by Jan Coffey
“I wasn’t offering you a job then. Plus, I was too far away. No danger of secondhand smoke.”
“Don’t try to tell me you’re afraid of secondhand smoke.”
“As a matter of fact, I am.” Léa said flatly. “Plus, I’m fixing that house to sell. I don’t want the smell of smoke in there when all the potential buyers line up to see the place. The stuff stinks and sticks for a long time.”
Heather considered calling the whole thing off. But instead, she put another spoonful of sugar in Mick’s cup. She had to admit, it would be kind of fun to get up in the morning and go to work. It would be even more fun to hang with Léa all day. She was cool.
“So what are you going to do? Think about it?”
“I don’t have to.” Heather tried the coffee again. It was too sweet, even for her. She put it back by her father’s plate. “I’ll take the job. But it’s not because I like you or anything, or because I buy that stuff about smoking and all that. I’ll do it…well, because I think it’s pretty cool that you have a brother on death row.”
Léa stared at her with a startled look on her face for a moment. Then, Heather saw her hand reach across the table and take her own.
“Thanks,” Léa said softly.
Her hazel eyes got misty, but Mick came back into the kitchen at that minute, and Léa busied herself straightening the folds on the paper. One look at him, and Heather knew something wasn’t right.
“There’s a problem on one of the jobs. I have to leave you two to your own devices this morning. Think you can handle looking after each other?”
“I don’t need a babysitter,” Heather said defensively.
“I know you don’t, but she does.” Still standing, he took a bite off his plate and picked up his coffee to wash it down.
The expression on his face was priceless as he drank a mouthful. He couldn’t spit it into the sink fast enough.
“I couldn’t drink it either,” Heather said innocently. “Way too sweet.”
“Clean up the kitchen, brat,” Mick ordered, glowering at her. “I need to talk to Léa.”
“No problem.” Heather pushed her soggy cereal aside and casually pulled the applesauce and French toast in front of her. As she picked up a knife and fork, she watched her father lead Léa into his office and close the door.
~~~~
“I want you to stay here.”
“Sure! Heather and I are going to spend the whole morning together. She agreed to help me next door.”
“That’s great. But I’m talking about staying here with us while you’re working on your house.” Mick leafed through a file cabinet and found what he was looking for. He dropped the folder on his desk. “I want you to use this house as your base, where you stay and sleep. I don’t want you be alone over there at night.”
She crossed her arms and leaned against the door. “I’ll be fine, Mick. Nothing would have happened to me last night if I hadn’t gone out there in the middle of night.”
“Yes, it could have.” He pulled on his sneakers. “Please Léa, do this for me. Something crazy is going on around Stonybrook, and I’d feel much better if you were somewhere where I could keep an eye on you.”
“This has something to do with the phone call, doesn’t it? Has something happened on one of your jobs because you’ve been helping me?” She didn’t even let him respond. “I am so sorry, Mick. I should have stayed away from you and Heather. It’s been so wrong of me.”
“There’s no connection between you being here and some jerk vandalizing a job site. But I still want you here.”
When she started shaking her head, he took hold of her chin. Her skin was so soft. The thought of the kiss they’d shared in the kitchen came flooding back, but she was hurt and tired. Mick knew better than to take advantage of her when she was this vulnerable. He put on his business face.
“Let’s look on the practical side of things. Your house is not livable as is. Everything will go much faster if you are not struggling to live and work in the same rooms.”
“I can stay in a motel. In fact, I had planned on that originally, but—”
“That won’t work.” He looked from her bandaged head down to her lips again. All his good intentions disappeared in an instant. “You don’t want to have Heather all alone here just because I can’t stay away from you, now, do you?”
She blushed and he felt the shields started to go up. “Mick, about that. I don’t think you and I should…make anything more…”
The moment his lips brushed against hers, her fingers clutched at his shirt and he could almost hear those shields crashing to the floor. She held him close.
“I think we absolutely should.”
There was no starting slow this time. The taste and feel of her were intoxicating. She had an incredible mouth. Mick thought he could go on and make love to her mouth like this for hours. But that was before Léa tucked her fingers in the waistline of his jeans and backed up to the wall, pulling him with her.
Mick’s blood pounded and his body hardened and he pressed and molded himself to every curve of her beautiful figure. Their mouths played and tasted and tormented, and their bodies strained to fit closer.
Léa’s fingers moved beneath his shirt and up his back. Mick managed to push down one of the straps of her overalls and cup her breast through the T-shirt. She was wearing no bra, and the nipple hardened beneath his thumb.
“You are full of surprises.” He smiled before delving deeper into the kiss. Léa’s hips moved restlessly against his. She wanted him as much as he wanted her.
His cell phone started ringing, and she tore her mouth away. Neither of them could catch their breath for a moment.
“You…you must be late.”
Cursing, Mick looked down at the incoming call. It was from the same job site.
“I am.” He tipped her chin up again. Her face was flushed, her lips a little puffy from their exchange. “Promise you’ll stay?”
“We’ll talk when you get back.” She pulled the strap over her shoulder and opened the door for him. “Be careful.”
~~~~
On the hill just beneath the ridge that bordered Stonybrook to the north, the long-dead patriarchs and matriarchs of many of the well-to-do families of the town lay in their ornate family vaults and looked down over their children’s struggles. Each granite and marble resting place vied for attention with its neighbor. Angels with spread wings. Crosses with inlaid gold. Enough clusters of little cherubs to make even Raphael blush.
On the edges of the cemetery, following the ridge east and west, the newer plots were not nearly so ostentatious. Granite headstones for the most part. A few low crypts in evidence here and there. All of them carved with the same family names of those far, far more important personages who went before.
Turning off the steep road leading to the ridge above the town, the gray Cadillac glided through the cemetery’s stone gate pillars. The vehicle moved slowly past impeccably groomed lawns and into a small parking lot.
The driver of the Cadillac killed the engine and sat. From the perspective of the town below, this place—and everyone and everything in it—was all part of the distant past. Tucked away. Forgotten. No bells rang in the ancient stone chapel by the road, even during the occasional burial service. Almost no one came here. Only some chance tourist following a genealogical trail, or an art historian, curious about one sculpture or another. From the town, no one bothered to come up that hill.
Except Stephanie.
She picked up the two small bouquets of summer flowers—daisies and irises—off the seat and stepped out of the car.
The sun shone high above. A gentle breeze made the growing heat of the day almost bearable. With the exception of an old van laboring slowly up the hill beyond the gates, there wasn’t a living soul for as far as the eye could see.
Stephanie stepped out of her high heels and threw the silk scarf she’d wrapped around her throat back inside the car. She locked the car and started along o
ne of the paths. As she went, she smelled the flowers in her hand. They didn’t have the same bright scent they used to have when she was a girl.
This was more than a habit for her, this trip up here every Sunday morning. It was now her religion. Indeed, Stephanie thought as she walked, it was a grandmother’s duty to visit with her grandchildren.
“A yellow ribbon for you this week, Emily, and a very pretty pink one for Hanna.”
Sitting on each side of the headstone, the long ribbons and fresh flowers only accentuated the dark gray color of the granite. As she looked at them, Stephanie noticed little cuttings of grass adhering to the girls’ headstone. She got down on her hands and knees and started brushing the grass off. She ran her hands over the entire stone. It was cool to her touch. Surprisingly cool. All the while, she talked about the new dresses she’d seen in a catalogue and the new toys that were being advertised on TV.
“You know you have to start making your Christmas list. It’s never too early for girls as good as you two.” Her hands were covered with dirt when she finally sat back on the grass. The knees of her white trousers were already stained. “Emily, you’ll have to do the writing for both you and Hannah. But I’ll help you, if you’d like.”
As she talked to them, the breeze riffled the flowers on Hanna’s side. Stephanie reached across and straightened the arrangement.
“And since you’ve been such good girls, I thought we could open our presents on Christmas Eve. We don’t want that fat old Santa Claus getting any credit for what Grandma’s bought for her precious girls.”
Another breeze brought with it an odor. Every nerve in Stephanie’s body went on alert as she immediately recognized it. She scrambled to her feet and looked about the cemetery wildly.
Standing by the path, Dusty was watching her.
For a moment, panic took control of her as she stared at the devil. She glanced about her feet desperately for something to use as a weapon, but there was nothing.
He was still staring at her. Staring right through her. And as always, when it came to him, she was fully exposed.
Stephanie summoned all her courage and stood guarding the two small graves as he drew near.
Dusty reeked with a smell that was all his own. His clothes were more ragged than ever, the diseased skin on his face showing through his beard in large red patches.
None of this frightened her. The sight of him—the smell of him—only filled her with revulsion.
But when he looked from the children’s graves to Marilyn’s beside them, the way those dark eyes turned cold with hate caused her to shudder.
“Where are Merl’s flowers?”
Stephanie tried to collect herself, and she stepped back to the children’s gravestone, creating a little distance between the intruder and herself.
“Where are Merl’s flowers?” When he stepped toward her, she backed up involuntarily.
“I don’t know. There was nothing here when I arrived.”
“You didn’t bring her any?”
She brushed the dust and pollen off the top of the granite stone. “I’m here to see my grandchildren. That’s all.”
Dusty crouched down and scooped up the two bouquets of flowers.
“Get your filthy hands away from those.” She moved with the quickness of a cat to him, trying to snatch the flowers away.
He shoved her away and moved the flowers to Marilyn’s grave. “For you, Merl. Your mother is a stupid bitch, but she really does love you.”
“Give those back to me. She doesn’t deserve them.” Stephanie tried to reach around him, but he shoved her away—this time harder than before.
As she landed on the ground, her hand struck the headstone, and she winced with pain.
“You deserve better, Merl.” He ripped the ribbons off one of the bouquets and started spreading the flowers on the grave. “Lots of flowers. Pretty…like you.”
“She is ugly!” Stephanie cried out, rubbing her hand. In her mind’s eye, she could see Emily sobbing in her bedroom while Marilyn slammed the door shut in the child’s face. She remembered coming into the yard to find Hanna sputtering and nearly drowning in the backyard pool while Marilyn casually walked back into the house, her phone pressed to her ear. “She’s vile and ugly! Do you hear me?”
“My pretty Merl. So pretty.” Dusty started on the second bouquet. “You don’t believe anything she says. She loves you, Merl.”
The repulsive image of Marilyn on her knees flashed in her memory. On her knees and sucking Charlie’s dick in their living room. The slut had been counting on Stephanie walking in on them. Her face had said it all.
“I hate her. Do you hear me? I hate her.” Crawling on her hands and knees, Stephanie scrambled toward her daughter’s grave. “She’s nothing more than a whore.”
“She’s jealous of you, Merl.” He ran his fingers on the inscription carved in the headstone. “The stupid bitch is old and bitter, and we know why.”
“You’re disgusting.”
“It’s because I like you better. Because now I do it with you.”
“Shut your filthy mouth.” The tears started to come. She took fistfuls of flowers off the grave and put them back on the children’s graves.
“She is jealous. Jealous!” He croaked out a laugh and sat back on his haunches, watching her fall apart. “Should we tell her, Merl? Please, please let me tell her.”
Stephanie twisted the yellow ribbon around a couple of the daisy stems. She wound it tighter and tighter. It was easy imagining wrapping it around Marilyn’s neck. The stems snapped.
“The girls?” He continued his conversation with the headstone. “No, we don’t want to tell the girls now. They’ll whine and cry, and I don’t want any of that shit going on before we do it. We want them older, anyway. We want them the way you were. How old were you when first we did it? Fifteen?”
“Shut up!”
“The summer before?”
“Shut up!” Every nerve in her body was taut and sharp as piano wire. The world was tilting around her head.
“Yeah. Fourteen.” He laughed again. “You’ll have to bring them one at a time…first. After a while, after they’re used to—”
“You won’t touch my babies!” She sprang at him, toppling him in the grass. “You won’t come close to my babies, you bastard.” Her fists were flying at his face.
He caught her hands, but she continued to fight him. “I’ll kill you. I’ll dig your eyes out with my bare nails. I’ll stab you until you’re…”
When she tried to bite his hand, Dusty rolled Stephanie onto her back and threw his body heavily on top of her. There was blood trickling from his nose, but he didn’t seem to notice. His breath was foul when he breathed in her face.
“You stupid bitch. Don’t you think I have as much right to those girls as you?”
She looked at him in horror. “They are my grandchildren,” she gasped. “My babies.”
His eyes were slitted with hatred. “They are Marilyn’s girls. So they are mine, too. Or have you forgotten, Stephanie?”
~~~~
“Marilyn has become more vicious than she ever was before. And everyone around her is paying the price.”
“She is not hurting Emily or Hanna, is she?” Ted asked with concern.
“She is inflicting a different kind of bruising on them. Not the hurt that people can see.” Stephanie started crying. “I came here to see you because I know what she is capable of. I know the extent of her anger. The depth of her hatred. And I know how far she is capable of going to get what she wants.”
“The first hearing is in two weeks. My lawyer thinks, despite all of Marilyn’s lies and accusations, I still have an excellent chance of getting custody of the girls.”
“Even though you were married to her, you don’t know her. You don’t understand the…the bad seed that she is from. Revenge is the only thing that drives her. For years, I was her main target.” Stephanie took Ted’s hand before he could respond. “I have somethi
ng to tell you. Dusty Norris is her real father.”
“Dusty?” He knew nothing about that.
“And from the day Dusty told her the truth, her life’s goal became punishing me. But her target now is you and everyone who takes your side. Everyone that you care for. She is vicious, and she will not stop. I’m her mother, Ted, but I’m telling you…Marilyn is evil.”
Chapter 15
The cottages, set into discreet notches along the lake’s edge, had been popular with summer tourists from the day the Lion Inn had them built back in the fifties. The lake was long and curved, deep in the middle and a favorite place for fishing and boating. The last owner of the Lion had given the cottages names like Nairobi, Mombasa, and Victoria, furnishing them with safari-themed pictures and furniture that were both plentiful and cheap then, thanks to the post-war economy.
From early on, the cottage called Serengeti had proved the most requested. More secluded than the others, it offered privacy that honeymooners and lovers had sought with a regularity that did not surprise the succession of hotel managers. But for almost a decade now, a certain individual’s year-round rental of the place had permanently removed this cottage from the available lists.
Driving up to the Inn, Mick knew somehow the problem would be in Marilyn’s cottage. As he stood frowning in the open doorway of the place, his foreman Chuck shifted uncomfortably behind him.
“This place didn’t look nothing like this when we went around in April to do the estimate.” Chuck leafed through the folder Mick had brought with him and pulled out the sheet of photographs. “I’m glad we took these pictures.”
The stench inside was from something more than the closed-up, musty smell they regularly encountered in renovations of old buildings. This one smelled like stale beer. Or dog piss.
“This sets us back a couple weeks at least, boss.” Chuck looked at his clipboard. “In Serengeti, the owner only wanted fresh paint on the upper walls and a coat of varnish on the wainscot, and new flooring for the kitchen and bathroom. But with all this damage, I figured we’d better not touch a thing till you got here.”
