Chapter Eleven
I awoke to the sound of a sharp inhale. My inhale. Like I’d been startled, only I couldn’t remember hearing anything, or if I’d been dreaming.
I could just make out the bedroom furniture in the silvery pre-dawn light. I listened but the house was still as if holding its breath, waiting for day to break. So what had awoken me? Dislodging myself from the arm Daniel had wrapped around my waist, and then the other beneath my neck, I lowered my feet to the floor. Daniel’s shirt lay crumpled at my toes, discarded last night in his haste to get out of his clothes, to get me out of mine. Slipping my arms into the sleeves to cover my bare skin, I buttoned it most of the way down and padded out of the room. My mouth was dry, so I took the back stairs down to the kitchen to get a drink.
The light from the refrigerator stung my eyes as the cool fog floated out to nip at my face. My eyes felt heavy and swollen. After what had happened in the cemetery, and then the conversations I’d overheard the evening before, and the mounting questions all three incidents had left gnawing at my brain, it was no surprise that I hadn’t slept well.
Plucking the orange juice from the top shelf, I unscrewed the cap and gulped from the bottle. The rebel inside me scoffed a wicked cackle, wondering what Cooper would think about my manners if she could see me now. With a devious smile, I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand, replaced the bottle, and swung the door closed. The kitchen, cloaked again in the predawn light, closed around me with a chill. Less than an instant later an intrusion in the stillness alerted me that I wasn’t alone.
My lungs squeezed in a short gasp, and I spun to face the source. “Paul!” I pressed one hand to my chest, the other to my forehead, trying to reclaim my breath. “You scared me half to death.”
I turned on the light over the water dispenser and the particulars of the kitchen became apparent in the soft glow. I blinked against the light as my eyes scanned the commercial gas stove, the glass refrigerator, distressed pine table, and rustic hearth. No one else appeared to be here. “What are you doing here?”
Paul’s gaze tracked over me. “I might ask you the very same question, especially after the day you had.” He ran his tongue over his lips.
The conversation I’d overheard last night skirted across my brain. So he’d been watching me. A dismal feeling settled into the closed air between us. “You didn’t answer my question,” I said through the murk.
“And you didn’t answer mine,” he came back, eyeing me with a depraved look that spoke of acts so foul, it pulled my belly into knots. “Maybe I’m here to get my share.” He stepped so close I could feel his hot breath on my face. “Looks like Daniel got his. Now, I want mine.”
Bile burned its way up my throat. “Get away from me,” I said, pushing at his chest to gain some distance.
“Or what?” His lips curled into a barbarous smirk. “You’ll scream? And Daniel will come to your rescue only to find you seducing his closest friend and advisor?”
Something in his manner told me that panicking was exactly what he wanted me to do. I edged away from him instead. “He would never believe you,” I said, biting back on the nasty taste in my mouth.
“Oh, really?” He crossed his arms and leaned against the center island. “Who do you think he trusts more, his oldest friend or the two-bit hussy who’s trying to ruin him?” he asked, oozing that self-important air he was so proficient at giving off. “Maybe you think you’ve fooled him into believing you’re some kind of saint, but we both know different, don’t we?”
I thought again about what I’d heard last night. So, he’d come to intimidate me—to put me in my place—with idol threats? Two could play that game.
“No more than you having him fooled into thinking you’re looking out for his best interests,” I charged back. “Forcing him to support a bill he doesn’t believe in. Trying to convince him that the woman he married is a fraud in order to reaffirm his dependence on you.”
Paul’s brows rose in subdued surprise. “Initiating a deal hatched by some silly notion of social consciousness was a risky, irresponsible move on Daniel’s part. He has a habit of getting distracted from our ultimate goal. It’s up to me to keep him on track. And sometimes a little doubt is just what he needs. It’ll have him thinking twice the next time he defies me to follow some ill-fated plan, proposed by a woman whose expertise begins and ends between the sheets.”
He pushed on. “So, we all have our secrets, don’t we? I’m sure he would be interested to know some of yours, like how you were once married,” he said, throwing that little-known detail out in the form of an accusation. “How come you never told him?”
Because I never talked about losing Finn and had no desire to start. I angled Paul a look. “Because he doesn’t need to know,” I said, keeping my voice unaffected while, on the inside, I trembled.
His eyes rounded into questioning circles. “Oh?”
I lifted a shoulder. “It only lasted a few months and was annulled, so I didn’t and do not, see the point in bringing up something so insignificant.”
He straightened and began to pace with slow scuffing steps. “Yes, but then there’s that unfortunate business with your pregnancy,” he said, his gaze swinging to mine.
“Miscarriage,” I corrected.
He shook his head as if scolding me. “An ectopic pregnancy is hardly the same as a miscarriage.”
My eyes widened in spite of my bests efforts to appear unaffected. How could he be privy to details I’d never shared except with the necessary medical professionals? The floor beneath my feet seemed to shift, throwing me off balance, but I held tight to the calm I’d been fabricating.
“He knows I can’t conceive. If he wanted to know why, he would have asked.”
Paul plucked a saltshaker from the island and looked it over. “And if he did ask,” he said, shaking a few white grains into his hand and then tossing them over his right shoulder, “I wonder if you’d tell him the whole story.”
Where is he going with this? “There were complications, there was nothing untoward about it,” I said, keeping a careful eye on his smug expression.
He replaced the shaker with enough force that the ceramic cracked against the wood. “Except that you knew something was wrong. But you concealed your complications from your husband until it almost killed you.” He started to pace again, rolling his hand in the air as he spoke. “Headache and nausea can only be written off as the flu for so long when one is bleeding profusely,” he said, stopping abruptly to shoot me a look.
My skin turned clammy.
“So much blood,” he said, and my head spun as memories whirled up. “But then, one would have to wonder, why lie and risk your own life? Could it be that you’d gotten pregnant simply to trap this man because you thought a baby was your best chance of holding onto someone who was too good for you in the first place? A man who never would have stayed without a compelling reason? So, I wonder, how far will you go to hold onto Daniel?”
The orange juice in my stomach turned into an acidy froth. “What do you want?” I asked, the words seething up with an unnatural harshness.
The shadow of a smile passed over his lips. “I want you to stay out of my way,” he said, his eyes pulling into black slits.
“Out of your way?”
“Yes. That means keeping your mouth shut and your nose out of matters that don’t concern you. When Daniel comes to you for advice, you defer to me. When you have an opinion that contradicts, well, basically anyone, especially in a public setting, you keep it to yourself. No exceptions.”
I closed my eyes to hide from his gaze, hoping to quiet the chaos thrashing my insides. When I opened them again, he was square in front of me.
“You simply become Mrs. Daniel Cannon—loving wife, devoted step mother, and leave the politics to me. I’ve worked too hard, for too long, to get Daniel to where he is today.” He paused, his lips parting as if he thought to press them to mine.
I dropped my eyes to the floor, s
tepped away, and found myself backed against the cold steel of the refrigerator.
“So no one,” he continued, “not the mother of his children, and especially not some social worker who crawled out from under a surfboard, is going to get in my way.”
The cold from the refrigerator permeated the fabric of Daniel’s shirt, burning an icy sting across the skin of my back. Like a pinch to stave off drowsiness, the sensation of cold brought clarity to my riddled mind.
Channeling the pain, the anguish he so craftily forced me to relive, I directed it back to him with a measured gaze. “So are you ‘handling’ me now?” And when he simply continued to eyeball me without an answer, I asked again, “Well, are you? Paul?”
Sliding out from between Paul and the refrigerator, I stepped a safe distance away and rested my hands on my hips. “Because where I come from, you know, from under that surfboard, we never back down, especially from quibbling, beady-eyed jerks. You want to get somewhere in politics, why don’t you try getting there on your own?” I said, aiming my words at his arrogant face. “Daniel is twice the man you’ll ever be. He doesn’t need you bossing him around any more than I do.”
Nostrils flaring, Paul took in a deep, closed-lip breath. “Bold words for a gold-digging whore. I look forward to ramming them into that self-righteous heart of yours,” he said, gesturing in my direction. “Look at you. You’re just a common tramp, living every white-trash woman’s fantasy. The problem with fantasies, though, is that they aren’t real. Just like how you’re not a real wife. And we both know you’ll never be a real mother. ”
Like a cluster of warring super balls, his attempts at intimidating me bounced off the thick shell of indifference I’d reformed around myself. “You can tell Daniel whatever you want about me, but it won’t be me you’ll be hurting, it’ll be him. How much use will he be to you when he’s broken-hearted from the loss of another wife?” I challenged. “So here’s the thing, Paul. I call the shots in my own life, but if you insist on attempting to control me, go right ahead. We’ll see who’s still at Daniel’s side when the dust settles.”
The malice was palpable as we stared each other down. The stalemate held, the seconds ticking down to the first rays of light now inching up over the horizon beyond the window. BB-sized drops of sweat rolled down my back and over my hips. But I held strong to my stance by keeping my hands resting casually at my waist, my jaw slack, while my eyes threatened.
Paul was the first to breach the impasse. “You’re in over your head here but too stubborn, and too blind, to see that you’re already drowning. You think you can take me on, Marlie Evans?” he asked, giving a swift look to the bright flecks of light splitting through the plantation shutters.
“Open your eyes. You’re in the middle of something much bigger than that simple mind of yours could ever imagine.” He started toward me, heading for the back door and stopped just past my shoulder. “Go right ahead and defy me. But in the end I’ll take everything and leave you with nothing.”
Leaning close, he hissed in my ear. “And then you’ll be nothing.”
Chapter Twelve
Come on boys, you’re going to be late,” I hollered up the back stairs. I was anxious to get the boys off to school so I could resume my investigation.
It had been a little over a month since the morning Paul had cornered me in the kitchen. First the cadaver, then Johnny, next that creepy Gentry lookalike, and lastly Paul—four different admonitions but all very similar, and all counseling me to either leave Tennessee or stay out of . . . what? And if I didn’t, I’d lose everything? But what none of them knew was that threatening me would only make me work harder to find the truth. I might have been imagining things, but I had this nagging feeling that my life, and the safety of my family, depended on me getting to the bottom of whatever these people were hiding.
I’d continued my amateur sleuthing starting with an Internet search for “Iphiclesian.” All Google had yielded was a bunch of websites devoted to Iphicles, the mortal brother of Hercules. Dead end. Turning my focus back to Gentry, I’d continued to comb the Internet for clues as to her true character, hoping to unearth a possible explanation as to who that woman from the cemetery could have been. Again, I’d found nothing useful. I was hesitant to involve anyone else, but since my investigation had hit an impasse, I’d called Anna-Beth. She had yet to return my calls.
“Bridger. Bodie. If you’re not out here in two minutes, I’m leaving without you,” I warned, like I would leave them when I had nowhere else to go this early in the morning but to drive them to school. As I waited, I glanced up at the small television screen built into one of the cabinets.
A graph with a few decades worth of numbers showed the ever-increasing gap between the wealthy and poor. “As you can see from these graphics,” the newscaster was saying, “the middle class seems to be shrinking not only in the US but in developed countries around the world.”
The camera zeroed back in on the commentator’s flawless complexion and brightly whitened smile. “And in entertainment news, reality TV star Morgan Adams is showing off her new body after losing a whopping thirty pounds.”
A picture of the star engulfed the screen. Her body, pencil thin, was attached to the bulb of a head that looked too heavy for her thin neck to support. Her bone structure protruded noticeably beneath the milky smoothness of her skin. Take away the makeup and the airbrushing, exchange the Anglo skin for a more ethnic look, and this image would prompt viewers to send money and food in sympathy.
What kind of twisted society esteems what it pities? I asked myself as I grabbed my purse, stepped out the back door, and onto the porch. The spring heat wave along with the stifling humidity that had settled in over the last few days gathered around me like an oppressive fog.
“Ouch!” I said when something reached up and bit my baby toe. Hopping on one foot, I looked down to see a pair of rose clippers lying open and deserted on the concrete. Picking them up, I pinched them closed, secured the lock, and looked around for Herbert. He was a stickler about his tools and I couldn’t imagine how a pair of his clippers had been left out.
As I returned them to his workshop at the far end of the garage, I noticed that Daniel’s Aston Martin was missing. Since we’d been married he’d never once driven that car downtown. The legislature was on break but he’d mentioned he had a meeting up at the Capitol and had left earlier than usual this morning. I wonder why he drove—I’d only begun to consider when I heard the grumblings of the boys.
Toting backpacks and large duffels full of gear over their shoulders, they walked with a hitch in their step under the weight. It was the middle of May and the height of spring. A time of frequent rains, exploding blossoms, grass that grew faster than it could be mowed—and baseball.
Popping the trunk hatch with the button on my key, I stood back while the boys tossed their bags into the back of my car with a thud. When the last bag had settled, I could have sworn my car lowered two inches. Though the hatch closed by remote, Bodie slammed it down with a force that rocked the car.
“Hey, easy now,” I warned, patting my beloved RX. “That’s my baby you’re man-handling.”
“If only Bodie could swing a bat half that hard we’d be a cinch for the championship,” Bridger chided as he headed for the front passenger side.
In response, Bodie gave his brother a generous shove from behind. Bridger stumbled, recovered his footing and whirled around, posed to deflect another blow. “Try that again when my back’s not to you,” he challenged.
“Like that would make a difference,” Bodie shot back. “I can beat you blindfolded and hogtied.”
Bridger made a move toward his brother, and I quickly stepped between them before things got out of hand.
“That’s enough,” I said in a firm voice.
Bodie pushed forward, and I pushed back with a hand to his chest. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you. If your dad comes home and I have a fat lip, you’re going to have a lot of explaining to
do,” I said, gambling that the mere mention of Daniel would have the boys backing down. They weren’t afraid of Daniel as much as they were desperate for his affection. Disappointing their father would only bring more of his stern silence, an unfortunate rift made larger by falling short of his expectations.
I reaffirmed my hand against his chest and for a fleeting moment, Bodie’s eyes met mine with all the anger, confusion, and raging hormones one would expect from a teenaged boy. In that instant, when Bodie’s eyes softened at the mention of his father, I saw it, the reason why Daniel seemed to turn away when addressing his sons. Gentry. She was there in the shape, color, and even emotion, of their eyes.
“Why does Bridger always get to sit up front?” Bodie offered by way of acquiescence.
I ventured a glance at Bridger who shrugged in return. Bridger was the eldest by five minutes, but did that one distinction entitle him to sole possession of the front seat?
Having no possible response, “Get in the car, we’re late,” rolled off my tongue easier than it should have. A bad mom moment for sure; I might as well have said, because I said so.
Twenty minutes later, we were barely through the bulk of the traffic on Hillsboro Road when Bodie broke the silence. “Can Bridger and I stay over at Mika’s tonight?”
“It’s a school night,” I said, thinking that was what a mom should say. Wouldn’t she?
The boys generally went to their rooms around ten o’clock every night, but I doubted they went right to sleep, so what difference would staying at a friend’s make, sleep-wise? There were only a few more weeks of school until summer vacation, but if I let them stay at a friend’s on a school night, would that small concession lead to expectations of more? What would they ask for next? A motorcycle? A beer? Tattoo? Body piercing? Ugh! How does one know where to draw the line?
“We have a project due in Latin tomorrow,” he added. “Mika’s our partner.”
Replacing Gentry Page 10
