It turned out not to matter, however.
“That’s mine,” Mopsy said, and snatched the horse from beneath his fingers, then hugged it to her heart.
dieciseis
“I don’t think this is a good idea,” Jesse said.
“Your objection’s duly noted. And you’re obviously not the only one. Debbie doesn’t seem too happy about it, either.”
It was much later. Jesse and I were seated in uncomfortable lawn chairs beside the fire pit in the backyard of Brad and Debbie’s three-bedroom house in Carmel Valley Ranch.
Brad’s fire pit paled in comparison to the one his older brother had constructed at Snail Crossing. Jake’s was made of limestone and was sunk into the ground and surrounded by luxurious built-in couches in a wooded area of the Crossing’s backyard, not far from the redwood hot tub (which comfortably fit ten).
Brad’s fire pit was an overturned metal drum that he’d placed not far from the girls’ swing set, engendering the wrath of his wife, who felt this was unsafe.
This wasn’t all that had engendered Debbie’s wrath.
“You don’t have to stay,” I whispered to Jesse, for what had to have been the fiftieth time since we’d pulled through the gated entrance to the golf resort community in which my stepbrother and his wife lived.
“Of course I have to stay. I’m not going to leave my future wife alone in a house that’s being haunted by a murderous demon child.”
“We don’t know that she’s haunting it. And I thought we established that she probably isn’t murderous, just overprotective. A lot like someone else I know . . .” I let my voice trail off suggestively.
He ignored me. “Then why, precisely, are we here?”
“To make sure the girls are okay.”
We had to keep our voices low because Brad and Debbie were inside the house having what they called “a discussion,” but what I thought might better be described as a domestic dispute. Debbie hadn’t been too happy when she’d come home from Pilates to find that she had houseguests.
I could understand it. I probably wouldn’t be too thrilled, either, to come home from my exercise class to find that my stepsister-in-law and her boyfriend had shown up at my house with their overnight bags.
Still, it was for a good cause. Too bad we couldn’t explain what it was.
Every once in a while we could hear Brad’s and Debbie’s voices through the thin walls and vinyl siding of their bi/split level. Their home was lovely, but it hadn’t been made of the soundest construction material. I wondered if Slater Properties had had something to do with it.
“Why did you have to pick tonight, of all nights, to invite them over?” I could hear Debbie demanding with perfect clarity from inside their kitchen (all stainless-steel appliances, but the dishwasher and trash compactor were often broken, usually at the same time).
“I told you. They invited themselves over, Debbie.” Brad sounded tired. “Something about a class Suze is taking. She needs to observe kids in their home environment overnight.”
“Great. So she chooses tonight to do it? With no advance warning?”
“She’s my sister. What was I supposed to do?”
“She’s your stepsister. And you could have said no. God, you are such a pushover, Brad. You let everyone walk all over you. Did you lose your balls as well as your brains when you got that concussion playing football in high school?”
“Hey,” Brad said. “Could you keep it down? They can probably hear you. And it was wrestling, not football.”
“Ask me how much I care, Brad.”
“You know, I really don’t understand it,” I said to Jesse, taking a sip of the wine we’d brought, along with a couple of pizzas. “How do you think it happened?”
“Father Dominic was probably taken off guard,” Jesse said. He reached out to squeeze my hand reassuringly. “But like I said, he’s strong. His vitals were looking much better before we left.”
I remembered the father’s pale and battered face as I’d last seen it underneath the fluorescent lights of his hospital room, how sunken his eyes had looked beneath those paper-thin lids, the frailness of his hands resting on the blue blanket, the tangle of IV tubes flowing from them.
If that was “much better,” I’d hate to know what “worse” looked like.
“And we made good use of those items I ‘borrowed’ from the church,” Jesse went on. “That Medal of Mary we hung over his bed should keep him safe tonight, along with all the holy water.”
“That isn’t what I meant,” I said. “I meant the girls. How could that have happened? How could they be mediators?”