The Darkest Corner

by Liliana Hart

  “Bless her heart,” Debra said, shaking her head. “I remember those days. I threw a brick right through Harold’s windshield. The hormones made me do it.”

  “Yeah, that was a good one,” Tatiana said, her smile nostalgic. “That’s the first time I ever had any respect for you.”

  Debra gave her a puzzled look, not sure if she should be insulted or not.

  “What happened to Mavis?” Tess asked, drawing the conversation back on point.

  Carol stuck her hands in two bowls of hot sudsy water, and there was an unholy glee in her eyes at the idea of being the first to impart such a great story.

  “She dropped like a stone onto the floor. Just splat, like an overgrown toddler at the grocery store. She looked like a fool flopping around down there and carrying on. I’m telling you, she’s faking it. Nobody has menopause for eight years. I think she just likes being crazy and getting away with bad behavior. On her way down to the floor I saw her grab a bag of M&M’s right off the shelf and shove them in her purse.”

  “My goodness,” Theodora said, scandalized. “You just can’t trust anyone nowadays.”

  The irony of Theodora making that statement wasn’t lost on Tess.

  “Well I’d like to get back to the subject of Tess and the sheriff,” Tatiana said. “You should try him on for size. Sometimes men have to grow on you.”

  “You and the sheriff?” Jo Beth asked, blinking rapidly.

  “There’s no me and the sheriff,” Tess assured her. “I’m not interested.”

  “It’s because that Henry Pottinger broke your heart,” Carol said, sagely. “You can’t put a timetable on grief and moving on. You take your time. When you’re ready to take the sheriff for a ride, I’m sure he’ll still be available. I think he’s allergic to marriage since Victoria up and left him.”

  “Henry didn’t break my heart,” Tess said. “Mostly he made me want to slash all his tires. But that was just because I’d basically wasted a year of my life trying to plan a wedding he never intended on going through with.”

  “What the hell did you do with all those flocked Christmas trees?” Tatiana asked. “I’ve never seen such a thing. It would’ve been a beautiful wedding. Very Russian.”

  “I put them in the front lawn of the funeral home and sold them all at a discount,” Tess said. “My first inclination was to set them all on fire, but Miller talked me into getting a little money back.”

  “I can’t blame you for wanting to slash his tires,” Jo Beth said timidly. Her breaths were coming in and out so fast Tess wondered how she wasn’t hyperventilating. “The way he called off the wedding in public like that was just awful. He just ruined that whole Fourth of July parade. He really thought the crowd would be on his side when he got up on the bandstand like he did and told everyone he couldn’t marry you because he had to follow his heart.”

  Crystal hadn’t said a word, but she snorted and muttered, “Asshole,” under her breath.

  “And then he called up Tammy right there in front of God and everybody and told her he was in love with her and wanted to spend the rest of his life with her.”

  “You forgot the part where he asked Tess for the ring back so he could give it to Tammy,” Carol said. “I thought Tess’s hair might catch on fire. It got pretty entertaining after that with you tossing the ring in the Dumpster like that.”

  “She’s a Sherman,” Tatiana said. “We always think on our feet. And if her grandfather had been alive, Henry probably wouldn’t have kneecaps.”

  “It was a real spectacle,” Debra said. “I don’t know how you showed your face in public after that.” She pursed her lips judgmentally and said, “If he didn’t break your heart that means you never really loved him. And I just don’t see how that’s possible. He’s an excellent dentist.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” Theodora piped in. “Women marry men they don’t love all the time. She had her reasons. And if Henry was such a hotshot dentist, his front cap wouldn’t have popped off when he climbed into that Dumpster.”

  “It only popped off because he landed on his head,” Carol said. “He was never very coordinated. You dodged a bullet there, Tess.”

  “A bullet would’ve been too merciful for that bastard,” Theodora said. “If it was up to me, I’d have taken my shears and cut out his cold, black heart.”

  And that right there was why Tess had suffered through the ups and downs of her mother’s sickness. There was love there. It only got redirected from time to time.

  “Thank you, Mama. But I’d prefer you stay off death row. Henry has never been worth it.”

  “Don’t worry, baby,” Theodora said. “You’ll find a man who is. Maybe one of those nice young men who works for you. Except for Dante. I’ve already called dibs.”

  “And she’s back,” Tess said, but Theodora had the water on full blast and was scrubbing away at Debra’s scalp.

  “THIS DOESN’T SEEM right,” Elias said.

  Water sprayed from one of the pipes in Tess’s bathroom, and Deacon was getting blasted in the face as he tried to tighten the valve where the leak was.

  “No shit,” Deacon said.

  “Next time just get her flowers, mate,” Axel said. He placed a bucket to catch the drips that weren’t spraying in Deacon’s face. “Women are only impressed by home improvement projects if you can actually do them.”

  “I can do it,” Deacon said. “I wasn’t expecting pipes to start disintegrating the minute I touched them. This could’ve happened at any time. Only now I know where the major problems are.”

  “Right,” Elias said. “Nice save. I don’t see why Eve picked you to seduce the delectable Miss Sherman. I think I’m much more qualified for the job.” Elias smirked and leaned on the shovel he’d been using to fill the wheelbarrow with broken tiles and Sheetrock. “How about we we shoot for her at the range? Whoever is most accurate with the fastest time gets to take her to bed.”

  “Hold on a sec,” Axel said, moving out of the bathroom. “I want to get out of the way before Deacon kills you.”

  “What?” Elias asked, his grin widening. “Seems fair to me. What if she likes me better?”

  Deacon growled and said, “She doesn’t.”

  A gleam of the devil was in Elias’s eyes and he kept pushing. “Want to put it to the test?”

  “I will kill you, and I’ll make it hurt. No one touches Tess.”

  “Staked a claim, have you, brother?” Elias asked. “Why didn’t you just say so? There are plenty of fish in the sea.”

  “You have so much to learn,” Axel said from the doorway.

  “What are you guys, a hundred? We’re in the prime of our life. Women are meant to be savored and enjoyed. Like an eight-course meal, except there’s a different woman at every course.”

  “You’re an idiot,” Deacon said, blotting his knuckles on a rag. “A woman is going to come along someday and make you forget about your eight-course meal. And then she’s going to make you beg and knock you off that pedestal you’ve put yourself on as God’s gift to women.”

  Elias snorted out a laugh. “No woman will make me beg. That’s when you know it’s time to move on to the next course.”

  “This conversation is making me oddly hungry,” Axel said. “It’s still stupid, but I guess it could be worse. He could be using an all-you-can-eat buffet as an example.”

  “Yeah,” Deacon said. “He’s all class with his eight-course meal analogy.”

  “Shut up, the both of you,” Elias said. “If you want to limit yourself to one woman, then it’s your loss. More for me.”

  Deacon felt the panic of those words prickle beneath his skin. “Just stay away from Tess,” he growled. “Can we please get some work done here, ladies?”

  Deacon had decided that if Tess’s bathroom ever had a hope of being finished he was going to have to recruit some help. So after they finished training for the day, Elias and Axel had grabbed their tools and followed him up to the mess.

  They were sup
posed to be on a rigorous training schedule—after all, that was their actual job, not working for the funeral home. So they had spent the afternoon first at the range, each of them put through the rigorous target drills and then eventually progressing to the moving targets. Their speed and accuracy were required to be twice as fast as any other agency’s. They were all exceptional shots—better than exceptional—but Elias was fucking phenomenal with a weapon in his hand, and it was a beautiful thing to watch.

  After they’d finished at the range, they drove out to what had once been a small three-story hospital. It had been built in anticipation of the population boom in Last Stop, but the bypass had taken care of that and they’d left it unfinished and never inhabited. It was a great location to run scenario training. All they had to do was pick a random scenario and upload it to the VR goggles. They could work anything from a terrorist scene to an active shooter to biological weapons and run it through start to finish, using Simunition weapons to make it as real as possible.

  Today’s scenario had been particularly rough—it always was when it involved children—and Colin had ended up with a deep gash across his cheek when he’d rappelled into a window that had a broken shard of glass still attached. He was lucky he hadn’t lost an eye, and Dante had taken him to get stitched up once the scenario had been completed.

  Manual labor or sex were the two best ways to work off the adrenaline after a particularly high-rush training session or an actual op. Since sex wasn’t on the menu, manual labor was the best option. And Axel and Elias had jumped at the opportunity to help Deacon since they were in the same situation.

  “So when you say major problems,” Elias said, “you pretty much mean everything, right? Because this is not even a shell of a bathroom. If we weren’t on the third floor, I’d tell you to knock the whole thing down and start over.”

  “Eve should’ve taken care of this during the renovations,” Deacon said. “There was no reason not to other than she just wanted to make her usual power play. She knows Tess’s psychology well enough to know that she won’t complain about the conditions, and she was already living here anyway. But she always likes to see how far she can push people, how bad she can make their circumstances, before they’ll break. It’s the same reason she had Levi go ahead and do the psych evaluation, even though he was still orienting himself after waking up, and his body was still weak.”

  “Yeah, she’s a bitch. We all know that,” Elias said.

  “How’s Levi doing?” Axel asked.

  “He’s holding on, which I’m sure she knew he’d be able to. He was Kidon Mossad, so she’d know he can withstand torture at an elevated level.”

  “Just because she knows he’ll succeed doesn’t make her any less of a bitch,” Elias said. “It’s a harsh thing to do to put someone through that when your head is pounding and you have flashes of complete memory loss. Or flashes of too many memories.”

  Deacon finally got the water shut off and flung his head to the side, tossing wet hair out of his eyes. He looked down at his scraped knuckles that were oozing blood.

  “You got the Dumpster?” Axel asked.

  “Yeah, they delivered it this morning,” Deacon said. “It’s right outside.”

  Axel walked into Tess’s suite and toward the window and looked down at the lawn. “Looks like a perfect shot to me,” he said, grinning. “Elias, help me lift that toilet. Might as well start with a bang.”

  “It’s a good thing Tess isn’t here to see this,” Deacon said, bothered by the sight of dusty boot prints messing up her bedroom.

  “Don’t worry, it won’t be long before she hears about it,” Elias said with a chuckle.

  Up until now, Deacon had been the only one to invade her personal space, and he didn’t like the idea of other men seeing where she slept and dressed. How they casually looked at her belongings and photographs, or moved her things around to make a path to the window. The territorial instinct was strong, and his adrenaline was still high. He had to talk himself down from those basic, gut reactions.

  They laid plastic across the floor to keep the wheelbarrow from leaving marks, and then Deacon picked up the sledgehammer and decided the best way to take out his frustration was on the shower and what was left of the walls.

  “You think we can get this done in less than six months?” he asked.

  Axel started laughing, and then he kept laughing as he shoveled debris into the wheelbarrow.

  “I think what he’s trying to say is, ‘Hell, no,’ ” Elias said, joining in the laughter.

  Deacon sighed and hoped this wasn’t the thing that would push Tess past her breaking point. Maybe Eve knew what she was doing after all.

  CHAPTER TEN

  The next day, Mrs. Schriever was buried. With her broach.

  There had been no sleeping in on Saturday morning, and Tess had desperately needed it after spending a majority of her Friday at the Clip n’ Curl, and the rest of it keeping herself preoccupied while Deacon worked shirtless in her bathroom. When he’d finally come downstairs sometime after ten, covered in sweat and dust and looking just a little bit frustrated, she was sitting on the bench seat in the kitchen trying her hardest to concentrate on her crossword puzzle book and wondering if she’d be able to button her pants the following morning if she went ahead and ate all the cookies that had been left over from the viewing the night before.

  The look in Deacon’s eyes when he’d seen her sitting there had made her feel hot all over. And a little afraid. There was a lot of passion in his gaze. She wasn’t used to that kind of intensity when it came to physical matters, and for a split second she wondered if he was going to pounce.

  He’d taken a deep breath, tossed his shirt over his shoulder, and then walked straight up to her and given her the sweetest kiss right on the forehead. It had taken her completely off guard. He’d whispered good night and then left her sitting there without a thought in her head.

  Saturday morning, Tess had sighed at the memory and forced herself out of bed and down to the kitchen for coffee. Esther Schriever had chosen a nine o’clock funeral, which meant Tess had to be up at five thirty and dressed by seven.

  She had a slight moment of panic when she got to the bottom floor and remembered she didn’t have a jacket to wear. But the worry was short-lived when she walked into the kitchen and found a new suit jacket in a hanging bag lying across the table.

  She unzipped it and there was a note pinned to the lapel that said: “It’s not too fancy. I hope this one ends up on the floor too. ~S”

  She found herself smiling before she took her first sip of caffeine, and she stroked the collar. And then she realized there wasn’t just a jacket inside, but an entirely new pantsuit.

  There was another note attached to the pants. “Scowling will give you wrinkles. It came as a set. The size should be right since I had the chance to measure you at length. By the way, when can I get my hands on you again? ~S”

  “Incorrigible,” she muttered. “And charming. Good move, Deacon.”

  She had taken her coffee and the suit halfway upstairs before she remembered that her bathroom was a construction zone, so she headed back down to the large bathroom next to the embalming room. In all honesty, this one was much nicer than the one she was used to upstairs. The downstairs bathroom had been completely remodeled, with travertine tiles and heated towel bars. And the walk-in shower had so many shower heads she felt like she was in a car wash.

  Her mood was pretty darn good by the time she got out of the shower and toweled off. She slathered herself in cream with the light lemon scent Deacon had commented on and then pulled on plain black underpants and a matching bra. And then she stood there staring at the suit hanging on the hook on the back side of the door.

  Deacon had said it wasn’t too fancy, but from where she was standing it looked like the fanciest thing she’d ever laid eyes on. There was no label, and that was a bit worrisome, because she’d read in Cosmo one time that clothes without labels were really e
xpensive. She stroked her fingers down the lapel and bit her lip. It felt really expensive.

  “Here goes nothing,” she said, and pulled it from the hanger before she could talk herself out of it.

  She put the whole thing on before she looked at herself in the mirror, but just the feel of the material against her skin was a new sensation. And when she turned around, she almost didn’t recognize the body in the mirror. She had . . . curves. And what looked like cleavage.

  “Holy smokes,” she said, turning so she could see her butt in the mirror. She’d never thought much about her butt before, but after seeing it like this she decided it wasn’t half-bad. The jacket was form-fitting and emphasized her breasts and the smallness of her waist.

  “It’s like a magical suit,” she said in awe. And if she could manage to make it through the day without getting it dirty or tearing a hole in it, she’d consider it a success.

  Friends and family came to lay Delores Schriever to rest. The rain had started up again sometime during the night, so everyone huddled under the tent as the preacher gave the CliffsNotes version of her life. Jo Beth had a freshly colored and styled mane of hair, and she looked an awful lot like Peppermint Patty from the Peanuts gang, only the wet had made the whole thing fall flat so she looked mousier than ever. But Tess had a new respect for Jo Beth after hearing her opinions on Henry the day before. And no one would ever hear it from her about the mechanical bull or the lap dance.

  Delores had had a good and fulfilling life, and Tess guessed that, in the end, that’s all you could ask for. She waited until the crowd dispersed and then gave Axel and Elias the go-ahead to lower the casket into the grave and fill it with dirt. She left them to the job and then drove the Suburban from the cemetery back two blocks to the funeral home. By the time she finished up the final paperwork and put on an old pair of sweats and her University of Texas T-shirt that was so worn and thin it was indecent, it was well after three o’clock.