“No.” The bags under his eyes look voluminous since the last time we spoke and those lines that swim across his forehead seem to have magnetized. There she is, my mother warbling in his features. As mesmerizing as it may be, I’m forced to look away. “I’ve been getting calls nonstop about your family.”
I glance up. He’s got my attention and he knows it. I know exactly which haunted branch he’s talking about. “They’re digging ’round the proverbial graveyard, picking apart those bones. You’re gonna have to break your silence on it sooner than later.”
“Aston.” I nod at the thought of my dead brother. The one I singlehandedly put in the ground. “I will. If it comes up, I’ll just tell them the truth. We were going hunting, cleaning rifles, I was being stupid and blew his head off.” It decorated the walls for weeks. Mom moved us into a hotel until a cleanup committee she hired could scrape every last bit of my brother off the walls. My father tore out the drywall and installed new sheeting, had a painter come in and paint the dining room my mother’s favorite shade of apricot, giving her some time to mull over wallpaper options. The wall-to-wall carpeting was eschewed for hardwood floors. My father joked my mother finally got that remodel she wanted. Sick fuck. Sick fuck, sick fuck.
“Dude.” Rich gives a quick knock over his desk. “They’re asking about Rachel and Wilson, too.” He winces. “What exactly happened to Rachel again?”
Rich and I are about the same age, but Rachel had six years on me at least.
“Female problems. I don’t know. She was sick. Something to do with her period. I was too embarrassed to get the details while my mother was still around to give them. Have been all my life. And Wilson—you know, OD’d.”
“Right, I remember that.” He stares off a moment as if reliving the event. Wilson OD’d in a park after a rock concert. He and a bunch of friends tried heroine. The next morning, he was found by an off-duty cop with his brain bleeding out of his nose, flies swarming around him as if he were a piece of rotted meat. “I’ll keep it clean if anyone asks. All you have to say is no comment. You might want to tell Allison the same. What the hell is her sister doing time for, anyway?”
“She knifed her husband to death.” We share a quick smile as if to say that’s a woman for you. That very well could have been Allison a few months ago. Still might be if she finds out Hailey Oden is about to hear the patter of little feet no thanks to the deposit my dick made into her vaginal account. I cringe at the thought.
“You okay?”
“Yeah, everything’s just peachy. Anything else?”
Rich purses those lips until they turn white. “There is one more thing. There seems to be a growing interest in your father.”
“That’s to be expected. He was the man with the robe for decades around here.”
He gives a slight nod. “They’re not interested in the fact he’s a judge.”
“What now?”
“You don’t know?” His cheek depresses on one side and I’m wondering if I should be equally depressed by what this might mean.
My mouth opens but not a word comes out.
Rich shakes his head at me in dismay. “You don’t know your father at all, do you?”
“And what exactly do you know?”
“My mother claims there’s someone who’s had a long running affair with the old man.” He flicks a pencil my way and it rolls right off his desk. “Your mother found out about it, and poof she turns up dead.”
My stomach bottoms out. My mind swims with every insane thought Rich just planted in it.
“You’re right, Rich.” I get up and stagger for the door. “I don’t know my father.”
All that one-woman, one-man bullshit he’s been feeding me for the last few years was just that, bullshit. The wages of sin is death. Only he’s fucking made of Teflon.
I hit the street and let the balmy breeze pump me back to life.
For whatever reason, I believe Rich. Or at least I want to. As cringe-worthy as it sounds, news of my own father’s affair takes some of the heat off mine. A million valid excuses bounce through my mind. The proverbial apple didn’t roll far from the tree after all. I was genetically predisposed to cheat. My DNA is programed to wander. I had an affair.
As much as I have hated the man, and I have hated him deep down for many, many years—I was just like dear old Pops.
5
Allison
Days float by programed with icy grief. The numbness in my heart turns into an ocean big enough for the entire world to drown in—a sheet of frozen glass suppressing all of humanity from taking another breath. My mother says she’s making arrangements to fly out with my father, but I threatened her within an inch of her life, begging her for mercy to reconsider. I can’t have that right now. I cannot have my parents milling around, the unwanted guests—peering into my life with James, our shared hellish nightmare exposed and magnified before them. And they would insist on staying here at the house under the guise of compassion, but God knows they are too cheap to ever stay at a hotel. My mother doesn’t have a compassionate bone in her body. No. I cannot have that woman in my house. I might lose my mind and accidentally pay her back for all the misery she’s inflicted on me. She is the sole reason for so many of my indiscretions, so many of my seemly rational decisions, which in hindsight were all so very, very bad.
James seems to be sulking more than usual. The visceral hate the American public feels for us has hit an all-time high. At night, when sleep eludes me, I sit and peruse the comments’ sections of each exacerbated article that paints the two of us to be money-grubbing baby killers. The trolls have come out in force. Where is your daughter? Where are you hiding her? Have you killed her just like you killed your brother? That one in particular was geared toward James like so many of those hateful comments are. Who knew my handsome husband has equal power to charm as he does polarize an entire demographic of fang-bearing women. But he’s not the only Price they’ve decided to crucify. She looks like she’s got her nose stuck on a window! Oh, the comments about my pig nose—something I haven’t been insecure about since junior high. They wish they could rear the ugly monster of insecurity back to life. Sorry, but I’m too damn frightened at what might have become of my daughter to care about your cruelty toward my genetic makeup. My daughter shares what my father dubbed an adorable ski-jump. But they don’t give a damn about Reagan.
A knock bounces over the front door. James is upstairs and Charles is on one of his famous walks in which he herds the media around the block for hours like a faithful sheltie. It’s a sight to behold. Maybe he forgot his sunglasses.
I head over and find a plume of blonde parading in front of the window. A woman about my height, and I swing the door open without thinking twice. What could be the harm? The harm has already happened in my life. The shit has hit the fan and it is covering every square inch of me.
A cry strangles in my throat at the sight of her.
She bats those spider lashes at me. “Now is that any way to greet an old friend?”
Heather Evans stands taller than I remember with her feet strapped in three-inch heels. She’s put on a good forty pounds, but that obsessive gleam in her eye remains the same.
“What are you doing here?” Years ago, I wanted to take out a restraining order against her, but Jane said not to. My sister had other ways of taking care of my nuisance. Secretly, I hoped she would have someone point the working end of a pistol to her head but no such luck. Yes, I’m ashamed to say Heather Evans has always fostered a murderous side of me. Heather disappeared quietly—met a boy, had another baby, such a boring end to our unreasonable relationship—and here she is ready for round two.