by Gen Griffin
“Personally, I'd rather you not be on a first name basis with the men in my life,” Trish said. “You have a bad habit of getting to know them a little too well.”
Nellie's jaw dropped. “Aren't you being a little touchy?”
“You slept with my husband, remember?” Trish glared at Nellie. “You begged me to come in here so we could have some privacy to talk. Get to talking, because I really don't have the time to deal with you anymore.”
“I'm sorry.” Nellie held both of her hands up in a gesture of surrender. “I've missed you so much. Brooksville is boring without you. I'm sorry for sleeping with Curtis. I was drunk and it was a stupid decision. I miss my sister. Will you please forgive me? ”
Trish opened her mouth and then closed it again. “Nellie-.”
“Hear me out, please. I know that what I did was wrong. I know you don't trust me anymore. Give me a chance to regain your trust. I'm not asking you to welcome me back into your life with open arms, but I'd love just to be able to call you up and talk once in awhile. I miss my big sister. I miss our talks and your advice.”
“You never follow my advice,” Trish said.
“I should follow your advice. You give great advice.” Nellie reached out for Trish. “Can we please try for a fresh start?”
Trish closed her eyes and leaned back against the cold decorative tile wall. “The only reason I'm even considering forgiving you is because Mom has been begging me to patch our relationship up.”
“I know. She's been on me about it too. She practically begged me to come today. She said you needed my support.”
Trish made a mental note never to ask her mother for help ever again. “I asked her to tell you not to come.”
“Did you really?” Nellie frowned. The fingers on her right hand went up to a chunky, old-fashioned necklace that was hanging around her slender neck. The stones were huge and looked like diamonds. The necklace looked vaguely familiar to Trish but she couldn't remember when she'd seen it before.
“I did. Obviously she doesn't listen.”
“Nanette told me that you promised to make an effort to patch things up between us.”
“I promised to make an effort to forgive you by Thanksgiving.” Trish clarified. “Its June, Nellie. I still have a five months.”
“If we make nice now, Nanette will get off our backs about it. I don't know how you feel, but I could do with a little less motherly nagging in my life.” Nellie held her hands out in a broad shrug. “You don't have to call me once a week and talk for three hours. All I'm asking is for you to give me a chance to earn your trust back. Answer your phone when I call instead of sending me straight to voicemail. Give me five minutes of your day once a month or so. We've always been there for one another up until this last year. I made a mistake and I hate myself for it.”
“I wish I believed you,” Trish replied. She sucked on her lower lip for a minute. “I guess we can give this whole sisters thing one more try, just to get Nanette off our backs. But if you betray me a second time, I'll never forgive you. I swear to God, Nellie, I'll never speak to you again.”
“I won't betray you,” Nellie replied. “I promise that I've learned my lesson. I always have your very best interests at heart.”
Nellie slid down off the counter and wrapped Trish in another awkward hug. After a second's hesitation, Trish used her unbroken arm to hug Nellie back. “Come on. We need to go to the service. The memorial will be starting any minute now.”
“I love you sis,” Nellie said as she admired herself one last time in the bathroom mirror. She stuck her leg out in front of Trish. “By the way, what do you think of my new tattoo?”
“I like the orchid,” Trish told her, caught unexpectedly by the abrupt change in conversation topics.
“Do you remember what used to be there?” Nellie asked.
“It was Marcus's face, wasn't it?” Trish had to struggle to recall which of her sister's permanent bad decisions had been inked onto her right thigh.
“Joel's name, actually. Marcus's face is on my shoulder blade.” Nellie twisted slightly and parted the back of her dress from her skin just enough to display the image of her high school sweetheart's face. “I need to find someone who can do a really badass cover. I was going to let Emma do it but then I saw the cover she did on Becky's leg and I was like, nope. Absolutely not. Becky's got a rose that looks like a bruise on her calf now. It's too dark and has crazy thick lines. It's so ugly. If I were Becky, I'd never wear shorts again.”
“You wear tank tops despite having Marcus's face on your shoulder,” Trish pointed out.
“I tell people its a bad tattoo of Elvis,” Nellie admitted. “Marcus looks kind of like Elvis, don't you think?”
Trish sighed and pulled open the bathroom door. “If you want my sisterly advice, I'm strongly advising that you stop tattooing your boyfriends' names and faces on your body. Your tattoos last a lot longer than your relationships do.”
“I'll find Mr. Right eventually,” Nellie said as she laced her fingers through Trish's. “Speaking of guys, I saw the sexiest man I've ever seen in my life when I was walking into the funeral home. Like, he was so hot that I got all wet just looking at him. He had these crazy intense green eyes and it looked like he had full tattoo sleeves underneath his dress shirt. I couldn't entirely tell because he was carrying this humongous plant into the funeral home. I guess he works here.”
“No, he doesn't.” Trish didn't need to be a genius to realize who Nellie was talking about. She'd just been hoping she could make it through the funeral before Nellie noticed David.
“You know him then?” Nellie grinned at Trish. “You have got to introduce me. I want him. I have to have to know what he looks like underneath that suit.”
“Six pack abs, too many tattoos and taken,” Trish summarized the situation as bluntly as possible.
“Taken?” Nellie pouted. “I don't think so. That boy was custom made for me. If he has a girlfriend, she's going to have to go.”
Trish was tempted to claw her step-sister's eyes out, but she forced herself to keep a fake smile pasted on her lips. She was at her grandfather's funeral. The first hints of music were beginning to flow out the walls of the chapel. Nellie had slept with Curtis on the night before Trish's wedding. Nothing Trish could say to Nellie would convince her that David was off limits. She just hoped that Gracie was right about David's loyalty.
Being cheated on by Curtis had hurt.
Being cheated on by David was going to shatter Trish's heart into a million little shards of glass.
“The funeral is starting,” Trish said to Nellie. “We need to go.”
“Just let me reapply my lipstick.” Nellie reached down to her side and then stopped, frowning at her hip. “Oh crap. I left my purse in the viewing room. Come with me to grab it real quick, will you?”
“You were already in the viewing room?”
“Nanette didn't want to be alone with her father's body,” Nellie explained quickly as they headed out of the bathroom and into the hallway that went through the center of the funeral home. “I set my purse down when I grabbed her tissues.”
“Okay, but we need to make this quick. The memorial has already started. Everyone is going to be wondering where I am.”
“It'll just take a second to grab my bag.” Nellie grabbed Trish by the wrist and pulled her through the single doorway and into the room where Grover's coffin was waiting for burial. Nellie's bright yellow and orange clutch purse was easy to spot. It was sitting in the center of an embroidered chair that was identical to the ones in the funeral home's lobby. A man was standing in the middle of the room with his back to them. He looked like he was praying over the coffin. Nellie hesitated mid-step when she saw him.
“Excuse us.” Trish stared at the back of the man's head, trying to figure out where she knew him from. The fabric of the man's navy blue suit was visibly straining as he began to turn to face them. “We just need to grab my sister's purse. Sorry for interrupting
you.”
The man let out a soft laugh.“You're not interrupting me, Trish. I've been waiting for you.”
Trish recognized Curtis in the split second before he reached for her. She tried to quickly step back out of the room, but Nellie was still holding onto her wrist. She turned to tell Nellie to run and was stunned to see that her step-sister had an unapologetic smile on her face.
“Here she is,” Nellie said to Curtis. “I brought her to you. Just like you asked.”
Trish tried to break free and run for the door but it was too late. Curtis grabbed her and clamped his hand over her mouth before she could scream. Trish kicked and twisted against him. She felt the heels of her shoes connect with Curtis's shin.
“Stop fighting me,” Curtis hissed in her ear. “Everything is going to be alright.”
Trish, running low on other options, bit down on his hand as hard as she could.
Curtis let out an angry growl but he didn't release her. “Open the door for me, Nellie. I need to take her somewhere more private.”
“I'm sorry, Trish. Really, this for your own good. Curtis loves you.” Nellie opened the door for Curtis as he drug Trish out of the viewing room. “You'll see. You guys can work your problems out.”
She struggled against him but it was simply no use. The memorial service had already started. The microphone had been turned up on its loudest setting so that all of Grover's deaf friends could hear what the preacher was saying. The noise from the speakers covered up the sounds of Trish's struggle as Curtis carried her out of the funeral home through the back door and threw her into the backseat of a vehicle she recognized entirely too well.
Curtis was driving Kerry Longwood's Callahan County Sheriff Department squad car.
Chapter 49
“And when I finally did get my baseball back from Grover, he told me the window I'd worked so hard to pay to repair had actually been broken for years before I threw that ball through it. I'll never forget the way it felt to have done all that backbreaking work to fix something I hadn't actually broken, but I did learn the meaning of hard work that summer. Grover taught me a lot about hard work. He also taught me never to give up when I wanted something.”
David kept his eyes on the door of the chapel as Addison stood at the podium in the front of the room and lied his ass off about the meaningful relationship he'd shared with Grover Shallowman. His lies were even bigger whoppers than the ones that Mayor Jerry Walker, Cal's Dad, had just gotten done telling about Grover's 74 years of responsible and respectable citizenship.
“You okay?” Cal asked in a low whisper.
“You see Trish anywhere?” David bit the inside of his lip and scanned the room again.
Cal hesitated and then frowned. “Did she not come in with Addison?”
“He told me she went to the bathroom with her sister and that they would be here in a minute. That was nearly 20 minutes ago.”
“Shh! You boys ought to be ashamed of yourselves. Talking at a funeral!” June Simms was sitting in the row behind them and she nearly clubbed David in the head with a memorial booklet as she swatted at him. He ducked slightly to his left and scowled.
Cal pulled his cell phone out of his suit jacket pocket and typed something into it. A second later, David's phone received the text. He felt like he was back in high school as he extracted the device from his back pocket and stared at the screen.
Maybe she just needed a little time with her sister. I'm sure she's fine.
David knew that Cal's words made sense, but it wasn't like Trish to miss her own grandfather's funeral. He watched in disturbed silence as Whitt Jones and several members of his staff rolled the heavy pine coffin containing Grover's earthly remains into the center of the front of the room. David was glad the coffin had been closed and draped in flowers. He hated open coffin funerals. The bodies never looked anything like the dead person had in life. The waxy expressions on their dead faces never failed to make his skin crawl.
Addison left the podium and walked back down to his spot in the second row of pews. Pastor French from the Methodist Church got up and made his way to the front of the room.
“It's wonderful to see so many friends and neighbors gathered here today to honor the life of a man who affected so many of our lives in such a colorful way,” Pastor French began. “Today I want to remind all of you that the fate of your immortal soul lies in your own hands and our brother Grover...”
Colorful my ass, David thought. He tried to twist discretely around in the pew to see if Trish might have slipped into the memorial service late and taken a seat in one of the pews at the back of the room. June waved her memorial booklet in his face again.
“Sit right and quit wiggling or I'll tell your Momma,” she threatened.
David seriously considered telling her to go ahead. He wasn't exactly a little kid anymore. He was a lot more worried about finding Trish than he was about being scolded by Loretta for squirming during a funeral.
He looked past June and into the faces at the back of the chapel. All of them were familiar. None of them were Trish. His nerves felt like they were running along the edge of a razor blade. Trish may not have liked Grover, but she had cared for the old man. She wouldn't skip his funeral service without a damned good reason.
David stood up in the middle of the pastor's sermon and walked to the side aisle of the chapel. He checked every pew for Trish as he headed for the doors at the back of the room. He didn't see her anywhere.
Shit.
He walked out of the chapel and into the empty lobby. Still no Trish.
Cal came through the chapel door on his heels, looking decidedly annoyed. “What the hell are you doing?”
“She's not in there,” David said. “I checked every damn pew. Trish isn't in there.”
Cal opened his mouth and then closed it again. He shrugged with obvious irritation as Gracie walked through the same door they had both just come through.
“Where are y'all going?” She demanded. “Did y'all see the dirty looks everyone was shooting you? You can't just get up and walk out in the middle of a memorial service.”
“You just did,” David pointed out without even thinking about it.
“I was only following you.”
“You didn't have to.”
“Did you see Trish in there?” Cal asked her.
Gracie stopped and then frowned, shaking her head. “No. I was looking for her earlier because I wanted her opinion on what we did with the photographs her mom brought for the memorial. I couldn't find her and then the service started. I just assumed she was sitting somewhere out of my immediate line of view.”
“She was supposed to be sitting in the front row with her mom and her step-dad,” David said. “She wasn't there. She never came into the chapel.”
“Addison said she went to the bathroom with her sister right before the service started,” Cal reminded them. “He said she promised she'd be right back. Like I told you in the chapel, Trish has had a bad week. She's probably just having a little bit of girl time one-on-one with her sister. I'm sure she's fine.”
“Her sister?” Gracie's bright turquoise eyes widened as she bit her lower lip. “That's not good.”
“Why not?” Cal asked.
Gracie opened her delicate lips and then shook her head. “I can't tell you. I promised Trish not say anything.”
“Not to say anything about what?” David demanded.
“Really David, I specifically promised her that I wouldn't tell you. She confided something private in me with the explicit instructions that I absolutely was not going to tell you, Cal or Addy.”
“Gracie.” David spoke her name through gritted teeth.
“Hang on. Hang on. I have to think of a way to say this without breaking her confidence,” Gracie held up her hand to David. Her wide eyes were worried and her cheeks were flushed the palest shade of pink. “Trish doesn't like Nellie.”
“Nellie?”
“That's her step-sister's name,” Gr
acie explained. “Trish didn't want her to come the funeral today.”
“Why?”
“I can't tell y'all. But Trish wouldn't be skipping Grover's service to spend one-on-one time with her sister. She doesn't quite hate the girl, but she's pretty close to it. Its a strong dislike.”
“Shit,” Cal said.
David decided he didn't care about manners right now. He pulled out his cell phone and dialed Trish's number. The phone rang several times but no one answered. He jammed the phone back into his pocket. “She's not answering her phone.”
“Did you expect her to?” Gracie asked. “We're in a funeral home. Even if she's perfectly fine, she's not going to answer her phone right now.”
“I don't like this,” David said.
“We should go look for her. I don't think her ex-husband would be ballsy enough to come into Grover's funeral. She's probably fine. Maybe she went out to the truck for something.”
“We need to find her,” David snapped.
“No one is arguing with you,” Cal said. “Gracie, go check the bathrooms and anywhere else you think looks likely. I'll go out the back of the funeral home. David, check out front. I'll meet you outside.”
“Make it fast.” David took a deep breath and then headed for the front door. He was almost certain that something had gone very wrong in the twenty minutes since he'd last seen Trish, but he was praying with all his heart and soul that his gut instincts would be wrong this time.
Chapter 50
Trish didn't have the strength to fight Curtis off. Even if her arm hadn't been broken, her ex still outweighed her by over 200 pounds. Curtis had locked her in the backseat of the cruiser and then gotten into the driver's seat and cranked the engine. He seemed familiar with the car as he put it into drive and headed out of the funeral home parking lot.
Trish beat her fist against the window, screaming at the top of her lungs. No one heard her. No one saw her. No one was even looking at the police cruiser as it blew down the highway going close to a hundred miles an hour.
