E.J., THE PRESENT
Well, Elizabeth came out of her room this morning. Surprise, surprise. And she hugged me. Out of nowhere. I’m suspicious but inclined at this moment to accept things at face value. I caught her and Megan in the living room whispering to each other, but they stopped when I walked by. Six months ago I would figure they were up to no good, but now I’m just happy to see them communicating again. If it’s secrets they want to share, that’s fine by me.
About noon, there was a knock on the front door. When I went to answer it I found Alicia standing there, mousy brown hair all but covering her face, wire-rimmed glasses the only thing keeping her eyes uncovered. Even in the heat of a Texas July, she was wearing long sleeves, a jumper, and tights. ‘Hi, Alicia! Aren’t you hot in that outfit?’ I asked.
‘Yes, ma’am. Is Elizabeth here?’
I sighed. ‘Sure, honey, she’s upstairs in her room.’
‘Thank you, ma’am,’ she said, and scurried in the house and up the stairs. Every time I saw that girl, she reminded me more and more of a mouse.
ELIZABETH, THE PRESENT
I called Alicia and went outside to find Megan. She, of course, was on the front porch, sucking face with skater-boy. He is
such
a geek-freak. I just can’t understand what she sees in him. Megan’s really pretty, I say grudgingly, and can do a lot better.
She looked up and saw me, her eyes wide. I guess it’s because she hadn’t seen me in a few days. My tan has faded some, but I know I didn’t look bad enough for her to stare at me like she did. I motioned for her to come to me and she actually did, leaving her asshole boyfriend with his tongue literally hanging out. I was totally creeped.
‘You OK?’ she asked me.
‘I called Alicia. She’s on her way over. I’ve called a meeting in my room. I’d like you there.’ I turned to walk off and she grabbed my arm.
‘What about?’ she asked.
‘What do you think?’
‘Should we include Graham?’
I laughed bitterly. ‘Why? Do you really think we need a
man
to help us?’
She looked over her shoulder at lover boy, who’d finally pulled in his tongue. So gross. ‘No,’ she said emphatically.
‘OK then,’ I said, again turning my back on her to go to the door. She grabbed my arm again.
‘What about Lotta?’ she said.
I thought about it. ‘We have to make her promise not to tell Graham she’s even coming over.’
‘What about Mom? She’ll see her,’ Megan said.
I sighed. Then had an idea. Graham’s birthday was coming up in mid-August. ‘We’ll tell Mom we’re plotting a big birthday surprise for Graham and he can’t know Lotta was here or he’d figure it out.’
‘Cool!’ Megan said. ‘She’d go for that.’
‘I’ll call Lotta, you go tell Mom.’
And with that, we were on our way.
ELIZABETH, APRIL, 2009
Friday dragged on and on, the girls spending much of their time holed up in Elizabeth’s room, going over scenarios of the following evening. Each scenario ended with Megan jumping out of the bushes and pulling a mask off Tommy/Aldon’s face to reveal . . . well, whoever they decided at that moment was the culprit – everyone from their brother Graham to Brandon Gregory, the cutest boy in school.
‘Why would Brandon Gregory be doing this?’ Elizabeth demanded.
‘Because he’s secretly in love with me,’ Megan said.
‘Oh. So he’s harassing
me
?’ Elizabeth said, with a hint of sarcasm.
‘Of course. He wouldn’t harass me – he loves me. Secretly.’
‘Which is why he’s dating Heather McDonald, to further hide his desire for you?’ Elizabeth inquired.
‘Duh. Anyway, he’s harassing you to get my attention. He knows I’m the kind of girl to proteck her sister—’
‘Pro-tect me,’ Elizabeth said slowly.
‘Duh. And he knows I’ll be there when you meet him. Then we’ll get rid of you—’
‘Do you mean that figuratively or permanently?’ Elizabeth asked, raising an eyebrow.
‘We’ll let you drive Dad’s car back—’
‘Then you two will make out in the bushes?’ Elizabeth asked.
‘Of course not. We’ll have a meaningful dialog, at which point he’ll ask me to marry him. After we both graduate college, of course. Then we’ll go together all the way through high school, both go to UT together, then get married, move to Houston where he’ll go to med school and I’ll support him as a fashion buyer for Neimans.’
Elizabeth looked at her sister with admiration. ‘Wow,’ she said, ‘you don’t mess around with your fantasies, do you?’
‘Uh uh,’ Megan said. ‘You wanna know the color of our bedroom?’
‘No,’ Elizabeth said and sighed. ‘I wanna know who this creep really is.’ Sighing again, and wrapping her arms around herself, she said, ‘Half of me wants to believe it’s Aldon. But that would mean that Mom and Dad have been lying to me all these years, and I don’t want to believe that. The other half of me knows this creep is full of crap. That he’s after something else.’
‘And I know what that something else is,’ Megan said.
‘What?’ Elizabeth asked.
‘Your virtue,’ she said.
BLACK CAT RIDGE, TEXAS, 1999
I had an hour before I needed to pick up the kids, starting with Bessie at Grandma Vera’s house in Codderville. I went to the window and looked out at the lawn. Clouds were gathering in the east, big, black nasty-looking ones. Another spring storm. I looked past the lawn to the Lesters’ house next door, sitting forlorn and abandoned. I hadn’t been in there since Friday morning, when I’d gone to get Bessie’s stuff. I should check on it, I thought. Make sure everything’s OK. Somewhere deep in my being, I knew that wasn’t the real reason. The house compelled me. Beckoned me.
I stepped out of my back door and crossed the side-by-side driveways, large drops of rain pelting my head and shoulders. Using my key, I unlocked the Lesters’ back door, stepping inside the dark kitchen. My foot hit something grainy and I almost slipped, grabbing the kitchen counter for support. I flipped on the light switch.
The kitchen had been ransacked. Totally trashed. All the cupboard doors stood open, plates and glasses smashed on the floor, staples and condiments – the only foodstuffs still there after I’d cleaned up on Friday – smeared the counters, floor and tabletop.
I stood still and listened. Not a sound. No one could be repeating this performance in other parts of the house without making quite a racket. A week ago I would have run like a jackrabbit on seeing this kind of mess. But I was tired of running and being afraid. Now I was pissed. That somebody could do this with me right next door! When had it happened? In the middle of the night, while we slept? Luna wanted something concrete? Well, by God, this was pretty damned concrete!
I went to the wall phone in the kitchen and dialed Luna for the second time in an hour.
‘What?’ she said, her voice clipping dangerously at the ‘t.’
‘You want concrete?’ I asked.
‘What’s happened?’
‘I’m at the Lesters’ house. It’s been trashed. Totaled. You wanna come have a look?’ I hung up the phone, almost grinning at my triumph.
TEN
I
lull myself to sleep at night dreaming about Bessie. About the family we could be together. She just doesn’t know how much she needs me, how alike we are, how we were fated to be together. Our lives are intertwined. It’s God’s will. None of this would have happened if God had not deemed it so. I’m ready for our life together to begin. And no one will be able to stop me this time.
E.J., THE PRESENT
About ten minutes after Alicia arrived, Lotta came walking up our block. I could see the bus pulling away from the corner. ‘Hi, Mrs Pugh,’ she said, smiling at me.
I returned the smile. I liked this girl in spite of the fact that she was trying to seduce my son. Get over it, Pugh, I told myself. It still didn’t work. ‘Hi, Lotta. Graham’s not here . . .’
‘I know,’ she said. ‘I’m here to see Liz.’
‘Oh,’ I said, taken aback. First Alicia, then Megan ran upstairs and into Elizabeth’s room, and now Lotta. At least she was seeing people, I told myself. Somehow, that wasn’t as reassuring as I thought it should be. ‘She’s in her room.’
‘Thanks!’ Lotta said, giving me a little wave as she headed up the stairs.
Megan had voluntarily come in from whatever she was doing on the front porch with skater-boy – excuse me, Cyril – and told me first that Lotta was coming, and second not to tell Graham because they were all getting together to plan a surprise for Graham’s birthday. OK, I’m not stupid. The only person upstairs in Elizabeth’s room who would give a damn about Graham’s birthday was Lotta. In the past I’ve had to bribe the girls to get their brother something for his birthday. And as far as I can tell, Alicia has never spoken a word to Graham. So what was the big surprise for? It wasn’t even a significant birthday – he was going to be seventeen. Eighteen maybe I’d buy, but seventeen? And coming immediately after Myra’s untimely death? Like I said, I’m not stupid.
I went to the laundry room and stared at the dirty clothes.
ELIZABETH, THE PRESENT
Mom knocked on my door and opened it without me saying enter. I tried to ignore it.
‘I have to go to the store,’ she said. ‘I’ll be gone a while. I’ve got some serious shopping to do.’
‘OK, Mom,’ Megan and I said almost in unison. ‘Don’t worry,’ Megan said on her own. ‘We’ll take care of the house.’
Mom smiled. I didn’t like the smile. It didn’t reach her eyes. ‘See that you do!’ She gave a finger wave – she never gives finger waves – and closed the door.
‘Something’s up!’ I said as soon as she was gone.
‘What?’ asked Alicia.
‘My mother never finger waves,’ Megan said.
‘And that smile
didn’t reach her eyes
!’ I said.
Lotta looked at the door then back at us. ‘You think she knows?’
I said ‘no’ at the same time that Megan said ‘yes.’
‘She may not
know
know, but she knows something’s up,’ Megan said.
I shook my head. ‘I don’t care. This is the perfect opportunity to find this son of a bitch!’ I said.
‘You’re not thinking this is maybe
too
perfect an opportunity? When was the last time you heard Mom say she was going shopping and might be gone
a while
? She never says that, even when she’s gone for
hours
!’ Megan said.
I stood up. ‘I don’t really care if she knows or not, if this opportunity is too perfect or not. I say we take off. We get Lotta’s uncle’s car and we cruise Codderville.’
‘Just
Codderville
?’ Megan said sarcastically. ‘It’s not a big city, grant you, but there’s still a lot of ground to cover.’
‘No, I’m looking for one place in particular.’
‘Where, Liz?’ Alicia asked.
‘The one place in Codderville no self-respecting girls would ever be caught dead,’ I said.
And in unison, they all answered: ‘The bowling alley!’
BLACK CAT RIDGE, TEXAS, 1999
‘A cut-and-dried burglary,’ Luna said.
‘What?’ I threw up my hands in disgust. Looking around the Lesters’ living room, I said, ‘You call yourself a detective? A three-year-old could tell this place’s been searched!’
She glanced around at the knife-torn couches and chairs, upended with the bottoms also slashed; the potted plants uprooted and all the dirt poured out on the floor; the paintings ripped off the walls, their canvases slashed; the carpet ripped up at the corners and pulled to the center of the room. This was no ‘cut-and-dried burglary.’
‘Every room’s like this,’ I told her.
‘You’ve gone through the whole house?’
I sighed. ‘I had a while to wait for you, you know.’
‘Thought maybe you’d prove your point?’ Luna looked at me. I didn’t like the look she was giving me.
‘What?’ I asked.
‘I said not to call unless you had something concrete. Maybe you decided to manufacture something you considered concrete.’
‘What?’ My hands were on my hips and the look on my face must have matched hers in intensity.
Luna broke eye contact by taking out a small notebook from her purse. ‘OK, when was the last time you were in here?’ she asked.
‘You mean before I started tearing up the place?’ I asked.
She looked up from the notebook. ‘When was the last time you were in the house before today?’
‘Friday morning. I came over to get Bessie’s stuff so she could leave the hospital.’
‘Everything was OK then?’
I nodded. ‘I cleaned out the refrigerator and took out the trash.’
‘So sometime between Friday – when?’
‘Midmorning – around nine or ten.’
‘OK, so sometime between then and now, somebody broke in here and burglarized the place. Can you tell what’s missing?’
I pointed at the almost brand-new forty-inch Sony TV in the living room. ‘Seems funny to me they’d smash a thousand-dollar TV rather than take it, don’t you think?’
‘Maybe they just took smaller stuff like jewelry,’ Luna said. ‘Easier to carry than that huge TV. Smash-and-grab types.’
‘Who systematically searched the whole house?’ I whirled around, pointing at the destruction. ‘This isn’t smash-and-grab, Luna! Even if they did take a couple of things to make it look like a burglary! My God, how stupid are you?’
Boy, had I gone too far! Luna turned and looked at me and I wished I was anywhere but in the Lesters’ living room at that moment. ‘Not stupid enough to make myself a sitting duck for God knows what! Not stupid enough to put Bessie and my own kids in jeopardy by blabbing to the newspapers! And not stupid enough to try to alienate the only people on my side!’
‘Are you on my side?’ I asked. ‘How the hell can I tell that? By all the tremendous support?’
‘By the fact that you’re not in jail for obstructing justice!’