It was long after dark by the time they got back to the house, and they were tired and hungry. Lily called Paul, but there was nothing new. Only fear and waiting.
She got the old cast-iron frying pan out of the sink and washed it, then made scrambled eggs. Her dad made toast, but when they sat down at the table, neither of them could eat much, and afterward, without much discussion, they tackled the pile of dirty dishes, Lily washing, her dad drying. She glanced at him as she mopped the kitchen countertops one final time. “Go to bed, Dad. You look whipped.”
“Yeah,” he said, pinching the bridge of his nose. “I am. Don’t know that I’ll sleep, though.”
“Try, okay?”
“You good? You know where your old room is, right?” His eyes were soft and held a teasing light.
She smiled. “I think I can find my way.”
She got her purse and tote from her dad’s office and followed in his wake up the stairs.
His bedroom was at the front of the house, overlooking the drive and giving a view of a sweep of hills, while her bedroom at the back of the house overlooked the barn and the corral. A small bathroom was across the hall. Neither room had been used in a while, and the air smelled musty, but Lily didn’t mind. She switched on the bedside lamp, a frilly pink-shaded confection she and her mother had bought to match her equally frilly pink-canopied bed. Lily could have had other, more grown-up furnishings. Her dad had offered them, and Winona would have helped her pick them out, but Lily had said no. She’d wanted her room to remain as it had been when her mother was alive. They’d decorated it together when Lily was ten. It had been their last project before her mom’s cancer was diagnosed.
Lily opened a window, and, shucking her boots, she lay down on the bed, thinking she should take a bath, brush her teeth, but after a moment, she reached to turn off the light. Moonlit shadows flickered over the walls. The wind had picked up, and she heard it singing around the house corners, rattling through the live oaks. Crickets hummed in the greening grass. She didn’t think she would sleep, but when she first heard the telephone ring down the hall, she was convinced she was dreaming. The ring was old-fashioned, the one the landline made. Lily couldn’t remember the last time she’d heard it. Everyone used cell phones now.
She waited to wake up, waited for the ringing to stop. It didn’t. Swinging her sock-clad feet over the side of the bed, she went out into the hallway, where the old residential phone still sat on a red lacquered table halfway between her bedroom and her dad’s. Sepia-edged shadows loomed, old ghosts clinging to the walls, and the sense of dreaming persisted even as she reached for the heavy black receiver. Lifting it, she felt its weight in her hand, the coolness against her ear.
“Hello?” she said softly.
“Mom?” rasped a voice.
Lily straightened. “AJ! Where are you? Are you all right?”
“Mom? Can you bring me my passport?” he asked, and his voice was low and hoarse. He sounded hurt.
“Oh, AJ, where are you? You need to go home to Dad, or come here, to the ranch. The police—”
The hall light came on, making Lily blink.
“Let me talk to him,” her dad said. But when he got the phone from her, when he said, “Son, you need to come here and let us help you,” there wasn’t an answer.
AJ was gone. He’d hung up.
4
Neither AJ nor I could kill anyone, Detective,” Shea said, and Dru flinched.
It flat-out pissed her off, the very idea that Shea felt the need to defend herself. Dru wanted to yank Shea’s cell phone out of her hand and speak to the idiot detective herself. Leave my daughter alone. She’s got nothing to do with this nightmare. Dru plunked the lemon bars she’d baked—was that just this morning?—into the handled grocery sack with the foil-wrapped chicken she’d roasted to take to the Westins.
Behind her, Shea paced a short path between the kitchen, where Dru was, and the table in the breakfast nook, where Kate, Leigh, and Vanessa were sitting, their eyes glued to Shea. Scared out of their minds, Dru thought. They were frightened, and so was Dru. That was the stripped-down bottom line. Her blood hammered in her temples. The very idea that her daughter was being questioned—implicated, for God’s sake. What was next? Would they haul her off in handcuffs?
It was ludicrous.
Dru turned to Shea. “Give me the phone,” she said. “I’ll tell him you were here with me last night.”
Shea waved her off. She didn’t need her mother to run interference. She was perfectly capable of standing her ground on her own. She could defend herself, thank you very much. And AJ, too.
She was grown up now, twenty-three. An adult. That’s what she’d say.
But the thing Shea refused to understand, even though she’d lived it, too, was how quickly the person you loved, the soul mate you trusted with your life, could turn on you. The way Rob, Shea’s dad, had turned on Dru.
They’d been married thirteen years when it happened. They’d been lovers and best friends, done everything together. And when Shea came, their family circle was complete until the day a couple of thugs jumped Rob in a parking lot in downtown Houston. They’d beaten him to the ground even after he gave them his wallet, his watch, and his wedding band. And when he was down, they’d kicked him, breaking his ribs and rupturing his spleen. They’d left him there, alone, bleeding internally—dying. A passerby had found him. Until Dru got the call from the police, she’d had no concept of crime other than what she picked up from the news, which was mainly that it was awful, and it happened to someone else.
At first she’d imagined Rob’s injuries, while severe, were only physical, a matter of surgical repair and eventual healing. She hadn’t been prepared for the mental anguish, his nightmares and anxiety, his constant suspicion. He’d flinched if she or Shea appeared in his peripheral vision, and they’d learned to announce their presence or risk bodily harm. At Dru’s insistence, they’d gone for counseling, but Rob had ultimately quit attending the sessions, arguing there was nothing wrong with him, that he was getting better, getting himself under control. She’d made the mistake of believing him until the night he’d threatened her with a loaded shotgun.