Hush

by Nancy Bush

  “Take a moment to look at this,” Coby told her, sliding a spreadsheet across the desk in her direction, then glancing surreptitiously at the clock, knowing she had that two-hour drive to the beach ahead of her while rain was already peppering the windows behind her with increasing force. Late fall weather. Cold as the arctic. Wetter than wet.

  Shannon, early forties, blond, trim, good-looking, although lines were etching in her face from setting her jaw and glaring at everyone and everything through icy blue eyes, mulishly would not drop her gaze to the figures before her. But in her expression a faint but growing panic was developing. She’d made a choice and the choice had been based on emotion rather than the cold, hard truth. She knew it now, but it was too late for a “do-over.” She had to work with what she had.

  Coby didn’t love being the bearer of bad news, even when it was advice the client sorely needed. But someone had to do it, and Coby was the one. She’d developed into the job because she was a natural born fixer. She was a sounding board for the lawyers, a cool head, a troubleshooter, and often times the “detective” who uncovered the information the other side was hiding. She could often discern what was really going on behind the “he said, she said” dialogue that developed between opposing sides. From receptionist-cum-secretary-cum-possible soon-to-be law student, she’d become an integral cog of the firm’s machinery that was crucial in holding it together, a piece no one knew was even missing until Coby filled the space.

  She hadn’t intended for things to turn out this way, but there it was.

  In a cool but firm voice she warned Shannon, “The house is only valuable to you if you sell it and walk away with the equity.”

  “I won’t get enough. I won’t.”

  “You have the appraisal,” Coby reminded her. “Your property is valued somewhere around three million dollars in today’s market. That’s a lot of money.”

  “I know it’s a lot of money. That’s why I got the house! It’s my money!”

  “But it’s trapped. You can’t keep feeding the house for long. It will swallow you up.”

  “I won’t lose it!” she declared stubbornly.

  “I understand how you feel, but it won’t alter the facts. The sooner you sell, the sooner you stop putting money into the house, the sooner you can access the property’s equity.”

  The lines between her eyes deepened ever further. “You act like I have no choice!”

  For an answer, Coby dropped her gaze to the spreadsheet caught somewhere on the desk between them. The numbers were on the conservative side, but they were unrelenting. By the middle of next year, maybe sooner, Shannon would lose her house and all the equity it represented.

  It took another twenty minutes of quiet insistence for Shannon to finally buckle and accept what Coby was telling her, a truth she already knew herself but couldn’t even look at. The Kleenex box on Coby’s desk was nearly depleted by the time she plucked out the last tissue and pressed it to her red, swollen eyes.

  “God damn it, he screwed me again, didn’t he?” she said on a hiccup.

  Technically, she’d done it to herself, but Coby decided it might be counterproductive to say so. “You have a lot of money coming your way. You just have to take the steps to get it.”

  “Fine.” Shannon jumped to her feet and stuffed her clutch purse under her arm. A designer label that must have cost her a small fortune. “The fucker!” she muttered as a final salvo, then slammed out of the office.

  Ten minutes later Coby had changed into her jeans, shirt, and boots, tossed her raincoat and hat in the back of the Sentra, and was driving to the beach, an eye on the approaching storm, wondering if she should have put more in her overnight bag before her meeting with Shannon. She did not want to spend the night, but that decision might be taken from her. This was a duty to perform, nothing more. She was headed for her stepmother’s birthday party at the beach house her father still owned. There were so many reasons she didn’t want to go, but she had little choice in the matter. Her plan was to show up, eat dinner, suffer through some small talk, then turn around and drive back to Portland and her rented condo in the Pearl District.

  Still, as the sky grew darker, she wished she’d tossed in more toiletries beyond her toothbrush and comb. This storm had its hooks in the area, and she was driving straight into it.

  Now she powered on through long miles and driving rain, her windshield wipers working overtime. Sometimes the rain sloshed over her windshield like she was going through a car wash. At this rate, mudslides would form in the mountains where the trees had been clear cut. Luckily or unluckily, depending on how you looked at it, the road she was on was bordered by Douglas firs, their roots dug deep into the ground. Their presence might help her escape mudslides, but she had to watch out for falling limbs.

  Finally she was over the Coast Range and cruising toward Highway 101, which wound down the coastline from Washington state, through Oregon and then California. A glance at her watch: 6:30 P.M. The rain was still raging but she could relax a bit, knowing she was through the most treacherous part of the trip.

  The car seemed to be handling itself. Another half hour and she would be there.

  Turning south onto Highway 101, Coby flicked a look to the west and the black area beyond that was the Pacific Ocean, indiscernible through the storm as anything but a continued blackness that stretched to an equally black horizon.

  The beach house was only sixteen miles away.

  In a few minutes she would be there. She’d tried, over the years, not to let the events of that night ruin the place for her, but in essence, they had. She shied away from trips to the beach, often finding a way to say no to a weekend with her dad and sister. She couldn’t help it. The place held too many unresolved issues, too many uncomfortable memories.

  Were you with Lucas Moore, Miss Rendell?

  No. Yes. Sort off. . . .

  Bringing alcohol to the party had changed the tenor of the evening, which wasn’t all bad, considering it got them away from talking about the secrets that were spilled that night. Coby sipped her drink and listened to the guys talk louder and louder as their consumption increased and watched as Lucas and Rhiannon snuggled deep into her sleeping bag. The other girls noticed, too, though everyone pretended to be oblivious. Man-slut that he was, Lucas was adorable, and Coby leaned back in the sand and saw the stars blur and spin overhead.

  “C‘mon, Wynona,” Kirk Grassi coaxed, his speech beginning to slur. “Quit lyin’. It’s Coach Renfro, isn’t it? You got down with him, huh.”

  “She went down on him, y’mean,” Vic said. Coby turned her head and squinted an eye at him. He was grinning like an ogre.

  “Shut up,” she told him.

  Wynona sputtered, “It wasn’t Coach Renfro! It wasn’t anybody!”

  “Yeah, sure,” Theo muttered from the other side of Ellen.

  “I told you!” Wynona sobbed. “You’re such bastards! All of you!”

  “Who was it, then?” Kirk demanded.

  Coby realized Kirk and the others had dismissed, or not heard, the part about using the Tualatin pool and assumed Wynona was talking about the Rutherford High swim instructor, Coach Renfro. It would be a simple matter to put together, probably, if they had all the information. She had to find a way to keep them from learning anything more about any of them, but her head wasn’t tracking as well as it should.

  “You can all go to hell!” Genevieve spat between her teeth. She’d been drinking, too, and now stood up and swayed a bit on her feet. Her face, normally so cool and careful, was stretched with fury.

  “Stop talking,” Yvette complained.

  “This isn’t good,” Jarrod said. He staggered to his feet and left Coby to walk to where Genevieve was planting her feet in an effort to keep her balance. “Let’s just chill.”

  “Leave me alone,” Wynona told Kirk. “Just leave me the hell alone!”

  “Well, excuse me, bitches.” Kirk lay on the sand and stared up at the sky, much like Coby.r />
  Theo, who’d wriggled in between Ellen and McKenna, gave them each another beer. Ellen was already sipping vodka and Sprite, so she started alternating with swigs of beer, which made Coby shudder a little inside. McKenna took her longneck in silence, her face hard. She hadn’t decided whether to accept the boys or not.

  “Dana,” Jarrod said, holding up a beer from Paul Lessington’s sack. “Here.” He lightly tossed it to her. Coby turned her head to see Dana fumble it before setting it down into the sand immediately. Then she pulled back her hands as if she’d touched cooties, looking around to see who noticed.

  No one cared. Lucas and Rhiannon were wrestling in their sleeping bag. Yvette was watching them through half-closed eyes, sipping at her vodka drink. Genevieve still looked like she wanted to kill someone, and as the alcohol took further effect she subsided into angry silence. Wynona made some hiccuping sounds, on the verge of crying. Having left Coby, Jarrod stayed close to Genevieve, and Coby, finding that oddly funny, kept lifting her head to sip her own Sprite and vodka until she had a really nice buzz going. She didn’t plan on getting sick again, like she had with Willa, so she was trying to pace herself. Ellen, seeming to sense Coby was a friend, moved closer until her side was nearly pressed against her. Coby didn’t move, recognizing that Ellen needed a friend, and McKenna, still smarting over the “lesbo” comment, glared at Kirk between gulps of beer, but Kirk was blotto by then and impervious. Galen, Paul, and Theo were trying to catch up with Kirk as fast as possible while Dana kept refusing all drinks, declaring there were too many calories in alcohol.

  “There are four calories per gram in carbohydrates, but there are seven in alcohol,” Dana stated with certainty. “Seven! That’s almost as many calories as are in fat, which is nine!”

  “You’re a freak,” Vic Franzen told her, then belched loud enough to wake the dead. Paul and Galen shared a glance over their longnecks, as if Vic bugged them, too, which warmed Coby’s heart a little.

  With an effort, Coby squinted a look at her watch, but Yvette caught her. “Got a hot date, Rendell?” she accused.

  “With the sandman.” She hiccupped, found that funny, and laughed. “I’m beat.”

  “You can’t leave,” Genevieve told her.

  That did it. She’d been vacillating whether to stay or leave, but Genevieve’s arrogance just plain pissed her off. Coby deliberately dug her now-empty cup into the sand, then clambered to her feet, swaying a little as she dusted off the back of her pants. Ellen jumped to her feet, also, and Theo followed suit and asked her if she wanted to walk along the edge of the surf. Ellen looked flummoxed for a moment, then happily surprised, and she strolled away with him.

  “Aww, come on,” Vic said, wrapping Coby in a bear hug as she tried to back up and get away.

  “Leggo,” she muttered.

  “Stay,” McKenna said, and it was more a plea than an order.

  “Don’t leave us,” Wynona begged.

  Well, hell. They actually wanted her to stay. Lifting her hands in surrender, Coby sank back down and picked up her empty cup again, which Jarrod promptly came over and filled, and wondered if she could manage to spend the night on the beach with them after all.

  “So, Wynona’s a sex mermaid,” Vic said, circling back to the topic they’d already declared taboo.

  “Jesus, Vic.” This from Jarrod.

  “I just wanna know what else they were talkin’ about,” Vic defended himself.

  “Wouldn’t you like to know!” snapped Dana.

  “Yeah, I would. That’s why I asked.” He made a face at her.

  “It was private,” Genevieve said sternly.

  “Hey, c’mon, we got no secrets,” Vic said. “You all know about Theo knocking up that girl from Gresham.”

  Everyone looked toward the waves where Theo and Ellen had wandered off.

  “He didn’t knock her up,” Paul Lessington corrected him flatly. “Get your facts straight, man.”

  There was a groan from Kirk as he sat up again, swiping at the sand that was sticking to his cheek. “He knocked her up,” he disagreed with Paul. Then, “Gimme a beer, Lockwood.” Jarrod tossed him a longneck, which he bobbled a bit then caught. “The bitch said so.”

  “Everybody’s a bitch, aren’t they?” Coby pointed out, glaring at him. Well, at least it felt like she was glaring. She was kinda tipsy. Definitely, definitely tipsy.

  “That’s right,” Kirk said.

  “Well, she lied about Theo,” Paul insisted, throwing both Kirk and Vic a dark look. “Imagine that, the little ho lied. She screwed half the school and then some, then said Theo was the dad.”

  “So she’s a bitch and a ho. Do you even know this girl?” McKenna demanded. “Jesus, I’m sick of guys name-calling and making judgment calls! We’re always hos, sluts, bitches . . . or worse.”

  “Well, you sure don’t have to worry about getting that kind of reputation, do you?” Vic pointed out with a snicker.

  McKenna marched up to him and for a moment Coby thought they might actually come to blows. McKenna looked ready to grab him by the throat and Vic, for all his boasting, was shocked and maybe a little scared. McKenna might be a girl, but she was a good-sized girl and she was bristling with fury and intent.

  “You’re all fucking idiots,” Yvette declared in a voice that could cut glass. She let her gaze slide over the guys. “No wonder college guys look so good. You’re all like junior high losers.”

  “About the age you first got interested in dick?” Kirk said, throwing her a sly glance. “No judgment here,” he said, before Yvette could react. “Just sayin’.”

  The girls all froze and looked at each other. They’d overheard? The guys had overheard? How much did they overhear?

  Genevieve scooped up some sand and threw it at Kirk. “Get out!” she screamed.

  “Hey!” he protested.

  “Get out, get out, get out!”

  “I didn’t hear yours,” Kirk protested.

  “Get—the—fuck—out!” Genevieve was in a froth, and Coby was with her completely.

  “Whose did you hear?” McKenna asked cautiously.

  “We were here awhile, just listening,” Jarrod admitted.

  “Oh, don’t be such a girl,” Kirk accused him.

  Coby threw a glance toward where Ellen and Theo had gone, but there was no sign of them. Her head felt fuzzy and her tongue thick. Nevertheless, she declared, “You can’t eavesdrop on our privacy, throw it in our faces, and then think we want to hang around with you creeps.”

  “Creeps,” Vic repeated, laughing.

  “Assholes, then,” Coby stated firmly.

  Lucas stuck a head out of Rhiannon’s sleeping bag, his hair mussed, his face flushed. “You’re ruining my mojo,” he declared, extricating himself with an effort from the bag.

  Rhiannon instantly protested. “You didn’t do anything. It was Kirk and Vic!”

  “We all overheard your confessions,” Lucas said, looking at the other guys, who didn’t deny it.

  “You didn’t overhear mine,” Genevieve said with a snarl to Kirk. “Because I didn’t get a chance to tell it. You wanna hear it? Since you barged in and never gave me a chance to tell it? I’ll tell it.”

  “Hey!” Kirk was pissed. “We didn’t know you were gonna be tellin’ big secrets.”

  “Gen, come on,” Jarrod said, trying to placate her.

  “No. You might as well all know what a bitch I am, too. Here it is: I made out with my sister’s boyfriend. She cried and cried when I told her what I did, but I didn’t care. I wanted to take him from her, and I did.”

  “You don’t have a sister,” Rhiannon argued, her hands still on Lucas’s arm, trying to get him to stay.

  “My stepsister, then. I call her my sister. I wanted her boyfriend and I took him from her.”

  “How are you and your sister now?” Dana asked, frowning.

  “Not good.” Gen shrugged.

  Coby found herself wondering if Genevieve was lying. She was just o
ne of those people who couldn’t face losing, even in a contest about who could tell the most horrendous secret about herself. Did she have a stepsister? “Was your dad married before?” Coby asked.

  Genevieve turned away, as if she were deaf and said instead, “I just wanted him.”

  “I’m going down to the ocean,” Lucas said, completely free of the bag now. He slipped his feet into flip-flops, then thought better of it and took them off again before heading barefoot across the cold sand to the waves.

  “Hurry back!” Rhiannon called after him, looking sort of annoyed. She seemed torn between following him and getting back in the sleeping bag.

  Yvette watched Lucas’s disappearing form, then jumped to her feet and followed him. “I’ll be right back,” she said.

  “Fuckin’ A,” Rhiannon muttered, furious. She took two steps after her, then stopped and said to Galen, “Give me a drink.”

  Galen complied, pouring her another vodka and Sprite, and gallantly getting up to hand it to her. Rhiannon muttered something about Lucas being a man-slut, and Genevieve, who’d popped up to her feet as well when Yvette tore after Lucas like a homing pigeon, said, “Yvette’s a horny whore.”

  “Whoa,” McKenna said.

  “Well, it’s true,” Gen declared.

  Vic said, “I’d give her a ride.”

  Paul half laughed. “She wants Lucas. They all do.”

  “That bitch better not sleep with my man,” Rhiannon warned through tight lips.

  Coby, swirling a bit, listened to their words with half an ear. Outside of their ring she heard something else. Turning, she strained to see through the dark night. Was that a moving figure? Lucas or Yvette, maybe? Ellen and Theo?

  Genevieve said with a snarl, “Lucas is too smart to put his dick in her overused crotch.”

  “She did start pretty young,” Galen burst out as if he couldn’t help himself.

  “She sure did,” Genevieve agreed, suddenly not bothered in the least by further evidence of the boys’ eavesdropping.

  Jarrod groaned and shook his head. “Gen, shut up. Sit down. Have a drink.” He grabbed her hand and tugged on it, pulling her back down beside him, though she was reluctant to give in. “Who gives a shit? Let’s have some fun.”