“What’s up?” she asked, closing the door behind them.
Sienna filled Juliet in on her conversation with Gretchen about Charlie Goodman. “It doesn’t sound like much, but it’s someone Richard no longer spoke to who had a pickup truck.”
Juliet nodded. “Yeah, doesn’t sound like much at all. But I’ll go check it out. Was that all?”
Sienna pursed her lips. “Why are you being so short?”
“Am I?”
“Just tell me, what’s going on?” Sienna asked.
“I’m not being short. I have a ton of work to do and I have to get a jump on it. That’s all.” She could feel the petulance oozing out of her and she hated herself for it.
“You’ve been distant since last night. I get it, but I don’t think this is the right way to go about it.”
“I haven’t been distant,” Juliet said.
“Yes. You have.”
“Nope, I haven’t.”
“Damn it, Juliet. Just stop it.” Sienna slammed her hand on Juliet’s desk, then straightened up immediately. “Sorry.”
Juliet was taken aback but quickly regained her composure. “I don’t mean to be distant or cold. It’s just that everything is weird right now and I really don’t want to stay in the house that you live in with Will. Seeing you in the same space makes it even weirder, and more…real, I guess.”
“Juliet.” Sienna’s voice was soft. “What was I supposed to do? Tell him he couldn’t come in the house? Don’t you think that would have raised a few eyebrows?”
“Probably! And he’s being so helpful with my house and he has no idea that I’m a terrible person. Maybe I should just stay somewhere else, like I suggested in the first place. I could take a week off and go spend some time with my parents in Connecticut. Or I could just go to the motel or I could sleep on Celeste’s couch. Any of those options would presumably be less uncomfortable than staying at your house.” Juliet felt a wave of guilt at the look of hurt on Sienna’s face.
“Okay. I get it. Let me know what you decide.” Sienna tightened her sweater and whipped her bag over her shoulder.
“Sienna, wait. I didn’t mean for it to come out that way. I’m all jumbled inside, and I know I sound more like an eighth grader than a woman pushing forty, but this whole thing is messing with me.”
“Do you think it’s not messing with me? Juliet, I haven’t had feelings for anyone besides Will in over a decade. And I haven’t even had that with him in…well, a very long time. It’s messy and it’s unfair and part of me wishes that I could just go back to seeing you as Declan’s mom, who shows up now and again and we make small talk about the weather and about Declan’s baseball games and that’s it. And the other part of me doesn’t want that. At all.”
Juliet didn’t know what to say. She’d been so afraid of the things that she’d been feeling she hadn’t given much thought to Sienna’s mental state. She sighed and fiddled with the bobby pin keeping her twist in place. “I just think it might make more sense if I stay somewhere else. For both of us.”
“I don’t want you to go.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know,” Sienna said after a moment.
“You’re just a bundle of answers, aren’t you? Same as me,” Juliet said with a short, humorless laugh.
“Excuse me,” Mr. Mullen interrupted, poking his head through the door. “Sorry to bother you, but would you mind giving me a tour of your power facility? Or leading me to someone who can? I can’t seem to find the chief or the mayor.”
“Certainly.” Juliet grabbed a pile of keys off of her desk. “Sienna, can we finish discussing this issue later on?”
Sienna straightened her jacket. “Of course. Will you be coming to my office for the discussion, or will I need to find you elsewhere?”
Her meaning was clear. Juliet made a split-second decision that simply walking away from it probably wouldn’t help matters much. “I’ll see you at your office.”
Sienna was visibly relieved. She excused herself and slipped past Mr. Mullen. Juliet watched Sienna pull out of the station driveway, and a swirling pit of unease settled safely inside her stomach. She led Mullen to the town’s electric plant a few blocks over, which served only Shell Creek and Salt Creek. Her cell phone rang, and the caller ID showed that it was from the county lab she’d left the whisky bottle with. She left Mr. Mullen with the plant supervisor and took the call outside.
“Hello, Lieutenant Mitchell. The results have been emailed to you as well, but I saw a note that you’d asked for a call when the results were completed.”
“Yes, thank you. What did you find?” Juliet asked.
“The bottle contained a mixture of rye whiskey and sublingual nitroglycerin. There is a trace of gelatin that suggests the nitroglycerin was emptied from capsules.”
Juliet closed her eyes. So, someone had emptied Kowalski’s pills into his whiskey. So far, the only people who knew about the whiskey were Kowalski and Tara Wolfe.
“Thank you. Were there any viable fingerprints left behind?”
“There were, yes. The deceased’s fingerprints were on the bottle, along with another set we’ve been unable to identify. It’s a partial print, and not a very good one at that.”
“That’s helpful. Thank you again,” Juliet said.
“Not a problem and the detailed results are in your inbox. Have a good day.”
Juliet ended the call and decided to go find the chief. If Kowalski had wanted to kill himself, he’d have taken a handful of pills and swallowed it down with his whiskey. What would be the point of emptying capsules one by one into the bottle and hoping to drink enough for the mixture to be fatal? No, that didn’t make sense. Someone had emptied his pills into that bottle and waited for him to poison himself.
She jogged back to the station and opened the email from the lab to see if she could connect any additional dots before asking a few of Richard’s family members and colleagues to submit fingerprints. She could always count on work to distract her from the mess of relationships.
Chapter Twenty-three
Screams emanated from the television, the pulsing blue light in the darkness providing a much-needed distraction. Sienna shoveled a handful of microwave popcorn into her mouth while Declan sat on the chair across from her, scrolling on his phone.
“This is dumb.” He kept looking up at the screen intermittently.
“Come on, this is a modern classic. The first of its kind to do the whole ‘found footage’ thing,” Sienna said. The iconic scene of one of the campers with her face in the camera, nose running and all, was playing. “It’s actually terrifying.”
“Oh, please,” he said, though he didn’t look away.
A high-pitched witch cackle came from behind them and caused the two of them to scream. Sienna spilled popcorn all over her lap and Declan threw his phone to the ground.
“Wow, you guys are easy,” Juliet said. She was laughing so hard Sienna could see tears in the corners of her eyes.
“What the hell, Mom?” Declan yelled. “You could have broken my phone!”
“Oh, this isn’t scary, this is for babies,” Juliet mocked him.
“Whatever. It’s only because it’s dark in here and you surprised me.” He gave her an epic eye roll.
Sienna smiled at their interaction. They had a great relationship, and she was glad Declan had such a good support system. “Take a seat, we’re getting to all the good parts now,” Sienna said. She patted the couch next to her, trying to make it seem like everything was normal.
She sensed Juliet’s hesitation, but Juliet sat next to her anyway. She removed her hairpin and let her hair fall over her shoulders. She looked good either way, but Sienna loved it when she wore her hair down. Not that it mattered.
“Give me some.” Juliet took her own handful of popcorn. “We should take a field trip to Maryland to see if we can find the Blair Witch ourselves.”
“You guys can go. I’m not wasting my time in the woods looking for
some made-up witch.” Declan scoffed.
Juliet looked at Sienna with wide eyes. Sienna caught her drift and covered her mouth.
“What?” Declan asked, seeming the slightest bit uneasy.
“Legend has it that if you say out loud that she doesn’t exist, she comes and proves it to you. While you sleep. Why did you have to say that?” Juliet asked. Sienna had to give her kudos for how genuinely shaken she sounded.
“That’s bull…crap.”
Sienna uncovered her mouth slowly. “Didn’t you ever hear about that girl in Delaware? She told her friends it was all a myth and that the Blair Witch could bite her ass. The next day, she was found floating facedown in a pond behind her house. And she never went near that pond because she was deathly afraid of water. It was ruled an accident, but everybody really knows what happened that night.”
“Stop trying to scare me, it’s not going to—”
“Behind you!” Juliet screamed.
Declan leapt out of his chair so fast he knocked it over. Sienna was laughing as hard as Juliet was, and at one point, Juliet put her hand on Sienna’s knee. Sienna looked at it but didn’t acknowledge it. She didn’t want her to pull it away.
“You guys are dicks!” Declan yelled, fixing the chair.
“Language!”
“You deserved it! Go ahead and watch your stupid movie. I’m going upstairs to play Smell of Death,” Declan said. He stomped away, but Sienna could see the hint of a smile on his lips.
“Keep the light on,” Juliet called after him. She smiled again and took a drink of her soda. “It’s always fun to scare the shit out of your kid. He’s done it enough times to me that I feel sort of vindicated right now.”
“Not sure we’ll win any parenting awards, but you’re right, that was good,” Sienna agreed. Their eyes met for a second before they both looked away.
They finished the movie in relative silence, providing commentary here and there. When it was over, Juliet stood and stretched. She was still in her uniform.
“I’m gonna call it a night,” Juliet said, bringing the empty popcorn bowl and soda cans into the kitchen. “It’s been a very long day.”
“Agreed,” Sienna said. She followed Juliet up the stairs, taking a left toward her own room while Juliet went into the guest room. “Good night.”
“Night.”
Sienna changed into a silk nightshirt and turned off all the lights. She went through her nightly skin care routine, tried to read the book that she’d had lying on her nightstand for the last month, scrolled through her phone for a few minutes, and then decided that it was useless. Her brain was too full, moving from one subject to another and always back to the one person she shouldn’t be thinking of. She stared up at the ceiling for a few minutes and then threw the covers off angrily.
She sat in the oversized chair near her vanity, still in the dark. Her nightshirt was tucked under her knees, her toes curling and uncurling in response to her indecision. She wasn’t sure if she should just burst into Juliet’s room and tell her that they needed to talk, or if it would just be awkward and tense for the foreseeable future. The door to Juliet’s room was made of both iron and cardboard. Too much, not enough.
It turned out that she didn’t need to make that decision. Sienna heard her door snick softly open. She watched as Juliet tiptoed into the room a few feet, presumably assumed that Sienna was sleeping, and attempted to slink back out.
“I’m here.” Sienna broke the silence. She didn’t bother to whisper. Declan slept like the dead.
Juliet jumped. “Jesus, Sienna. Why are you sitting in the dark?”
“Why are you in here?” Sienna asked, ignoring her question.
“I couldn’t sleep.”
“Neither could I.”
Juliet closed the door behind her and stumbled in the dark until she was sitting on the edge of Sienna’s bed. Even in the dark Sienna could tell she was hesitant and uncomfortable.
“Are you angry?” Sienna’s voice was softer now.
Juliet chuckled bitterly. “Not for any rational reason, Sienna. I just don’t want to sweep this whole thing under the rug and be weird around each other anymore. We can acknowledge it, get past it, and move on. We don’t need that kiss to define what we are to each other. Or maybe we do. I don’t know.”
“We’re treading dangerous waters.” Sienna tucked her knees under her chin, suddenly feeling chilled.
“I know. But I feel like if I don’t tread, I’ll drown. We’ve been dismissing whatever this thing is between us for a while now.”
“Okay.” Sienna took in a monumental breath. “I’ve known this for some time, but what happened in the basement confirmed it for me. I’m attracted to you.” That was putting it mildly.
“Same.”
Sienna rolled her eyes in the darkness. “Good. So, we’ve admitted that we have an attraction toward each other. Does that clear anything up?”
“You know it doesn’t.”
“I do know that. Then maybe we shouldn’t have to drag it out of each other. Just tell me,” Sienna said, though her heart was pounding out of her chest. She was petrified to hear what Juliet had to say; she was even more afraid that she’d never hear it.
“This is hard for me, Sienna. I think, maybe, I mean, I’m pretty sure anyway, that this…is more than an attraction. I like you.”
Sienna swallowed. “Okay?”
“Yeah.” Juliet fidgeted on the bed. Sienna heard her foot smack against its wooden leg. “So, I think it’s been a long time coming. Since that day we drove Dec to summer camp, there was like this little spark, and it wasn’t huge or anything, but it was there, and it never went out. And then we went out for coffee and I saw you around a couple times, and it grew a little bit more each time I saw you, but I ignored it. And then we started working together, and it just kind of ballooned into this bonfire I can’t control anymore. So…yeah.”
Sienna could feel the vulnerability exuding off Juliet, which only made her want her more. Everything Juliet said stabbed her in the heart with an ice pick. She wanted to cry but pushed it down as far as it would go.
“I feel that way too, Juliet,” Sienna said. She could barely elevate her voice above a whisper. “I’m trying to be rational about this, in any way that I can. I know a fair amount about the human psyche, and infatuations are common. Especially when the object of that infatuation is off-limits.”
Juliet stood. She paced back and forth. “It’s not an infatuation. I’m not interested in you because you’re ‘off-limits.’”
“How do you know?”
“I just know. This isn’t my first rodeo, though it probably seems like it.”
Sienna didn’t want to push. This was the most open they’d ever been with each other, so forcing Juliet to admit something she didn’t believe certainly wouldn’t help the communication.
“What about Will?” Sienna asked.
“I love Will. I’ll always love him, he’s a good friend and a good father and we’ve been through a lot over the years. He would hate me if he knew how I felt. Same question goes for you, what about Will?”
Sienna sighed. “I don’t want to hurt him. That has never been my goal. But we’re not getting back together. I’ll always care about him and he’ll always be important to me, in one way or another. But I’ve let this linger for much too long. I’ve been ready to move on with my life for years at this point, but I was so determined not to hurt anyone or blow up a ‘perfect’ life that I just sat idly by and watched the days and nights pass in front of me. I can’t do that anymore. I won’t.”
“And I am one hundred percent not saying you should. But you’re not legally divorced yet. Wouldn’t that be cheating? Technically?” Juliet sat back down on the edge of the bed and crossed her legs at the ankles.
“I don’t know. I don’t know the protocol for that kind of thing. It doesn’t feel like cheating because it’s been over for such a long time. Will would probably feel otherwise. Our hearing is set for
December thirteenth and at that point it will be over. I’ll be Sienna Carter again, and I don’t really know who she is. But I have an idea what she wants.” Sienna bit her bottom lip. It was vague, but not really. Juliet wasn’t naive.
“Which brings me to my second point. When you and Will are finally divorced, aren’t you going to want to go out into the world and see what’s out there? Date around, do new things, be Sienna Carter, single woman, for a while? I’m not saying that if you and I…I don’t know, but I’m not saying that it’s instant commitment or anything, but I’ve been single for a while and I don’t want…that. I know I’m being evasive, and I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be.” Juliet’s leg was shaking as though she was leaning on a nerve.
“I understand where you’re coming from,” Sienna said. “But I’m not interested in being a serial dater. It’s not my thing and it never has been. Remember, I was in my thirties when I met Will, so it’s not like I have wild oats to sow.”
She heard Juliet swallow hard. “Sienna. What if this is…fleeting? We have this Romeo and Juliet thing going on, and I won’t deny it, I’ve thought about how this could possibly work and what effect it would have on our lives. But you have to understand my hesitation in blowing up everything I’ve worked so hard for, for a maybe.”
Sienna flinched. Juliet was right, but that didn’t make the sting any less biting. “Well, that hurt. But I do understand what you mean.”
“I’m sorry. I know you love Declan, and I know you don’t want to hurt Will any more than he’s already hurting. Would you be willing to jump into something with me, knowing the damage it would do?” Juliet asked.
Heart of the Storm Page 14
