by Lis Wiehl
“My grandmother. She was a wise woman. Some of my ancestors were actually hanged for witchcraft.”
Cassidy felt a moment’s confusion. “But didn’t you say both your grandmothers died before you were born?”
After the briefest hesitation, Elizabeth smiled. “Oh, I just meant the woman I called my grandmother. She was really my grandmother’s sister. Now pour the tea.”
Cassidy finished pouring, trying not to make a face as she looked at the murky tea with bits of leaves bobbing in it. As a child, she had been a picky eater. She used to worry that a bug had landed in her food without her noticing. The slightest strange texture on the back of her tongue had made her gag, as she imagined tiny struggling legs and wings disappearing down the back of her throat.
“Now we need to let it cool.” Elizabeth leaned back in her chair. “You know, ever since I met you, I’ve been watching a lot more of Channel Four.”
Cassidy’s feelings of flattery were quickly dashed when Elizabeth added, “So who’s that young woman reporter who works there? The one with the long blonde hair?”
Cassidy rolled her eyes. “That’s Jenna. And first of all, she’s not a reporter. She’s just an intern. She’s still finishing college. She’s a total suck-up. But all the men just eat it up, like they can’t get enough.”
“So she doesn’t report stories?”
“Sometimes,” Cassidy admitted reluctantly. “She’s talked her way into a couple of assignments, and she’s always nosing around, looking for more. She’s the kind of girl who practically sticks her chest in the station manager’s face and says”—Cassidy made her voice breathy—“‘I would do absolutely anything to get ahead in TV news.’ It’s disgusting.”
Sure, Cassidy herself had striven to get ahead when she was Jenna’s age, but she was sure she had relied on a little more than her hair and cleavage.
“Sounds like she’s the kind of person who tries so hard it backfires on them.” Elizabeth touched the back of Cassidy’s hand. “Okay. The tea should be ready. I want you to sip it while you concentrate on your question.”
And what came into Cassidy’s mind was: Will I always be lonely? And she realized she was. Lonely at her core. She had Allison and Nicole and now Elizabeth, she had her job, but she needed something more. She would have labeled it a man, but even when she was dating, she still sometimes felt empty. She lifted the cup to her lips.
“Try not to drink the tea leaves,” Elizabeth cautioned.
“No worries!” Cassidy said, suppressing a shudder. Looking over the rim of the cup, she saw Elizabeth watching her, as dispassionate as a scientist. Cassidy felt queasy. Was she getting sick? Sieving the tea through her teeth and suppressing a shiver, she swallowed the last dregs.
“Okay, all done?” Elizabeth didn’t seem to have noticed anything. She took the cup in her left hand, covered it with her right. Closing her eyes, she swirled it clockwise three times. Her lips moved, and even though Cassidy strained her ears, she did not hear any sound.
Elizabeth lifted her hand and peered into the cup. Cassidy got up to look over her shoulder. Tea leaves were scattered along the rim, sides, and bottom.
Elizabeth rolled the cup between her palms, her face intent. “Look, there you are, Cassidy, riding a wild horse!”
Cassidy followed her pointing finger and tried to see what Elizabeth saw. Obviously, reading tea leaves took training.
“And look! There’s a big wedding bell over your head—and you’re trying to get away from it.” She glanced up at Cassidy, her blue eyes sparkling. “It’s like you want to get married, but you really don’t. Because you’re too wild to marry. No man has ever been able to tame you.”
That was so true! Cassidy thought. And the way Elizabeth put it, it didn’t sound like a negative.
“Hm, that might be changing. I can see that you have recently gotten over a hard, emotional time in your life.”
Cassidy had told Elizabeth about it, at least some of it. But it was like the leaves were telling her friend even more.
“That’s interesting,” Elizabeth murmured.
“What?”
She pointed. “Look at that square. It means you need to be cautious.”
Cassidy looked past the tip of Elizabeth’s perfectly manicured finger. She didn’t see a square, but she nodded.
“But there’s also this triangle, which means good karma.”
Cassidy thought she could see the triangle. Maybe.
Elizabeth rotated the cup, peered closer. “This arrow next to the broken necklace means that you work hard for people to like you, then push away the people you love, because you don’t love yourself.”
That was true. Cassidy did work hard on her friendships. But lately it seemed like it was Allison and especially Nicole who were pushing her away, not the other way around.
Elizabeth’s eyes narrowed. “Oh, that’s not good.”
“What?” Cassidy scooted closer and squinted at the blobby bits of leaves.
“It’s a cat. That means a false friend. And it’s so close to the rim. That means it’s big. Life changing.”
“Does it tell you who?”
Elizabeth gave her a long look. Cassidy had the feeling that she really knew the answer but was holding back for some reason.
She patted Cassidy’s hand. “I guess the best I can tell you is to watch your back.”
CHAPTER 25
Northwest Portland
Nic would not let herself think of the pain and bewilderment on Leif’s face as she had pushed him away. She still had a couple of hours before she picked Makayla up at her folks’ house. The best way to fill the time was to keep busy. So she got on I-405 and headed in the direction of Foley’s condo. There had to be more evidence—but where? There was no sense in searching his place again. They had already been over it with a fine-tooth comb, even looked for hiding places built into the walls, floor, or ceiling. But they had found nothing.
She had to keep busy. Keep her mind off Leif. Breaking things off had had to be done, for his sake. If he found out that she had cancer— and Nic knew in her bones that she did—then he would have stayed with her. No matter what. Even as his love changed to pity, his desire to distance, his joy to a burden. Because that was the kind of man Leif was. Honorable. Dedicated. Nic had worked side by side with him long enough to know that he would never give up once he had committed himself.
If Nic let him embark on this terrible journey with her, she would never know how he really felt. She wouldn’t be able to trust him. For the best of reasons, but still. Nic needed to know that if Leif ever said he loved her, he meant it. A pure, uncomplicated love, not one with an asterisk after it that meant because you might be dying and I know you need to feel loved. Besides, she told herself as she cruised by Foley’s condo, even in the twenty-first century, it wouldn’t have been easy. A black woman and a white man still made some people look twice. Even in Portland.
Staring at Foley’s condo, Nic drove in ever wider circles. Here was his gym, but they had already checked out his locker there and found little more than a bottle of dandruff shampoo.
She was doing Leif a favor, really. Aside from the cancer, in some sense Nic was damaged goods—because how could anyone have gone through what she had and not be damaged? Leif was the first outsider Nic had told about what happened, how two cute guys offering to buy her a drink after she got off work at a restaurant had led to a night she still didn’t remember, a court case, and the birth of her daughter. She hadn’t dated since. Ten long years of relying on no one but herself. And until Leif had come along, she had been perfectly happy with that.
Nic passed a storage rental place that was only a mile from Foley’s condo building. But they had already checked the records of every storage rental place in the city, and neither Foley nor his fiancée had rented a unit.
Nic had Makayla, and that had to be enough. And there were hard times ahead. Even a nine-year-old knew what the word cancer meant. Her daughter didn’t need to deal with all the
changes the treatment would bring and a new, strange man in her life. Nic and Makayla were a team. The two of them against the world.
And Leif? Ending this thing now was best for him, too, Nic told herself, as she automatically stopped at a red light. Before it had put down roots. Before he yoked himself to a woman who would need more and more and could give less and less.
Leif would say otherwise, but how could he not need things from her? He would want closeness and honesty and communication. He would want her to bare her heart, share her soul. If she were unhappy, he would try to cajole her, prop her up, until she felt she had to pretend. How long would it be before he became just one more demand among the many that already overcrowded her day?
Nic shook her head. What was she doing, driving aimlessly through Northwest Portland as if she might just stumble over a clue? She obviously wasn’t accomplishing anything, other than wasting government gas.
She put on her blinker and started to make her way back to the freeway. On the way she passed Good Samaritan Medical Center. Two men walked out of the main doors, both of them wearing white coats, loops of stethoscopes sticking out of their pockets.
And Nic realized there was one place she hadn’t looked.
Two hours later Allison and Nic were in front of the magistrate judge on call, asking him to sign off on a warrant to search Foley’s medical school locker. And before another hour had gone by, Nic was using a bolt cutter to snip the combination lock in a hallway gone weekend-quiet, with Allison looking over her shoulder.
But when Nic swung open the metal door, her heart sank. A pile of textbooks and nothing more. With gloved hands, she lifted them to make sure there wasn’t anything underneath. When she did, something shifted within the stack, making a soft clunk.
“Did you hear that?” she asked Allison, who nodded. “Something’s off.”
Nic set the pile of books back down and then lifted each one, giving it a little shake before rifling the pages. In addition to dense prose, she caught quick glimpses of a line drawing of a spine and a photograph of a chest cracked open to reveal the heart. The last book, the one on the bottom, was a copy of the 1,500-page Gray’s Anatomy. The weight was all wrong in her hands. She opened the cover, revealing a space hollowed out with surgical precision.
Allison looked over Nic’s shoulder. Inside were a Sig Sauer pistol, a dozen plastic restraints, and several pairs of women’s underwear. Underneath those was a stack of money, at least a dozen credit cards, and a gift card that read Happy Birthday. Nic flipped the last over with the tip of her gloved finger. On the back someone had filled out the To line with the first name of one of the dead women. And on the From line was the word Mom.
CHAPTER 26
Southwest Portland
Even though Allison never set her alarm for Saturday morning, she still found herself waking at six. For the next twenty minutes she tried to persuade herself to go back to sleep. But some orders the body simply disobeyed.
She had shifted positions for the dozenth time when Marshall rolled over, gathered her into his arms, and gave her a kiss.
“Mmm,” he said, his eyes still closed. Marshall was not a morning person.
Maybe the kiss would have led to something more, but now that Lindsay lived with them, they had begun sneaking around like teenagers.
So instead Marshall let his head flop back on his pillow.
Allison tried to go back to sleep, but with Marshall’s muscled arm now under her neck, it was even more out of the question. She sighed and swung her legs over the edge of the bed.
With a muffled groan, Marshall propped himself on one elbow. His tousled black hair fell across his still-closed eyes. “What’s the matter?”
“Don’t you want to sleep?”
He smiled and opened one blue eye. “Not if you’re going to sigh like that. What’s wrong?”
“Oh, everything just feels unsettled. Nicole was really snappy at Cassidy on Monday. After that exercise class we took together.”
“Why?” He patted the bed beside him, and she lay back down with another sigh.
“For giving airtime to the Want Ad Killer. Nicole had a point, but she didn’t need to come down so hard. Especially when Cassidy tried to help us by letting that guy trip himself up. Cassidy has a lot more freedom than either of us does. Sometimes that means she does things—both good and bad—that we couldn’t. Or wouldn’t.”
“Uh-huh.” Marshall curled his knees up.
Allison draped her legs over his. “I don’t understand why Nicole acted the way she did. She’s been really prickly lately.”
Marshall kissed her ear. She wasn’t even sure he was listening. But talking out loud, even to herself, helped clarify her thoughts.
“I think something’s up with Leif,” she continued. “Nic says she wants to take it slow, but by the time she’s ready to admit how much she likes Leif, they’ll both be in a nursing home. I don’t know. I can’t see him giving her any grief. He’s a good guy. It feels like something else is bugging her. But I’ve tried talking to her about it, and she says it’s nothing.”
“Really?” He kissed her shoulder.
“Even Cassidy is acting kind of weird. She’s always going on and on about that instructor. You know, the one who taught the boot camp class. According to Cassidy, Elizabeth walks on water. I don’t like her nearly as much as Cassidy does, but I have to admit she is pretty amazing looking.”
“I know someone else who is pretty amazing looking,” Marshall whispered. After his lips found hers, Allison forgot about her worries about her friends.
And after that, they were very, very quiet.
When Lindsay finally got up a couple of hours later, Allison waited until she had drunk half her coffee before she said, “I’m going to check out that gym Cassidy took me to. You should come with me. I’m thinking about getting a family membership.”
Marshall was a runner, but if they had a gym membership it was possible he might use it as well. He had gone into work for a few hours, so she and Lindsay had the house to themselves.
“Just go on without me.” Lindsay didn’t look up. Her gaze was fastened on the table. Not even on a newspaper. Just a blank stretch of polished wood. “That’s okay.”
“Is this the same Lindsay who was the star of the volleyball team?”
Lindsay made a pfff sound. “In eighth grade. And in case you hadn’t noticed, that was seventeen years ago. If you want to go to the gym, great. But I don’t. I think I’ll make snickerdoodles while you’re gone.”
Snickerdoodles? Even though her mouth watered at the thought of their soft sugar-cinnamon sweetness, snickerdoodles were the last thing Allison—or Lindsay, for that matter—needed.
“I’ll make you a deal, Linds. I need your help. Between”—Allison hesitated, still having trouble saying it out loud—“between losing the baby and all the treats you make, I’m beginning to blow up like a house. I figured if you started going to the gym with me, you could keep baking and I could keep eating—only without gaining weight.”
“But I don’t want to go a gym.” Lindsay took another sip of coffee.
“Why not?” Allison felt a prickle of irritation. This was the first thing she had asked of Lindsay. What would it hurt her to say yes?
“No one is going to want to see me in the dressing room. Trust me. I don’t even want to see me in the dressing room. Look at me, Allison. I mean, really look.” Lindsay lifted her puffy face. Her eyes were shiny with tears. “I used to be pretty. Now nobody is going to want to watch me take off my clothes. Take it from me. I got laughed out of the last strip club I tried out at. I’ve got that divot on my leg from when I fell off Chris’s motorcycle. I’ve got scars on my arms from when meth made me feel like bugs were crawling under my skin. I’m all lumps and bumps.”
“But that’s why people go to the gym. To get in better shape.”
Lindsay smiled wanly. “Yeah, and then maybe the other people can point me out to their kids as a cautionary tale
. ‘See, honey, that’s what happens when you take drugs and end up living on the street.’”
Inside, Allison winced. Lindsay sounded like she was ready to give up. Like her life was over at thirty.
But Allison was her big sister. And big sisters didn’t take no for an answer.
“How about this? We can put on our workout clothes before we go, and afterward come back and shower here. No dressing rooms.”
Lindsay finally agreed, reluctantly. But once they were at the gym, she warmed up as one of the front desk employees toured them around and she saw all the options. It wasn’t the room full of exercise equipment, the basketball court, or the Olympic-sized pool and the smaller heated pool that made Lindsay’s eyes light up. Instead, she was interested in the sauna, the Jacuzzi, the massage rooms, and the café.
Allison ending up spending only twenty minutes on the treadmill, while Lindsay flopped down on various pieces of equipment—moving only when someone actually wanted to use whatever she was sitting on—to watch one of the half dozen closed-captioned, large-screen TVs. Still, Allison thought, if they made coming here a regular habit, maybe Lindsay would start taking advantage.
As they were leaving, they passed a line of framed photos of the various instructors.
“Hey,” Lindsay said, pointing at a picture of a red-haired woman and then leaning forward to look at the gold nameplate screwed into the frame. “Elizabeth Avery. She looks familiar. Did she go to high school with us?”
Elizabeth, the instructor that Cassidy admired so much. “I don’t think so. In fact, I’m sure she didn’t, or Cassidy would have brought it up. She really likes Elizabeth’s classes and talks about her all the time.”
Lindsay shrugged. “Maybe I’ve just seen her downtown or something.”
Allison had an uncomfortable image of a wasted Lindsay panhandling Elizabeth.
Compared to that, she thought, today was an unqualified success.
CHAPTER 27
Nordstrom
