“We can’t let Bitsy find out about this until we talk to Moses and figure out how best to break the news,” Faith said.
“It’ll be a challenge keeping this from her,” Mike said. “The press is already lined up at the end of the driveway. I’ll call Chloe Cook’s mother and explain the situation.” He went outside to the porch and returned five minutes later. “The Cooks are going to the beach for the weekend. They invited Bitsy to go with them. She assured me they would keep her away from social media and not let her watch the news on TV.”
“What if something happens to Mom?” Faith’s hand flew to her mouth. “What if she—”
Mike knelt down beside Faith’s chair. “We’ll worry about that if it happens. I’ll drive to the beach and get her if need be.”
Her throat felt thick and her voice sounded hoarse when she said, “Thank you. Having her taken care of for the weekend will give me a chance to figure things out.” She gestured toward the hallway, where a team of crime scene investigators were collecting evidence. “We’ll never get the blood out of the carpet.”
“They have professionals who will do that for us. I’ll get the number from Eli and schedule them to come tomorrow.” Mike rubbed her arm. “You’re in good hands here with Eli. He’ll bring you to the hospital later. After I take an overnight bag to the Cooks’ house for Bitsy, I’m going back to the emergency room to check on your mom. Unless you want me to stay.”
“No, you go. I’ll be fine.” She ran her hand down his cheek. “I don’t know what I would do without you. I’m so sorry, Mike.”
“What do you have to be sorry for?”
“For killing my ex-husband in cold blood in our home,” she said, her voice tight with unshed tears.
“You did what you had to do, Faith. You saved your own life, and you would’ve saved Bitsy’s too if she’d been here. You did a damn fine job of defending yourself, and I’m proud of you. You’re a much stronger woman than when we first met. It’s over, honey. Curtis will never hurt you again.”
She nodded, unable to speak. A torrent of tears came with the wave of relief that washed over her. Mike seemed torn, not wanting to leave her, but she waved him on.
During the hours that followed, Faith answered the same questions over and over again from the detective Eli had assigned to the case. Even though he’d recused himself from her case, her brother-in-law never left her side.
“Am I going to jail?” she asked Eli when Detective Hamilton finally finished his interrogation.
“Not a chance. We have a clear-cut case with the evidence to prove that he’s been stalking you for weeks and you were defending yourself.”
“I don’t understand how he pulled it off,” Faith said. “How was he able to come and go from Columbia without anyone missing him?”
“As you suspected, he had help on the ground here in Prospect. We found his cell phone in his pocket. Since he got out of prison in early May, Curtis has been in constant communication with his good buddy Earl Sessions.”
“I knew Earl was somehow involved in this.”
“We’ve already picked him up. He’s on the way to the station as we speak, singing like a canary, or so I’m told. He’s owned up to planting the pig and fish. He claims Curtis mailed him the recipe cards. But he swears he had no knowledge of how the fire started.”
“Will his word be enough to force the insurance company to settle?” Faith asked.
“That’s my hope.” Eli got to his feet and peeked into the hallway. “They’re wrapping things up in there. They’ll get the body out of here soon.” He disappeared into the kitchen and returned with a ham sandwich. “Here.” He handed her the plate. “You should eat something.”
It was past five o’clock, and Faith hadn’t eaten a bite since breakfast, but the thought of her ex-husband’s body being carried out of her house in a body bag made her feel nauseated. “I’m not hungry.”
He pointed at the sandwich. “Eat. You’re in for a long night at the hospital.”
She’d been too preoccupied with the police to think about her mother. She patted the pockets of her khaki pants. She had no idea where her phone was or if Mike had tried to call. “Have you talked to Sam?”
“Several times.” He lowered himself to the arm of her chair. “I hate having to tell you this in the wake of what you’ve already been through today. Your mother suffered a major stroke. She’s in a coma. The doctors have little hope of her ever regaining consciousness.”
TWENTY-EIGHT
Jackie
Jackie, Sam, Sean, and Jamie had been waiting several hours, and so far not a single doctor or nurse had been in to speak with them. Mike had arranged a private waiting room that offered comfortable seating and a view of the hospital gardens through a row of large windows. She wondered if her mother’s medical team had forgotten about the family tucked up on the second floor, away from the hustle and bustle of the emergency room.
When Bill appeared in the doorway, she pulled him out into the hall. “Give it to me straight.”
He studied her face as though trying to decide if she could handle bad news. “It’s not good, Jack. This is the end for your mother. I’ve always respected Lovie. She was as good a mother-in-law as a man could ask for. This is hard for you to hear, and hard for me to say, but this is the best-case scenario for Lovie and your family.”
Jackie knew enough about Alzheimer’s to know he spoke the truth. “How much time are we talking?”
He lifted a shoulder. “A few days. A week tops.”
“Will they keep her here in the hospital?”
“For the time being,” he said. “If she lingers, we may need to make other arrangements.”
Jackie pressed her forehead to his chest. “Thank you for being honest with me.”
He kissed the top of her head. “Lovie was one of a kind. The world will be a lesser place without her.” He held her for a minute before pushing her away. “I need to check in with my office. I’ll be back in a few minutes. Can I bring you anything?”
“No,” she said. “We’re fine for now. When do you think we’ll get to see her?”
“Soon, I imagine. They were taking her in for a CT scan when I was down there a few minutes ago.”
Jackie watched her husband walk to the end of the hall and disappear inside an elevator. Returning to the waiting room, she locked eyes with Sam and shook her head. Sam nodded her response, an unspoken agreement between them. They would wait for confirmation from the doctors before telling the boys. Just as they’d agreed earlier not to tell them about Curtis’s death until the sisters had heard the whole story from Faith.
She sat down beside Sean, who smelled like sweat and fish. From what he’d told her, they’d had a particularly successful day on the water. How would these latest family crises affect tomorrow’s farmers’ market?
The four of them sat in silence in a row of chairs facing the windows. Over the course of the next half hour, the sky darkened as storm clouds rolled in from the west. A bolt of lightning followed by a loud clap of thunder brought the boys to their feet.
“I’m sorry, Mom,” Jamie said to Sam. “I hate to leave you here like this, but we need to get on these crabs.”
“Mom?” Sean’s eyes met Jackie’s. He’d been humble, helpful, and considerate since Memorial Day. “Is it okay if we go?”
Jackie smiled at him. “Yes, son. There’s nothing you can do here, and your grandmother would understand. She’d never forgive you if you let those crabs spoil.”
The sisters got up and walked their boys to the door.
“We’ll call you as soon as we know anything,” Sam said.
“There’s leftover chicken parmesan in the fridge and plenty of sandwich meat. I trust you can fend for yourselves for dinner. You two look out for one another. This storm looks like a doozy.”
“We will, Aunt Jackie.” Jamie smiled at her. She didn’t need to spell it out for him. He understood. She was asking him to take care of his cousin.
With each day that had passed since Memorial Day, Jackie had seen more of her son’s true personality emerge from beneath the layer of anxiety and gloom. The antidepressants seemed to be working, as did his daily sessions with Moses. Sean had gone to Moses’s office on Tuesday and Wednesday mornings and spoken to him by phone on Thursday and Friday. Big Mo was counseling him on how to live his life independent of his twin.
She’d driven Sean to Charleston Wednesday afternoon so he could register for his summer school classes at the college. He seemed genuinely excited about the courses he’d selected—a detective fiction class that fulfilled one of his freshman English requirements and an upper-level course in hospitality and tourism, which he was auditing to explore the subject as a possible major.
After leaving the registrar’s office, they’d run into a friend of Sean’s from Georgia in the bookstore. Jeb Watson was a cute boy with a head of wavy blonde hair and bright-blue eyes.
“I’m glad to see a familiar face,” Jeb said. “Are you transferring here too? Georgia was way too big for me.”
“I’m thinking about it,” Sean said. “I’m taking a few classes this summer to see if I like it.”
Jeb eyed the paperback novels by Arthur Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie in Sean’s shopping cart. “Looks like you’ll be studying a lot, same as me. I’m taking physics and accounting. We should hang out together in the library.”
Sean’s face brightened. “Yeah, bro, let’s do that. And maybe we can finally take that fishing trip we’ve been talking about.”
“Was he in your fraternity?” Jackie asked on the way to the car.
“No, but we lived on the same hall in the freshman dorm.”
“He seems like a nice boy. Is he?”
The irritated expression that crossed Sean’s face told her he saw through her questions. He understood what she was asking. She didn’t care about his manners. She wanted to know if Jeb was into drugs.
“I don’t know, Mom. The few times we hung out, we mostly talked about fishing. His dad owns a sport-fishing boat he keeps over in Mount Pleasant.” He deposited his bag of books on the back seat and climbed into the front of her Escalade. “At least I’ll know someone here.”
Jackie was all for his attending the college. She could establish a strict set of boundaries in the beginning and slowly loosen the reins as he proved himself and earned back her trust. But she wouldn’t pressure him into staying for the fall semester if he didn’t like it. She’d learned her lesson the last time. He had Moses to guide him now. She’d leave the important decisions to them.
She’d never before given any of the four guest rooms at her house on Lamboll to either of the boys. The house was strictly for show. Decorated with luxury Italian linens and designer fabrics, the rooms were not suited for a twenty-year-old boy who never made his bed and left his sweaty clothes piled in a heap on the floor. She stripped off the bed linens and removed all the decorative knickknacks from the tabletops in the room closest to her. She designated the bathroom across the hall his. She wanted to be able to hear him if he moved around during the night.
Sean wanted something more to occupy his time when he wasn’t in class on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday mornings. He interviewed for a job with Heidi, who was fully staffed but promised to keep him at the top of her list if anyone quit or called in sick. Jackie thought he was trying to do too much—he’d committed to helping her move the business when she closed on the warehouse property in two weeks’ time—but she reluctantly agreed to let him work for Heidi as long as he kept up with his studies.
“Why are you worrying about this now, Mom?” Sean had said when they were discussing it on the way home to Prospect on Thursday afternoon. “Heidi doesn’t even have a job to offer me.”
“But she will eventually, mark my words,” Jackie said. “Catering jobs are fluid.”
“Whether I work for her or not, I plan to spend a few hours in the library every day after class. That’s plenty of time to get my work done.”
Jackie smiled over at him. At least you’ll be working with Jamie, who will keep you in line, she thought to herself.
#
It was almost six o’clock and rain was pouring down in torrents when Faith finally arrived at the hospital. She burst into tears when she saw them and sobbed hysterically for a full ten minutes. Jackie and Sam nestled her in the chair between them and consoled her by rubbing her back and arms and cooing words of encouragement while she cried.
When the sobbing finally subsided, Faith said, “It’s all my fault if Mom dies.”
You mean when Mom dies, Jackie thought, but she didn’t have the heart to break the news to her sister just yet. Instead she said, “Mom suffered a massive stroke. Why on earth would you think that’s your fault?”
“Based on the peaceful expression on Mom’s face, Eli thinks the stroke happened before Curtis got there,” Sam said.
“She was supposed to be at Creekside Manor,” Faith said in a quivering voice. “The nurses there would’ve gotten to her in time.”
“That’s crazy talk, Faith,” Sam said. “Mom has an illness. This was bound to happen one way or another.”
Jackie saw no point in discussing the what-ifs and might-have-beens. The sooner they accepted reality, the better off they would all be. They could make plans for their mother accordingly and be strong for their children, who would undoubtedly be devastated by this loss. “This might sound morbid to you, but in a way I think we’re lucky. Alzheimer’s is an unkind disease. Yes, we’ll be deprived of years spent with Mom, but we’ll also be spared having to watch her mind deteriorate bit by bit. Mom was a proud woman. She’ll die with most of her dignity intact. And I, for one, am grateful for that.”
“I agree. These last few weeks have presented some challenges, mostly for you.” Sam patted Faith’s leg. “But Mom and I shared some lucid moments that I will always cherish. In her state of mind, she reminded me of a much younger Lovie, of the mother from our childhood. We never owned material things of value, but we shared a lot of love in our family. Our little cottage on the creek was a happy place because Mom and Dad made everything fun.”
“That’s so true,” Faith said. “I remember the bonfires and the afternoons spent floating down the creek in our inner tubes.”
Sam added, “The ghost stories at bedtime and the watermelon-seed-spitting contests.”
“Dad never did teach me to bait a hook,” said Jackie. “I hated touching those slimy old worms. I never got into the hunting and fishing like y’all did either, but I always enjoyed that time with Dad. What you learned from him saved your life today, Faith. If you feel like talking about it, we’d like to know what happened. If you never want to mention it again, that’s okay too. It’s your call.”
Faith paused as if gathering her nerve. “I don’t necessarily want to talk about it, but I need to talk about it,” she said, and walked them through everything that had happened that afternoon.
“I admire your courage,” Jackie said when she finished. “I couldn’t have done what you did. I hope you’re proud of yourself, because I’m proud of you.” She gave her baby sister a big squeeze.
“Do you have any suggestions on how I can break the news to Bitsy that I killed her father?” Faith asked.
“I certainly wouldn’t give her specifics,” Sam said. “She’s way too young to understand it.”
“She thinks of Mike as her father now anyway,” Jackie said. “I doubt she has any good memories of Curtis.”
“It’s all over the local news.” Faith gestured at the television suspended from the ceiling in the corner. The volume was muted, and they’d ignored the footage of Curtis’s body being removed from Faith’s house when it aired on the six o’clock news. “You know how kids are. Someone in her class will delight in bullying her.”
“You have the whole summer to let the dust settle,” Sam said. “The kids will have moved onto someone’s else’s tragedy by the time school starts back in the fall. I
don’t feel one ounce of guilt admitting I’m glad Curtis is dead. I only wished it’d been me who put the bullet in his heart.”
Jackie too was glad Curtis was burning in hell where he belonged. He was evil through and through.
“I guess this means you’ll be getting your money from the insurance company,” Faith said.
“And just in the nick of time.” A sneaky grin spread across Sam’s face. “This morning, before all this happened with Mom, I made an offer to buy the stationery shop behind the market. We’re joining forces with Heidi and Annie. We’re expanding the business to include a sandwich shop. As of this moment, I’m rebranding our image. In the spring we’ll reopen as Captain and Lovie Sweeney’s Seafood. That’s a mouthful, I know. I’ll use the full name on the logo. I can see it now—a ship’s captain and his plump-cheeked wife. But we’ll always be known to our customers as Sweeney’s Seafood.”
TWENTY-NINE
Faith
Faith and her sisters took turns keeping vigil at their mother’s bedside, making certain someone was always with her in case she opened her eyes. Or worse. The doctors had called in hospice, who assured them there would be signs when Lovie neared the end. They alternated taking the overnight shift through the weekend, but when Jackie left for Charleston on Monday, Sam and Faith agreed to cut their hours back to avoid exhaustion. They took turns sitting with her for four hours at a time from six in the morning until ten at night.
Faith had been waiting on the front stoop when Bitsy arrived home from the beach on Sunday evening. Her daughter’s sunburned shoulders and the freckles dotting the bridge of her nose attested to time spent frolicking on the beach. She hated for her daughter’s fun weekend to end on a sad note.
“I have something I need to tell you.” She took Bitsy’s overnight bag from her and set it down on the bench in the hallway outside her bedroom. The cleaning company Mike hired had done a remarkable job of removing the crime scene evidence, including the large pool of Curtis’s blood from the beige carpet in the hallway. “Let’s go out on the porch.” Draping her arm across Bitsy’s shoulders, she kissed the top of her daughter’s brown head. “I missed you, kiddo. I’m glad to have you home.”
Saturdays at Sweeney's Page 21
