Chapter 38 Andrea Kendal
Andrea Kendal
“At least with Roxanne, you knew what she was. Someone from the rough fringe of society, who had made something better from her life. She didn’t pretend to be part of the Crestmore crowd—and besides, everyone knew she had a family full of skeletons, and we all kind of liked it, to be honest. It brought a little texture to a group that was really cookie cutter and boring.
Andrea . . . she made out like she was cut from the same upper-class mold as the rest of us, but I never trusted her.
I bet if you scraped a layer past all that plastic surgery and dug into her past, you’d find a single-wide trailer and a lot of dirt. ”
Eric’s absence was like the amputation of a limb. Without it, Andrea didn’t know how to move, how to sit, how to think about anything else.
She stared at the room where he was being questioned. There was a reception area and desk between them. Through the frosted glass window in the door, she could only see fuzzy shapes. One Walter. One Eric. The detectives. Movement. Nodding. Talking. About what?
Her hands started to tremble, and she clasped one over the other and squeezed the fist. She thought of the glove box of her car, where, hidden in the leather portfolio of the owner’s manual, there were two Virginia Slim cigarettes. A lighter was in the rear trunk, in the cavity by the jack.
No one would know if she stepped outside to smoke. The scent would be gone by the time she got home, and she could change her shirt as soon as she walked in the front door.
If any occasion deserved a cigarette, it was this one. Reckoning day for a five-year-old crime.
Her stomach cramped and she tried to clear her throat, to catch a bigger breath, but it felt like something was sitting on her chest. What did they have on them?
Would they arrest them here? Would she have to spend the night in jail?
She needed to call the nanny, see if she could stay the night, just in case.
She should have made something other than that stupid soup.
She’d had five hours—could have made a week’s worth of precooked meals and stocked the fridge, and instead she had labored over a broth that would likely be thrown out in the morning.
Andrea checked her watch. Eric had only been in there for eight minutes.
Eight minutes and it felt like her psyche was going to explode.
She should get the cigarettes. This wasn’t a want, this was a need, and if she didn’t get them, if she didn’t have that glorious moment of silence when the nicotine pushed through her lungs and out through her fingertips and nose—she might just die.
She stood and approached the desk. “I have to go out to my car for something. It’s right there.” She pointed to the window on the left side of the room, the one that overlooked the small visitors’ lot. “You’ll be able to see me.”
“Oh, go ahead, honey.” The woman stapled two small stacks of papers together. “You aren’t under arrest. You can come and go as you please.”
“Oh. Okay.” Andrea hitched the strap of her purse higher on her shoulder. “I’m sorry. First time in a police station.”
A lie, but even if she hadn’t been hiding her past, the prior times hadn’t been like this.
For one, they had all been in Lincoln Park, the station packed with people, all angry and indignant over their right to justice, or a spot in line, or the removal of the parking boot on their car.
Here, there was elevator music piped in over the speakers.
There was a bowl of mints on the table. There was her husband, less than a hundred feet away, and their thousand-dollar-an-hour attorney.
“It’s fine.” The woman waved away her apology with an armful of bright gold bangles. “Everyone’s nervous when they come in here. It’s just part of the vibe.”
Part of the vibe. Right. Andrea nodded and tried to walk as normally as possible toward the double doors.
They opened smoothly, and she made it through the second set without breaking into a run.
Out in the open sunshine, she inhaled deeply and seriously considered just getting in her car and taking off.
How far could she get before they came after her?
Maybe it would take days. Maybe months. Maybe they would never catch her and she could settle in a new town, get a new identity, and start over.
Without Ryder.
Without Cameron.
Without Eric.
The fantasy died, and that was the problem with loving someone. It meant that you were tied to them for life. Their crimes became your crimes. Yours became theirs. You fought with the ship even if it meant your certain death.
She pulled out the two cigarettes with trembling fingers, same with the lighter. Leaning back against the SUV’s front bumper, she lit the first cigarette and took a long, greedy inhale.
It didn’t help.