Bitter End (Seychelle Sullivan #3) (4 page)

Jeannie pulled to the curb in front of an immaculate bright yellow house with a tea-green door. I knew my old family home was just down the street, but I didn’t want to look.
 

“Let’s go,” Jeannie said, swinging open her door.

The colors and the landscaping at the house were different, but I would have recognized her house all the same. I’d spent part of nearly every week of my childhood crossing the yard to that door. Jeannie stepped up onto the porch to ring the bell, and I positioned myself behind her so that her large frame hid me. I pretended to look around the old neighborhood, pretended that I wasn’t hiding, while doing everything possible to postpone having to look at Molly.

The door opened. “Hi, Jeannie. What brings you around here?”

The voice was so familiar, and yet strange at the same time. Our friendship had been marked in large part by our ability to
not
have to say things, our intuition into each other’s emotional state. When my mother had locked herself in her room in one of her “moods,” Molly knew without my having to tell her. And now hearing those few words this morning, I knew—even after all these years—that she didn’t know yet.

“I just wanted to stop by and see how you were managing. See if there is anything I can do to help,” Jeannie said.

“Help with what? Why would I need help?” Molly asked.

“You haven’t heard? Oh, shit. Molly, can we come in?”

“We?”

Jeannie turned to her side to look for me, and even in profile, I saw the expression of puzzlement on her face when she didn’t see me. I turned my head away and tried to look very interested in the Haitian gardener with the hedge clippers across the street. Jeannie grabbed me by the back of my sweatshirt and yanked me up onto the porch. “Yeah, we. Me and Seychelle.”

I stood not three feet from her, so I saw her body stiffen, saw her start to turn aside, to go back into the house, and leave me standing out there, rejected. I couldn’t take that one more time. I said the only thing that I knew would change everything between us.

“Molly, Nick’s dead.”

III

Molly staggered back a step as though I had struck a blow to her body. She raised a hand to her cheek and looked at Jeannie, opening her mouth like an exotic tropical fish.

“Let’s go inside,” Jeannie said.

“What?” She stood her ground in the doorway, trying to get the words out. “Is she—this—” She turned to Jeannie. “Is this some kind of joke?”

When we were little girls and the other girls walked around holding hands or with their arms around each other’s shoulders, we had laughed at them and thought them silly. Molly and I had never been very touchy-feely, probably a result of the mothers we had. So, I surprised her when I stepped forward and put my arms around her, and she knew absolutely in that moment that this was no joke—Nick was dead.

“I saw it happen, Molly,” I whispered into her dark hair, knowing that I was breaking that long-ago promise never to make the first move. “This morning. He was shot.”

I nearly had to carry her inside. Her breathing changed to quiet, ragged sobs, and she buried her face in my shoulder as her legs sagged beneath her. I got one of my arms under hers and, once in the living room, lowered her to the couch. I heard Jeannie head for the kitchen, probably after tea or coffee or, I hoped, something stronger.

Through the soft blue sweater Molly was wearing, I could feel her bones just beneath the skin. I’d never known her to be so thin. Her jeans were bunched at the waist where her belt fought to keep them up. The divorce must have been hard on her, and I wondered all over again how she could have loved him that way, how she could have chosen him over Pit—and me. As I sat next to her on the couch and held her and let her cry it all out, I was amazed that she could feel sadness over losing that man all over again.

We’d been sitting like that, my arm around her and Molly’s body shaking with silent sobs, for what seemed like hours when we were startled by a voice from the dark hallway.

“Mom?”

Molly pushed herself into a sitting position, rubbed at her eyes with the backs of her hands, and stared at her son. Other than in pictures, I’d never seen him before. I knew he had to be about thirteen, but he looked small for his age, his narrow shoulders in a thin T-shirt with a picture of Batman on the front. His hair was fine, dark blond, and behind his round, wire-rimmed glasses, he had eyes the color of the sky at dusk. I couldn’t put into words what aspect of his face resembled his mother’s, but I felt transported back to our childhood, a sense of déjà vu when I looked at him.

“Come here, Zale.” She patted the couch next to her and said, “Sit down, honey.” When he sat, she took him in her arms.

“Mom? What’s wrong? Why are you crying?”

From the surprise in his voice and what I knew of his mother, I imagined this was the first time he had ever seen her cry.

“Something terrible’s happened.” She hugged him tight, then pushed back so she could look into his face. She held both his hands on her lap. “Your dad’s been killed.”

He shook his hands free from hers and slid back away from her. “What? No way.”

“Zale—”

“No. That can’t be right. Dad’s got bodyguards. He told me. He was just gonna go to the boatyard today.”

Molly reached her arms out to her son. “Zale,” she said again, her voice breaking.

“You’re right, Zale,” I said, leaning out to look at the boy on the other end of the couch. “Your dad was on his boat going up the river. But he was alone. I was on my boat behind him, and I saw it happen. Someone up on the Andrews Bridge had a gun.”

The boy looked up at his mother’s face. “Mom?” His face said she was the one person who had always been able to restore order in his world. “It’s not true, is it?” He was shaking his head, back and forth, faster and faster. “She made a mistake, right? Tell me, Mom, it’s not Dad.”

“No, honey. It’s no mistake.” She whispered the words.

The boy jumped up off the couch and let loose an animal-like sound, somewhere between a cry and a retch, and he fled down the hall to Molly’s old room. She stood and followed him, stopping only long enough to give me a look with a face so contorted that for the first time that morning I felt tears wet my cheeks. Not for Nick Pontus or even for the long years I’d wasted away from my friend, but because I knew what it was like to be a kid and learn that one of your parents was dead.

I felt the little projector fire up in the back of my head, the one that replayed the scene over and over whether I wanted to watch or not. I saw the three of us, me, Molly, and Pit, playing together, starting to pack our things into Pit’s skiff for another of our adventures on the river. Then my mother, who had been locked in her room, the curtains drawn, all morning, was there, dragging me away, insisting that I accompany her to the beach, and I saw the lipless line formed by my mouth as I stared out the backseat car window, my arms crossed tight on my chest.

The sound track plays my silence louder every time I have to watch. I see my mother’s face, the way her mouth turned up on one side in a mirthless little half smile. And every time she asks me her question, asks if I will ever forgive her, I speak the one word I spoke to her that whole afternoon, and my “No” is louder and more resounding and more full of condemnation each time. The scene jumps then to me going through the crowd on the beach and seeing my mother’s white foot in her purple beach shoe. The color of her skin is wrong, as is the color of her lips where the lifeguard labors, trying to blow life back into her body. Unlike Molly’s son, I never went through any denial. From the moment I saw that foot, I knew she was dead.

Jeannie came in from the kitchen with ceramic mugs and a bottle of rum on a tray. She lifted her eyebrows.

“I take it you heard,” I said. I knew how sound carried in that little house.

“Yeah, that’s tough,” she said. “Even though everyone else in the world thinks Nick was pretty much of a shit, to that kid, he was still dad.”

Molly came back into the living room and collapsed on the far end of the couch. “He says he just wants me to leave him alone for a while. He won’t even let me in.” She leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees, and ran her fingers through her hair. “I can’t believe this is happening.”

Jeannie placed a steaming mug on the coffee table in front of her and offered her the bottle of rum and a box of tissues. Molly nodded and blew her nose while Jeannie poured a good slug of liquor into all three mugs.

“So, what do you think’s going on, Molly?” Jeannie said. She settled onto the large ottoman on the far side of the coffee table. “Any idea why nobody’s called you yet?”

“It’s
her.
You know that.”
 

I looked back and forth between them, not getting it, missing the inside scoop. Molly put her face in one hand and rubbed her forehead just above her brows. It looked like she was trying to make a pain go away. When I caught Jeannie’s attention, she rolled her eyes and shook her head.

Molly continued. “
She’s
the next of kin now. Not me. I’m sure they’ve contacted
her
.”

“Molly, it’s probably just an oversight. Don’t go reading something more into it,” Jeannie said.

“You don’t know her like I do, Jeannie. I keep telling you that. You only see the public side of her. Inside she’s mean and nasty. She’d do anything to keep me out of their lives.” She drew in a quick gasp of breath and sat up straight. “Oh my God.” She put her face in both her hands and mumbled something under her breath that sounded like the word “stupid.”

“What is it? What did you just think about?”

“I was going to call you, Jeannie,” Molly said without lifting her head. “Something happened last Friday night when I dropped Zale off at Nick’s for the weekend.” She sat up and began pounding her fists on her legs, saying, “Shit, shit, shit.”

“Molly,” Jeannie said. “Calm down. Start at the beginning. Tell me what happened.”

I saw her chin tremble as she struggled for control. The whites of her eyes flashed brightly as she searched around the room, and I remembered what it was like the first time we went back to her house after a movie and found her parents in the kitchen, passed out in the middle of broken glass, spilled vodka, and blood. She’d looked at me then trying to find the words to explain how that was just a part of her world. In the morning, they had smiles and Band-Aids on their faces and life went on.

I took her hand. “You took your son to Nick’s house,” I said. “Then what happened?”

“His new wife, Janet. She hates me. I don’t know why, except that Nick and I are still friends. We talk about Zale.”

I noticed she was still referring to Nick in the present tense.

“Anyway, she’d do anything to hurt my feelings. And she leads Nick around like she owns him, like he’s her pet dog. She’d talked him into going after full custody of Zale. I don’t know why, because she never really seemed to like having him over there. When I went to the house Friday, Nick invited me in. He never does that. Zale went upstairs to his bedroom. He and I’d had a fight, too. He didn’t want to go to his dad’s, and I had to make him go. Zale’s crazy about his dad, but he can’t stand it when she tries to play stepmom.”

“Okay, so what happened then?”

“Nick took me into the living room, poured me a glass of wine, and told me he thought Zale should live with him full-time and visit me only on the weekends. I was stunned. This came totally out of nowhere. Then she came in with that brother of hers, Richard. He was one of Nick’s charity cases. He’s kinda’ pathetic. Thinks he’s gonna make it big someday as a Christian country singer. Nick hired him when he was a drunk homeless vet living on the street, got him to AA, and the guy worked his way up through the ranks. Now he captains the TropiCruz boat that runs out of Hollywood. Anyway, whatever happened overseas, the whole Desert Storm thing really messed him up. I hate to send Zale to their house when Richard’s there. He’s always falling off the wagon.”

I’d forgotten how crazy she used to make me with these long-winded stories of hers. “Molly, get to the point.”

She waved her hands in the air in a gesture that suggested she was either surrendering or parking a jet. “It was like they were ganging up on me, all three of them. They said they could provide him with a much better life than I could, that I was too
eccentric
. They disapprove of my lifestyle, of my homeschooling Zale. They say he’s suffering here because I don’t allow him to have a TV or play video games.”

I shook my head. “Geez, Molly. You’re still into all that? You probably make him eat natural foods, too— no McDonald’s or anything?”

“What’s wrong with wanting to raise a healthy child?” Jeannie said, “Is that the only reason you’re so upset? That’s it? So you argued the last time you saw Nick alive. Honey, after the way that bastard treated you, you should have threatened to hack his balls off.”

“It was more than just an argument.” She looked at me, then back to Jeannie. “You know how crazy they make me.”

Jeannie set her mug down on the table. “What did you do?”

Molly hung her head between her hunched shoulders and stared at the floor for several seconds before she continued. “Well, when Janet started telling me that Nick was going to go to court to prove I was an unfit mother, I just lost it.” She looked up and fixed her eyes on mine. “Here’s this twenty-five-year-old blackjack bimbo telling me how to raise my child, and there’s my son’s idiot father going right along with it, hanging on every word she’s saying. I just blew. I threw my glass of wine at him and ran out into his driveway. I yelled so loud, I’ll bet even his neighbors heard.”

“What did you say, Molly?”

“I didn’t really mean it.”

Jeannie looked away. “Oh shit, what did you say to him?”

“I told him if he tried to take my son away from me, I’d kill him.”

IV

Nobody said anything at first. I kept hearing her voice echoing in my head, so the silence didn’t weigh on me. When we finally started talking, we took Molly’s words and tossed them this way and that, discussed what she’d said, offered up different ways of looking at it, and after about fifteen minutes we were all exhausted, and still hadn’t found a way to put a positive spin on it. First of all, there was no way to keep it quiet. According to Molly’s version, Janet hated Molly so much, she would never consider keeping such a thing to herself. Jeannie downplayed the issue of animosity from Janet, but pointed out that the homes in that neighborhood are very close together, and, by her own admission, Molly had screamed at Nick. Someone else certainly heard, and the police would talk to the neighbors. And second, even without having made a threat, it was like Detective Mabry said, the family was the first place they would look for suspects.