by Greta Boris
“Here’s the empty,” Olivia said taking the Ball jar from her purse.
“I used to make this for Doug. That’s why Tomas wanted Brian to have it.”
“Did it help?”
“I think it was beginning to, but Doug died, so I’ll never know.” She gave Olivia a sad smile.
“Your calling may not pay the bills, but it’s important.” Olivia touched Sage’s hand as she took the jar from it.
“I hope so.”
“It is to me,” Olivia said. “Can I give you something for it?”
“I hope you didn’t think I was hinting around about payment.” Sage looked horrified.
“Of course not. I just want to show my appreciation.”
“Knowing it’s helping Brian is all the payment I need.”
“Well, you’ve got free classes at the studio for the month. I’ve already put them into your account.”
“You didn’t have to do that.”
“I wanted to. It makes me feel important, like a real business owner.”
“How does Fiona feel about it?”
“No problem. If you brought her a jar of your magic face cream, she’d give you free classes for life. She wants your complexion when she grows up.”
Sage laughed. “I was going to mix up a batch for myself next week. I’ll make it a double.”
They hugged goodbye. Olivia headed toward her car, but was stopped by a thought. Sage still stood in the doorway, a halo of light around her silhouetted form. “How long did Tom stay in Idaho?” Olivia asked.
“About seven years, I think. Why?”
“Just wondering where he was between college and moving home again.”
“His first teaching job was in Boise, but he didn’t like the winters. Then he transferred to a school in Arizona, but Phoenix was too hot. So like Goldilocks, he came back to California where it was just right.” Olivia could hear the smile in Sage’s voice. She said goodnight again, and continued on to her car.
Idaho and Arizona. The same states the boys in the articles had lived in. It didn’t mean anything though. They were big states. A lot of people lived in them. But it was a strange coincidence.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
OLIVIA CHECKED HERSELF in the mirror on her closet door and adjusted her skirt for the fifth time. She didn’t look like herself. She wasn’t sure if she’d ever worn a skirt this short or heels this high, but she did know she’d never worn any this expensive.
Davy’s blow up the other day had backfired on him. If she was going to be accused of dating Tom, she figured she might as well do it. She’d asked Mike if his offer to keep Brian overnight was good for that Friday, firmed up plans with Tom, and cajoled Fiona into going shopping with her.
They went to the Irvine Spectrum, an overwhelming mini-city of boutiques, chains, and eateries. Fiona was an expert. She knew where to park. She knew the right stores, and she knew the wrong ones—which turned out to be the ones Olivia always shopped in. Fiona talked her into saying yes to the dress, then the shoes, the purse, and finally some costume jewelry.
Olivia pivoted on her heels and checked her profile. The dress fit like a glove—a very tight, very red glove. What had she been thinking? She couldn’t wear this. Panic grabbed her. She hurried to her closet and pushed through the hanging garments like a hunter charging through a jungle. She found the long, pilled cotton skirt and black t-shirt—her old go-out-in-the-evening wear—laid them on the bed, and kicked off her new heels. She grabbed the hem of the red dress to pull it over her head but was stopped by the doorbell.
Seven already? She closed her eyes in defeat, breathed deeply, and stepped into the shoes.
Tom stood on the stoop with a large bouquet of flowers in one hand. His eyes grew wide when he saw her. “Wow. You look... Wow.” Olivia’s cheeks flushed.
He took her to Chad’s in Laguna Beach, one of those new restaurants with a five-star menu and blue-jean ambiance filled with old bricks and Napa wines. Afterward, they walked off dinner in the art galleries on Forest Avenue.
Laguna, like so many Orange County towns, had a personality all its own. It had once been a small beach community populated by artists and hippies. Now it was an international vacation destination with untouchable home prices. But Olivia could still taste the bohemian spice in the cosmopolitan stew, and she loved it.
She breathed in the damp, salt air, glad she’d worn the red dress after all. She didn’t feel like herself tonight, and that was okay. She was someone prettier, someone more sophisticated. Tonight she felt brilliant, and poised, and a touch wild. “You know what I want?” She leaned into Tom’s shoulder.
“No. What?” He smiled at her.
“I want wine. Lots of it. And I want to drink it on the beach.”
“Your wish is my command.”
They bought an expensive blend called Ravish, because she liked the name, glasses and a wine key in a market on Ocean Avenue. When they walked out into the balmy night, Tom turned toward Main Beach, but Olivia stopped him. “I have an idea.”
“Another one?”
“Let’s go to Diver’s Cove. The house Fiona sold is on Cliff Drive. It overlooks that beach. I want to try to find it.”
Five minutes later, Tom parked his Honda on Cliff Drive near the beach entrance. “Do you know which house it is?”
“I’ve heard a lot about it. I think I’ll recognize it when I see it.” They walked along a shrub-lined path dotted with short flights of stairs. Eucalyptus and jasmine perfumed the air. The path opened onto a moonlit cove. Soon it would be busy with scuba divers going for dawn dives, but now it was deserted. They trudged south, dodging the incoming tide, shoes dangling from their hands.
“There. Look.” Olivia pointed to a moss-covered house crouching on the cliffs above them. Glowing French doors peered like eyes from a weathered face.
“It’s kind of creepy looking, isn’t it?” Tom said.
“It is. There was a murder there when Gwen Bishop had it listed.”
“And you find this romantic?”
Olivia sat on a large rock, leaving room for Tom to sit next to her. He opened the wine, handed her a glass and poured one for himself. She pondered the moon’s silvery path across the water, and the stars freckling the stretches of sky visible between purple-gray clouds before answering. It was a romantic setting, but Main Beach had all the same elements. She’d wanted to come here and sit with her back to Fiona’s old house. She wasn’t sure why. “Romantic isn’t the word,” she finally said.
“I’m relieved. I was beginning to wonder about you.”
“Join the club.” Olivia stared into her glass. The deep red liquid looked black on the darkened beach. “When I was a kid, my mom and I lived in Vermont on a farm for a while. There was an abandoned house up the road. It was broken down, roof part way caved in, hidden by wild roses, blackberry vines, and overgrown lilac bushes. It was like a fairy tale. I’d go there to pick berries. On nice afternoons I half-expected Peter Rabbit, or the seven dwarves to show up. But at night, at night the place turned into something out of Grimm’s.”
Olivia took a sip of wine and let it roll around on her tongue. It was delicious. “Anyway, five of us, all under twelve, would go there after dark now and again just to scare the piss out of ourselves. I never understood what the attraction was, why I wanted to go. I just did.”
“When I was a kid, we used to play chicken on the train tracks.” Tom’s voice took on a sleepy quality, like he was telling her about a dream he’d had. “On full moons, a group of us would go there and see who could stand there the longest while the train was coming.”
“That sounds dangerous.” Olivia felt a tingle of fear imagining it.
“Wouldn’t have proved how macho we were if it wasn’t. The train would come roaring up the tracks like a giant bull, and I was the matador. It was a rush. I’d lay there in the dirt only feet away while it screamed past me feeling like I’d cheated death.”
They sat and listened to the s
ound of the waves breaking on the shore for several long moments. Tom broke the silence. “Kind of like Brian.”
“What’s kind of like Brian?” Olivia said.
“Cheating death. Most people who get hit by a car don’t make it.”
Olivia didn’t want to think about Brian’s accident, not now, not here. She didn’t respond.
Tom’s voice grew lighter. “So why are we sitting here anyway? To scare the piss out of ourselves?”
Olivia laughed. “I guess I’m making a statement, turning my back on the scary stuff. The past has haunted me far too long.”
Since she was ten, as a matter of fact. Since that winter a battered Buick station wagon crunched up the long, ice covered driveway at the commune in Vermont. The day before there’d been a big snow fall, then the temperature dropped. The world was blanketed in the uncanny silence that comes when all the moisture in the air has frozen.
Olivia stood at the window of the big, white house with Mark, one of Teach’s kids, and watched the Buick park. It was hard to see the face of the man who exited the car. He was covered in shoulder length, tangled, brown hair, a bushy beard and mustache. He dressed like all the other men on the farm, dirty jeans, construction worker boots, flannel shirt, and a bulky, green, army jacket.
She watched him walk toward the house with nothing more than mild curiosity. Her feelings changed as soon as she heard his voice. It was too bright, too smooth, too smiling.
Olivia had a sixth sense about people when she was a kid. It was a survival mechanism. Her mother loved her, but she was the least protective person Olivia had ever known. Sarah Richards was a trusting soul who believed the best about everyone, even those who didn’t deserve it. Olivia knew as soon as she heard Proctor say “hello,” he was dangerous, but her mother was sleeping with him within a week.
Tom reached up and stroked Olivia’s hair. “Anything I can do?”
“No. It’s being handled.” She hoped that was true. She and Sarah had met with Mike earlier in the week and told him about the blackmail attempt. He’d agreed to investigate. The waiting was hard though. Small ripples of anxiety rolled through her whenever her phone rang. “I saw your mother on Tuesday night. We talked about you.” She moved on to an easier topic.
Tom dropped his hand, tipped his head and looked at the night sky. “Uh oh.”
“No, no, it was all good things,” Olivia said. “She told me how you’d found your calling in college, and how you worked in Idaho and Arizona before you got the job at St. Barnabas.”
“All true.”
“So why did you leave California in the first place?”
“I got accepted to Boise State. It seemed like a good excuse to see another part of the country.” Tom leaned on one arm. “But the novelty of Idaho’s snowy winters wore off in a couple of years. After a little traveling around the Southwest, I’m home.”
“I’m glad you are.” Olivia put her hand on top of his. His expression was unreadable in the dark, his eyes dark hollows, his cheeks shadowed stone. Only his lips glinted wetly in the moonlight. She leaned forward and kissed him.
“I wish we could go away together,” he said when they broke apart.
His statement, so impetuous, so sudden, startled Olivia. “Where?”
“I don’t care. Mexico. San Francisco. The wine country. I’d just like to get out of here. Go somewhere.”
“How about Rome? Or I’ve always wanted to see the Parthenon. Oh, or Egypt. Egypt would be wonderful. So much history.” Olivia waved her wine glass at the sky. “Or, why not the moon?” She refused to take him seriously. There was a hook in this conversation that threatened to snag her and drag her into the responsible, rational world. She wasn’t ready.
He pulled away from her. She grabbed his arm and drew him close again, but the damage was done. She felt the magical braid of night and beach and wine unraveling. They finished their drinks, then in unspoken agreement began to pack up their things.
“I feel like all I do is apologize to you,” he said as they trudged through the sand.
“Are you apologizing now?”
“Yeah. I shouldn’t have talked about taking off together. I wasn’t serious. I mean, of course, I’d love to go away with you, but this is only our third date. It was inappropriate.”
“Fourth, if you count Turk’s, but you don’t need to apologize. It’s just my life is... complicated. I can’t take off whenever I want. I have a new business. I have Brian.”
“You have Fiona, and you have Davy.”
“I could leave the Fishbowl for a week, but I can’t leave Brian.”
“I thought he was doing better?”
“He is. So much better. I don’t want to upset the balance.”
“Would you go away if he wasn’t doing well?”
“Of course not.” She bristled.
“So whether he’s well or sick, it doesn’t make any difference. You wouldn’t go away.” There was an edge in Tom’s voice that made her uncomfortable.
“I’m saying it’s timing. Now is not good timing. Speaking of which, we’d better hurry.” The tide was coming in quickly.
They darted up the beach, coordinating their runs around rocks and over tide pools with the waves. When they reached the first set of stairs, they collapsed with laughter. They were soaked with salt water, speckled with wet sand, and cleansed of tension.
Tom was looking for a serious relationship. He’d made that clear. She liked him—liked him a lot—but she wasn’t ready. Not yet. There were too many loose threads in her life that needed tying up: the Safety Plan, Davy, Proctor. Especially Proctor.
He’d been a boogie man under her bed since she was a child. His invisible, but constant presence had infected her life with its poison. Her marriage, her relationship with her mother, and even her parenting had been tainted by it.
But that was about to change. At this moment Mike was shining his big police flashlight into dark closets and under furniture. He’d find Proctor’s dirt. When he did, the omnipotent monster of her childhood would be defeated once and for all, and she’d be free.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
SATURDAY, JULY 11TH, 1992
I HUMMED TO myself as I washed up the breakfast dishes. It was a sunny Saturday morning, and Doug had woken up in such a good mood and seemed so much like his old self, I’d made pancakes to celebrate. I even let him take the kids to the petting zoo across from the train station without me.
His doctor had adjusted his medications after his fight with Paul two weeks ago. I’d increased the strength of the tea I’d been making him. He was doing better, and I was encouraged.
The tea was an old recipe of Abuela Maria’s. She’d used it to treat depression, senility, nerves, what today would be called ADD, and any other malady of the brain or mood. Every few days, I would send Tomas up the ginkgo biloba tree in the garden to bring me the brightest green leaves he could find. I washed them well, placed a handful with sprigs of rosemary into a bowl, covered them with three cups of boiling water and let them steep for at least ten minutes. After I strained the mixture, I would add in ten to twelve drops of the St. John’s Wort tincture Lily and I made whenever the small yellow flowers were in bloom.
My children had grown up knowing the ways of the garden. Although many of the plants were used to flavor food or had medicinal properties, some were deadly. To my way of thinking, having a garden was like having a swimming pool. It was a pleasure and a blessing, as long as one taught children to respect it.
Just as I placed the last dish into the dishwasher, there was a knock on the front door. I dried my hands on a towel and headed there. Paul Travers stood on the front porch.
As soon as I saw his face, tight and drawn, I knew something bad had happened. My thoughts ran ahead to the petting zoo, to Doug and the children. Had I trusted him too soon?
Paul spoke in a formal tone, not at all like our usual friendly way with one another. “Is your husband home?”
Relief cooled some of
my worry. If he was asking for Doug, he wasn’t bringing news of my family. Yet. I could see something was wrong. “No. He’s taken the kids to the petting zoo. I’m sure they’ll be home soon. Can I help?” I said.
“Little late for that.”
I didn’t respond.
Paul continued in a weary, emotionless voice. “It’s Pepe. He’s been poisoned. The vet says he’ll make it, but it’ll cost a small fortune. Just wanted to let Doug know, although I’m sure he already does.”
“Oh, Paul. I’m so sorry. But you can’t believe Doug would have...” Paul gave me a hard smile, a smile that said that’s exactly what he believed. “Did the vet know what kind of poison? Maybe Pepe got into someone’s rat traps. I know the city was talking about putting something down to get rid of the rabbits in the parks.”
“He thought it might be sago palm. The symptoms fit, and he found seeds in Pepe’s vomit along with half-digested beef. We don’t have sago palm in our yard, and we don’t feed our dog steak.” He and I locked eyes. I had sago in mine. “Sage, I’m going to have to file a report. I know it’s not Doug’s fault, but he’s dangerous. If he’d do this—”
“But he didn’t do this.” My words shot out high and sharp. “How can you think that? He’s been better, Paul. So much better.”
“I’m sorry. I can’t have that kind of threat near my family. What if he goes after Molly or the kids next time?”
“Paul, please. I’m sure Doug wouldn’t have hurt the dog. He—”
“He said he wanted to kill him, then Pepe gets into some poison. Odd coincidence, don’t you think?”
“People say things like that all the time. They don’t mean it.”
“People who don’t have brain damage say things like that and don’t mean it. Obviously, Doug did.”
I heard Lily’s piping soprano, and Tomas’s laugh before I saw my family trudging up the driveway. Why did they have to come home now? If Paul accused Doug, and if Doug threw another punch, it wouldn’t go as easily as it did before. The police had warned me. They said if Doug presented a danger to others, he’d have to be institutionalized.
