"You know each other?" Marcy asked with a laugh.
"Sure. Ben and I are old buddies. He interviewed me in January for a school report, right?"
He nodded. "Chief Drummond is really quite knowledgeable on crime statistics in rural and urban areas."
"Is she now?" Marcy couldn't stop smiling. Ben sounded so grown up so often that she felt like she had missed out on something. When had this happened? When had he developed such a vocabulary?
"You doing all right?" Claire asked Marcy. She gave a little nod toward the hospital waiting room.
"Oh, yeah. Yeah, I'm fine. I just had a CT scan and some blood tests. Dr. Larson says it's routine for patients with head trauma. He'll probably want me to do this once in a while for the rest of my life."
"Good." Claire smiled. "I'm glad to hear it."
Marcy reached out and touched Claire's arm. "How about you? This second murder..." She had never been particularly demonstrative with other women, but her heart went out to Claire. Two women dead and no real leads, apparently. She knew that had to be hard to handle.
"I'm doing okay." Claire nodded, lowering her gaze.
"Still no idea who could have done it, though?"
She shook her head, adding a half nod. "Well, we're still investigating. Lab results can take days, weeks..."
"I know you're doing your best." Marcy smiled, trying to sound reassuring. "You want to get together for lunch this week? Or maybe coffee?" Never in her life had she asked an acquaintance to go somewhere or do something. She just had never been the kind of person to reach out to others. Maybe that was changing, too.
When Claire didn't answer right away, Marcy got a little nervous. "I mean, I know how busy you are, and if you don't have the time—"
"No." Claire looked up with those striking blue eyes of hers. "I'd like that. Can I call you? My schedule is pretty hectic, but I really could use a quiet lunch with a friend."
Marcy bubbled inside. Claire had called her a friend.
It had been a long time since she had been able to think of herself as someone's friend. "That would be great. I'm in the phone book." She reached for Ben's hand. "Let's let Chief Drummond get to work." She glanced at Claire once more as they went down the sidewalk toward the parking lot. "Have a good day."
"You, too."
"I didn't know you did a report in school about crime," Marcy said, letting go of Ben's hand to let him go around the front of the SUV to get inside. "I'd really like to read it." She waited for him to buckle his seat belt before she started the car. "I know I was only asleep six months, but in ways, Mommy feels like she'd been asleep a lot longer than that."
"Can I have pancakes and toast?" Ben asked.
"Little heavy on the carbs, there?" She cut her eyes at him as she pulled out onto the street. The diner was only a few blocks away.
"I used to get scrapple, but I read what they put in that stuff." He wrinkled his nose. "Not just guts and brains and stuff, but did you know what percentage of rodent hair is legally permitted in packaged food in this country?"
A few minutes later, they were seated in the diner. They'd run into Patrolman McCormick on their way in, and he'd practically asked her on a date right in front of Ben. Apparently word of her and Jake's separation was getting around. She thanked him politely but turned him down. No matter what happened with her and Jake, there was no way she was dating anyone Phoebe had dated.
"Well, hello, little lady." Ralph sauntered up to the table. "Just can't stay away from old Ralph, can you?"
"I'll have coffee and a waffle with fresh strawberries. No butter." She glanced over her menu at Ben. "I was going to have sausage, but after the conversation I just had with my son, I've thought better of it."
Ben giggled. "Can I have a small orange juice, pancakes, and two pieces of whole-wheat toast, butter on the side?"
Ralph scribbled on the pad of paper in his hand. "I think old Ralph can see ya get that."
Marcy glanced up at the diner counter. Loretta was busy running the cash register, and there was a young woman she didn't recognize changing the filter on the coffee machine. She looked nervous. "That Loretta's new waitress?"
Ralph glanced over his shoulder. "Yup. That's Kristen Addison, college girl. Come to stay with her aunt and uncle for the summer. You know the Addisons off Oak? I think she's a nurse. He's some kind of big wig at one of the plants."
"Actually, I do know them." Marcy tucked the menus behind the napkin holder on the table. "Their son Ty used to baby-sit Ben. We know the family from church."
Ralph tucked his pencil behind his ear and winked at Marcy. "That coffee and juice be comin' right up."
She watched him walk away, glad to see him go. The man just gave her the creeps.
"So," she said, turning her attention back to Ben. She had made him leave his video game in the car. "Tell me about this carbon monoxide thing we're buying today. Why do we need this in our house and how on earth did we live without it this long?"
Chapter 9
"Hey, Mom, can I ask you a question?" Katie asked. It was a few days after Marcy's trip to the hospital.
Katie sat on a stool on the other side of the kitchen counter, slicing cucumbers for the salad for dinner. Marcy had picked up fresh tuna steaks to grill; it was one of her daughter's favorites. Phoebe had said she had a couple of errands to run and then she was going out with friends. It was the perfect opportunity for Marcy to spend some time alone with her children, especially Katie, who was hard to catch these days between her baby-sitting job, her girlfriends, softball, and the almighty telephone. It seemed that in the three weeks since Marcy had been home, she and Katie had really had very little time together alone.
"Sure." Marcy ducked so that she could see her daughter on the far side of the kitchen cabinets. "As long as it's not too personal."
Katie made a face. "Like I would want to know anything like that. Please."
Marcy laughed and went back to squeezing juice from a fresh lemon into a small glass bowl. "What is it?"
"Why haven't you gone to see the van?"
"What van?" The minute it was out of her mouth, Marcy realized what she meant. The van. The van she had driven off the bridge. The van that had nearly killed her. "Oh, you mean our van. Our new van that I totaled." She tried to make light of it.
Katie nodded, gathering up cucumber peels in her hands to carry around to dump in the sink. "Dad wouldn't let me see it. It's at the junk yard, you know. That place with all the fencing and the dog that always barks. Ben thinks it's as big as the one in the Harry Potter movie, but I told him that was stupid." She looked at Marcy as she stuffed the peels down the garbage disposal. "So why haven't you?"
Marcy leaned on the counter, the lemon in her hand. "To tell you the truth, I hadn't really thought about it."
"I don't know how you couldn't. I saw the picture in the paper after it happened. In the picture, they're using a crane to pull it out of the water. It wasn't a very good picture, pretty dark and smudged, but it looked really awful," she said tentatively.
Marcy shifted her gaze to Katie's face. "You think I should see it?"
She lifted a slender shoulder. Katie had gotten so pretty. She had her Dad's sandy brown hair and his dark eyes, yet she was utterly feminine. And she had apparently not inherited her mother's penchant for weight gain, either. She was the perfect size for a thirteen-year-old, neither too thin nor too heavy. She was going to be a beautiful woman by society's standards, but more importantly a beautiful person inside. She seemed to have none of the insecurities that Marcy had already accumulated by the time she was her age.
"It didn't look like a person would survive, coming out of it." Katie flipped on the garbage disposal switch and turned on the water. The sound was so loud that it prevented either of them from hearing each other.
Marcy took the moment to try and figure out where Katie was going with this conversation. She was pretty certain it wasn't so much about the car as about the fact that Marcy had survived. Had Katie been th
inking about the van and the shape it had been in, all these months?
Marcy waited until Katie turned off the switch to the garbage disposal and the room was quiet again except for the distant sound of Ben's afternoon cartoons on the TV in the family room. "Do you want to see the van?" she asked her daughter.
Again, the only response was the slight rise and fall of Katie's shoulder.
"Because maybe we could go together," Marcy said carefully. "If you wanted to."
Katie turned away, presenting her back to her mother, and Marcy realized by the way she trembled that she was crying. "Katie?" Marcy dropped the lemon on the counter, swiped up a dishtowel to dry her hands, and walked up behind her daughter to put her arms around her.
"I'm sorry, Mom," Katie choked. "I saw the picture, and I knew there was no way you could live. I didn't care how many candles they lit or what people said about miracles."
Marcy wrapped her arms tightly around the teen, breathing in her little-girl scent that wasn't so little girl now. Once she had smelled of baby powder and peanut butter. Now it was shampoo and conditioner, deodorant and nail polish. "Ah, sweetie, it's okay."
"No, it's not." Katie sniffed. "Dad knew you were going to get better and wake up. Ben knew." Her voice trembled. "But Aunt Phoebe and I, we were just sure you were going to die. We talked about it when we were alone. You know, what was going to happen when you died." A sob escaped her lips. "I just knew you couldn't live through that car wreck," she repeated.
"Katie, honey, don't cry. It's all behind us now." Marcy turned her daughter around. She knew how teens could be about physical contact with their parents, but Katie wasn't resisting, for once. "There's no need to cry now. I'm all right. I know I don't look the way I used to and that's weird for you, but I'm still your Mom. I'm still the same person inside."
"But you don't understand." Katie clung to Marcy, wetting her mother's linen shirt with her tears. "You've always been there for me. Always believed in me. Told me I could do anything, be anything. And I—" Another sob. "I didn't believe in you. I didn't think you would get better."
Marcy closed her eyes, pulling Katie tightly against her, wishing that she could take away her daughter's pain and the guilt she obviously felt. Marcy had learned the hard way that it didn't matter if the pain was justified or not, it was still just as real.
"Katie, it's all right that you realized I might die. You're just practical, that's all. The odds were against me. You were probably the only sensible one in this house, thinking I was never going to come to." She said nothing about Phoebe; no matter what she thought of her sister's handling of the situation, she didn't want Katie in the middle of it.
"I'm sorry, Mom."
Marcy tipped Katie's head back and pushed the damp hair away from her eyes. She wanted to say no apology was needed, but if Katie felt it was, she knew she needed to accept it. "Apology accepted," she said softly. "Now, no more tears over this. I'm alive, and I'm going to be fine." She wiped at her daughter's tears again, mainly because she wanted to savor the moment of closeness they were sharing. "And if you feel like you want to see the van, I'll take you to see it. We'll do it together."
Katie stepped back, her quota for mother's hugs probably filled and then some. "Even though Dad said no?" She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand.
"I'll talk to him. If you feel you need to see it, I think that's a reasonable request."
"That's okay, then. I don't need to go."
Marcy walked back to the counter and grabbed the lemon to finish squeezing the juice from it. "So you don't want to see the van?"
The teen shook her head. "Nah. No sense in flipping Dad out. You saying it's okay is enough." She walked out of the kitchen. "I'm going to call Miranda. Tell me when dinner's ready."
Marcy stood in the kitchen, lemon in hand, perplexed. She wasn't quite sure what had just happened there between her and Katie, but she had to think it was something good.
With a sigh, she walked to the refrigerator to retrieve the tuna steaks. As she dropped the brown wrapped package on the counter, she heard the front door open. "Marcy!"
It was Phoebe. And she was pissed. No one could miss the shriek of fury in her sister's voice.
"In the kitchen," Marcy called. She pulled the olive oil from the cabinet above the stove and calmly added a few splashes to the fresh lemon juice for the tuna.
"Just what do you think you're doing?" Phoebe demanded, marching into the kitchen on spiky high-heeled sandals. "Are you trying to make me the laughing stock of this town?"
Marcy put the cap back on the olive oil, taking her time in screwing it on. "What are you talking about, Phoebe?"
"I've been to the bank this afternoon." Phoebe halted in the center of the kitchen, both hands planted on her hips. Her hair was pulled back in a tight, high ponytail, and she was wearing too much makeup. In the bright fluorescent light of the kitchen, the pink lipstick and blue seventies-era eye shadow made her look harsh.
Marcy stirred the lemon and olive oil with a pastry brush and sprinkled in some fresh thyme. So Phoebe had found out. And just the way she had hoped she wouldn't.
Marcy should have known no one in this town could mind their own business. "No one at the bank should be discussing my personal business," she said, annoyed by the thought that an employee had mentioned her application for the business loan to anyone. She'd be calling the manager in the morning to complain.
"I went in to withdraw some cash, and that snotty Carla Perkins looks up at me and asks me if I intend to work for my sister in her new restaurant. Imagine my surprise."
"Phoebe, I—"
"You're buying a restaurant after what I've just been through!" She practically screamed the last words.
Marcy's first thought was to point out to her sister that the last seven months of her life hadn't been a picnic, either, but she kept that thought to herself. This conversation was about Phoebe. Of course. They always were.
Marcy calmly stirred her marinade for her tuna. "The loan may not even go through. I just didn't want to say anything to anyone until it was a sure thing."
"How are you getting the money to do this? Banks don't loan money to women on disability in the process of getting a divorce! Not that kind of money!"
"I resigned from my job. I haven't collected disability since I came home. As for the money, I'm using what Mom and Dad left me."
"You still have the money they left you?" She almost sneered the words.
"Yup. And then some. Jake and I never touched it. I invested it."
"Of course you did." Phoebe began to pace. "Little Goody Two-shoes invests her money," she mocked. "The evil twin blows it all on men and bad business deals, and you, of course, come out ahead!"
Marcy turned around and leaned on the counter, crossing her arms over her chest. It used to be that when she looked at her sister, her first thought was of how beautiful she was. How much she wanted to look like her. What she would give to be her.
How could she have been so shallow? How could she not have seen beyond the pretty face and size-eight jeans? Marcy wouldn't want to be Phoebe now for anything. She'd take her old body, her old face back, before she would be this bitter, selfish, angry woman.
"I didn't mean to hurt you by keeping it from you," Marcy said quietly. "I just had to make some decisions on my own without anyone else giving me advice."
"Hey, who am I to be giving advice?" Phoebe threw up her hands. Reaching the wall, she turned on her high heels and started back in the other direction. "God forbid I should say anything, be consulted, even though I'm the one with experience running a restaurant. I'm the one who owned one."
Marcy wanted to say owned was the operative word there, as in past tense, but she bit her tongue. Phoebe had owned a restaurant and it failed for several reasons, the biggest one being that her sister had no head for numbers, especially when it came to money. Marcy was good with money, and she thought she had an eye for what would make money; she didn't intend to make the same m
istakes her sister had.
"Does Jake know about this?" Phoebe demanded.
"Yes."
"And when were you going to tell me?" Phoebe's voice quivered. "At the grand opening? Or were you going to give me a ring ahead of time? Maybe offer me a position as your hostess?"
"Phoebe, I don't know what else to say, except that I'm genuinely sorry you heard this way." She beseeched with open hands. "I didn't do it to hurt you. It's just that I need to get on with my life. I need to put the accident behind me and start fresh."
Phoebe walked out of the kitchen without saying a word.
Marcy followed her. "Where are you going?"
"Out."
Marcy ran her fingers through her hair in frustration. She wanted her sister out of her house, but not this way. With their parents deceased, they only had each other. On her deathbed, her mother had made Marcy promise she wouldn't let Phoebe separate herself from her sister, her only family ties left, no matter what. "Phoebe, please don't leave angry. You don't have to go now. Not tonight. Certainly not like this."
Phoebe jerked the front door open and walked out.
"Phebes, please—"
She swung the door hard, slamming it in her sister's face.
Marcy didn't go after her. Instead, she walked back into the kitchen and called Jake on the phone. "Hey."
"Hey," he said.
She could hear him smiling.
"I've got four tuna steaks and only three diners." She opened the package from the seafood market. "You want to join us for dinner?"
"Sure. When?" His tone was light, teasing.
"Now."
"Be right there."
Marcy hung up the phone and walked to the kitchen door that led to the family room to call the kids to get ready for dinner. She wasn't going to let this fight with Phoebe upset her or change her plans to open the restaurant if she could get the loan. She felt badly for Phoebe, but in time, her sister would get over her hurt feelings. Phoebe had lived her whole life ignoring how her actions would affect Marcy, always doing what she thought was best for herself. It was time Marcy tried doing the same.
She'll Never Tell Page 17
