They linger long after dessert, generous scoops of Jules’s homemade tequila-laced strawberry-lime sorbet for the adults, and mint-carob-chip for the teenagers. Nora keeps an eye on them. The younger girls are like longtime BFFs, juggling conversation with texting on their phones and occasionally showing each other their screens. Stacey, too, seems to be having a good time, deep in conversation with Lennon.
At the adult table, lively conversation flows along with the cold, crisp wine. True to her promise, Jules isn’t shy about sharing the details of her “sex, drugs, and rock and roll past,” as Heather refers to the time her wife had spent in Seattle as a young adult. Jules got caught up with several grunge-era bands in one capacity or another—musician, backup singer, roadie, groupie. Whip-smart and unapologetic, she shares harrowing close calls fueled by addiction and her doomed affair with a long closeted and now dead household name.
“I could have been so much more than I was, but I blew one opportunity after another. I knew my career and my life were going down in flames and I felt helpless to stop it. I used to ask people—random strangers, you know?—if they’d ever seen a falling star, and then I’d say, ‘No? Well, you’re looking at one right now.’”
“But you survived,” Heather says.
“Hell, yes. I turned my life around and became an entirely different person. I’m one of the lucky ones who’s seen it all, done it all, and lived to tell about it—thanks to rehab and meeting Heather. I was so damned lucky.”
She clasps her wife’s hand, their wedding bands glinting in the flickering light.
At the kids’ table, voices are rising.
Nora sees Lennon leaning forward, as if delivering urgent information. His sister gives an emphatic nod. Stacey and Piper are wide-eyed, mouths hanging open.
“Hey, guys? Everything okay?” Keith calls.
“Not really, Dad!” Piper jumps up from the table and hurries to his side. “Why didn’t you tell us?”
“Tell you what?”
“About the murders!”
The word storms the summer garden like a cold front, obliterating the warm wine and tequila afterglow.
Stacey
“Sorry, dude,” Lennon tells Stacey as Piper goes flying over to the adults’ table with Courtney on her heels. “I thought you knew.”
“How would we know?”
He shrugs. “I just figured everyone does. I didn’t mean to freak you out.”
“Yes, you did. The way you said it . . . like it was some cool thing you just couldn’t wait to tell us?”
“It is cool, if you ask me. I mean, it’s—”
“I didn’t ask you, and I don’t think it’s cool. I think it’s disturbing.” Stacey gets to her feet and trails after her sister.
She thinks he’s disturbing, her first impression of him now confirmed. She’d changed her mind earlier, when he was talking about school and books and music—normal things. She decided he was an okay guy after all. Maybe even someone she’d want to hang out with, or even . . .
Yeah, no. No way.
“Three people were killed in our house! In their beds!” Piper informs their parents, sounding as if she’s on the verge of crying.
“What?” Mom and Dad say in unison.
Their faces are masked in shadow, but Stacey sees her mother’s hand shake a little as she sets down her wineglass.
Courtney puts a hand on Piper’s shoulder. “It’s okay, you know? It was a long time ago, before any of us were even born.”
“Not before any of them were born.” Lennon gestures at the adults. “Mom knew the victims. It was a family—father, mother, teenage daughter. She was living here then.”
“Actually, I moved to Seattle a few years before they were killed. But my parents were living here at the time, and I used to visit.”
Stacey turns to Jules, wide-eyed. “Wait, you knew the people?”
“Cool, right?” Lennon’s tone is sarcastic, and she shoots him a glare.
“Well, nobody really knew them,” Jules says. “They lived here for, what, maybe ten years? And when I say they kept to themselves, I mean they kept to themselves. My mother used to say Mr. Toska wouldn’t have talked to a neighbor if his house was burning down and the neighbor was out front with a fire hose.”
“So . . . like, he was snobby?” Piper asks.
“Nothing like that,” Jules says. “He worked some kind of blue-collar job. So did my dad—second shift, my whole life. But Mr. Toska came and went at all hours. The wife never left the house—she was sick or something. Maybe in a wheelchair? Something like that.”
“What about the daughter?”
Lennon answers Stacey’s question. “She was a gawky weirdo.”
Heather scowls at him. “Geez, Lennon. What a thing to say.”
“Jules always says it.” He shrugs. “Right, Jules?”
“Sure. I don’t mean it in a bad way. I mean, I was a gawky weirdo, too. Still am. And proud of it. Anyway, my brain is a sieve, so don’t count on me for details, but this family had some serious ties to organized crime.”
“You mean, the mafia?” Stacey asks. “Like in The Godfather?”
“You’ve seen The Godfather?”
“I read the book.”
“Stacey reads everything,” Piper informs them. “And she loves true crime. She has twenty-five thousand books about some girl who killed her parents with an axe like two hundred years ago.”
“Shut up, Piper!”
For one thing, it was 1892. And for another . . .
Way to drive home the gawky weirdo parallel.
Stacey turns back to Jules. “So, was it the mafia?”
“Not the Sicilian mafia, but organized crime.”
“Then when they were killed . . . was it because of that?”
“Of course it was,” Dad says promptly, as if he knows.
Actually, maybe he does. He’d attended Columbia University.
“Do you remember the murders? Were you living in New York then?” she asks him.
“When was it?”
“January 17, 1994.” Lennon rattles off the date as if someone had asked his birthday.
Now who’s the gawky weirdo?
“I was here in college then,” Dad says, “but I don’t remember anything about it.”
“How can you not remember, Dad?” Piper asks. “Something like that must have been in the news.”
“It was all over the news,” Jules confirms. “My parents said you couldn’t even get up the street for a few days after it happened, with the press.”
“Well, all I cared about was girls and beer and sports,” Dad says with a shrug. “And the city was a dangerous place back then. Crime rates were high. The news was full of murder.”
“But this was a family,” Piper persists. “I can’t believe you don’t remember it.”
“I guess my brain is a sieve, too,” Dad says lightly.
Mom has been quiet all this time. Now she asks Jules, “Was it a mob hit, then?”
“That was the general consensus. Whoever did it didn’t mess around. They were shot in the middle of the night—one, two, three. No one heard a thing.”
“The killer must have used a suppressor,” Lennon comments.
“What does that mean?” Piper asks.
“A silencer, on the gun,” Stacey explains.
Lennon shakes his head. “Suppressors don’t really make the shot silent. Just muffled.”
“How do you know that?”
“It’s true. If you want to look it up—”
“I know it’s true. I’m just wondering how you know.”
“I know everything,” Lennon says with a shrug.