Dark Halo (An Angel Eyes Novel) (6 page)
“You like that girl, Brielle?” Her voice is calm, her posture relaxed.
“What?”
“Forget it. I’m not going to talk to you when you’re all tetchy like this. I’m heading to Beacon City and I’d like you with me. But if you’re going to be awful company, I’ve got the radio.”
She drops her phone in the console and flicks it on—talk
radio, some kind of political soapbox channel. Marco grits his teeth and slams his back into the seat. Clenching his bag tight to his chest, he turns his face away and watches the trees fly by. Patches of shadow and light roll over the car. Shadow. Light. Shadow. Light. It’s disorienting to be pelted by one after the other.
Twenty minutes pass before he’s calm enough to look at her again. Tired of hypocritical rantings, he reaches forward and turns down the radio.
“How can you listen to that guy?”
“I was just trying to outlast you.”
In the console between them, her phone beeps.
Keith
Matthews
flashes on the screen, but she slides her finger across it, ignoring the call.
“What’s with you two?” Marco asks.
“Keith? Nothing. He’s interesting, I guess.”
“You’re such a liar.”
“What? You don’t like him?”
“I don’t dislike him, but he’s not interesting. Not to someone like you.”
“You haven’t seen me since we were kids, and you somehow know what I find interesting. How’s that?”
“I just do,” he says.
“You’re full of it.”
“I do. Liv, I know you.”
“You don’t know me.”
There’s a bitter edge to her voice, and it silences him.
“What about you?” she says, shaking the hostility from her face. “His daughter, Brielle. You think she’s interesting?”
“She was Ali’s best friend,” Marco says, “and between her
and Jake I never went more than two days without some sort of call or doughnut-laden care package while I was holed up getting poked and prodded like some kind of science experiment. She’s beyond interesting. She’s family.”
“But she can be a bit much, right? Her intensity level’s off the charts.”
Marco smiles. “Yeah, she’s a lot like this other girl I know.”
“What, me?” she says, feigning surprise. “I’m intense?”
“You are intensity defined.”
“Yes, well,” she says, fumbling for something in the console. “I’ve got grown-up responsibilities. Some of us are paid to be intense.” Her shoulder slides out of her silky blouse as she jams a cigarette between her teeth. It trembles.
“You want a light?” he asks, punching the cigarette lighter.
“Nah. I don’t smoke. I just, you know . . .” She pulls the cigarette from her mouth and puts it back in.
He narrows his eyes. “No, I don’t think I do.”
“Oh, come on,” she says, her laugh hollow. “You’re an actor. You pretend all the time. It’s cathartic being someone else for a while, isn’t it?”
“So the cig helps you pretend.”
“Sure. Like a prop.”
“Like a prop?”
She rolls t the Prince’s haloSJowhe window down and lets the wind suck on her hair while she chews the end of the unlit cigarette.
Marco watches her for a while. Finally curiosity gets the better of him, and he calls loudly over the wind, “Why are we going to Beacon City?”
She glances at him then, pulled from whatever thought had her miles away. “You ever been there?”
“When I was a kid. My mom took me. Ice-cream cones and kites on the beach. Water too frigid to swim in.”
“That’s right,” she says, nostalgia written all over her face. “You remember the Bellwether?”
“Sure,” Marco says. The Bellwether Lighthouse. It was decommissioned years ago. “We used to climb the rocks on the cliff there. Why?”
“’Cause I bought it.”
The highway grows dark as the road narrows, trees growing up on every side. Through the shifting light he watches her, confused.
“You bought a lighthouse?”
“Well,” she says, lifting a piece of tobacco off her tongue, “the foundation bought it.”
“Does the foundation make a habit of acquiring assets that technology has made outdated?”
“Only since I’ve taken over. Henry would never have allowed such a thing.”
Henry’s name sits between them. It festers like an open wound for a solid minute before Marco regains enough of his composure to speak in measured tones.
“I hate him, Liv. When you stormed into the house today and said ‘Get in the car,’ I thought that’s where we were heading.”
It’s another painful minute before she answers him. “You’re not the only one who hates Henry, and you’re not the only one who wants him dead. But I’m not taking you to him.”
Marco explodes, measured tones forgotten. “Then why am I here?”
Unfazed by his frustration, Liv flicks the cigarette out the window, and with the press of a button the wind is closed outside. “Let me tell you about the lighthouse, okay?”
He’s angry and confused, doing his best to not think about all the crazy that’s found him since the psych hospital gave him a clean bill of health. But it’s the gleam in her eye, the excitement there—about a lighthouse, of all things—that does it. Girls have always been his Achilles’ heel. Beautiful, passionate girls. He deflates, settling against the seat once again.
“Go ahead. Tell me about your bouncing baby lighthouse.”
She smiles. The first real em;
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.tx1D1Aone he’s seen since they stumbled into one another at the lake last week.
“Well, about a decade ago this old couple cashed in their retirement and bought the Bellwether. They converted the light-keeper’s house into a pastry shop. Adorable little place. A rock garden out back, sea spray on the air, and the best chocolate tarts you’ve ever had, I swear.”
She removes a hair tie from the emergency brake, and with both hands pulls her hair into a ponytail. The car veers slightly left.
“Geez,” Marco says, moving to help with the steering wheel. She swats his hand away and steers with her knees as she continues to talk.
“It wasn’t long before the unthinkable happened.”
“The economy tanked?” Marco guesses.
“Yes, and this poor old couple went belly-up. Their life savings, retirement fund, children’s inheritance, everything.”
“Sucks,” Marco says. It does suck, but it’s a story heard ’round the world these days.
“So the Bellwether sat on the market for months. I watched it, watched the price drop. Finally, when it dropped far enough, I jumped in and snatched it up. I’d like to use it one of these days.”
“Use it for what?”
“Here’s something I bet you didn’t know about Beacon City. It houses one of the largest group-home programs in the state. Thought it’d be a great work project for them . . . if we could get it up and running. Teach the kids to cook, teach them to run a business.” She shrugs. “I paid next to nothing for the place. If it fails, it fails. But if I can turn it into something, it’ll be great press for Ingenui and a great pick-me-up for a seaside town in desperate need of some help.”
He’s still annoyed but kind of impressed. “I didn’t know you were such a bleeding heart, Liv. Thought you were all business.”
“My heart bleeds a bit.”
But Marco can tell this is more than just a side project to her. He knows what it is to dream, to put yourself out there and cross your fingers that it all pans out.
And he knows what it’s like when the foundation your dream is built on crumbles.
“It’s a kind thing to do, Liv. A great idea. Really.”
“Yeah, well. Don’t go all sappy on me. For now that’s all it is. An idea. The board doesn’t even know I bought it.”
“Don’t you need permission?”
Another shrug. “I do what I want, and the board usually backs me. It’s when projects go astray that they leave me high and dry.”
“Happen often?”
“No,” she says, a wicked little smile curling the right corner of her mouth. “Not often.”
“So that’s where we’re heading? Bellwether? Why?”
She stabs at the radio, snapping the nail on her index finger. She curses and jams the injured finger into her mouth.
“Liv, why are we going to Bellwether?”
“I’m letting the old couple rent the keeper’s house back from
me for now,” she says, her voice muffled over the finger. “Mostly because I’m in love with their salted caramel truffles. You’re going to die when you taste them. Gosh, that hurts,” she says, withdrawing the finger and prodding it with her thumb.
“Liv . . .” He takes her hand in both of his. “Why Bellwether?”
“Your hands are clammy,” she says.
“Liv, please.”
“I have a business meeting, okay?” She tugs her hand away and cranks the radio up, stabbing at it until she finds an obnoxious hip-hop station.
Marco shouts over the music, “And you need me there because . . . ?”
“I don’t,” she calls. “But road trips are more fun with a friend. You are my friend, right?”
“Liv . . .”
“Let it go for now, Marco, okay? I’m driving. I want you with me. Can’t that be enough?”
She’s used to being in charge. He can tell that by the set of her jaw, by the tiny lift in her brows. She’ll do whatever it takes to get her way too. It’s the seductive pout of her lips that tells him that.
“You promised me Henry,” he says, turning the radio down.
“Henry’s dying, Marco. Take me instead.”
A thrill slides up his spine. The curve of her cheek, the bright caramel of her " aid="AFMAQ">
W
hen I walk into the kitchen, Miss Macy’s still here. Her hip is pressed against the granite island, a dish towel thrown over her shoulder. Good. I was counting on her sticking around. What is a little shocking is the presence of Pastor Noah. Dad’s not a fan of the guy, and this makes twice in the past week the pastor has braved my kitchen. His wife, Becky, is here too. Tall and lean, her brunette hair curling under at the shoulders.
Dad squints at me from a barstool. His head is wrapped with a clean bandage. One hand holds a steaming mug of coffee, and with the other he pops a pill.
“Close the door, baby,” he says. “That sunlight’s a killer.”
I close the door and let the dim kitchen light settle around me. I’m sure Dad’s headache is a result of several things: the alcohol he managed to down yesterday before I trashed what was left in the fridge, the wound he sustained when Damien flung him into the television, the talon he took to the shoulder, and the Sabres’ worship that, for reasons passing understanding, Dad can hear. He’s allowed a little grumpiness, I guess. I glance again at the coffee cup. At least he’s sober.
“We’d like to talk to you, Brielle,” Pastor Noah says.
I drop the pictures on the island next to Dad’s elbow. The envelope’s a little worse for wear now and it opens, the snapshots spilling across the granite.
“Good. ’Cause I’d like to talk to you too.”
“What are these?” Becky asks.
“Pictures of you all,” I say. “And of Mom.”
The kitchen turns into a chorus of oohs and ahhs as they pass around snapshots that are a decade and a half old. After dancing for hours in the heat and light of the Celestial, I’m exhausted, but impatience battles for dominance over my drooping eyes and throbbing legs. I’m short on time and need answers.
And I’ve got to keep moving.
I start to interrupt, but they’ve got their system down now, passing the pictures in a circle like they’re steaming sides at Thanksgiving dinner. With the big toe on my right foot I scratch at the mud on my left; I drum the island with my fingers and sniff like I’m coming down with a dreadful cold, but they
“Brielle, baby, are you okay?” Dad asks.
I didn’t realize I’d closed my eyes. I open them, and though I view the room through glossy, wet teardrops, I’ve made my decision.
“I’m such a crybaby,” I say, yanking the collar of my shirt up and wiping my eyes. “I’m not going to cry anymore. I’m not. I’m just . . . not.”
“You can cry,” Becky says. “Tears are healthy, they’re real. They’re—”
“Constant,” I say.
She smiles. “Sit, okay? We just want to talk to you.”
Miss Macy leans across the counter. “And I’m sorry about the timing, sweetness. I know you and your dad have had some”—she glances at Dad—“happenings here, but I’ve got to haul some of our girls off to dance camp, and I wanted to be here for this little chat.”
“It’s okay,” I say. “I’m glad you’re here.”
“Good, then,” Miss Macy says, patting my hands. “Go ahead, Pastor.”
Pastor Noah flushes red, but clears his throat. One look at him and I understand he really does have something he needs to say. I guess that makes two of us, but curiosity gets the better of me and I let him go first.
“Right. Brielle, I’ve been wanting to talk to you for a while now. Since Christmas, actually. If your dad’s okay with it, I’d like to tell you some things you may not know about your mom.”