by Patti Larsen
I accepted, knowing he wasn’t going to let me walk anyway and with my car still in the shop and, as far as I knew, Rosebert still trying to do me damage, it made sense not to let them have another go at me. Though, now that I wasn’t sheriff, would they turn their attempts on Jill?
Yikes. I had to warn her.
Dad parked in the lot beside the house, following me inside, his head down, hands in his pockets, lips twitching. He clearly wanted to talk about things further, so why didn’t he just spill? Except, as I stepped through the front door and into the bright foyer lit with the last of the day’s sun, I realized it wasn’t something he wanted to discuss with me that made him glow like a child with a toy he wanted to share.
Mom, Daisy and Liz beamed at me, Crew holding out a bouquet of roses, Petunia sitting at his feet, panting softly, eyes heavily lidded. As I took in her presence, I absorbed a second truth that made me burst into tears.
In the time I’d been avoiding my responsibilities, these amazing, wonderful, loving and incredible people in my life took care of things for me.
Good as new was an understatement. I let my tears fall as I smiled and turned a slow spin, at the newly painted walls, the carpet freshly cleaned, the sitting room on my left fully reassembled as though it had never been touched by defiling hands.
“We still have a bit of sorting to do,” Mom said then, wringing her hands a little, glancing at Daisy who nodded with enthusiasm, brilliant smile lighting her up. “But we managed to take care of most of it.”
“Thank you.” I went to Crew, kissed him, kissed them all, but not before lifting my pug into my arms. Petunia grunted and snorfled my cheek before resting her chin on my shoulder and sighing a deep and contented pug exhale. I cuddled her against me, so grateful for my life and loved ones and finally feeling hopeful our wedding might actually happen before something else leaped up to get in our way.
How awesome was that?
“Fee, your dress.” Daisy’s turn to look at Mom, then back at me, biting her lower lip. “We couldn’t salvage it.”
I didn’t care about that. “You gave me so much more,” I said. “It’s just a dress.” Crew’s smile matched mine. “I don’t need it to make our day the most amazing of my life.”
“Our lives,” he whispered in my ear, pressing those delicious lips to my temple, hugging me and Petunia both.
I loved the sound of that.
***
Chapter Thirty Five
I sat in my car outside the door of a house I never expected to visit, jaw tight, body tense. I had to sneak away from the wedding prep—now set for tomorrow at last, only three days late and so what if it was a Wednesday, weddings didn’t have to happen on a weekend, right?—to tackle this task I’d been sitting on for the last little while and just couldn’t let go.
I really needed to just drive away and forget about it. Confrontation would get me nowhere, I was positive of that, and yet I just couldn’t bring myself to leave. Instead, I tried to distract myself with deep breathing and recounting all the reasons I was happy, so happy and didn’t need to do this to myself.
Jill had caught us up this morning on the wrapup of the case, as comfortable as sheriff as she’d been being deputy, though there was a tension around her now I could only attribute to Rosebert.
“I tried to fire them,” she’d said without having to qualify who she meant. “Still working on it.”
Well, we knew the council was controlled by the Pattersons, so… hardly a shocker. Still, good to know Vivian and Jill had each other. And us, even if we could only work behind the scenes from now on.
“Andrew and Katelyn are moving back to Montpellier,” the sheriff told me over coffee. “Funny how chasing a new life in a new place only gets you more of what you used to have when you’re not ready to do anything about who you are.”
The single most profound thing I’d ever heard her say. And made me even more hopeful for our future here in Reading.
“And Dominic?” I’d already heard from the Jones sisters that Alfred Welling was throwing a conniption fit that the church had decided to, yet again, hire outside Reading. Mary’s near-giggling really shouldn’t have made me want to snort in return. I was a terrible person.
Jill’s grim delight told me the choir master was finally going to get what was coming to him. “There’s an inquiry,” she said. “I’m dealing with it.”
Good on her.
She’d left with the promise she was still on to read for the wedding, bless her. I wondered if her newfound determination might affect her current relationship with Matt and wished them both well. She’d always been awesome? But now I had a feeling Jillian Wagner was a force to be reckoned with.
Speaking of couples, that made me think about the lovely Irish pair I still struggled to quantify in my life. Regardless of their criminal status, I’d invited Malcolm and Siobhan to the wedding, but when I tried to reach them I could only get Darius.
“They’ve left town,” he told me in that gentle tenor. “I know they’d love to be there, Miss Fleming, so I’ll do my best to get in touch with them. They both adore you so much.”
That was the most he’d spoken to me ever and I took it as a great sign. Though why I cared if an Irish mob boss’s head bull—security guard liked me or not?
Yeah, I cared.
Daisy’s request to have Emile added to the guest list wasn’t a surprise. In fact, I made absolutely certain she knew he was welcome by hugging her as hard as I could and saying, “of course, Day,” before she even had a chance to get the question out fully.
“Oh, Fee,” she’d gushed. “I don’t even know why he loves me.” She blushed, eyes wet with unshed tears. “He’s so wonderful and I’m…”
“Amazing,” I said, wanting to shake her.
Her hesitation told me there was more to it and it was finally time to force that particular conversation. So I’d dragged her downstairs with me to my apartment, poured her a glass of wine and sat there, Petunia firmly in her lap so she couldn’t run away, staring at her, until she finally cracked and fessed up.
“Life is so short.” She sighed, patting Petunia. The fat pug was still slower than usual, groggy yet, though Dr. Miller assured me she was going to recover fully. She’d just turned eight, though, and how long did fat little pugs with a penchant for too much food that’s not good for them and three near-death experiences under her belt usually last?
Forever, Fee. The answer was forever.
“Almost losing Petunia?” Daisy met my eyes, her fingers digging into the dog’s ruff. “That was the moment, Fee. When I finally decided I was worth it.” She let out a soft sob but shook her head when I tried to comfort her. “I’m okay, I promise. I’ve had a secret for a long time, one only Rose knew about. And I let her use it against me for far too long.”
I knew it.
“Just after you left town,” she said, “going off to your glamourous life at college,” right because it had been so glamourous I just couldn’t even, “I met someone. A visitor. He wasn’t here long and I barely remember him.” She blushed deeply. “But he was sweet and we, well. After he left, I found out I was pregnant.”
Oh. My. God.
“Day.” I stopped myself instantly while she shrugged, gray eyes haunted.
“I know, stupid, right?” She laughed, brittle and high-pitched. “Seriously, I knew better. But he was my first and I thought I loved him.” A tear trickled its shining truth down her cheek. “I blame myself.”
Because visitor boy had nothing to do with it, right. Growl.
No time for protective Momma Bear instincts with Daisy rushing on now that she’d started, like she couldn’t keep it in a second longer.
“I had no one to turn to. My mother was passed and Rose’s mom didn’t like me much. And I couldn’t tell my father.” Her strained relationship with her dad wasn’t a secret. “I thought about Lucy, but instead, when she caught me crying, I told Rose.” Daisy’s jaw jumped and her hand fell still on Petu
nia’s head. “Biggest mistake of my life, aside from getting pregnant in the first place.”
Okay, scratch the shelving of the wrap my bestie in a bubble and keep her safe mode. I was all over that. Except I was way too late, wasn’t I?
“I wasn’t here for you.” Daisy really needed my guilt layered over her story.
She grasped for my hand, hugged me. “Don’t do that to yourself,” she said. “This isn’t your fault.” She sighed deeply, looking down again, resuming her pug scratches to which Petunia groaned her joy. “Rose suggested I get an abortion. And, after thinking about it for a long time, agonizing over it, I agreed with her.” She blinked at me. “Don’t hate me for making that choice.”
As if. “Now it’s your turn to stop doing terrible things to you.”
She shrugged at that. “The thing is, I didn’t have to follow through. Two days before my appointment, I had a miscarriage.” Fresh tears, renewed sorrow, all aimed down at the dog in her lap who absorbed it into her magical fawn fur and gave the kind of snorty, farting support that really was the best antidote to grief, in my opinion. “Didn’t matter, though. Rose has held my choice, and the pregnancy, over my head my whole life. Telling me how stupid I was to make such a mistake, that I was going to go through with taking a life. She brought it up as often as she could and I let her.”
Wait, there had been a hint of this, hadn’t there? There had been, when Kami Derham, the young model who had tried to blackmail Grace Fiore’s ex-husband with an impossible pregnancy. Rose had made a comment about abortion and Day…
My beautiful friend had reacted. I didn’t understand why at the time. But now?
Crystal clear.
Daisy nodded, with no idea where my brain had just taken me and I wasn’t about to remind her. “Just another moment Rose used to prove to me I wasn’t worthy of love, of anyone, that all I’d ever be was a dumb and terrible person.”
While I really wanted to murder Rose before, the intensity of my dislike ramped up so high I could barely sit still. And yet, it was Daisy’s place to pull the trigger, so to speak.
“Let me know when and where,” I said, “and I’ll help you hide her body.”
Daisy laughed at that. “You know what Emile says, Fee?” I shook my head. “He says the very best revenge against her and the way she treated me is to be happy. So happy it makes her crazy. And he’s right.” She beamed at me. “He makes me very happy, Fee.” There was that dark cloud again. “He doesn’t even care that when I had the miscarriage I found out I can never have kids.” How much weight could those beautiful shoulders of hers carry?
“I like Emile’s plan a lot,” I said and hugged her. “But if you change your mind? I have this idea about pulling Rose’s lungs out through her nostrils.”
That should have been it. Wasn’t it. After our conversation Daisy seemed brighter than ever, more happy than I’d seen her since I came home to Reading. And Emile clearly doted on her. I knew the guy was uber wealthy, old money, and yet he had pitched in to help with Petunia’s, surely the sign of a good person with a big heart worthy of my Day.
The trouble with other people moving on and accepting things was that it didn’t always apply universally. Especially when I had my own conflicts with not just Rose, but Robert. And so, as the story Daisy told me layered into the previous hurts and griefs, I realized I couldn’t drop it.
I had to confront them.
Thus me sitting in my car outside the last place I ever expected to be sitting the day before my wedding, doing my best to control my temper while figuring out the best way to make them both go away forever.
Maybe I would have just gone home eventually, except as I sat there, hands clenching the steering wheel of my newly repaired car, Robert walked past his kitchen window. The sight of him in a t-shirt too tight for his present lack of health and fitness, that 70’s porn ‘stashe an affront to the entirety of the male population who sported facial hair, lit a fire under me and sent me over the edge.
And out of my car.
Up the walk.
To their front door.
Where I rang the bell.
He opened it without checking to see who was there, obviously, because he was shocked by his expression, more so when I forced my way past him and into their small living room. Rose stood abruptly from the coffee table where she’d been sitting, studying something, and my eyes settled, for the briefest moment, on a piece of parchment with black lines that looked like the side of a lake on it.
And I knew.
Didn’t care.
Wasn’t here about the treasure.
Rose squirreled the map piece away while I confronted the two of them. “The next time you want to try to destroy my home,” I jabbed a finger at him, “or run me over with your car,” this jab was hers, “or cut my brake lines,” double tap, both hands at once, “or poison my dog,” they were lucky I was out of appendages to wave around, “you take a long, hard thought about it. Because I’m watching you. And your days are numbered.”
Robert’s lips flapped before he did what I expected him to do. Lied. “You’re cracked, Fanny,” he snapped. “We didn’t try to kill you.”
Grunt. “Of course you didn’t, Robert,” I hissed at him. “Tell that to Victor French.”
He flinched. Like I’d punched him right in the face. And his guilt, oh his guilt. Legendary and telling and tragic all in one before the darkness flooded his expression and he jerked the door open.
“Get out,” he snarled.
“Already gone, Booby,” I snapped back, using his teenaged nickname for the first time in years, just because I wanted to remind him of Victor one more time.
And left.
It might not have been smart to confess to my family that I’d gone to see Rosebert, but I did, at our new rehearsal dinner, with Dr. Aberstock—reinstated at the hospital and, it turned out, an ordained minister who was happy to marry us—and Bernice in attendance. Neither seemed super shocked by the treasure’s reveal, though the doc was very excited to see the map and the frame.
“I don’t have the piece,” I said, handing a slip of paper to Dad who took it eagerly, “but this is what I remember.” I’d drawn it on a scrap I’d found in the car the moment I climbed behind the wheel, letting the excitement of the hoard hunt wash away my fury.
Not that it appeared to help. When Dad fit it into the empty spot, my rendering rather a good one even if it didn’t quite line up, it was clear gaining that last image did little to tell us more.
Ah well. Didn’t stop everyone from speculating and enjoying themselves while doing it.
It was late when Liz finally dragged Crew out, one final kiss for me lingering in the doorway, laughing as he left me, blue eyes a bit hazy from one too many beers but that dear, loving face the best thing I could ask for to fall asleep to.
“I can’t wait to marry you.” Tipsy Crew was adorable lovey-dovey Crew and I wasn’t complaining, giggling. “I love you so much.” Whispered over my lips in the cool air that left a puff of white between us.
“I love you too.” And then, laughing again, he was gone, one arm around his best friend and the beautiful December night leading him home.
Mom and Dad wanted to stay, but I insisted they leave. “I’m fine,” I said. “Robert won’t try anything. I’m not sheriff anymore.”
“He now knows for sure you know about Victor,” Dad fretted.
“Let him try anything,” I said. “Dad. Go home. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Lots of kisses, lots of goodbyes, hearts in the right places, and hope, lovely hope, carrying me at last to a final tour of Petunia’s to lock the doors, to wait for my still slow pug to do her business before carrying her downstairs, to retreat to my bedroom and slip under the covers, anticipating my wedding day and the rest of my life with Crew Turner.
My mother’s dress hung upstairs in the Green Room, newly tailored to me, and I couldn’t wait to get married in it.
I’d hoped to sleep soundly, instead w
aking every half hour or so, starting into alertness as nightmares and dreams, more vivid than I’d ever remembered before, kept interfering with my rest. Victor, of course, and the heavy body of Skip Anderson lying across my legs in the back of a carriage. The bulging eyes of Lewis Brown hanging against me on a zipline. Falling into the black water of the harbor, first to catch and rescue my pug from Robert’s assault, next near death as I plummeted from Doreen Douglas’s attack.
So many memories, so many bodies, so much hurt and struggle. But, so much love, too. The day we opened the annex surfaced in my mind, my first moment standing in the foyer upstairs when I’d come home to take over Petunia’s. The first time I laid eyes on Crew, and the love of my parents, my friends.
This town of mine. So complicated, like my life. And I wouldn’t have traded it for anything.
I finally fell asleep, hoping for the last time, jerking awake once more, groggy and frustrated, noting the clock read 4AM and hadn’t I just closed my eyes a bit past one? It took me a second to realize two things. One, that Petunia wasn’t beside me, her familiar warmth missing from my legs.
And two, I wasn’t alone in my room.
I inhaled to protest this surprise, still half asleep and struggling for focus, when the light beside my bed switched on.
“Hello, Fiona,” Peggy Munroe said from where she sat beside me, hovering over me, while, for the second time since I’d known her, she faced me over the barrel of a gun.
***
Chapter Thirty Six
There are times when feeling like an utter idiot can outweigh fear, at least for the instant it takes to process that I’d been so blinded by my hatred (strong word, considering the expression on the face of the withered old lady pointing a gun at me) of my cousin and his vile girlfriend I’d failed to put the most logical two-and-two equation of all time together before it was too late.
Because it was too late, with Peggy sitting there next to me with her hunched, thin shoulders rounded toward me, evil shining in her eyes, her thin lips pulled back to reveal she’d lost a few teeth in prison or else misplaced her dentures.
