Suddenly, her lazy drawl turned snide.
“Christ God, I’m so sick of it. So fucking sick of it. I’m not a wife or a mother. I’m a fucking woman.”
Another plume and she turned to me.
“You know what’s hilarious? He’s not gay. He actually isn’t,” she shared. “But after I quit fucking him, he found some other bitch so he could get his pussy, but he found some guy to take him up the ass. That’s funny. Hysterical. Because he’s so goddamned weak, he can’t ask her to do it. But he got a taste of it, and now he needs it. So there you go.”
I did my very best to find a delicate way to get us off this subject, but onto a different, more delicate one.
“Do you think that maybe this person who did this to—?”
“She’s not mine,” she declared, and I tensed, because the anger was leaking, the snide was evaporating, and another emotion was coming. “His wife before me died in a car wreck. We got together when Mal was three. I raised her.” She turned to the pier, and whispered, “I raised her.”
Suddenly, she dropped her head, the cigarette held up still burning in her fingers.
“I’m not sure you should be out here,” I remarked.
She whipped her attention to me.
“You think?” she asked. “His girl…our girl…my girl’s found dead out there,” she pointed with her cigarette at the pier and the ash dropped to the deck, “and I say, ‘Bobby, do not drive me to that fucking place.’ But does he fucking listen? No? Because I am not a woman. I am not a person. I am a wife.”
“Please come inside with me.”
She ignored me.
“You’ll note, he’s listening to Cade. He’s ranting and raving in the car on the way over here. Ranting when he gets in your house. Cade says to shut the fuck up, he shuts the fuck up. I beg him in the car to calm down because he’s driving, it’s like I’m not even there.”
She needed to get this out.
So I stood there and let her get it out.
“We have other babies. Two boys. One’s a freshman. One’s in seventh grade. They won’t be next. You know why?”
I shook my head. “No. Why?”
“Because they’re not girls. Those sick fucks, all of them, all of them,” she twisted at the waist and stabbed a finger toward the house, indicating her husband, “they punish the girls.”
With that, she lost it, broke down, and I moved in and gathered her in my arms.
Her body heaved, her tears wet my neck.
This went on for some time.
She was much more adept and elegant at getting herself together, pulling away, and she had her own tissues in her purse.
“Sorry,” she said to the slats of the deck as she wiped her nose. “I’m being awful.”
“No judgment here.”
Her gaze came to me, timid now, embarrassed.
“To answer your question, yes. The club, me and Wendy and Sarah and Annie, the day after they took Alice, we got together, and we wondered if it had something to do with Audrey. When they came around…when they…when…” She took a second, then carried on, “When they came to the house today, and Bobby was calling on my phone, and I knew, a part of me wasn’t surprised. And it figures, don’t you think? It isn’t Bobby in the lake. It isn’t Dale in the ground. It’s Alice.”
She swallowed, sniffed, took a shuddering breath and turned to the pier, and her voice was guttural when she finished.
“And my Malorie.”
Thirty-Five
Sweet and Cute and Wonderful
We weren’t quite done with the drama of Bobby and Lana.
Though the finale was brilliantly crafted by Lana.
Because, while I was on the deck with her, she took out her phone and sent a text, received one, and we stood in unsettling silence for a spell before she said, “No offense. You’re being really kind. But can I be alone for a little while?”
I didn’t like it, with the way she kept looking at the pier, but I nodded and left her as she was lighting another cigarette.
When I stepped inside, Bohannan’s warm gaze came to me.
Bohannan was still on the phone.
I didn’t want to, because I wasn’t his biggest fan, because he’d broken his wife’s heart, and I knew what that felt like, but I asked Bobby if he wanted a drink.
“No. Thanks. I…”
He gave me the once over, it wasn’t creepy, or inappropriate, even as it was both.
Mostly, it was habit.
So, yes.
Confirmed.
I did not like Bobby.
“They’re all saying you’re really nice. I guess they’re right,” he concluded, like only his own eyes and experiences could confirm this.
In other words, it was likely women who told him that.
I made myself smile and retreated to a stool at the kitchen bar where I could keep an eye on what was happening in the house, and out on the deck, and mentally explored my options.
Option one was going upstairs and telling Celeste what had happened that morning at the pier or finding a Celeste who had been talking to friends and had discovered it on her own.
This was what I should do.
Option two was staying there, because Lana was in a mood, entirely justifiably, and I wasn’t sure how that would go when she returned inside.
Which was what I decided to do.
Because Celeste had had an earful of it from Bobby, and that was not okay.
And I’d learned she really didn’t need to hear what Lana might have to say.
I fretted I’d made the wrong decision.
I found out it was right when Lana came in, and gently, even lovingly, but stupidly, Bobby said, “Sweetheart, you shouldn’t smoke.”
She didn’t even look at him.
She looked at Bohannan.
“Cade, someone is coming to get me. When he gets here, will you let him in the gate?”
That mystery was solved, even if I hadn’t yet thought about it. Bohannan went straight to the door because he’d gotten a call from Bobby to open the gate, so he knew he was coming.
“You don’t need a ride, honey. We’re going home,” Bobby told her.
She looked at him. “I’m not going home.”
He stood, starting, “Honey—”
“Mom has already got the boys,” she shared. “Dean’s coming over to get me.”
Oh dear.
I got off my stool and my gaze skidded to Bohannan.
Bohannan was watching Lana carefully.
“Dean?” Bobby asked, appearing genuinely perplexed.
“My boyfriend.” She shook her head. “At my age, that sounds idiotic, so…my lover. The guy I fuck who fucks me. The guy who, before we fuck, he makes me dinner a couple of times a week, when you think I’m having my hair done or getting a facial or playing tennis, or whatever you don’t really care I’m doing. He listens to me bitch about you and talk about my day, and he actually cares. I’m moving in with him. When we find a big enough place, the boys are moving in with us too. And I’m divorcing you.”
Bobby stood there, his chin in his neck, his mouth open.
“I got smart this time,” she continued. “My own job. My own money. Don’t get complacent,” she warned. “I’m going to take my share of yours. But I’m done with this bullshit game.”