One Summer (36 page)

“
I
handled that well? How could you tell them, just like that? I was going to wait until we were sure—”

“We are sure.” Michael was brusque.

Becky whitened. Wordlessly Rachel reached out and lifted Katie from her sister’s arms and carried the toddler a few paces away to watch a pair of squirrels playfully frisking around a tree trunk. Rachel was still close enough to hear and see what was going on. It was her intention to keep a discreet eye on her sister in case Becky should need rescuing. Michael in this mood was a stranger, and Rachel had no idea what he was capable of.

Becky wrapped her arms around her and stared up at her husband.

“How can you just throw the four of us away?” Becky’s voice cracked as she spoke. Rachel felt her stomach clench in sympathy.

Michael looked impatient. “You’re being melodramatic, as usual. I’m not throwing anything away. My daughters will always be my daughters, and I am sure we can work out a reasonable schedule of visitation. You know as well as I do that our marriage was a mistake. It quit working years ago. Now I’ve found somebody else I want to be married to. Why the hell won’t you just let go before you hurt the girls any more?”

“Before
I
hurt the girls—!” Becky was speechless.

“This could be quite painless if you would just stop behaving so damned hysterically. I’ve already got a buyer for the house, at a premium price that’s hard to come by in this tight market, I might add. Add that to what I’m prepared
to give you to put a quick end to this nonsense, and you’ll come into a nice little windfall if you’ll just be sensible. And I’ll continue to support the girls, of course.”

“I’ve been asking myself if I ever really knew you,” Becky whispered, her face as white as Rachel’s silk blouse. “I don’t think I ever did. Please don’t come here anymore. If you have something to say to me, talk to my lawyer. I’ll call your office on Monday and give you his name.”

“I thought we both agreed that we would use mine.”

“You agreed. I didn’t. I don’t think it’s such a good idea.”

“Becky—” Michael sounded impatient.

“Go away, please,” Becky said in a stifled tone that Rachel knew meant that she was on the verge of tears. Becky turned away from her husband as she spoke. Rachel saw her sister’s white face and desperate eyes as she walked blindly toward the house, and she felt her temper heat.

“See if you can talk some sense into her, would you, Rachel?” Michael asked in a harassed tone as he came to stand beside Rachel and stare after Becky. Rachel, her arms tightening around Katie, who was contentedly sucking her thumb, looked up at Michael in disbelief.

“You are a son of a bitch,” said the woman who hardly ever swore, while Michael’s eyes suddenly focused on her and widened with surprise. “And my sister is well rid of you. Now, please get off our land, or I will call the police.”

Then she, too, turned her back on Michael and walked away.

A few minutes later, still seething, she watched from the front window as the black Lexus roared down the driveway and out of sight.

Rachel had meant to join Johnny that evening at his apartment, as had become their custom, but by seven o’clock it was evident that she was not going to be able to get away. Becky and the girls were still so upset that she couldn’t leave them with their grief. Predictably enough,
Loren and Lisa blamed their mother for the whole mess and could not speak to her without the discussion degenerating into shouted accusations and outbursts of hysterical tears. Rachel was left to try to explain the situation and comfort her older nieces and distract Katie, while Elisabeth provided a shoulder for Becky to cry on.

In the midst of this turmoil, the telephone rang.

Rachel picked it up. In the hallway beside the kitchen, Katie took one of the crayons Rachel had given her and began scribbling big red circles on the gold moiré wallpaper. Rachel grabbed the crayon, and Katie immediately began to howl. Sighing, Rachel spoke into the telephone as Katie ran off.

“Where are you?” said the voice on the other end without preamble as soon as she said hello.

As she recognized the peremptory growl, Rachel immediately felt better. Just hearing Johnny’s voice soothed her.

“I can’t come tonight,” she said quietly, not wanting her older nieces, who sat around the kitchen table having brownies and milk, or her mother, who was in the library with Becky, to overhear. “There’s been a crisis.”

“What kind of crisis?” Johnny’s voice sharpened.

“Michael told the girls that he and Becky are getting a divorce. Everyone’s all upset. I really need to be here tonight.”

“Oh.” There was a pause. Then, on a slightly hopeful note, he continued, “Does this mean I can forget about coming to Sunday lunch?”

Rachel had to laugh. “No, it does not.”

“I was afraid of that,” he said gloomily. “Two o’clock, right?”

“About a quarter till. And, Johnny—”

“Yes?”

“Don’t worry. Mother can’t eat you.”

“Easy for you to say.” But there was humor in his voice, and Rachel smiled.

“I love you,” she said into the receiver.

“Hmmm,” That was the closest he’d gotten to answering in kind. Then, in a slightly different tone, he added, “Rachel?”

“Yes?”

“Do me a favor?”

“Anything, except cancel lunch.”

“Not that.” He was smiling. She could tell even over the phone. “But don’t go outside tonight, okay?”

“Why not?”

She could hear him hesitate. “I did a lot of thinking today. And it occurred to me that Marybeth and Glenda had at least one thing in common: me.”

“So?”

“So—so do you. I don’t know if they were killed because of something to do with me. I hate to even think it. But where you’re concerned, I don’t want to take any chances. So stay inside tonight, would you please?”

“All right.” Rachel spoke slowly as her mind grappled with what he suggested. It was so obvious, and yet it had never occurred to her. If—and it was a big if—the murders had been aimed at Johnny in some way, she was now a likely target. The realization scared her silly.

“Promise?”

“Absolutely.” She meant it. Wild horses couldn’t have dragged her out of the house at night now.

“That’s my girl.” He sounded satisfied. “See you tomorrow for lunch then. Take good care of Becky and the girls—and yourself.”

“I will. ’Bye.”

“ ’Bye.”

He was the first to hang up. Rachel held on to the phone a little longer. She loved him so much, she ached with it, and more than anything on earth she wished she were in his apartment, eating spaghetti or dancing or talking or …

“Rachel, who was that?” Elisabeth popped her head out of the library.

“Johnny, Mother. He said he’s looking forward to lunch tomorrow.”

“Is he?” Elisabeth looked as if she had tasted something sour, but after a glance at Rachel’s face, she said nothing more on that subject. “Do you think the girls can talk to their mother like sensible human beings now instead of throwing tantrums right and left?”

Rachel shrugged. “Who knows?” she said, and waited for Elisabeth to notice Katie’s embellishment to the wallpaper. But Elisabeth merely cast a harried eye over the thick red lines and withdrew. Rachel went into the kitchen to coax the girls into the library.

39

B
ack at his apartment, Johnny found himself missing Rachel sharply. He ate his solitary supper—a bologna sandwich, since he didn’t feel like cooking—and tried to distract himself with a talk show on TV. But after watching for twenty minutes without even realizing until the end that the program was an infomercial, he switched the TV set off in disgust. Next he tried to read, but that, too, was a waste of effort. He couldn’t concentrate on the printed page.

He should’ve been tired. He had had a hard day. Three hours on the cycle to Louisville and back, and another three spent taking care of the business that had taken him there. His visit with his lawyer left him feeling as if a weight he had been dragging for years had suddenly lightened. The attorney was readying the paperwork required to petition the court to overturn his conviction. If the petition was successful, and the lawyer expected it to be, he could expect to have the record of his conviction expunged. The next step in attaining full redress was to sue the state—but Johnny didn’t even care that much about the money. What he cared about was that he would no longer be a marked man. He would be free to start his life anew.

That thought alone should have made it possible for
him to sleep. But every time Johnny closed his eyes he kept picturing Glenda as he had last seen her and what had happened to her next.

And he thought of Rachel.

He could not escape the conviction that someone was out there in the night stalking Rachel. Call it morbid, call it paranoid, call it anything he would, the feeling would not be shaken.

At last, around eleven, Johnny gave up trying to distract himself. Pulling on his boots, patting Wolf an affectionate good night, he gathered up blanket and pillow and headed out the door.

Stupid as he would feel if he were discovered, he was going to camp out in Rachel’s backyard. If there was someone out there, this time he was not going to confront a lone woman in the dark.

This time Johnny meant to be there, too. He would sleep outside Rachel’s house until she was free to spend her nights safely in his arms. For as long as it took, until he was sure she was safe.

It would not be the first time he had slept out under the stars.

40

“J
eremy.” The soft voice cut through the misery that cloaked the boy. Seated on the back stoop of his father’s small frame house, his head cradled in his arms and his arms resting on his bent knees, Jeremy heard it and looked up. He could see nothing through the moonlit darkness but the shed and the few small trees that dotted the field behind the house.

Sam whined pitiably from somewhere. Sam was his puppy. His dad had bought the dog to make up for what had happened to his mom. Oh, his dad hadn’t come right out and said so. But Jeremy knew. He wasn’t stupid. He’d never been allowed to have a dog before. Then Mom got murdered, and two days later he and Jake and the girls had a new puppy. It didn’t take a genius to figure it out.

He was never going to see his mom again. That was what death meant. He knew it, even if the littler kids didn’t.

Tears coursed down his cheeks. He brushed them away with an angry swipe of his arm.

“Jeremy. Could you help me, please? Your dog’s got all tangled up in this wire.”

Sam, whose nightly business was the reason Jeremy was sitting on the stoop in the first place, whined loudly. Jeremy had just seen the pup scant moments before, when
he’d been frisking about in front of the shed. He got to his feet and started down the steps. There was all kinds of barbed wire back behind the shed, and it could really hurt a little puppy like Sam if he got caught up in it. It was nice of Heather to be so concerned. His mom had always called Heather “the whore,” but since his mom had died, she’d been real nice to Jeremy.

Only as Jeremy walked across the yard toward the shed did he remember that Heather was giving the girls a bath in the house.

But by then it was too late to run.

41