Chapter 29
The last person Nikki expected to show up on her doorstep was her brother, but there he was, big as life, holding his baseball cap in his hands on the front porch. “Kyle?” she said, surprised. “What’re you doing here?”
“Glad to see you, too,” he said, as both dogs, barking, came to the door to check out who had rung the bell.
“Well, yeah, of course, I’m glad but … Wow. This is a surprise.” To the dogs she added, “You two! Hush!”
“Can I come in?”
“Sure. Sure. Of course!” She stepped out of the way, just as Chloe, who had been playing in the family room, toddled into the entryway. She took one look at Kyle, scowled, and stepped back to hide behind Nikki and peek around her legs.
“This is—?” Kyle asked, and crouched down to be at eye level with the girl.
“Chloe. My daughter. Chloe, this is your Uncle Kyle.” She yelled up the stairs as she picked up the suddenly shy Chloe, “Lily! Kyle’s here!”
“What?” Her sister flew out of her room to pause at the landing and look down. “Seriously?” She was down the stairs in an instant. “What’s going on?” she demanded, barefoot, but in jeans and a blouse, her hair pulled back in a ponytail, her face devoid of makeup. “Oh, shit! Is it Mom?”
“No, no,” he assured her. “She’s fine. I was … I’m just dropping by.” He actually blushed a little.
Lily skewered her brother with an “I don’t believe you for an instant” glare. “Oookay,” she said, then yelled up the stairs. “Phee?” When nothing happened, she said, “I’ll be just a sec” and raced up the steps once more.
“You want something to drink?” Nikki asked over her shoulder as she led him into the kitchen, all the while wondering what his visit was all about.
“You got Dr Pepper?”
“Yeah, but are you sure you want to start this early,” she teased, leading him and the dogs toward the back of the house. “It’s before noon.” It was a joke they’d shared as children, always hearing their father remarking that any time after noon was time for a drink, usually whiskey.
As she opened the refrigerator door, she caught his grin. She snapped a can from the six-pack, then tossed it to him. “Careful. Don’t let it get all over the kitchen.”
As a kid, he’d loved to shake up a can and have it geyser out in a thick spray.
“Gotcha.” He opened the can over the sink, while Jennings, hiding under one of the barstools, scooted out of the way.
In that second, Lily returned with a groggy Ophelia in tow.
Phee, still in pajamas, her hair a tangled mess, couldn’t scratch up a smile, as if her face was set in a permanent scowl.
Lily made quick introductions as they settled into the family room, but Phee wasn’t about to make any kind of small talk or overture to her newfound uncle.
She jammed earbuds into her ears and lay on the couch, clearly blocking out the family as if she found whatever it was on her phone absolutely intriguing.
Chloe was no more friendly. She studied Kyle suspiciously while cuddled up against Nikki in an oversize chair.
“Mom wants us all to reconnect,” Kyle said. “You know, before she … Before she passes.”
“Is she—is she sick? I haven’t heard that, and I usually take her to all of her appointments,” Lily said, worry lines appearing on her forehead. For all of her talking about how their mother was a pain, Lily was still close to Charlene.
“No, I don’t think so.” From the leather chair where Pierce usually sat, he shook his head.
“She’s feisty enough to outlive us all, but several of her friends have passed, and she’s seen how some families never do get it together, so she asked me to reach out.
To, you know, start mending fences.” Leaning back against the worn leather, he added, “So here I am.”
“Well, I, for one, think it’s a good idea,” Lily pronounced. “Let’s start mending.”
“You know, I think Mavis Greenlee really sent her over the edge,” Kyle said. “Maybe because she was murdered, but as much as she resented Mavis for the whole Dad thing …” He raised his eyebrows as if to question if both of his sisters knew of Mavis’s affair with their father.
“Yeah,” Nikki said, while Lily, lips turned downward, nodded.
“She thought it was a damned shame how that family had fallen apart. Mavis, with all of those husbands and no children of her own, and then Archer taking up with a new girlfriend so much younger and all. She just doesn’t want our family to, you know, be disjointed, I guess.
” He held up a hand as if to stave off the arguments he saw brewing in his sisters’ eyes.
“Before you say anything, I know it’s been my fault.
I own it, all right? But it goes both ways, and Mom saw how Mavis treated her parents, and she doesn’t want that to happen to us. ”
“You mean, to her,” Lily corrected as she stood by the back door, staring out at the yard, where a bird was splashing in the birdbath.
“Mother doesn’t want us to ignore her or stuff her into some awful spot without good care.
I already heard all about that when I visited her, how shameful it was the way Mavis treated Norton and especially Blanche. ”
“She’s not wrong. I saw it for myself. So did you,” Nikki said to Kyle.
“Yeah.” He took a long drink from his can.
“So, wait a minute,” Nikki said, “so you knew Archer was having an affair?” she asked, seeing him blush again and turn his attention to the windows that looked into the backyard.
“I suspected. I take care of the yard out there, too, and yeah, I’d seen the girl in the pool.”
Nikki asked, “And you didn’t say anything to Mavis?”
“Nope. My lips are sealed for all of my clients.” He turned his drink nervously in his hands. “There is one more thing.”
“What?” Lily asked, instantly suspicious.
“Mom wants us to go to the funeral as a family.”
“Mavis Greenlee’s funeral?” Nikki said in disbelief. “Wait a minute. Mom sent you over here so that you would sweet-talk us into going together?”
Lily rolled her eyes. “She wants to make a statement. About the solidarity in her family, or something. At her old friend or frenemy’s funeral.
Because of Dad or whatever.” She threw up a hand and stared at her brother.
“It’s all about appearances with Charlene.
Wow. I can’t believe she talked you into it, though. ”
He shrugged. “I figured why not?”
“Because it’s so fake, that’s why not. She just wants to make it look like we’re such a tight-knit perfect little family!
Seriously?” Lily found a glass in a cupboard, then turned on the tap and filled the tumbler.
“That’s why you’re here, Kyle? To do Mom’s dirty work?
” She took a gulp from her glass. “Oh, I get it. She thought you could weasel your way in with us and she wouldn’t have to have the argument. ”
“Mom isn’t the kind to back down from a fight,” he pointed out.
That much was true.
“The funeral is tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?” Lily repeated.
Nikki had seen the notice. “Eleven in the morning. At All Christian.” She was definitely going.
“Well, I’m not doing it,” Lily said emphatically. “And I’m certainly not taking my daughter. Mavis Greenlee was a snob. A horrible person. Mom hated her. For God’s sake, she carried on with Dad. Nope. Not doing it. I have no reason to go and pretend to be all sad.”
“I’ll go,” Nikki said.
“Of course you will!” Lily set her glass onto the counter so hard the water sloshed over the rim.
“But it’s not because of any love for Mavis.
We all know that. It’s because you’re a snoop.
Always poking around. You don’t even care if you have to fake it and act like you’re at the funeral for Mavis or our mother, just so you can check things out. Well, it’s all sick, if you ask me.”
“Calm as ever, I see,” Kyle observed.
“I’m trying,” Lily said through gritted teeth, “but this, this hypocrisy is too much. I can’t imagine sitting in the church listening to Father Stark—that’s Westin Stark, by the way.
Kyle, you remember what a jerk-wad he was when you were in school.
He’s gonna be up on the altar in all of his robes and clerical collar or whatever and ask us to pray for Mavis’s soul.
And he and the rest of the damned flock will listen while Mavis is made to look like a goddamned angel, when we all know she wasn’t.
Worse yet, we’ll probably have to watch Archer blubber and wipe his eyes in the front pew, while he’s just itching to get out of there and back to his teen ager of a girlfriend. ”
Lily’s face was turning red with her rant.
“And you want to know the worst part of it? The very worst? Charlene wants us to go, and we all know that she hated Mavis and has never forgiven her for having a damned affair with our father. So, no, Kyle, I’m not going to be a part of the charade, and if I’m not calm? Tough! So be it.”
With that, she stormed out of the room. “I’m late,” she tossed over her shoulder to Nikki. “You’ve got her, right?” she said, motioning to the still-sulking Phee. “You’ll see that she gets to her lesson?” Though there was no school today, the riding academy was open, lessons ongoing.
“Yep,” Nikki said and noticed that Ophelia, caught in her own world, hadn’t looked up from her screen once, not even when her mother was reading them all the riot act.
“Wow.” Kyle walked to the glass door leading outside. “I’d forgotten how volatile she could be. Beneath all her peace/love/dove/ kumbaya vibe, she can go from zero to a hundred in a second.”
“I could say something about apples not falling far from the tree.”
“There was a reason or two or fifty that I backed away from the family,” he admitted, then changed the subject. “You’ve got a nice place here.”
It was the first time he’d been in her home. Nikki could well imagine he might have driven by the house a number of times, but she couldn’t remember him ever walking over the threshold. “You want to see outside? You know, since you’re the landscape guy and all.”
He lifted a shoulder. “Sure.”