Hush

by Nancy Bush

  She returned to the house by going farther south, away from the cliffs, where the beach and Highway 101 were almost on the same elevation. She walked up a public path between some houses and then trekked north to the beach house, coming in on that melange of shock and misery that followed Lucas’s death.

  Hank was there, looking gaunt and wild-eyed. He’d gone to the tavern, hung out awhile, buying a couple of beers for a few of the regulars, just so they would remember him, then returned to the house. He shook his head ever so slightly when he saw Yvette, his eyes pleading. He wanted to tell. He wanted to confess. He wanted to lay it all out for them.

  So she told them all that she and Lucas were lovers. Rhiannon fainted and she made an enemy for life in Genevieve.

  And then she found out she was pregnant.

  And then Hank didn’t want anything to do with her. . . .

  Now Yvette gazed stonily at the refrigerator. The glass of ice water was empty, still in her hand; the pitcher sat on the counter, ice melting. She’d pleaded with him. Begged him to take care of her and her baby.

  The memory made her close her eyes and shudder. How pathetic. How debasing. He’d just ignored her to death.

  She kept thinking he would change his mind. As soon as the baby arrived, they would be a family. She kept the secret of its parentage to herself, but she wasn’t going to give up the child. She was proud of her pregnancy and when, after Benedict was born, Hank still refused to see him, she was filled with fury and anguish.

  And resolve.

  She blackmailed him. Year upon year. And he paid. Maybe he thought it was a form of child support, maybe he just wanted to keep his past indiscretions hidden, especially when he was with that filthy, grasping whore, Geri? God, how Yvette hated her! She’d dreamed about how to break them up, but then it had happened all on its own without Yvette’s intervention.

  And then Annette, beautiful, social-climbing bitch that she was, overheard Yvette leaving Hank a somewhat pointed message, and she yanked the phone from Yvette’s hand and saw whom it was to: Yvette had him listed as “Fucking Bastard,” but Annette knew the number because Dave had it as well. Annette was vigilant about whom her husband called, and as soon as she saw the number on Yvette’s cell she put two and two together. And then she couldn’t keep her mouth shut! Nag, nag, nag! Threaten, threaten, threaten. Yvette wanted to kill the bitch!

  Annette wanted Hank to take a DNA test, just to be sure. Yvette didn’t need it, nor did she want it. But lo and behold, Hank suddenly wanted it. All of a sudden, he decided it was time to be Benedict’s father . . . and he planned to use Yvette’s years of blackmail against her. He’d kept records for years of the blackmail payments and all her parental misdeeds, gleaned from her unwitting sisters, though Annette was the biggest contributor. Hank had friends in high places. They would forgive him an indiscretion from years earlier, or so he believed, or at the very least, they would consider him the better parent, because it sure as hell wasn’t going to look good for Yvette.

  Annette thought this was a grand idea. All of a sudden Yvette was either fighting with Annette or fighting with Hank. The night of Annette’s party Yvette just wanted her to shut the fuck up and she pushed her into the hot tub. Had she killed her? She didn’t think so. Had she wanted her dead? Well, maybe. But it didn’t really matter, because the result was the same. Annette was dead and gone, and she hoped Hank was on his way to the great beyond as well.

  Yvette’s cell phone buzzed and she gazed at the screen. “What the hell do you want?” she demanded. She listened and felt herself move into a kind of alternative reality; she was being called to judgment. This was it. They knew. They knew already. Into the receiver, she said in a near monotone, “Listen, bitch. I know you. If I go down, so do you. I’ve got something of yours.”

  Then she slammed down the phone.

  Coby walked into the ER waiting room and inwardly groaned when she saw not only her father and mother, but Donald and Wynona Greer as well. Jean-Claude was there, too, looking strained. Well, they all looked strained, and when they saw her appearance they just gaped.

  “Coby!” Leta said.

  “I fell, Mom,” she said, easily brushing on the lie. “How’s Hank? Any news?”

  Her father couldn’t seem to take his eyes off her mud-spattered clothes. “They haven’t told us anything. Dana’s been notified. She’s flying here tomorrow.”

  “What happened?” Leta demanded.

  Coby just shook her head. Jean-Claude’s phone bleeped and he pulled it out and looked down at the screen. Wynona got up from her chair, her gaze on Coby, when one of the nurses came through a set of double doors that led to the operating rooms and came their way. Everyone waited tensely.

  “Mr. Sainer is still in surgery to relieve pressure inside his skull. It will be awhile yet, and he’ll be in recovery after that.”

  “You want us all to leave,” Donald Greer said, reading between the lines.

  She simply answered, “I’m just informing you of the time line.”

  Watching the nurse’s retreating back, Wynona said, “Come on, Dad. We can come back in the morning.”

  “Who did this?” Donald questioned, staring at Coby. “Someone ran Hank off the road. Who did it?”

  “Yvette,” Wynona answered for her, also turning her gaze to Coby.

  Coby didn’t respond. She wasn’t about to reveal what she knew without talking to Danner first. But Wynona’s gaze scoured her.

  “She did it. She ran him off the road. Why?” And then, answering her own question, she said in disbelief, “Oh, no. He’s not Benedict’s father, is he?”

  Dave’s head snapped up. “No.”

  Jean-Claude opened his mouth, closed it, blinked, and sat silent.

  He knows, Coby realized. He knows about Hank.

  Wynona saw his reaction, too. “Oh, my God. What did she do to Annette?”

  “She would never hurt Annette!” Jean-Claude burst out, as if the words were torn from his chest. “She would never hurt her sister!”

  “She ran the father of her child off the road,” Wynona snapped. “You don’t think she would harm anyone who got in her way?”

  “Yvette would not hurt Annette or Hank,” Jean-Claude insisted harshly. He was still gripping his phone tightly in his right hand. “She loves her son . . . and she loves Hank . . . and she loved Annette.”

  This last piece sounded tacked on and false, but Coby let it go.

  Donald, who’d been sitting, now stood protectively by his daughter, as if he felt Jean-Claude and Wynona’s argument would escalate into something ugly. “We’re all upset,” he began, but Wynona whirled on him.

  “Stop it, Dad. Really. I can’t do the whole school administrator thing right now. Yvette’s gotten a pass way too long!”

  Jean-Claude shook his head and said, “I have to go.”

  Wynona snapped, “I know it’s tough to hear, but facts are facts. Yvette’s behind Hank’s accident. I’m sure of it.”

  “I saw Yvette. She was here,” Coby said into the tense silence that followed. “She came into the reception area, but then left. She was scared for Hank, and I guess she decided waiting at the hospital wasn’t going to help.”

  “Couldn’t face what she’s done,” Wynona said, and Jean-Claude threw her a furious look and stalked away.

  Donald chided, “Wynona . . .”

  Her face burned with sudden color. “I’m not trying to be a mean bitch. It’s just the truth. I’ve been around the Ettes a lot.” She turned to Coby. “I was always dragged along with Dad every time Jean-Claude invited us to go somewhere. I know them. They’re all fucked up.”

  “Wynona!” Donald was appalled.

  “Tell Coby, Dad. Tell her what you know about the other Ettes. One of the other ones. Go on!”

  “I’m not playing this game with you,” he declared furiously, but Wynona was not to be stopped.

  She turned to Coby. “He caught Juliet putting the notes in the lockers. Didn’t th
ink it was a big deal and he was kinda pissed off about how everyone at the campout treated me, so he let it go. He never even told me until after Annette died.” She glared at him.

  “You just keep slandering Yvette!” Donald was in a huff. “You need to stop making assumptions about her or anyone else. The notes were a school prank, and I caught Juliet and she was embarrassed and that’s all. I wasn’t going to turn it into a circus. Leave Juliet and Yvette alone.”

  “It is a circus, Dad. It is a circus! Don’t you get it? And people have died!” She was disbelieving. “I’m no fan of Vic Franzen, believe me, but Juliet’s maligned him for years. We all have. I don’t care how embarrassed she was, it wasn’t right that you kept this from me, from us.”

  “I was the vice principal, and I handled the situation the best way I knew how,” he insisted.

  Clearly Donald Greer thought he’d done the right thing, but it would have helped to have known anyway, Coby thought. And his silence sure hadn’t helped Vic Franzen. And Wynona was right: people had died.

  “Jean-Claude can’t hear anything more about his daughters.” Dave suddenly spoke up and they turned to Coby’s dad. “He just lost one, and you’re blaming another one for her death. And now you’re attacking a third one, when this note business is just the kind of thing kids do.”

  Donald nodded emphatically, glad for the support.

  “So Juliet gets a pass, too,” Wynona said bitterly. “Fine. I’m the aberration here!” With that she walked away, following the same route Jean-Claude had taken out of the hospital minutes before.

  “She can’t leave without me,” Donald said. “I drove us.” And with that he said good-bye to Dave and Leta, shaking Coby’s dad’s hand hard, a gesture of friendship in an uncertain world.

  A few minutes later Coby left as well, and Dave and Leta were getting ready to depart; Coby watched as her father carefully helped her mother into her coat. Another time she would have felt happy at the sight, but now she just felt impatient with all of them.

  Outside, Coby flipped up the collar of her jacket and looked cautiously from right to left, half expecting some mad villain to race around the circular drop-off and smack her down. She crossed quickly and then nearly jumped out of her skin when she heard, “Coby.”

  She whipped around, hand at her chest, as the voice registered: Wynona. She was standing outside her car, the driver’s door open, and she gave Coby the high sign, silently asking her for a moment, before leaning in and telling her father, who was seated in the passenger seat, that she would be right back.

  Coby waited and Wynona walked toward her, her expression grim. “What really happened to you?” she demanded. “You didn’t just fall.”

  “I’m fine, Wynona.”

  “Somebody attack you or something?” She wasn’t about to be put off.

  “It wasn’t Yvette,” Coby stated firmly, then told her about the car that had grazed her and spun her to the ground.

  “Maybe she came back around and—”

  “No.” Coby cut her off. “It wasn’t Yvette.”

  “But she has to be responsible!” she insisted. “She’s the craziest of the Ettes.”

  “Wynona, just because you want it to be her doesn’t make it so. It was someone else. And that’s not all.” In for a penny, in for a pound, Coby thought as she went on to tell Wynona what had happened in the parking garage earlier. “I’m on someone’s radar, yes. But it’s not Yvette’s.”

  Wynona was shaking her head, struggling to believe whoever was after Coby wasn’t Yvette. “There has to be some explanation.”

  “Maybe she’s partly involved. I don’t know. But she wasn’t behind the wheel of that car. She left just minutes before in her black Ford Focus. She didn’t have time to switch cars and circle around and come at me. This car was light-colored. I know that much.”

  Wynona’s gaze was on her own vehicle with her waiting father. “But if it isn’t Yvette, who is it?”

  “Well, it’s not you,” Coby said with faint humor, “since you were inside with Jean-Claude and your dad and my dad and mom.”

  “Oh, God . . .” Wynona inhaled sharply. “It’s Genevieve.”

  “No.” Coby almost groaned at the way Wynona was switching allegiance.

  “Yes,” Wynona insisted, blinking as she came up with her new theory. “You’re investigating. Everybody knows it. I still say Yvette tried to kill Hank, her lover, tonight, but it must have been Genevieve who killed Annette and Lucas.”

  “Lucas’s death was an accident,” Coby stated automatically. “And Annette was Gen’s best friend.”

  “Lucas’s death wasn’t an accident. Someone cut a piece of his hair the night he died. After he died. Or one of us would have noticed! You know it and I know it. They took a piece of him as a trophy.”

  “Maybe they took a piece of his hair because they loved him,” Coby said. “Whatever the case, he fell from Bancroft Bluff. It still could have been an accident.”

  “This person who loved him, they didn’t report the accident and try to save him?” Wynona demanded.

  “We were kids. Who says any of us would have automatically done the right thing?”

  “I would have. You would have.” Coby couldn’t argue that, and Wynona went on, “Genevieve was in love with Lucas. She still is. And back in high school she was absolutely obsessed with him and their popularity. It’s like she stopped maturing right then and there. She’s never gotten past being homecoming queen.

  “That’s not just me being jealous, if that’s what you’re thinking. Sure, I’ve had my problems. Some really serious issues that I’m still working on. But you go and ask Gen about Lucas and how she worked on becoming Rhiannon’s best friend, just so she could be tied in to the whole Lucas melodrama after he died. Ask her. Oh, and while you’re at it, ask her about the time I caught her in the bathroom, crying over a picture of Lucas. You know what she told me that day? That she was so unlucky because she’d wanted to be pregnant with Lucas’s child, but it was Yvette who’d gotten knocked up instead. She was just about undone over that.”

  “You caught her in the school bathroom crying over Lucas?”

  She shook her head. “It was at the Knapps’. Our whole senior year, my dad spent a lot of time with Lawrence Knapp and Jean-Claude and some with your dad, too. I got to see a lot of the Ettes and Genevieve, though you weren’t around much.”

  “I kind of tried to avoid anyone associated with the campout,” Coby admitted.

  “Yeah, well. I was just the opposite. I tried too hard to be accepted by all of you! I might not have been cool enough to be anybody’s BFF, but I was there, and I remember.”

  As illuminating as this was, Coby was starting to feel cold and shivery. All she wanted was to get clean in a nice hot shower. “You know, I’m freezing to death here.”

  “I know you don’t believe me. And okay, I’ve been a broken record about Yvette. But it’s Genevieve. I’m sure of it. Annette found that lock of hair. I don’t know how come she knew it was Lucas’s, but she did, and I bet she confronted Genevieve with it.”

  “We don’t know the hair’s Lucas’s, and even if it is, and Genevieve took it, and Annette found it . . . it’s not enough to kill someone over.”

  “That’s what you think because you’re rational,” Wynona told her curtly. “Always, always rational. But if you think with your heart, instead of your head, crazy behavior can take over.”

  “Okay.”

  Realizing she was losing Coby to the cold, Wynona just lifted and dropped her hand in a universal gesture of “I give up.” She gave a terse good-bye and headed back to her car.

  Once safely ensconced in her Nissan, Coby let out a pent-up breath. Home. Shower. Bed. She wished Danner were a part of that prescription, but doubted he could get away from the Lloyd suicide.

  Yvette sat at her small kitchen table, bathed in the light from the small lamp on the counter that served as a kind of kitchen night-light. She was exhausted. And gritty. And
full of a sadness she couldn’t even really fathom.

  And fear. She’d taken drastic action to keep Benedict with her, but if the truth ever came out, she would go to jail for the bulk of her son’s life, and what good would that do?

  If Hank woke up . . . if he pointed the finger at her . . .

  Maybe she should just leave. Right now. Just go away with Benedict and never look back.

  A knock on the door caused her to chirp with fear. The next moment she knew who it was; she’d called him over, asked him to take Benedict. Her momentary flight of fancy was over. She had to wait . . . and hope Hank never woke up.

  She opened the door to her father. “He’s asleep in his bed,” she told Jean-Claude. “Probably won’t even wake up.”

  Jean-Claude gazed at her in concern. “I’ll take him to my house. Where are you going? How long will you be gone?”

  “I just need to get away for a while, Dad. That’s all. Not long.”

  “With Hank in the hospital, fighting for his life?”

  For an answer she kissed him on the cheek. A lifelong avoidance tactic of Yvette’s that worked more often than not. Now her father gave her a searching look before heading into Benedict’s room. A moment later Benedict stumbled out, in pajamas and a coat. Yvette had packed her son a bag as soon as she got back from the hospital. Now she gave it to Jean-Claude, then looked down at Benedict with love, holding his sweet face between her palms.

  “Mommy loves you,” she told him.

  He just looked at her blankly, in the sleep zone.

  Kissing the top of his head, she watched as Jean-Claude guided him out the door. Her father said to her, “If you’ve done something . . . if you need help . . .”

  “No, Dad. Go. I’m okay.”

  As soon as he was gone, she sank back down at the table, wondering when he would find the gift she’d left them tucked in Benedict’s backpack, among his things.

  Chapter 25

  As soon as Coby closed the door to her town house behind her, her cell phone buzzed. All she wanted was a hot shower. Some time to decompress and mentally put things in order. But she forced herself to see who was calling.