Chapter Seven #3
“Can’t wait to try it now.”
He had laughed, as if she had surprised him.
“It’s god-awful. But it reminds me of home.
” He had been so disarming as he talked to her while he weeded—how he missed salted potato chips and his mother’s lemon pie.
“Tart enough to make your mouth pucker, with cream as cool as a cloud on top.” He had closed his eyes and she still remembered the look of wistfulness and bliss on his face, the way he swallowed, as if his mouth was actually watering.
She wondered, looking back, if the seeds of his plan had already taken root in his mind by then.
Cora shivered now as a cold wind blew through the ivy wall behind her, raking it like fingers.
Some of the guests had retired inside to sit by the large fireplace for dessert.
Clementine and Rita moved to sit near the water’s edge of the Neptune Pool, gossiping and dipping their feet in where the waves caught the light.
The candles burned low until it was just Jack and Truman sitting together, playing cards with William Morton.
“Rich blood,” Morton muttered good-naturedly, playfully throwing his chips on the table and pulling himself to his feet.
The fountain burbled hypnotically beside the card table, and Jack leaned back in his chair, looking relaxed.
The servants offered him a new glass of whiskey on the rocks with Welsh rarebit, one of Truman’s favorite late-night snacks.
Cora could smell the melted cheese soaked in cherry brandy, the nutty scent of the cigars.
It mixed with the fragrant bougainvillea that carried through the wind. They were a long way from Moxie now.
She watched from the shadows as Jack dealt another hand.
He had grown into his cheekbones and jaw, and his lashes were long.
He still had the same whirl of cowlick behind his right ear that his fingers used to glance upon when he was troubled by something, but today he folded and flipped the cards like streams of water, quick and certain, and she didn’t let her focus stray from his hands.
Her nerves were on edge because he and Truman were together, alone.
She thought of her gun, hidden in the wall of her room.
She knew all too well what Jack was capable of.
She just didn’t know what she was.
Jack looked at Truman Byrd sitting across the table from him and casually reached for the deck of cards. He was acutely aware of Byrd’s nearness. The scent of him, mingling with the cigars and the whiskey. The blue veins snaking at the man’s temples.
“Another hand?” Jack asked.
Truman studied him, and Jack forced himself to look back.
“You remind me a little of someone,” Byrd said.
Jack took out his lighter slowly and flicked it on. Leaned forward and lifted it to the end of Byrd’s cigar. He watched the pulse beating in the artery in Byrd’s neck.
“I get that a lot,” Jack said. He lifted his glass nonchalantly and felt the whiskey hit the back of his throat for the first time.
The night he’d approached Truman in Reno, he’d waited until Truman was three drinks in.
He’d sweated through the shirt beneath his jacket when he pulled up a chair at the card table, wondering if Truman would recognize him.
It was true, Truman Byrd had not been the one to toss him on Pelican and throw away the key.
But he had played a part in Jack’s downfall all the same.
Byrd breathed in the smell of the cigar, a smile crossing his face. “Ah,” he said. “This is the good stuff.” There were small burst blood vessels in his eyes, and Jack wondered if he ever slept.
Jack remembered the look of utter horror on his father’s face when his two sons were sentenced to life on Pelican for murder. It was the last time Jack ever saw him.
Jack still dreamed some nights of the maniacal laughter that went through Pelican Cell Block D when the lights went out.
He thought of the day he came up behind the Gasper, his rage building, hitting him in the face and how good it felt.
He had once cut off a man’s fingers and hardly flinched.
He could feel the temptation of it rising up in him again now. A thirst. An almost-unstoppable desire.
“Sure,” Truman said. “One more hand.”
Jack took the two-dollar cigar that Byrd offered him between his fingers. “Thank you,” he said, nodding, raising it in a half salute.
Jack drank another sip of his drink and then played the winning card.
Byrd took one look at it and threw back his head to laugh, exposing his jugular.
Jack’s muscles tensed. He knew there were guards lurking close by.
He had to bide his time, get the information he needed, or it would have all been for nothing.
He forced himself to breathe. To think clearly. To wait.
Byrd settled back in his chair, at ease and seemingly delighted that Jack had bested him, and Jack wondered at a man who could laugh at his own losses.
“All right, one more,” Truman said cheerily, waving at Jack to deal again. Sucking in his cigar. Oblivious to the temptations running through Jack’s mind.
Jack broke into a cold sweat and dealt a final hand. He purposefully threw the game, gave the win to Truman Byrd. To keep Truman’s spirits high and unsuspecting.
And just to prove that he could.
Cora wove down to the esplanade and sneaked bites of leftover food from the trays: puff pastry, figs with bacon. Caviar with crème fraiche. She let the butter and salt melt in her mouth, then took a swig of a drink for herself as she watched Jack from the shadows.
She had once believed with all her heart that he was innocent.
Cora’s mother had forbidden her from knowing the details of the inmates’ crimes, but of course Cora had researched all of them and discovered exactly what crimes they’d committed to get sent there.
She never romanticized the grotesque things they had done.
But even as a child, she was fascinated by human beings, their makeup and motives, their characters and the points where they boiled and broke.
She wanted to understand why people did what they did—especially when they were grown up and should have known better.
Cora took another swig of a drink.
She still remembered the day she had invited her school friends to her house for birthday cake and to listen to records.
She was turning fifteen; and for the first time, two of her girlfriends had been granted permission.
Her father was to come to the mainland on the ferry and accompany them all there and back.
Cora’s mother was making a cake for them with flowers and candy buttons.
And then Cora had made her fatal mistake.
She’d worn a new blouse to school, one that didn’t keep her dog tag secured well enough. Its sleek, embossed silver slipped out from behind the fabric at her neck during recess.
“What’s that?” Lira Sutton had asked, head cocking. Reaching to touch it.
“It’s nothing,” Cora said, fumbling to tuck it out of sight.
“It’s a dog tag,” Molly Wright said. Her eyes gleamed.
“A dog tag!” Lira had exclaimed. “Whatever for?”
“All the Pelican children have to wear them,” Molly said, whose mother was the principal’s secretary. “The school administrators said so.”
“Why?”
Cora had shoved the chain down, her face heating. Molly’s mother had made her decline the invitation.
“In case someone connected to an inmate tries to kidnap one of them, of course,” Molly said, her voice lowering. “You know. For a hostage exchange.”
“Oh,” Lira had said uncertainly. She took a step back.
When Cora’s father came to meet her on the ferry that afternoon, Cora was alone.
“Where are your friends?” he asked, looking behind her.
“Sick,” she said curtly. And then she’d turned her face away from him and refused to say another word.
“Caught you,” a female voice said behind her now.
Lola swayed, the sequins on her dress catching the light.
She tittered a little. “Shh,” she said, winking, “I won’t tell.
But I’ll take one more of those, before you go.
” Lola raised a half-empty glass in her hand as if to “cheers” Cora.
“What’s in this, by the way?” she asked, with an almost astonished delight. “I’m absolutely zozzled.”
Then she laughed and abruptly let go of her glass, as if she were suddenly too bothered to hold on to it any longer. Cora jumped when it exploded in glass fireworks at her feet.
Instinctively, without thinking, Cora did the one thing she should not.
She looked across the esplanade at the same moment Jack glanced toward her.
For one split second, their eyes met.
Cora swore and dropped down as quickly as she could, hiding behind her hair. She pulled a frond from a nearby palm and used it to protect her hand from the glass.
Jack’s face had remained blank when their eyes met, not betraying even a flicker of surprise.
Cora forced herself to bide her time, waiting a full two minutes on her timepiece before she stole another look at Jack. He hadn’t moved, and he wasn’t looking in her direction anymore.
He hadn’t recognized her.
It was dark, she told herself. And she had hidden her face in time.
She stood, the glass glinting in her hands, her heart pounding slick and hard.
She was almost completely certain.
On her fifteenth birthday, Cora had eaten cake with her parents alone, a record playing quietly in the background to fill in the silence. Then she had slipped out the back door and gone to the fence to see Jack.
“Happy birthday,” Jack had said, and fallen silent when the tears had unexpectedly began to spill down her cheeks. He artfully ignored them and instead showed her the packets in his hands.
It took her a moment to realize what she was looking at: they were seeds.
For hundreds of black-eyed Susans.
“I persuaded the guards to let me plant them here, right along the fence,” he said. He had smiled at her. “So the dragonflies would come.”