Wiping my eyes, I try to bail Tom out with something kind to say back, something merciful, but nothing comes out. My mind is overheating and, in my peripheral vision, I realize Minni is crying into a silk handkerchief. What’s left of my heart falls out onto the floor with the shards of broken crystal. Her walls come tumbling down, bringing my anger right with it. In a frightening turn, guilt is quick to follow. “I’m sorry, Minni,” I say in a weak voice.
Vehemently shaking her head, she waves the handkerchief through the air, signaling her surrender. “No, I’m the one who’s sorry. This is my fault; I never thought he would do that again and I just don’t understand why he couldn’t…”
Tom pats her knee and she cries harder. “There, there, dear.”
“We raised him better than that!” she shouts, making Tom flinch. “And damn Jack for making us hate him again like this! After everything we’ve already been through.”
Lincoln trades a look with me, a silent understanding passing between us. Before the coroner came along, neither of us knew about Hannah and precedent always speaks volumes. Jack would’ve become one of those guys who, eventually, goes too far and puts someone in the hospital or worse. But I stopped him and Lincoln knows it. It’s just too bad Minni and Tom have to take one last sucker punch to the gut on our way out. This changes everything, but better they know the truth about Jack than hate the son who’s still alive. Lincoln deserves their love, not their scorn.
Minni rises from the fancy couch and rushes across the room, pulling me to my feet and hugging me so hard I can barely breathe.
“I’m so sorry, Sienna,” she sobs into my neck, her flowery perfume making my eyes water. Or maybe my eyes are watering because Lincoln and I won’t lose them now after all. Maybe we can have everything.
Tom comes over and wraps his arms around us, joining in a group hug I will surely never forget. “Lincoln?” he says, gesturing at him.
Lincoln looks over his shoulder to see if Tom is talking to someone else named Lincoln and I can’t hide a smile.
“Come on,” Tom says, feverishly gesturing.
Grudgingly, Lincoln gets to his feet and wraps his arms around the three of us, making it a foursome. Minni and Tom squeeze harder, driving the wind from our lungs and flooding my heart with something foreign. Something I saw in others but never felt for myself.
Family.
“Okay,” Lincoln says, breaking the circle. “Who just grabbed my ass?”
Tom grins at him. “Sorry, I thought that was your mother.”
Backing away and resting his hands on his hips, Lincoln studies the three of us through glassy eyes. “I’m glad we came by.”
“Me too,” Minni says, dabbing at her tears.
“But we should get going. I hate driving at night,” he says, giving me a playful wink.
Minni’s face folds into her neck. “Wait, you’re still leaving? Lincoln, you don’t have to run from us now. You can stay.”
“Mom, this is something I have to do.”
“We have to do,” I correct him, looping an arm through his and making him glow.
“Then the least I can do is play the part of silent investor,” Tom says, opening a drawer in the end table and removing a checkbook from inside. “Food trucks are very hot right now,” he says, reminding me of Wendy. “Read all about them in NatGeo’s History last month. They started out as food carts outside the Colosseum, ya know?”
“Pop, I appreciate it, I really do, but I have to…” Lincoln stops to correct himself. “We have to do this on our own.”
Ignoring him, Tom reaches beneath his sweater and pulls a silver pen from a shirt pocket. “That’s fine, Lincoln. I’m not planning on washing dishes or cleaning grease traps. I just want to invest.” His eyebrows rise. “How does twenty grand sound to start?”
Lincoln laughs and drops his face into a hand.
“Okay fine,” Tom replies, writing out the check. “Let’s make it twenty-five.”
“No, Pop, I’ve been saving up for this for three years.” He looks at me and smirks, sending a flutter of tingles sizzling through me. “We’re all set, aren’t we?”
“Yes,” I smile, squeezing his hand. “We are.”
Staring blankly at us, Tom closes the checkbook and shrugs. “If you change your mind, just let me know,” he says, tossing it on the table. “I’m always looking for promising startups.”
“I’ll keep that in mind. I will, however, take the Chevelle back,” Lincoln offers, stiffening a little. “If that’s okay.”
Tom plops a meaty hand on his shoulder and squeezes. “That car will always be yours, Lincoln. You know that.”
The muscles loosen in Lincoln’s face. “Thanks, Pops. I’ll fly back and get it in a few weeks.”
“I’ll keep it in the garage until then.”
Minni steps into my face and smiles warmly up at me. “I know it wasn’t easy coming here and I can’t even pretend to imagine what you’ve been through. It hurts to even try.” She collects more tears with her handkerchief. “Thank you.”
I hug her again, but not too hard for fear of breaking her brittle bones.
Lincoln hugs it out with his parents one more time and then we’re standing there staring at each other without knowing how to say goodbye. Sighing, I wonder what they’d think if they knew I pushed their sonofabitch son down the stairs and killed him. I wonder what they’d think of me then. Shaking the intrusive thought from my head before it gives me away, I stop another tear from escaping.
“We’ll be back for Christmas,” Lincoln tells them. “Or maybe you can come down there.”
“Down there?” Minni exchanges a worried look with her husband. “Wherever are you going? I hope not Mexico. It’s much too dangerous.”
“It’s a surprise,” he replies, towing me closer to the front door that bursts open before we reach it.
Mary fills the doorway, a silhouette against the daylight beyond. Her chest heaves. Red hair blows up around her on the wind. “Rice on a popsicle stick! Thank gosh you’re here,” she pants, barging inside without bothering to shut the door. “I think I found the thief who stole Jack’s Corvette!”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Paradise
Mary’s flats stomp closer and my insides twists into a pretzel. We were almost out of here and now this? It’s like this town doesn’t want us to leave, and I fully expect to hit the city line only to find ourselves entering Cottage Grove all over again.
“Where?” Tom steps forward, hungry for more information.
My shoulders plunge with my feelings and I cannot believe this is happening. What. The. Fuck.
“Well,” Mary says, blowing a loose strand from her face. “I cross referenced some city databases on our mainframe at work.” She pauses for a few quick breaths. “Knowing the thief would get the car out of town as soon as possible, I sifted through traffic cams, police citations, DMV records, the whole ten yards.”
“Nine yards,” Lincoln quietly corrects, towing me closer to the open front door.
“Anyway,” she continues, “I then hacked into surveillance footage from the gas stations by the interstate entrance closest to your house, on the date which the car was stolen.”
“Wait a minute. Hang on!” Lincoln swaps an angry look with his parents. “You did all of this from a computer at the library?”
Tipping her head down, Mary folds her arms across her chest. “I have a city access code,” she smugly replies, arching an eyebrow at him. “Plus, our IT guy is sixteen and could hack KFC’s secret recipe if he wanted. Which he doesn’t because that place is gross.”
“That’s nice,” Lincoln says, sidestepping closer to the door.
“Tell us what you found, Mary.” Minni demands, stopping next to her husband and stepping on my last nerve.
“I found out that somebody put gas in Jack’s Corvette at the Amoco on Boulevard and Long Meadow. Then,” she says, smacking her lips, “the same very tall somebody had the car washed at the Miste
r Car Wash around the corner from said gas station.” Her ensuing smile plants a proud glimmer in her eyes. “The video is a little grainy but I think your car was stolen by…a basketball player!”
“Great work, Red.” Lincoln finally reaches the door. “We’re going to go stake out every court in town. If you get the chance, cross reference all the big and tall stores in the area.”
Mary shrugs at him. “It was just a thought, Lincoln, but at least it’s something to go on. There are a lot of basketball leagues at the community center alone.”
I hug Mary. “Thank you for looking,” I whisper in her ear, pulling apart to study her pretty face. “I’ll call you soon.”
Frowning, she scans Lincoln and I through suspicious eyes. “Where are you guys really going?”
We look at each other and smile. “Home,” he responds, leading me out into the warm sunshine heating the car. It’s a beautiful day, full of bright colors and fragrant scents. The next thing I know, we’re on the interstate, barreling southbound and down with butterfly wings tickling my stomach. I’m flying over the SUV, arms outstretched with the future unfolding itself to us one mile at a time. I’m so glad to have Minni and Tom on our side but Mary is preventing me from really soaring. She has a way of digging things up and if she starts poking the medical examiner with a stick, I could be in big trouble. If he’s crazy enough to hide Jack’s cause of death and, simultaneously, blackmail me, he’s capable of anything my mind can conjure up.
“What’s wrong?” Lincoln asks, sensing my distress.
I watch the dotted lines zip beneath us. Tires click against the cracks. “Sooner or later, Mary is going to see the car. How many ’57 Corvettes can there be in Cottage Grove?”
“None,” he flatly responds, watching the road. “But I didn’t have the heart to tell her you sold it – which is exactly what we’ll tell her.” He turns to look at me. “Did you see the look on her face? She loves playing detective. How many twenty-three-year olds do you know who binge watch Murder She Wrote?”
“But what if she confronts him?”
“Who? The coroner guy?”
“I mean, what if…”
“Sienna,” he says in a soft voice. “That’s not going to happen.”
“Lincoln, he recorded me admitting to the whole thing!” Suddenly, a wave of paranoia washes over me and I imagine this is what depression feels like. One minute everything is coming up roses, the next it’s the end of the world.
“Let me deal with Mary,” he says, taking a hand from the wheel to wrap mine in his. “I’ll get her to call off the search. Trust me, okay?”
The soothing tone is his voice calms my jittery nerves and I love he has that effect on me. When I was feeling anxious or blue around Jack, he liked to pour gasoline on the fire. One time, when my drunk-ass mom failed to call on my birthday (again), he told me to visit a nearby retirement center and pick out a new one. Then he laughed and made a protein shake with the blender on high while I was trying to watch the season finale of This Is Us.
Blowing out a slow breath, I relax into the seat. “You’re right.”
“Give her a few more days to play Agatha Christie.” Lincoln pushes some aviator shades up the bridge of his nose. “Last time she did anything fun, she ran with scissors through the library after hours. I was there and it wasn’t pretty.”
The tires hum beneath us, clicking with the cracks in the road. When we finally exit the city limits, we don’t enter Cottage Grove all over again and my heart beats faster in my chest. This is it. This is us. I squeeze Lincoln’s hand and he gives me a knowing look. “Where are you taking me?” I ask.
His cocky grin surfaces, pushing into the scruff on his cheeks. Hanging his left hand at noon on the wheel, he gets into the gas and motors off into the horizon. “Paradise.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
The Blind Tiger
Two Months Later
A short, bony man approaches the window. His shoulders sink into a protruding ribcage and he’s dressed in nothing but Ray-Bans and a pair of disturbingly short swim trunks. Waves crash in the distance, his wrinkled skin kissed by the sun. Kicking at a seagull picking at something in the sand, he stumbles a bit with the movement. The bird could give two shits and keeps picking at a crumpled popcorn bag with precision strikes. “Goddamn flying rats,” the man grumbles, passing the Chevelle and stepping into the canopy’s shade. “We should be allowed to hunt them once a year!” he says, folding his liver spotted hands on the stainless-steel countertop between us. “Like alligators, sea turtles, and Chupacabra.”
Drying off a clean pair of tongs, Lincoln stops to give him a queer look. “Go on a lot of Chupacabra hunts, do ya Ralph?”
He grins up at us, tanned skin setting off his pearly whites. “Y’all are new to Charleston. You’ll find out soon enough.”
Leaning against my side of the counter, I furrow my brow. “That’s funny you say that because after we closed last night, Lincoln took me to The Blind Tiger.”
Ralph pushes his sunglasses up into his receding gray hair. Big browns stare back, floating on the heavy bags resting beneath. “Oh?”
“We played some darts and then Lincoln orders us another round and goes to the bathroom,” I continue, polishing the same spot of stainless-steel with a clean rag. “And while I’m sitting alone at this table, somebody comes up behind me and yanks on my hair. But when I turned around…no one was there.”
Giving me a comical doubletake, the old timer proceeds to swallow thickly before speaking in a grave voice. “Sounds like someone got bit by the White Widow.”
Lincoln and I look at each other. “White Widow?”
Ralph takes a quick look around to see if anyone is listening, but we just finished off the lunch rush and the strip is quiet. “The Blind Tiger Pub is one of the most haunted places in Charleston and for good Goddamn reason. Stay out!”
“Geez,” Lincoln chuckles, straightening a black apron with red trim – inverted from the food truck’s exterior paint scheme. “You sound like the crazy old guy from Scooby-Doo.”
“Bet your bottom dollar I do, Lincoln!”
“See?” Lincoln laughs. “You just did it again!”
I stare up at Lincoln and sharpen my gaze. “I told you I felt something last night!”
“Yeah, a buzz,” he snickers, filling a squeeze bottle with more hot sauce. “Everyone’s ghost crazy down here and it’s starting to rub off on ya.”
Turning off a fryer, I ignore him. “Why?” I ask, racking a basket of homemade corn chips. “Why is it haunted, Ralph?”
“Welp, Sienna, when you open a business in a building that dates back to 1803, you expect to run into some problems. Bad plumbing, electrical, rotten wood and the such.” Glumly, he shakes his head back and forth. “But those weren’t the kind of problems reported at The Blind Tiger.”
Lincoln looks up. “What kind of problems were reported?”
“Welp, during prohibition, the building housed a brewery owned and operated by a man named Benjamin Tillman, Governor of South Carolina from 1890-1894. They called him Pitchfork due to his aggressive campaign tactics, but when his wife caught him with another woman at the brewery one night, the first lady became the aggressive one.”
My heart starts beating a little faster in my chest and my mouth is suddenly cottonfield dry. Picking up a cold can of Diet Coke, I extinguish my thirst.
“What’d she do?” Lincoln just has to ask.
Ralph grunts, glancing at two pretty girls rollerblading past in sunglasses and skimpy bikinis. “A week later, she scooped up her two little ones in the dead of night and burnt the governor’s mansion to the ground is what she did. With Pitchfork still snoring loudly in his bed.”
“Oh my God,” I mutter blankly, dumping the chips into a paper basket.
Ralph nods his unwavering agreement with my appalment. “Back then, the police were ill-equipped to determine the cause of the fire and, subsequently, ruled it an electrical short. The former first l
ady, who always wore white no matter what, started over again in an old plantation on nearby Kiawah Island.” Gazing out to sea, the wind tousles his wavy hair. Sunlight winks off the Chevelle’s red paint. “That is, until a young detective with some new-fangled lab equipment joined the force. They reopened the case and the press dubbed the first lady the White Widow. After a jury of her peers found her guilty of murdering the poor, cheating governor by arson, she became one of the last people to hang in the great state of South Carolina.” Ralph turns from the ocean to face us. “Right out in the old cobblestone street running past The Blind Tiger.”
Taking a soft-shell taco from a warmer, Lincoln carefully positions it next to the pile of chips, using a rag to wipe away a grease spot from the lip of the basket. “Is that a true story?” he asks, slipping a plastic bowl of his top-secret guacamole inside and proudly sliding the basket across the counter.
“As the day is long,” Ralph replies, chomping down on a chip. “They say the White Widow haunts The Blind Tiger to this day and that if she pulls on your hair, she’s trying to tell you that someone is cheating on you.” He stares right at me. “That someone you know is being dishonest, and it’s time to take matters into your own hands, if ya know what I mean.” Dipping a chip into the chunky guac, he gives me a coy wink and slips his shades back down.
Pressing my lips into a thin, grim line, I hit Lincoln with an accusatory glower.
He shoots his hands up like I have him at gunpoint. “Hey, don’t look at me! I’ve been with you nonstop for the last two months.”
My eyes thin. “What about that one day you went kiteboarding and I went home to take a nap?”
“You’re right,” he admits, shoulders lowering. “I cheated on you that afternoon…with a dolphin named Lucy.”
White Widow Page 16
