by Leigh James
I hadn’t known they were capable of murder.
I watched Audrey’s chest rise and fall. I was almost forty. I’d spent the last twenty years shielding myself from love, from feeling connected to another person. There’d been too much pain when Danielle died. I don’t even think I’d realized what I was doing—burying myself in my work, developing an endless list of projects, dating women I didn’t even like. But I didn’t regret any of it except for the loss of Danielle. Because each step had brought me to needing to hire a date for my baby brother’s wedding, and that date had ended up being Audrey.
Who was the love of my life.
“Audrey.” I said. “Wake up.”
“What?” she asked, alarmed, and sat straight up. “What’s the matter?”
“Nothing,” I said, still stroking her skin. “I just wanted to tell you something.”
She lay back down, still half-asleep. “What is it?”
“I love you,” I said.
“I love you, too,” she said. She put her hand on my chest, tracing my muscle.
“You’re moving to Los Angeles with me,” I said.
“Yes. I told you I would. If your mother doesn’t run me off the road first. ”
“And you’re going to bring your brother.”
“I have to, James,” she said. “I can’t leave him with my mother. We’ll have to get all the legal stuff taken care of, and now we’re gonna have to fight your mom’s lawyer—”
“But we’re going to take care of all of that. I want him to come too, Audrey. I know how much you love him. I just need to know that’s still what you want.”
“Of course it is,” she said. “I wish it wasn’t, because then I wouldn’t have caused you all this trouble—”
“Stop,” I said, cutting her off again. “Please don’t ever say that again.”
“Okay.” Her voice was cautious. “Please tell me what’s going on with you.”
“I just want you to promise me,” I said. “I don’t want us to ever be separated again. I just don’t want to waste any more time.”
“Okay,” Audrey said again, nestling against me. She was quiet for a minute, and I thought she’d fallen asleep. “What’s it gonna be like?”
“What?”
“Living in your mansion in California,” she giggled. “The way things are going, it seems like we’re never going to get there.” She yawned. “Like it’s a fairy tale…”
I wrapped my arms around her. “Well, my house isn’t a mansion—not exactly. It’s all one level, up in the hills. I have a great view when there’s no smog. And I get all the sports stations, every single one. Even in my room.” I smiled at her in the darkness, picturing her in my house. “You can have your own closet, and if you behave, your own shelf in the bathroom.”
“If I’m living with you, I’m going to need more than one shelf,” she laughed.
“Well, okay. You can have more than one. If you’re good. What else is my house like… hmmm… I have a really big refrigerator.”
“Bigger than the one in Boston? ’Cause that thing’s huge,” she said.
“Yes, it’s bigger. And no offense, but Audrey, a Barbie mansion has a bigger refrigerator than the one you have in Southie.”
“Ha ha,” she said, punching me lightly. “But keep talking. Tell me what our life would be like.”
“Well, we would get up every day, and then we could do a quick workout in my gym—yes, I have a gym—and then you’d make me breakfast. Preferably French toast because you’re pretty good at that. And then I’d go to work—”
“And I’d go to work, too,” she slipped in.
“Yes, of course you would. Or you can go to school full-time. Just don’t let any of the students or professors ask you out. Then I’d have to fight them.”
“That might be hot, actually.”
“It might be. Yeah, it probably would be.” We both laughed then, and it felt so good. “But seriously, that might be a great place to start. And then I could pick you up from school, and we could go visit Tommy. On the weekends, we can go to dinner. We can take Tommy to the beach or to the park—we don’t have crap weather in LA. It’s totally different. You can go outside all year. And we can go see the Red Sox games in Oakland when they play the A’s. We can fly up in my private plane. We can fly to Hawaii for a long weekend. You can make me dinner every night.”
“Ha,” she said again, but she sounded pleased.
I paused for a second and traced her spine with my finger. I took a deep breath. “And then we can have kids, and you change their diapers—all of them, because I have a feeling that would be beneath me—and they’ll go to all the best schools. We’ll take them to Disneyland. We’ll go watch their music shows and their plays, and they can play baseball and be awesome at it like their dad, and they will never like the A’s, the Dodgers, or the Yankees, and if they are girls they will have beautiful, Bambi-like eyes like their mother. So there.”
“Bambi-like eyes?” she asked, and giggled.
I blew out an embarrassed sigh. “Mock me if you will. Just promise me,” I said, still stroking her back. “Promise me we are going to do all the things.”
“I promise,” she said, her face pressed against my chest. “I promise.”
* * *
The next morning, Audrey brought me coffee in bed.
“I’m going to make a few phone calls,” I said, “starting with Danielle’s parents. Even though I don’t have hard evidence, I believe my mother was at the very least involved in the accident somehow. I have to let them know. They still live in Tewksbury; I can look up the number.”
“Are you sure you want to do this right now?” Audrey asked. “It’s a pretty big wound to open up.”
“We need their help. They’re the only people my parents won’t be able to pay off,” I told her. “And they deserve to know, even if it’s only that I think my parents were involved. I’m going to let them in on the plan.”
“Are you going to let me know what the plan is?” she asked.
“Yes, but later. I want the element of surprise to go to bat for us.”
“What about your parents?” she asked. “Are we going to confront them today?”
“Don’t worry. They’re on the list. I have plans for them.”
Audrey
James was on the phone for what felt like forever.
“I talked to Danielle’s parents. They’re going to help us,” he said when he finally came out. His face was drawn, and his eyes were red. “My mother’s going to have a nasty surprise waiting for her when we get back.”
He poured himself another cup of coffee. “I also called my lawyer. He’s better than my mother’s, by the way. He said that he’ll get the paperwork prepared for you to become Tommy’s sole guardian. You’ll have to sign it when we get back, and then he’ll start the process with the court. And I made a call to that private investigator, too—he said he was going to go to your mom’s house today with a large file and a larger threat.”
“But what if she tells Celia?” I asked.
“She won’t. We’re going to make her an offer she can’t refuse. So she’ll receive a financial incentive while simultaneously being blackmailed. It’s win-win.”
My heart sank. “I don’t want her getting any more of your money…”
“I’d rather she gets it from us than from my parents,” he said. “Plus, we can’t just let your mother stay in that apartment, living like that, when there’s more than enough money to take care of her. It’s not right.”
I wasn’t going to forgive my mother so easily, either for what she’d done to Tommy or what she’d done to James. “It’s exactly what she deserves,” I said. “She doesn’t seem unhappy to me. Just greedy. And scheming.”
“Well, you’re right. She is greedy. And she’ll just come looking, threatening us again. I don’t want to deal with that for the rest of my life, and I know you don’t either. It’s better to just manage her, Audrey. She’s your mothe
r. She’s not going to change, and she’s not going anywhere.”
I sighed, understanding what he saying and wishing I didn’t. “How did it go with Danielle’s parents? That must have been such a tough conversation. It was so out of the blue.”
His eyes looked hollowed out. “It was awful. I’m sure hearing from me after all this time was the last thing they were expecting.”
“What did they say?” I asked. I couldn’t even imagine.
“I spoke with her father. I told him that I didn’t know the details, but that I believed my parents were directly involved with Danielle’s death. That it wasn’t an accident. I told him that you’d confronted my mother, and that she was threatening you, and that I needed his help.”
“What did you ask him to do?”
“I told him to go to the police. That we’d be back soon,” James said. His face was pale. I went to him and wrapped my arms around him. “He thanked me, Audrey—he said the way my mother had acted afterward had bothered him for years. He said he felt like she’d been relieved that Danielle was dead. He wants her to go to prison.”
“And you?” I asked. “Is that what you want, too?”
“I’m pretty sure prison’s too good for her,” he said. “But it’ll have to do.” He paused for a beat. “We need to call your mother. To let her know that she’s got company coming.”
I held up my hand. “I got this,” I said, picking up his fancy cell phone. “The farther I can keep you away from my mother, the better.”
* * *
Todd, Evie, Cole, and Jenny were waiting for us down at the dock again. “Good morning,” Cole called. He had a huge smile on his face, and so did Jenny. Since they’d professed their love for one another, I hadn’t seen them stop smiling.
Even though my world was on the edge of veering wildly out of control, their enthusiasm was infectious. I beamed at Jenny and gave her a big hug. “You look gorgeous,” I said, “and happy.”
“I am. Everything’s working out,” she said, holding me tight. “But I’m worried about you. Evie said Celia read you the riot act last night, and that you were wicked pale and upset after. What’s going on?”
I shook my head and blew out a deep, ragged breath. “She’s giving my mother a run for Mother of the Year, is all.”
Jenny snorted. “You and James are good people. Maybe you were both adopted.”
“I wish,” I said.
* * *
We snorkeled all morning. The kitchen staff had packed lunch for us; the crew dropped us on a secluded beach with our enormous picnic basket and a cooler full of prosecco and beer. “I could get used to this,” Todd said, sitting back on the blanket that Evie had set up and cracking a beer. “Sure beats filing Department of Labor compliance docs.”
Cole smiled at him. “I don’t miss compliance or due diligence, but I do miss my hockey team. But really, I have every thing I need right here.” He threw his arm around Jenny.
“I don’t miss work,” Jenny said, deadpan. “I don’t think I’m going back.”
“You’re not. You’re retiring,” Cole said protectively.
“I have about ten deals that have probably gone south in the past two weeks, and I don’t even care,” James said. He poured us each a glass of champagne and gave me a loving kiss on the cheek. I leaned back against him, trying not to stare at his tanned six-pack stomach, rising up tautly from his swim trunks.
“I’m sure you’ll still have a booming empire to attend to when you get back,” Todd said. “You always do. Audrey, are you going to transfer to a school out there?”
“I think so,” I said. I hope I make it that far, I thought. “California would be a nice change of pace.”
“I know—warm weather, can you imagine? Winter lasted forever this year,” Evie said. It was true; there had been dirty snowbanks in Boston well into April. “Being down here’s been really nice. It’s so beautiful here. I’m glad you guys came—you’re way more fun than my cousins. All they do is talk about their protein intake and their training schedules. And their screaming kids.” She looked at Todd and wrinkled her nose. “That’s not normal, is it?”
“No, honey, it’s not,” Todd said agreeably. “We won’t be like that when we’re parents. We won’t talk about our kids all the time, and they won’t be screaming, filthy little buggers like your cousins’.”
“Of course not,” she said. She was wearing a pink-polka-dot bikini, her collarbones tanned and on prominent display. “We have manners, and so will our children.”
“We should come down here every year—and we won’t invite your cousins. Or your screaming kids,” Cole said to Evie.
“My children won’t be screaming,” Evie said defensively, telling the same lie all non-parents told themselves.
“Then it’s a date,” James said, lacing his fingers through mine. “Same time next year.”
* * *
We went home and showered before the night’s festivities; Todd and Evie had arranged for dinner at the fanciest of the resort’s restaurants. We had to dress up, which bothered me. Only because I was worried that I’d have to run away from Mrs. Preston in my spike-heeled sandals. And that I wouldn’t get far.
James was dashing in a sand-colored linen suit; he wore a white shirt underneath, slightly unbuttoned, showing off just a peek of his gorgeous, tanned chest.
“Do we have to have to go right now?” I asked, fanning myself. “’Cause you look wicked hot. That tan is killing me.”
“Wicked hot?” he asked, laughing. “Is my wicked hot girlfriend from Southie, or what?”
“She is,” I said, grinning at him.
He pulled me to him and gave me a long, lingering kiss that took my breath away. I felt him stir against me. “Yes, please,” I said and started undoing his belt.
James groaned. “No, thank you,” he said, even though he’d sprung to life instantly underneath my touch. “We have reservations, and we have to go deal with my parents, remember?”
“Ugh,” I said, forgetting all about undoing his belt.
“Ugh is right,” he said. “But I’d like to pick that back up as soon as we get home, if you don’t mind.”
“I don’t mind,” I said and kissed him again. “Taking your clothes off is about the only thing that can keep my mind off of all our… more unpleasant business.” I sighed. “That and thinking about your abs.”
“That’s what I like to hear,” he said, beaming at me. “You’re perfect, you know that? Now let’s go, before I start trying to show you my abs.”
* * *
As soon as we were back out in the sunlight, my heart started thudding in my chest. We had to face his mother again. James still hadn’t told me what our strategy was going to be at dinner. He’d just instructed me to play along.
He looked straight ahead as we headed to the restaurant, gripping my hand. His easy demeanor of a minute ago was gone. He was almost a little scary right now, striding toward the restaurant in full-blown preparedness for combat.
“Audrey,” he said when we got to the door, “I want you to remember something. This is about to be a show. Don’t lose the plot, okay? Remember who the enemy is. And remember that no matter what I say in there, I will love you forever.”
James
We marched into the restaurant, and Audrey’s face was pale and concerned, just the way I wanted it to be. There was another long table with a white tablecloth; chandeliers and candles shimmered throughout the room. I was getting tired of these fancy dinners. I was certainly tired of my fancy parents, with their misplaced faith in their abiding superiority.
Danielle had been better, a better person than my mother, not the other way around. My mother needed to understand that. I wasn’t sure she was capable, but I was going to try my damnedest.
I just had to make sure that Audrey and I were credible right now. We needed to be pitch perfect. My mother didn’t miss much, and there was no room for error. The vacation was ending, and we were going back to the real wor
ld. Audrey was going to be a part of my world. I just had to make sure I got her there unscathed.
Mostly unscathed.
“Let’s sit here,” I said to Audrey, pulling out a chair across from my parents. Audrey nodded at me silently and didn’t look at them: it was as though she couldn’t bear to.
My father nodded to us over his bourbon, and I saw his eyes slip down to Audrey’s chest. “Father,” I said to him coolly, “eyes on me.”
He gave me a dirty look and sipped his bourbon. “I was young once, you know.”
“Really?” I asked, taking a seat next to Audrey. “I don’t remember. It seems like you’ve been an old man forever.”
He snorted at me. “You’re in rare form tonight,” he said, peering at me over his glasses.
“So are you. You’ve said more than four words.” Per his usual, he grunted at me and turned back to the menu. Compared to my mother, my father was like a cardboard cutout of a person. He’d been forever in the background, a voice on the other end of a line from his office. I would always think of him as dressed in neutral tones, nursing a bourbon, scowling at the world from behind his Armani glasses. I’d often thought my mother had chosen him largely because he did what she said.
I wonder if he’d fought her about Danielle, or if he’d just fallen in line. Maybe she never told him, but he had to have guessed. My mother was a difficult woman. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’d never said a word and just gone back to his office on the Monday morning after the accident, as though nothing had happened.
As though his wife had never killed a girl.
Celia swept in after that, in a blush-pink gown that ruffled at the neck, probably to mask the few existing lines she had left there. If she was surprised that we’d chosen to sit across from them, her face gave nothing away. Not that I expected it to. She was either so morally bankrupt that she was completely without remorse or her filler had settled in just enough that her face wouldn’t really move for another few weeks. Either way, her smooth expression was just as I expected.
