Chapter 25
CHAPTER 25
It had taken me nearly two days to recover from the all-nighter I had pulled at the police station (and the hour Nick and I had spent in the back of my van before he’d finally driven me home). He’d fallen asleep curled around me in my bed. When his alarm went off before sunrise the next morning, we had both reached to turn it off and slept through the entire next day.
My mother, upon returning the children to my house on Sunday, had been delighted to find Nick standing barefoot in my kitchen, enjoying a cup of coffee and stirring a pan of eggs on my stove. His shirt was untucked, and a few extra buttons were open. To my surprise, Delia hadn’t batted an eye. She’d called out a joyful, “Hi, Nick!,” given each of us a vigorous hug, then skipped off to play with her Barbies.
Nick leaned down to let my mother give him a kiss on his cheek as he cooked. “Can I fix you some breakfast, Susan?”
My mother practically swooned. “Me? Oh, no, Nicholas! I already ate, but you’re very sweet to offer.” She leaned close to my ear and whispered, “I found a fantastic caterer who does very affordable receptions, and my friend Doris knows a wonderful florist who has her own truck—”
“Mom, we’re not—”
She held up a finger. “He looks very good holding a spatula, Finlay. Do not screw this up. I have to go. Your father’s waiting in the car. I told him we’d go to early Mass so he can get home in time to lay some mulch.” She kissed my cheek, too, said goodbye to Vero, and was out the door, a whirlwind of grandma energy. I waved to my father through the window as Nick set two plates of eggs on the table, one for me and one for Vero. He came up behind me and wrapped his arms around my waist.
“I’m going upstairs to grab a shower before I head to the station. Can I convince you to join me?” He nuzzled my neck as his hands wandered to my hips. “Delia already thinks we’re taking baths together.”
“If we do, you might never make it to work.”
He groaned into my shoulder.
I turned in his arms, tipping my face up for a proper kiss. “Can’t I convince you to play hooky? It’s a beautiful day. Vero and I thought we’d take the kids to the park. Javi’s coming, too. You should join us.”
“You’re definitely making it hard to leave,” he said as I looped my arms around his neck. “I promise, I’ll be out the door at a reasonable hour tonight. How about I pick up dinner so you and Vero don’t have to cook?”
“Throw in a bottle of wine, and I might agree to let you go.”
“Done.”
My mother was right. He was definitely a keeper.
He stole a bite of my eggs, washed it down with the last of his coffee, and double-timed it upstairs to get ready for work. I thought hard about his offer to join him in the shower, but my stomach growled and his cooking smelled far too good to pass up.
I called Vero to the table and our eyes rolled up in pleasure as we scarfed down our breakfast.
An engine rumbled outside. I peeled back the curtain to see Steven get out of a taxi. His jaw was dark with a few extra days of growth, and he was wearing the same clothes he’d had on the day Mike Tran took him into the station for questioning. He raked his hands through his unkempt hair as he walked to my door.
“Kids!” I called up the stairs. “Guess who’s here!”
I opened the front door as the children thundered down the stairs. “Daddy!” they cried, leaping into his arms.
“Man, am I glad to see you two!” His eyes were a little wet as he held them and breathed them in.
“When did you get out?” I asked.
“About an hour ago. I came straight here. I would have called, but my battery was dead on my phone when they gave me my stuff back.”
“Did you bring us a souvenir?” Delia asked. “Mrs. Haggerty said they do arts and crafts in jail, and she learned to make all kinds of things.”
“I bet she did.” He gave each of the kids another kiss, like he couldn’t get enough of them. Maybe Mrs. Haggerty had been right, that a little time in the clink wouldn’t be the worst thing for him. Sometimes, you don’t realize how precious something is to you until you’re faced with losing it.
He beamed at Zach. “Look at you, buddy, keeping your pants on like a big boy!”
“At least there’s hope for one of you,” Vero called out from the kitchen.
Steven’s cheeks reddened, but, to my surprise, he didn’t fire off a comeback.
He set Zach down, pulling back a little to look at Delia’s face. “A little birdie told me you’re going back to school tomorrow.”
“Yep!” Delia said proudly. “After we went for ice cream, Mrs. Haggerty told Cam to drive us to my school in his giant eggplant. Arnold Schwarzenegger came, too! Then Mrs. Haggerty went inside to meet with the principal. Arnold didn’t like her.” Delia curled her fingers into claws. “He growled at her and peed on her floor. Mrs. Haggerty didn’t like the principal either. She told her if they didn’t let me come back to school, she was going to call her grandson and make a fuss. She said her grandson is a very important polly-tippan , and they’d better listen if they don’t want to be on the TV, too. Mrs. Haggerty is famous, Daddy! All my teachers knew her!”
“That’s… Wow,” Steven said, looking at me. I shook my head. This was the first I was hearing about their field trip to the school, but that would explain the strained voice mail I’d received from Delia’s principal yesterday, saying Delia was welcome to return to class on Monday.
Steven set Delia down and she tore off after her brother to play.
“Which little birdie told you?” I asked, wondering how he’d been getting his information while he was in lockup.
“Mrs. Haggerty wrote me a letter and asked one of the officers to deliver it to my cell. She apologized for letting the police arrest me before deciding to come forward. She told me all about homeschool and potty training and how well the kids were doing. And she said that if I screwed anything up for you, she’d make me disappear and it would look like an accident.”
Vero snorted in the kitchen.
Steven smiled in spite of it. So did I.
“She also mentioned you bonded her out.” He raised an eyebrow when I nodded.
“The judge set a very reasonable bail. I couldn’t let her stay in that place, so Vero and I picked her up and brought her home with us.”
His smile wavered. “She isn’t here now, is she?” he asked, looking a little unnerved by the possibility.
“She’s upstairs packing. Apparently, her grandson is coming to pick her up in an hour.” I still had my doubts, but if and when he did show up, I had several questions I expected answers to, and I was sure Vero had a few choice words for him.
Nick came down the stairs, smelling like soap and shaving gel, his hair damp from the shower. He slowed on the bottom step when he spotted Steven.
Steven nodded and mustered a smile. “Hey, Nick. Good to see you.”
Nick nodded back. “I’m glad to see you, too.”
Steven bit his lip. “I guess I have the two of you to thank for that. So, thanks,” he said, sincere in his gratitude. “You didn’t have to help me. I wouldn’t have blamed you if you didn’t. But I’m grateful for everything you did to get me out of there. Joey, too. Tell him thanks for me.”
“I will,” Nick said. “I’ll let you two talk. I have to get to work.” He gave me a quick peck on the cheek and whispered, “I’ll see you tonight.”
Steven stepped aside to let Nick pass. I watched him go, already counting down the hours until he got back. “He seems like a really decent guy,” Steven said with a strained smile.
“He is.”
“That’s good. You deserve to be happy.”
“Thanks. I want that for you, too.” Steven didn’t deserve to be happy with me , but I hoped one day he’d be worthy of a chance at happiness with someone else.
“Speaking of that,” he said, brightening a little, “you know that redhead attorney you sent to help me—Parker? You wouldn’t happen to have her number, would you? Because I was thinking—”
“Goodbye, Steven,” I said through a dry laugh. I handed him his truck keys and pushed him toward the door. The kids called out their goodbyes from the playroom as I closed it after him.
When I turned, Mrs. Haggerty was coming down the stairs, her footsteps a little uneven and heavier than usual. She looked tired and sore as she limped into the kitchen. The last few days had definitely taken their toll on her. She filled a kettle and put it on the stove, waiting for it to boil as she prepared her tea.
“Thank you for what you did for Delia,” I said, leaning on my elbows beside her.
“Nonsense. I didn’t do it for Delia. I did it for you,” she said, her frankness surprising me. “Sometimes, you remind me of me,” she admitted. “I always wanted to write a book of my own, but Owen used to say writing stories was frivolous. And I didn’t have anyone like Vero to help me when my children were young. The closest thing I had to a friend was Penny, and she and I didn’t find each other until much later on. Honestly, I envied you. Never more than the day your husband moved out,” she said with a rueful smile. “Oh, how many times had I wished that for myself.”
“Is that why you did it?” I asked quietly.
“Did what?”
“You know…” I dragged a finger across my neck.
She laughed, surprising me with a full-throated chuckle I’d never heard from her before. “I didn’t kill Owen. Owen killed Owen, exactly like I explained to Detective Tran. I told my husband for years he was going to end up in an early grave if he didn’t take better care of himself. That if his liver didn’t kill him, his blood pressure would. In the end, it was both.”
“But if Owen died of natural causes, why haven’t you cashed his insurance policy?” I could have understood holding on to it if she was afraid she might get caught using a forged death certificate, but that was an awful lot of money to continue paying every month to insure a man who had a legitimate one. “Why not collect the balance of the policy and stop paying?”
She sighed and shook her head. “Guilt, I suppose. My marriage to that man was far from perfect. There were plenty of angry, lonely nights when I laid awake and thought about smothering him with a pillow. For all his flaws, I know I never could have done it, but we weren’t happy together, and I wasn’t all too unhappy about it when he died. I guess it didn’t feel right to collect a reward for it. But,” she said, holding up a finger, “that doesn’t mean I can’t understand how another woman might be driven to kill her husband and use that money to build herself a new life.”
“Is that why you started the book club?”
“I guess you could say I started the book club out of guilt, too,” she admitted. “It was gnawing at me. Not because I had helped put Gilford in the ground, but because I had convinced Penny to run away from her problem. If I had helped her deal with him, like we had talked about so many times, we could have been more careful. She wouldn’t have been forced to handle that nasty business all by herself. I felt so awful about the whole thing. I just wanted to fix it,” she said, pouring herself some hot water from the kettle. “I had been volunteering at the women’s advocacy center with Viola for several months before I finally confided in her. I danced around the details, but something told me she understood the things I wasn’t coming out and saying. She told me she had a family cabin in the woods, that if I had burdens I didn’t feel I could hold on to anymore, for myself or anyone else, that she would take them and she would keep my secrets safe. She explained that she understood the guilt I felt. That she had guilt, too, over all of the women she wanted to help but couldn’t. That’s how I knew we understood each other.
“I thought about asking her to take Gilford, but moving him seemed like a reckless idea. Months had passed and no one had come looking for him. Better, we thought, to let sleeping dogs lie. But,” Mrs. Haggerty said, tapping her temple, “Viola’s offer had opened the door to other ideas.
“The club grew one by one after that. Inevitably every new member wanted to pay it forward and help someone else. Viola found Lola. Lola found Destiny. Destiny found Elizabeth. Elizabeth found Kathy. Kathy found Gita. And Gita found Sally.” Mrs. Haggerty looked at me askance as she dropped a spoonful of sugar in her mug. “I stand by my opinion of your ex-husband, by the way. You know where to find me, if you ever change your mind.”
I laughed. “Thanks for the offer, but I think we’ll be fine.”
“Why don’t you go on upstairs and take a shower. You look like you need one,” she said, resuming her usual judgmental tone, though now I sensed a glimmer of genuine affection in her teasing. “I’ll watch the children for you,” she offered.
I only hesitated a moment before relenting. In spite of her veiled threats to Steven and Delia’s principal, Mrs. Haggerty wasn’t a terrible person after all. Vero was just upstairs doing the laundry, the kids were playing peacefully, and Zach was fully dressed and potty trained. What could possibly go wrong?