it. Everyone feels sorry for
me and admires me for not sending you away. You see the problem, don’t you?
Nothing you say would be believed. Whereas every word I speak is gold.”

Luke knew he wouldn’t escape violence on this night. It was
what Jared wanted and what Jared would have.

Jared was goading him to make the first move. Luke had never
risen to the bait. Always before, his sole focus had been on surviving what was
to come.

But Jared had never before goaded him with what he cared
about most in the world. Snow. And, never before, had Luke felt he had nothing
more to lose.

Even if he had been sober on this final night in Quail Ridge,
Luke might have lunged at Jared—and seen, too late, Jared’s knife.

Luke believed Jared would kill him. But after slash upon
slash drew blood without plunging to a life-threatening depth, he began to
understand that this was a new game for Jared, a foreshadowing of the way he
planned to keep their fights as unfair as they had always been.

The fight moved up the stairs to Luke’s bedroom.

The room itself afforded neither sanctuary nor privacy for
Jared’s son. Its only lock was on the outside. And the nailed-shut windows
above the glass-filled pool offered no escape.

Luke slammed the door he couldn’t lock and waited for Jared
to throw the dead bolt, trapping him inside, or follow him into the room.

Jared did neither. Laughing, he retreated down the stairs.

The knife was new. The alcohol—for Luke—was new. But the
chase to Luke’s bedroom and Jared’s laughing withdrawal weren’t.

The night’s violence might be over, or it might not.

Luke could only wait . . . and plot his father’s murder.

He had contemplated it often, a soothing antidote on nights
like this. He could do it, he would tell himself. The power was his.

Deciding not to murder Jared was a choice. The choice, always
before, that Luke made.

But now, as he was planning to leave Quail Ridge and Jared was
threatening to destroy the only world Snow had ever known, a different choice
felt clear—even though Luke didn’t know, could never know, if Jared would make
good on his threats against Snow once he was gone.

Would Jared miss having an innocent victim for his games and
decide to befriend Snow instead? If so, he
could
befriend her. He was
that charming. He didn’t blame her for disliking him, he would tell her. Or for
distrusting him. He deserved it. He hated himself, too. But he loved Luke, he really
did, and if she would help him find his vanished son, he would spend the rest
of his life proving to Luke how sorry he was.

Luke had to kill Jared. It was the only way Snow would be
safe. He wouldn’t kill and run, either. He would admit to the murder and offer
no excuses.

I did it
,
he would confess to the cops who were Jared’s
friends. Lock me in prison and throw away the key.

Killing Jared would be worth any punishment. But the act of
killing scared him. He had spent his life trying not to be his father’s son.

But that was who he was. The monster’s son. He would rid the
world of that monster—but how?

Luke tried to visualize it.

The images wouldn’t come.

Coward
,
he goaded himself, as Jared would have, to no avail. There was another voice in
his head, Snow’s voice, knowing he wasn’t a coward . . . and knowing, too, that
he could never kill.

A sound outside his door signaled Jared’s return. As he
waited for the door to open, Luke prepared himself for the invasion.

But Jared was throwing the dead bolt, not turning the knob,
and liquid was seeping in, flooding in.

Scotch? No, Luke realized as he inhaled the scent—and tasted
the fumes.

Jared was pouring gasoline under the door.

A puddle.

A pond.

A lake of flames.

Beyond the locked door, his father laughed.

Then swore.

Then, with a shout followed by a crash, Jared Kilcannon was
silent.

Luke’s bedroom wasn’t silent. The inferno was noisy. The
flames crackled as they chased him toward the window Jared had nailed shut.

Luke saw his reflection—a boy pursued by fire.

A strong boy and a soaring one. Like Peter Pan.

Luke felt freedom in that soaring moment, and the blessed
coolness of the November air.

He felt something else before losing consciousness. Nails
impaling flesh. And he heard a new sound as his spine caved and his bones
snapped.

He awakened to paramedics nearby and onlookers overhead.

“Jared’s dead,” he heard someone say.

“Jared? No!”

“He’s inside the house.
Dead
.”

The poolside crowd was large and diverse. Pinewood neighbors.
Larken High teachers. The Hilltop husbands Jared golfed with. The Hilltop wives
he slept with.

It was a jury of Jared’s peers, not of Luke’s, and as Luke
lay below them, crucified on nails and glass, Jared’s jury proclaimed him
guilty on all charges.

“Luke
murdered
him, as Jared always feared he might.”

“Is he dead, too?”

“Soon, I should think. Look at all the blood.”

“Good.
Good
.”

Luke didn’t recognize the disembodied voices. But he knew who
wasn’t wishing for his death, or at least was committed to his near-term survival.
The paramedics offered words of reassurance, and Mrs. Evans, too, had climbed
into the pool.

And then . . .

“Luke!”

“Snow.”

For the first time since regaining consciousness, Luke looked
from his crumpled body toward the plumes of smoke that veiled the moon. The
faces that wished him dead hovered above.

And so, too, did the face that didn’t.

“You’re wrong!” she cried to the townspeople who had already
convicted him. “Luke didn’t kill his father. Luke could never kill
anyone.
”

You’re
wrong, something told him to say to her. I was planning to kill him. I
wanted
to. Luke didn’t say those words, or the other desperate ones.
Hold me, Snow.
I’m so afraid. I can’t feel my legs. Don’t leave me.
Please.

What Luke said to her, when even Mrs. Evans couldn’t prevent her
from climbing down to him and she knelt on the broken glass beside him, was, “Go
away, Snow. Go
away
.”

Wind
Chimes Towers

Chicago
, Illinois

Saturday,
October
29

6
:
45
p.m.

Snow didn’t need to glance at the
clock to know it was time to leave for the Harvest Moon Ball, to make the short
walk from her Wind Chimes Towers condominium to the Wind Chimes Hotel.

She didn’t need to glance in the mirror, either, to know that
apprehension was written all over her face. She felt her frown. And the
clenched muscles in her neck. And, as she had massaged concealer into the
shadows beneath her eyes, she had felt nerve endings rebelling from too little
sleep.

She had actually tried a smile when she finished applying her
makeup and styling her hair. The mirror hadn’t been convinced. Like the
talkative mirrors of the fairy tales she once loved, it even had some advice.

Watch out what you wish for, for you may surely get it.

Her return to Chicago was a decision, not a wish, and she had
pursued it with zeal. She needed to go home. To resolve issues left unresolved?
Not really. There were none—unless you admitted that by living anywhere
but
Chicago you were running from the past.

No Windy City ghosts awaited her. But finding peace in Atlanta was one thing. She needed to find peace in the place where she had fallen in love
and lost her daughter . . . and where that beloved baby lay sleeping in her
hidden grave.

Peace with the place? Yes.

And peace with the man.

She had to see Luke, talk to Luke, to say, face-to-face, the goodbye
she had promised him sixteen years ago. And if he had forgotten the promise, or
didn’t care that she had broken it? That would be fine. Best.

Luke lived in Quail Ridge. Directory Assistance provided a
number but no address. She hadn’t permitted herself more than that rudimentary
investigation. It wasn’t relevant to her mission what Luke did, or where he
lived, or to whom he was married—the woman he had found who could carry his unborn
babies to term.

Maybe he had even married Vivian.

Luke is in love with me, Vivian had told her on the morning
after the Glass Slipper Ball. He has been all along. I like him, Snow, and I truly
care about his future. But no matter how much Luke wants me, there isn’t a
future for us.

Maybe Luke had changed Vivian’s mind.

Snow wished Luke well, wanted happiness for the boy she had loved
and the man he had become.

If he had married Vivian, so be it. What had Vivian ever done
but tell the truth?

Snow’s churning stomach sent a reminder of her pregnancy with
Luke’s baby. She had been sick during those months of joy, but so hopeful, so
in love.

Get a grip, she admonished herself. You’re here because you chose
to be.

And because it had felt right. WCHM had been looking for
something new and different for their evening listeners.
The Cinderella Hour
would be such a show. The fit was perfect for both Snow and the station—like
slipping a bare foot into a lost glass slipper. She had even found a condo in
the Towers, an eight-flight commute to the station where she would be working.

It was happenstance that the Harvest Moon Ball was held the
weekend before her debut program, and that it benefited the hospital where Luke
had been saved—happenstance that WCHM decided to parlay into a chance to introduce
her to the CEOs they hoped would vie for advertising time on her show.

Snow had attended events like this before. From appearance to
attitude, she was a pro. She enjoyed meeting people—in Atlanta. Would meeting
strangers in Chicago be as enjoyable?

Snow didn’t look like her mother. But somewhere along the
line, the womanly version of Snow Ashley Gable had emerged, a metamorphosis
that drew appreciative smiles from men and faintly frowning ones from women.
The frowns deepened, and the appreciation soared, when Snow spoke. With age,
with womanliness, her voice had become identical to Leigh’s.

There might be, among the strangers at the Harvest Moon Ball,
husbands who had known Leigh, slept with Leigh, paid enormously for the
pleasure of her company. Their wives might be with them, and they might view
Snow, as they had viewed Leigh, as a threat.

No ghosts here? Just a ballroom full of them, a city full of
them, including, perhaps, the father Leigh had insisted she must never know . .
.

Snow hadn’t known, on the night of
the Meadow View Drive inferno, that her own father was alive. She knew only
that the father who had been so cruel to Luke was dead—and that most of Quail
Ridge believed Luke to be Jared’s killer.

The opinion persisted despite the assessment made by arson
investigator Noah Williams.

Noah had no preconceived notions about either Jared or Luke
and wouldn’t have let them influence his analysis even if he had.

The findings, he said, were clear. Jared had set the fire
with murderous intent. Luke, locked in his bedroom, was supposed to perish in
the blaze, or to die when he made a frantic leap to escape it.

Luke’s sky-high blood alcohol level probably saved his life.
He had fallen as drunks often fell, with so little concern for the consequences
that they managed to miraculously survive.

Jared’s intoxication, by contrast, had proved lethal. He had fallen
down the stairs during his own escape from the flames. A minor head injury
rendered him unconscious long enough for the smoke to do the rest.

To say that Noah’s evaluation was unpopular was an
understatement. Even those who accepted it felt constrained to add a heroic
spin. Jared had decided to rid the town of Luke’s menace once and for all. But
being the fine man he was, he couldn’t live with what he had done. After
setting the blaze, he had downed some scotch while awaiting his own fiery
death.

It was a murder-suicide, or would have been if Luke had died.
As it was, Jared made the ultimate sacrifice for nothing.

Other townspeople, notably the country club set, believed
Noah was simply wrong. It was understandable. He had recently lost his wife of
fifty years. His judgment was clouded by grief. The mayor should never have
asked him to come out of retirement to investigate the Kilcannon fire. The
request had been made with kindness: a distraction for Noah, something
useful—and familiar—that he could do.

Little did anyone know it would backfire so miserably.

Not that what Noah Williams said, or didn’t say, really
mattered.

Luke Kilcannon wasn’t prowling the streets of Quail Ridge in
search of the next house to torch. The news from Grace Memorial Hospital was somber. Even if the teen arsonist survived, his prowling days were through. He
would be paralyzed from the waist down.

It was a punishment that most of Jared’s friends could live
with.

Rumors were twined with truth at the dinner tables of Quail
Ridge. They were repeated, with occasional embellishments, in the hallways of
Pinewood Elementary. Despite being paralyzed, the rumors swirled, Luke made
physical attacks on the doctors and nurses in the ICU. His legs were useless,
but his arms were strong.

He had confessed to killing Jared, according to those same
rumors. Bragged about it. He admitted to killing his mother, too. Her bones
would be found beneath the swimming pool, he said. That was why he stopped
swimming. He got tired of doing laps on her grave.

“But Mrs. Evans
saw
Luke’s mother drive away,” Snow
would implore. “She
saw
her take a heavy box from Luke and never even
wave goodbye.”

Snow’s classmates weren’t interested. The fictions about Luke
Kilcannon were far more delicious than the facts.

Snow fell silent, retreating into her own desperate worry.
She hid her unhappiness from Leigh, knowing her mother would disapprove of its
cause. But she let Mrs. Evans see. And, with Snow standing anxiously beside
her, Mrs. Evans made phone calls on her behalf.

Snow couldn’t visit Luke in the ICU, Mrs. Evans was told.
Even if she had been a blood relative, she was too young. But, the ICU nurses
at Grace Memorial told the school nurse in Quail Ridge, Luke would survive.
And, they confided nurse to nurse, his paralysis was not complete. There was a
little movement in his toes.

Snow heard those glorious truths long before they became
known around school.

Once Luke’s survival was a certainty, all anyone talked about
was what should become of him. He had no family. No family
left.
Even
the grandparents he had never met were dead. Quail Ridge could have offered him
a place to stay. It was the sort of noblesse oblige the town’s wealthiest
residents prided themselves on. But the Hilltop elite turned the full force of
their influence against him, a charge led by Trey Larken himself.

If Noah was wrong—which, with all due deference to the
bereaved widower, Trey believed was the case—Lucas Kilcannon was a cold-blooded
killer. And, if Noah was right, he was the son of such an assassin.

Either way, the outlook was bleak. Luke belonged in a
reformatory. And in the likely event he committed crimes while he was incarcerated
there, he could be tried as an adult and permanently locked away.

The reformatory chosen for Luke was as far from Quail Ridge
as it was possible to be without leaving Illinois. Using her own name and Mrs.
Evans’s home address, Snow wrote letter after letter to her friend. All were
returned unopened and stamped Refused by Inmate.

Snow, who had no weight to lose, nonetheless lost a great
deal. Eating was impossible, as was sleep. Her mind raced around the clock, in
a perpetual sprint with her heart. She raced academically, too, galloping
toward early promotion to seventh grade as if Luke would still be at Nathan
Hale Junior High when she arrived.

Snow knew he wouldn’t be. Just as she knew, when she hurried
every day to their forest, that he wouldn’t be waiting for her there . . . and
that it was crazy to keep filling their glass jar with rescued coins.

Luke was gone. Forget about me, he had told her. Go away
.

Sleep became necessary eventually, and so did food. The two,
Snow discovered, went hand in hand. She ate herself to sleep, just as, during
their life in downtown Chicago, Leigh had swallowed beer after beer before
going to bed.

Food was Snow’s sleeping pill. And, like many drugs,
increasing doses were required to achieve the desired effect. A bedtime jar of
peanut butter became two, then three.

Snow was the youngest seventh-grader at Nathan Hale and the
heaviest. Most of her classmates ignored her. But some stared. Teachers did,
too. It was more than her weight, Snow thought, that made them gawk. And more
than her sadness. They seemed to know some secret about her that she didn’t know.
The same secret, perhaps, that Luke had known but never shared.

Snow had no friends. Her blood friend had left her, and she had
left her only other friend, Mrs. Evans, when she had graduated from Pinewood
Elementary. She could have visited Mrs. Evans at her home. She was more than
welcome. But she was embarrassed that Mrs. Evans had gone out on a limb for
her—with the Grace Memorial nurses and the warden at the reformatory—only to
have Luke reject her at every turn.

Snow escaped into her studies, and when she finished her
homework, she read from the piles of books she borrowed from the library. Her reading
selections were nonfiction. No more make-believe for her. The more she read
about the real world, the more she had things she wanted to say—and no one to
say them to.

On an impulse that verged on desperation, she joined the
Nathan Hale debate team. She was exposed to more reality there . . . including
what was real within her own home. With sadness, not confrontation, she told her
mother that at last she understood the “business”—prostitution—Leigh had always
been engaged in. And she decided, based on her reading, that Leigh must have
been abused as a girl.

“That’s why you ran away at sixteen and turned to phone sex
and dates with men you didn’t know. It wasn’t your fault. You had no choice.”

Leigh gazed at her daughter’s plump, earnest face, and
laughed. “Sure I did! What I told you about the reason I left home was true.
Too many kids, not enough money. I wasn’t sexually molested, Snow. I
wasn’t
.
And there’s not some hidden horror that I’ve suppressed. I remember clearly
when it occurred to me that I could make a living being paid for sex. I was
fourteen and attractive to older boys. They’d take me to dinner and the movies,
after which we’d do what they wanted to do in the first place. I told them that
if they’d pay me what it would have cost them for our date, we could skip the
preliminaries. I went from feeling powerless to knowing I could survive on my
own. I don’t regret the choices I’ve made.”

“You hated what you did in Chicago.”

“Because I wasn’t in control. The choices weren’t mine.”

“And now they are?”

“Absolutely. I’m not a victim, Snow. No one is. Not the men
who give me money, or their wives. Trust me, the wives are making pleasurable
choices, too. I’m more of a mistress, a courtesan, than a prostitute. I don’t
get involved with men I don’t know, or even with men I don’t like.”