I Think I Love You

by Stephanie Bond

  “You’re in Monroeville?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  He cursed loud and long. “This is not a good time for me to be back in that hellhole. I need to be here, working on a deal.”

  “Are you coming or not?”

  More frustrated noises sounded. “Dammit, I guess so.”

  “When?”

  “I don’t know. Might take me a couple of days. I have to clear up some things here—one of us has to work, you know.”

  “I know.”

  He sighed, a thrill-raising sound. “You’re killing me, woman, you know that?”

  Justine smiled slowly into the phone. “Yes. I know that.”

  She disconnected the phone, tingling with anticipation. With the push of a couple of buttons, she disabled the phone’s ringer and turned off the power. Then she buried the phone in the bottom of Mica’s purse. Her hand brushed several prescription bottles, and a tiny alarm went off in Justine’s head.

  Was Mica ill? She had felt a little bony when Justine had her down on the ground, but Justine had assumed it was her standard model weight.

  Antibiotics, more antibiotics, painkillers, more painkillers, antidepressants? From three different physicians, and the antibiotics prescription had been filled only yesterday.

  Hm.

  Chapter 11

  DON’T expect copulation and conversation at the same time.

  Mica sat in the den, tucked into a big comfy plaid chair that had nothing to do with the Victorian Era and everything to do with her dad having a good place to watch TV. She could smell him on the chair—his Old Spice cologne and the cherry almond tobacco he smoked occasionally. Behind the pillow she’d found a fifth of whiskey, half-empty. His sippin’ spirits, he used to say. But according to Cissy and Regina, he was doing more than sipping these days. A man with a splintered family.

  From the depths of an overloaded bookcase, she had pulled a photo album with brittle acetate-covered pages, purchased and filled before the general public was informed that the adhesive on the pages was permanent and that the pictures would yellow in tandem with the overlays. Black-and-white photos of Justine as a toddler gave way to faded color pictures of Justine and baby Regina. Justine had developed a personality for the lens, while Regina surrendered only shy smiles behind her big glasses. And suddenly another baby appeared in the pictures, this one with loads of dark hair. Justine had toted her around like her personal doll. “My MICA” had been written across one photo in permanent marker in Justine’s careful five-year-old block printing. Mica traced the letters with her pinkie, trying to pick up a vibe of the devotion her sister had felt for her then.

  Mica sniffed. This mess was all her fault for falling in love with Dean.

  At first she thought that Dean was being nice to her because she was Justine’s little sister. She adored Justine, so she was thrilled when they invited her along to movies and ball games. At her sixteenth birthday party, Dean had given her a brotherly kiss, and she remembered feeling overwhelmed and confused. After that kiss, Dean had started seeking her out for conversations, offering to take her to the library, that kind of thing. His brotherly kisses yielded to more adult versions until, one year later, she surrendered her virginity to him. He’d sworn her to secrecy, declaring that neither of them wanted to hurt Justine. He was so mature and so handsome, and their chemistry had been electric. When Dean made love to her, nothing else in the world mattered. She’d fallen head over heels for him but kept her feelings studiously hidden from Justine. Three years later, on the eve of his wedding, when Dean suggested that he accompany her to LA, no one had been more surprised than she.

  Except perhaps Justine.

  And what goes around, comes around. How naive she’d been to think that the man who’d cheated on another woman with her wouldn’t do the same thing to her. Dr. Forsythe had gone on to explain that in addition to gonorrhea, she also had chlamydia, another nasty little sex bug. The doctor hoped they had caught the infections before either had permanently affected Mica’s ability to conceive. Hoped.

  Her telephone conversation with Dean had been short—she told him the diagnosis, he denied cheating on her, and she hung up. It was that moment that she’d decided to leave town, because, frankly, she couldn’t promise herself that she wouldn’t kill him if she stayed. If there was a thin line between love and hate, she’d crossed it with Dean Haviland. And with herself. She’d chosen Dean over her family, and now she had neither.

  She continued to flip pages, scanning photographs through misty eyes. She smiled at the picture of the three of them at Disney World. She was seven, Regina nine, and Justine twelve. She couldn’t remember the ride they’d just gotten off, but it must have been high and fast, because she and Justine were grinning and glowing, and Regina looked a little green around the gills. She and Justine were thrill seekers—they were drawn to the same rides, the same limelight, the same man. Regina, on the other hand, was the good sport. The one who followed their lead and the one who usually took the blame in order to keep the peace.

  Another picture caught her eye, this one more sobering. They were mugging for the camera in their new bathing suits the summer that Aunt Lyla would be murdered. She knew because she had been allowed to wear a bikini for the first time. That summer was one of the hottest on record, and they’d spent every spare moment at the Dilly swimming hole. On that one particular day, their timing had been ill-fated. And for the first time, Regina had taken the lead, setting aside her fear of heights to shinny down a tree and gaze upon what must have been a horrific sight for a fourteen-year-old. Mica could still see Regina’s face, chalk-white and trembling. Then she and Justine had forced her to agree to a pact of silence. The irony was that it was a harder choice that day for Regina to swear she wouldn’t tell—it went against her innate judiciousness. Yet of the three of them, Regina would be the last one to break the pact.

  Mica pulled her hand down over her mouth. She had broken the pact, and only weeks ago—another irony. After keeping her word for twenty years, she’d decided one warm night when she and Dean were sharing a pillow that she wanted him to open up. To talk about his childhood in a scroungy little borough of Monroeville. She reasoned that if they talked more, maybe they could become more intimate on an emotional level. Dean rarely spoke of his childhood, or any serious topic, for that matter. So she had decided the best way to get him to share something with her that no one else knew would be to share a secret with him first, to break the ice.

  “Do you remember,” she’d asked, lying on her side, facing him, “when Lyla Gilbert was murdered?”

  He’d been half-asleep by that time—good sex did that to him. “Yeah. Wasn’t she kin to you?”

  “My aunt.”

  He’d grunted.

  “I’ve never told anyone this, but… Justine, Regina, and I saw the whole thing.”

  One of his eyes had opened. “Huh?”

  “We were spying from a rock ledge over Lovers’ Lane, and we saw the whole thing.”

  His other eye had opened. “No shit?”

  She’d nodded.

  “You saw the murderer?”

  “Yes… and no. We didn’t get a real good look at the guy.”

  He had sat up and put a pillow behind his back, now fully awake. “You didn’t go to the police?”

  “No. We were afraid if the killer thought we could identify him, he’d come after us.”

  “So could you?”

  “What?”

  “Could you identify him?”

  “Well… I don’t think I could have. Of course I can’t speak for Justine and Regina.” She shook her head. “Regina even went down there to make sure Lyla was dead.”

  “Regina?”

  “We couldn’t believe it, either. I think it nearly scared her to death. She said the murder weapon was all covered with blood.”

  “Murder weapon? They never found the murder weapon.”

  It was at that point that Mica realized the conversation wasn’t going as
she’d planned. “I… didn’t know.”

  He’d leaned forward. “Well, what did she see—was it a knife?”

  “She… didn’t say.” She’d tugged on his arm to get him to lie back down with her. “It’s been so long, I can’t remember. Maybe Regina just said there was blood all over. I’ve blocked out a lot of it, I think.”

  He resisted her tug. “So you might’ve seen the murderer’s face and blocked it out?”

  She frowned. “I don’t know. Anyway, it all turned out okay. We were so relieved when they caught that pool guy and locked him up.”

  Dean had seemed thoughtful, so she’d taken a chance. “Tell me what you were like when you were a little boy.”

  “Aw, come on, Mica, you know I hate to talk about this crap.”

  “Please?”

  He’d thrown off her arm. “Sad, okay? I was sad. My old man beat my mom constantly, and when she wasn’t handy, he knocked me around.”

  She had tried to touch him, but he’d retreated into that hard shell of his. “Surely there must have been some good times?”

  “One. My twelfth birthday.”

  She’d smiled. “What did you get?”

  “I got big enough to hit him back, and after that he left me alone.” He’d climbed out of bed. “Want a drink?”

  She’d shaken her head no.

  “I think I’ll watch some TV—don’t wait up.”

  Mica closed the photo album and hugged it to her chest. She’d told her biggest secret to the person who had betrayed her physically and emotionally. It was a darn good thing that Dean had declared he’d never return to Monroeville.

  She’d hate for them to get into trouble after all this time had passed.

  Chapter 12

  DO be mysterious—it drives men wild.

  “Take a break?” Mitchell asked from the doorway of the stockroom.

  Regina looked up warily from a tray of sterling serving pieces. They had barely exchanged a word in two hours. She had waited on customers in her father’s absence and still managed to work ahead of Mitchell, sorting and grouping and collecting information from the files to make the data entry more streamlined.

  He extended a cold soda. “Peace offering. I shouldn’t have been so defensive this morning.” Sam appeared and set his black head on her knee—apparently he was sorry, too.

  Caught off guard by the apology, she slowly swivelled on the stool she occupied and took the soda. “Let’s forget it.” She didn’t like to be surprised by men. Surveying the sterling pieces she’d tagged, she asked, “How much of this stuff will you bundle for the auction?”

  “A good number of the small pieces,” he admitted. “Excluding the jewelry and the pottery.”

  She took a drink from the can and sighed. “It’s good—thanks.”

  “You’ve been mighty quiet.”

  Regina tried to smile. “A lot on my mind, I suppose.” She stood and walked around the jam-packed stockroom, shaking her head. “I’ll bet Cissy and John don’t know half of what’s in here.”

  “It’s interesting that you call your parents by their first names.” He spoke carefully, casually.

  She shrugged. “My mother had liberal ideas about raising children. She was a bit of a feminist in her younger days. Still is, when it’s convenient.”

  “How long have your folks been married?”

  She conjured up a cheerful smile. “They’re not married.”

  He tried to cover his surprise but didn’t quite succeed.

  “They’re bohemian,” she said, nodding as if she made perfect sense.

  “Oh.”

  To smooth over the awkward moment, she poked around the floor-to-ceiling stacks of tables, chests, picture frames, and various junk in the storeroom, most of it in some state of disrepair. “We probably need to send some of this stuff to the dump.”

  “I’m afraid so,” he agreed. “A few poor pieces will reflect on the entire lot. Best to get rid of them altogether.”

  She stepped between two warped headboards to lift a dusty sheet from a tall object, then gasped.

  “Find something?”

  “An old wardrobe.” The wardrobe she and Mica and Justine had repaired and re-finished for Justine and Dean’s wedding gift. It had been Mica’s idea, but she and Regina couldn’t work on it and keep it a secret. When they told Justine, she wanted to work on it with them. The three of them had spent hours stripping, sanding, and waxing the lustrous walnut wood and connecting with one another as they never had before.

  Justine had been flush with anticipation at her and Dean’s impending wedding, Mica had made plans to take her regional modeling success to the West Coast, and she herself had been looking forward to graduation and the job that awaited her in Boston. They had been swept up in the knowledge that they were about to go separate ways, so they’d forsaken friends to cram in as much sister time as possible. Their one area of agreement: living together simply wasn’t good enough—they all wanted to be married to the man of their dreams.

  Ha.

  “Nice, big piece,” Mitchell said, rousing her from her musing. He ran his hand over the dozens of deep gashes in the wood. “Too bad somebody hacked it up. Exquisite firewood, though.”

  Regina smirked—she imagined that Justine hadn’t been contemplating toasty hearth fires when she’d taken an ax to the lovely wardrobe not too long after finding Mica and Dean’s getaway note. It was the only entertainment the guests got that day, watching the bride, in an ax-wielding rage, destroy the beribboned wardrobe that sat behind the gift table. A genuine Kodak moment.

  He swung open one of the dragging doors and winced to find the inside in similar condition. “Definitely a candidate for the dump.”

  She nodded, thinking it was for the best, even if she could still hear their giggles and laughter coming from its depths. “I’ll tag it.”

  He pulled open a drawer and withdrew a vase that had been broken and badly glued back together.

  Regina’s laugh was dry. “This was a vase that my Aunt Lyla and Justine argued over—they both said the other one dropped it. They didn’t exactly get along.”

  Mitchell studied the piece. “Was it of sentimental value?”

  She shook her head and pointed to the mark on the bottom. “It’s a Lalique—Lyla found it on one of her treasure hunts. I remember Justine had to work off the price of it—a couple of hundred dollars, twenty years ago. Can’t imagine what it would be worth now if it were in one piece.”

  “About twenty bucks,” he said.

  She frowned. “What?”

  “It’s not a Lalique—it’s a good knock-off. See, the mark is blurred. And the coloring is off. Your aunt was conned.”

  She winced. “Whatever you do, don’t tell Justine—she’ll be furious all over again for having to work off the debt.”

  The door chime sounded, announcing a customer. Regina smoothed a hand over the front of her jeans, then walked into the main showroom to see a tall man in a khaki uniform with his back to her. “May I help you, sir?”

  He turned and grinned. “Hi, Regina.”

  Dark hair, touch of gray, blue eyes, hooked nose, toothpick clenched in his teeth like an accessory. A vague memory chord stirred, but she couldn’t come up with a name.

  He removed the toothpick and held out his hands. “It’s me—Pete.”

  Her racing mind finally put the pieces together. “Pete Shadowen.”

  “Deputy Sheriff Pete Shadowen now.” He thumped an official-looking hat he held in the crook of his arm. “At your service.”

  She smiled and embraced him. He wanted to hang on a little longer than she did.

  “Wow, Regina, you look swell.”

  “Thanks. So do you. Is your dad still sheriff?”

  He nodded, then looked over her shoulder. “Hello.” The toothpick went back to the space between his eye-teeth.

  “Hi,” Mitchell Cooke said.

  Regina’s smile encompassed them both. “Mitchell Cooke, this is Deputy Sheri
ff Pete Shadowen, an old friend of mine.”

  “And old boyfriend,” Pete clarified.

  Mitchell looked amused. “Yes, I could see right away that you were a boy. Nice hat.”

  Regina glared at him.

  Sam appeared, took one look at Pete, and bared his teeth in a snarl. Mitchell snapped his fingers and Sam retreated. “Sorry—it’s the uniform.”

  Exasperated, Regina turned back to Pete. “Mom and Dad are going to auction off the inventory. Mitchell is an appraiser.”

  “Ah.” Pete gave an open-mouthed nod, then used his toothpick to point back and forth between them. “So you two don’t… know each other.”

  “No,” she said.

  “Yes,” Mitchell said at the same time.

  “Not really,” she added, then served up a smile. “Pete, what brings you up this way?”

  He winked. “Well, Mrs. Woods at the Grab ‘N Go told me you were back in town, so I was looking for an excuse to come see you.”

  “What excuse did you come up with?” Mitchell asked with a glib smile.

  Stop, Regina telegraphed with her eyes.

  Pete stared at the other man, then set his hat on his head and straightened his shoulders. He turned back to Regina. “I just left your house. I had to speak with Justine about an official police matter.” His gaze flicked back to Mitchell. “Maybe I shouldn’t—”

  “It’s okay,” Regina said with a sigh. Mitchell already knew most of their family drama. “Does this have something to do with the shooting at Cocoon?”

  Pete nodded. “I got a call from the Shively, Pennsylvania, Police Department, and it’s possible the shooter might have left the state.”

  Mitchell leaned in, clearly confused but riveted.

  Regina swallowed. “Could the woman be headed here?”

  “It’s possible,” Pete said in big-eyed seriousness. “But I’m going to be on the lookout.” He plucked a piece of paper from his shirt pocket and unfolded a faxed photo that was so dark and indistinguishable, Regina couldn’t even tell that it was a woman.

  WANTED: LISA CRANE