Don't Turn Around

by Hunter Morgan

  She looked at him over her shoulder. “You believe everything you read in the paper?” She pulled him down so she could kiss him on the cheek. “Happy birthday, birthday boy.”

  Lincoln rose from where he’d been sitting beside Casey. “Happy birthday. Thanks for having us.” He shook her brother-in-law’s hand.

  “Thanks for coming.” Joaquin walked around the couch, picking up a cracker and a piece of cheese from a plate Jayne had placed on the coffee table.

  Lincoln sat again. “Hey, I never miss an opportunity for birthday cake.”

  “Hi, Ed.” Joaquin munched on his cracker. “I hear you had a nice week at the senior center.”

  Ed stared at the big-screen TV he had pulled his chair in front of. Casey could tell he had heard Joaquin; he was just ignoring him. Her father hadn’t wanted to come for the birthday festivities. He said he wanted to stay home with Frazier. She was beginning to wonder if she should have let him.

  Joaquin turned back to Casey and Lincoln. “Jayne’s in the kitchen?”

  Casey nodded. “But we’re not to go in. She and the kids are preparing your birthday dinner. I understand the cake has lavender icing and a green dinosaur on top. Your son and daughter’s creation.”

  “Long as it tastes good.” He reached for another cracker. “So seriously, what’s up with the lawsuit? Paper made out like it was a big deal, constitutional rights being violated. Innocent man being persecuted and so on.”

  What’s up? Why don’t you ask your wife, she wanted to say. She supports RP. As she contemplated a better reply, Lincoln jumped to the rescue. “It’s not a good idea for Casey to talk about it, Joaquin. The hospital is representing her; this is really more run-of-the-mill than you probably realize. Happens all the time to professionals like Casey, but she still needs to keep the details to herself. You understand.”

  “Sure, sure.” He worked as a counselor for troubled teens, many headed for incarceration. He probably did understand. And he was far less left wing than Jayne. He was a psychologist because he wanted to help people, but he wasn’t so naïve as to believe that everyone was innocent, or even able to be saved. Casey thought it was interesting that Jayne and Joaquin were able to make their marriage work when they often had such opposite views. But Joaquin was easygoing. Like Casey, sometimes he just agreed to disagree with Jayne.

  A loud clatter came from the kitchen and Joaquin looked at Casey and Lincoln. They could hear Jayne chastising one of the kids.

  “Need some help in there, honey?” Joaquin called. “Dinner smells good.”

  “Stay out!” Jayne yelled from the kitchen.

  There was another clatter as if something hit the floor. This time, it was followed by the sound of breaking glass.

  Casey rose off the couch. “Jayne?”

  “Don’t you dare come in here,” she threatened. “I can do this. I know you two don’t think I’m capable of putting on a nice dinner, but I am.”

  Casey sat back down, looking wide-eyed at Joaquin.

  Lincoln smiled, easing off the couch. “How about if I see if she needs an extra hand? She won’t kick me out. I’m still considered a guest.” He waggled his eyebrows.

  “If she throws anything, duck,” Casey warned, leaning over the end of the couch to make sure she’d left her cell phone on ring. She was on call this weekend and Friday nights could be busy, especially in December. Unfortunately, emotions ran high around Christmastime, which meant an increase in alcohol-related car accidents and domestic violence.

  The episode of Storm Stories got louder on the big-screen TV. “Dad, turn it down,” Casey said.

  Ed held the remote firmly, but the volume didn’t go down.

  Joaquin just smiled. “Hey, you want to see what I bought myself for my birthday?”

  She shrugged. “Sure.”

  She followed him down the hall into the small room they used as an office. Like every other room in the house, every surface—the floors, too—was stacked with papers, bags, toys.

  He went behind the desk to a metal gun cabinet where she knew he kept the rifles and shotguns he used in hunting. He took a key off the top, over his head, and Casey watched him unlock the sturdy door.

  She didn’t like guns, but she knew Joaquin loved hunting. She reasoned she could admire his passion, if not the sport.

  He removed a wooden box from the top shelf, set it on top of a pile of Reader’s Digests on the desk, and opened it. “A guy in my hunting club has been bugging me for months to try target shooting.”

  She stared at the handgun he lifted out of the box. “That’s nice.”

  “It’s pretty simple, a Ruger Mk 2. A .22 semiautomatic. A good pistol to start out with.”

  “So you want to compete in target shooting?” She stood back, arms crossed over her chest. She was keeping one ear on what was going on in the other rooms. Lincoln had disappeared into the kitchen, there had been no more shattering of glass and he hadn’t come out, so she figured he was probably safe. The TV continued to blast. “I didn’t know you were interested in that,” she said.

  He shrugged, turning the pistol over in his hand. “I don’t know. I was a good shot in the army. I thought it might be fun. And the guys are nice out at the club. A lot of retired military guys and retired cops.”

  She nodded. “Could be fun.”

  “Maybe. We’ll see.” He reached behind him and pulled out a little cardboard box. “See, you shoot .22 Long Rifle bullets. They give you tighter groups at standard velocity.”

  Casey had no idea what he was talking about, but again, she nodded. He seemed tickled with the handgun. “But it stays locked up, right?”

  “Oh, sure. I bought one of the best gun cabinets they make.” Joaquin put the box of bullets back, then tucked the pistol into the box. “Kids aren’t even allowed in this room, and they wouldn’t dare get near the cabinet.” The pistol back in its box, he returned it to the top shelf, closed the metal cabinet door, locked it, and placed the key on top again.

  “Shouldn’t the key be stored somewhere else?” she asked. “You know, just to be safe?”

  “Yeah. But where would you put it in this room?” He looked around, giving a laugh. “I guess when the kids get a little older, I need to find a place for it. They couldn’t reach the key right now, if they tried.” He came around the desk. “Should we go see how dinner is coming along? I’m starved.”

  “Sure.” She turned around and almost ran into her father, who was standing in the doorway. He had the TV so loud in the living room that she hadn’t heard him come down the hall. “Dad.”

  “Expecting icy rain, sleet tonight,” he told her. “We should go.”

  “Dinner first, Dad.” She straightened the collar of his shirt beneath his sweater. “Cake and presents and then we’ll go home.”

  “Sleet can make the road slick, Freckles. You remember that accident you had when you were in high school? You slid right through the stop sign into the intersection.”

  Casey followed Ed down the hall. Joaquin closed the office door behind him.

  “That was Jayne, Dad, and her accident was in July. You used to call her Freckles, not me.” She rubbed her father’s shoulder. “And she was changing a CD in her stereo when she went through the stop sign.”

  “Daddy!”

  “Daddy!” The children met them in the living room.

  “Come see your cake in the dining room, Daddy.” Annabelle, dressed in a pink tutu over purple tights and body-suit, beamed.

  “Daddy! Daddy!” Little Chad bounced up and down like a pogo stick.

  “You sure it’s okay?” Joaquin asked. “Mommy says I can go in the dining room?”

  “It’s okay, Daddy.” Annabelle took her father’s hand. Chad took the other.

  Lincoln joined them in the living room. “Coast is clear, at least as far as the dining room.”

  Casey watched the children lead Joaquin into the other room. “So, everything going okay in there?” she asked Lincoln softly.


  Her father was in front of the TV again, remote in hand.

  “Dinner looks great.” He leaned over and kissed the top of her head. “How are you with this lawsuit nonsense? You doing okay?”

  She looked up at him. “I haven’t done anything wrong, Lincoln.”

  “I know you haven’t.”

  “The police say they can’t do anything without any proof.”

  “Well, what’s Gaitlin been doing?”

  She shook her head. “I really don’t want you to get involved.”

  He exhaled. “You know, with the RP breathing down their necks, the police will have to be careful. There’s nothing his attorneys would like better right now than a false arrest to add fuel to the fire.”

  “This is a man who should be in prison, Lincoln,” she said steadily. “You don’t understand what a monster he is. He has to be prosecuted for Linda’s death.”

  “I’ve already told the partners that I don’t want to see anything that should cross their desks concerning his case.”

  “They’re not getting involved in the suits, are they?” She looked up into his blue eyes.

  “I don’t think so.” He rubbed the small of her back in a soothing circular motion. “In fact, between you and me, if he’s rearrested on the Truman case, I doubt we’ll represent him.”

  She lifted her brows.

  “Various reasons.”

  “None I need to know about.” She nodded. “I understand.”

  He rested his hand on her hip, holding her against him. “So, you okay? I mean about Gaitlin. Is there something I can do? Something to make you feel safer.”

  She lifted up on her toes, smiling, and kissed him. She liked the idea that he cared enough to ask. “Nothing you can do. I can handle it, counselor.”

  He leaned over. “Can I have another little taste of that?”

  “This?” She kissed him again, this time darting her tongue out to tease him.

  “Mmmm.”

  “Okay, enough of that, you two. This is a G-rated home.” Joaquin walked out into the living room clapping his hands together. He was wearing a pointed paper party hat, as were his two accomplices trailing behind him. “Shall we eat?” He walked over to his father-in-law. “Dinner’s ready, Ed.” He took the remote from him and shut the TV off. “Let’s go,” he said, not giving him a choice. “Jayne has made my abuela’s enchiladas pollo and I know how you love them.”

  “I hate enchiladas,” Ed grumbled, getting out of the chair.

  Casey laughed. “Dad! You just asked me to make enchiladas the other day. I use Joaquin’s grandmother’s recipe.”

  He shuffled into the dining room behind them. “I don’t like enchiladas,” he complained under his breath. “And I don’t like the birthday boy. Jayne should have married Lincoln. I told her to marry him and not this one.”

  Casey met Lincoln’s gaze, and the look on his face was one of such amusement that she had to cover her mouth to keep from laughing out loud.

  “Quite a family you have here,” Lincoln said above the sound of the tooting paper horns Casey’s niece and nephew now possessed.

  “Gotta love ’em,” she whispered, grasping his hand and squeezing it before she let go.

  “Gotta love ’em,” he repeated with a grin.

  The sleet hit the windshield and beaded the way Carmen’s mother’s candy used to bead on the wax paper she dropped it on. Some people tested the temperature of candy by dropping it into water, but not her mom. She liked to see it, touch it. She made it the same way her grandmother had always made it.

  Carmen’s mom could make all kinds of candy. Used to be able to. Brittles, taffies, divinity. Carmen loved the fluffy white divinity made every Christmas. Carmen and her little sisters and their mom would all gather around the kitchen table and make the divinity with its stiff white peaks like snowy mountaintops. Then Carmen’s dad would come home and he would snitch pieces and her mom would playfully slap at his hand. Everyone would laugh, and Carmen’s dad would pull her mom into a big bear hug and kiss her with his sticky-candy mouth.

  A tear slipped down Carmen’s cheek. There would be no more sticky-mouth kisses. Her father had passed away two years ago from lung cancer. Never smoked a day in his life.

  And now, the doctors said her mom wouldn’t make it out of the hospital this time. They weren’t even sure she would make it until Christmas.

  Carmen rubbed her blurry eyes and turned up the speed of the windshield wipers. She hadn’t meant to stay at the hospital so late, but the room had been warm and quiet and her mom had been sleeping peacefully, for once. Carmen just hadn’t had the energy to get up and go home to her two sisters. Tomorrow she would have to talk to them about the situation before she took them over to the hospital after school.

  And soon they’d have to talk about what life would be after. After Mom died. Because Carmen had just turned twenty-one, she would be able to be her sisters’ legal guardian. Her mom had made sure of that before she went into the hospital for her last surgery.

  Carmen had left college in Virginia, midterm, a month ago when her mother had called with the news that she was no longer in remission. Her mother hadn’t wanted her to come home; she’d been angry when her eldest daughter had shown up with her car full of her belongings. But Carmen was glad she had done it. Glad she could be here for her sisters.

  No one had expected the breast cancer to metastasize this fast.

  Carmen shifted in her seat, gripping the steering wheel a little tighter. The road was slick and the sleet was making it hard to see. She cranked up the fan on the defroster.

  At a light, she glanced down at her sweater and the “mosquito bumps” under it. She tried not to be selfish, not to think about it, but she wondered if she would get breast cancer, too. They said it was hereditary.

  Carmen signaled. Turned. The traffic light on the next corner was green and she was tempted to step on the gas, but she knew her Honda might slide. She was the head of the family now. That was what her mother said. She couldn’t take chances like that.

  The light blinked yellow in front of her. She touched the brake lightly, just the way her dad had taught her.

  Both of her parents dying of cancer in two years’ time. What was the possibility of that? She would have to ask her sister Hannah sometime. Hannah, a tenth grader, loved numbers. She loved statistics. She would know what the odds were.

  Carmen eased to a stop at the white line and took her hands off the wheel to rub them together. She’d lost one of her gloves. Had to be somewhere in the house.

  She was cold. She shouldn’t have taken her coat off and thrown it in the backseat. The heater in the Honda didn’t work all that great, and the defroster did nothing to help the matter.

  Carmen’s gaze was fixed on the red light in front of her when she heard a noise to her left.

  It happened so fast.

  The car door jerked open and a guy reached in and yanked her by the arm. She didn’t see his face under the hood. Only the red skull and crossbones on the sleeve of his black sweatshirt.

  Carmen screamed, hanging on to the steering wheel with one hand. All she could think of was that if he killed her, who would take care of Hannah and Molly? She had to fight. She had to hang on.

  Carmen’s foot came off the brake and the car began to slowly roll forward. There wasn’t another car at the intersection. No one coming in either direction. Who would be out on a night like this? Cold. Sleeting. Most people had better sense.

  There was no one to hear her scream.

  Carmen gritted her teeth so hard that her jaw hurt. He was so strong that she couldn’t hold on. She cried out as her hand slipped. She hit the wet road hard. Water splashed up, cold on her face, soaking her jeans. “Let me go!” she screamed, beating him with her free hand.

  He kicked her hard in the small of her back and Carmen’s whole body jerked in response to the pain. He let go of her and she fell hard, her face hitting the ground. She slid a little and something burned her c
heek. Instinctively, she covered her head with her hands. She’d seen a show the other night on TV with her sisters where a mountain lion had attacked a woman riding her bike and she had saved her own life by protecting her head.

  Thankfully, Carmen’s attacker stepped over her, but he started to give her one more kick. She was able to curl into a ball quickly enough so that his sneaker made contact only with her buttocks. She grunted as his foot connected with her tailbone.

  Carmen rolled onto her back in the street and watched him get into her Honda. Her car? He wanted her old Honda? He could have the hunk of junk.

  But her purse was in the car. Not her purse!

  Carmen knew she should just lie there on the ground. Let him go. It was just a car. Just a purse. She could get another.

  “No!” she screamed through tears. As she tried to get up, she squinted in the sleet, hoping she would at least be able to get a good look at him so she could identify him if she saw him again. But the hood of his sweatshirt obscured his face.

  “Not my purse, you bastard!” she hollered. On her feet, Carmen almost made it to the car door before he slammed it, nearly catching her fingertips between metal.

  He hit the gas. The car lurched forward, fishtailing. The side panel hit Carmen hard in the hip, nearly sending her to the icy road again.

  She watched as the taillights glowed, trailing across the intersection. Still not another car in sight.

  “Not my purse,” she sobbed, rubbing her cheek where it now felt as if it was on fire. But it wasn’t the purse she was crying for. It was her mother’s wedding ring, tucked inside it.

  Chapter 22

  “No change?” Adam stood over his grandfather’s bed, his hands resting in the pockets of his gray flannel slacks. The ventilator clicked and whooshed. It was a sound he had come to detest.

  The private nurse looked up from the paperback novel she was reading and shook her head sympathetically. “I’m sorry, Mr. Preston. There isn’t.”

  Adam just stood there looking down at the tiny, shriveled man in the bed. This wasn’t how his grandfather wanted to die. Adam couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to die this way.