Chapter 33
Now
My aunt and great-aunt stared at each other across the table, a silent conversation playing between them. Finally, Ruth spoke. “Lilibet’s been released on good behavior to a halfway house in Alabama. Been there for about a week.” Her voice softened. “She’s wanted us to come and see her.”
Wanted them to come and see her…
The beginnings of a headache throbbed in my temples. “Mama’s out of prison, and no one was going to tell us?” I hadn’t seen Mama since the day I’d ran away, when she’d warned me to leave my old life behind.
“It’s not like that,” Ruth insisted. “The terms of her parole are intense. She wants to see you and Frances, but she wants to make sure everything’s perfect first.” Aunt Ruth leaned forward, her arms on the table, her voice growing soft.
“She’s been gone a long time. The world’s not the same place it was when she was arrested. She’s not the same person.”
“Okay.” I massaged my temples in small circles. “Okay…”
Frances frowned. “What you’re saying is, when we were kids, Mama never let us visit her, not once, but she wants to see us now?
Now. Not when I was a little girl sending her letter after letter, begging her to let me visit?
Not when I secretly tried calling her over and over?
” My sister inhaled sharply. “When I found myself tied to an abusive prick and thought maybe, just maybe, my mother could understand.”
“Oh child,” Hattie-May said tenderly. “She was doing what she thought was right. She—”
“Stop.” Ruth held up her hand, cutting off Aunt Hattie. She spoke calmly. “I’ll say this once. I know you’re hurting, Frances, and you have every right to that hurt, but watch your tone. That’s your mama, but Lilibet is my little sister.”
Bunny walked around the table and slid an arm over Ruth’s shoulder.
The wooden legs of my chair screeched against the floor as I stood, doing my best to ignore the dull throbbing behind my eyes.
Frances didn’t know I’d visited Mama the day I ran, and I wasn’t sure if my aunts did or not.
The thing I did know was that feelings are complicated and when it came to Mama, mine were a minefield.
“I want to see her.” Frances let out a deep breath, her shoulder’s slumping. “When all of this is done.”
“Of course,” Hattie-May said.
“Frances, did you post the photo?” I asked, pointedly changing the subject. “Let’s stay on task here. The sun will be up soon, and we have a lot to do.”
“Yeah. It’s posted.” Frances nodded and held up Bunny’s phone. I held out my hand, and she passed it to me.
The picture of shoreline she’d grabbed from the internet and captioned A little r&r with my big sis! already had sixty-five hearts and a few comments demanding to know where the photo was taken so the posters could plan their own vacations. I refreshed the screen and there were a hundred hearts.
And a direct message notification.
Burt had taken the bait.
I scrolled through the DMs.
Where are you?
Baby?
Call me.
Answer your phone.
Dammit, Frances, this isn’t funny—you can’t do this to me.
You won’t get away with this. No one will believe you.
There’s no way you’ll get away with this. Baby go home and I’ll forgive you. We’ll talk when I get back.
You’ll pay for this.
You won’t get away with this.
Baby?
Baby.
I love you.
Fuck you. You think you can do this to me? You’re nothing. Less than nothing.
Frances. I love you. Please come home.
And then the last one, possibly the most chilling.
You can never get away from me.
“Shit,” I breathed and passed the phone back to my sister.
“Yeah,” Frances said. “Welcome to my life.”
“Did you change your password?” I asked.
“Of course.” She gave the phone to Bunny, who put it away.
Frances bounced her hands on the table. “What do we do now?”
“I’m going to get us a sweet treat.” Hattie-May pushed up from the table and un-looped her oxygen tube from her face.
“We deserve it.” She shuffled to the pie safe in the corner of the room and retrieved a coffee cake.
She brought it to the counter and began cutting and plating it as if we were having Sunday lunch.
A confused quiet settled over the group, not wanting to interrupt Hattie-May. I shot a questioning look at Ruth, who shook her head and mouthed, It’s fine, before catching Frances’s eye, my lips almost wanting to quirk.
“The Instagram post has me thinking.” I took a saucer of cake and a fork from Hattie-May and poked at it. It was moist, with a crumbly topping of brown sugar and pecans.
“If it looks like Frances is staying with me in Persimmon Key, and assuming my original plan doesn’t work—”
“Oh honey. It’s not going to work.” Hattie-May shook her head sadly, sliding a saucer in front of Frances. I ignored her.
“If it doesn’t work, then we can decide where we want to…to lure Burt. If we, you know, have to do this, then we must be smart about where and when. Plan it all. And if it looks like me and Frances are together at the beach, then we’ll have a built-in alibi, right?”
“What are you saying, dear?” Aunt Hattie paused, cake knife in hand. “You want to bring him here, to Puddle Creek and—”
“God no. Not here.” I drummed my fingers against the table and glanced around my aunts’ home.
The room was clean but cluttered. The kitchen counters were littered with canisters of sugar and flour, jars of pickled things like beets, quail eggs, lumpy pink pig feet, and, of course containers of tea.
Tidy stacks of Hattie-May’s sketchbooks were everywhere, and every inch of wall space held one of her drawings, the most recent additions frenetic and messy. “No. Definitely not here.”
This wasn’t a place where people came to die. It was an old person’s house, full of strange smells and a lifetime’s worth of memories. “It should happen somewhere random. Somewhere we have no ties or connection to.”
“Like a motel,” Bunny said, nodding. “Men get up to some sketchy shit in roadside motels.” Her tone held the kind of authority you couldn’t fake, the kind that only came from experience.
“Specifically,” she continued, “the kind of stuff that leads to overdosing and not being found until the next morning.”
We hadn’t spoken on how we would kill Burt, but Bunny’s idea proved we were on the same page. If this death were going to happen, there was only one way. Poison.
Of course it would be poison. Hattie-May had spent her life getting rid of pests for others. Now she’d do the same for Frances.
“Yeah, a motel.” Frances nodded eagerly. “Do you know a place?”
“Matter of fact, I do.” Bunny took a slice of cake from the counter and brought it back to the table. She sat down and dug in. “Across state lines. In Alabama. The type of place nobody notices unless they go looking for it.”
“That sounds perfect,” Frances said excitedly, and I wondered where the haunted, pale woman had disappeared to. “There’s one thing I’m not sure about.”
“What?” I asked.
“It’s only…the poison. Seems risky. What if he survives?”
Hattie-May chuckled as if my sister had said something funny.
“No. Poison’s least risky.” Bunny spoke evenly and unbothered, as if she were deciding on where to grab dinner.
“Shooting him or stabbing him would be the wrong move. It would be messy and would be immediately investigated as a homicide the moment the body was discovered.” She forked another bite of cake and chewed thoughtfully.
“Couldn’t we make it look like, I don’t know, a drug deal gone bad or something?” Frances asked.
I blinked, and for a second, I was back in the clearing, shovel in hand. Terror and power swirling together inside me.
“No,” I said, not believing what my sister was saying. “That’s dangerous. What if he got the weapon away from you? Guns are traceable, and honestly, do you think you’d be able to go through with stabbing him?”
Frances shrugged. “Let someone pin you down and slap you across the face, then come back and ask me that.”
She had a point.
“Seems to me like poisoning him will be easier to conceal, and like Bunny said, won’t immediately be ruled as a homicide, as long as we, you know, make it look right.”
“That won’t be a problem, honey,” Hattie-May said.
She gathered the empty cake saucers and carried them to the sink.
“I know just the thing. Have it already bottled, stored. Of course”—she turned on the faucet to rinse the plates—“I could brew up something new. I believe I have some rosary pea in the greenhouse.”
I watch my great-aunt, openmouthed, as she began humming her favorite hymn and squirted detergent into the sink. From death to dishes, just that quickly.
“What if…” Frances ignored Hattie-May, her eyes darting around the room.
“What if we did bring him here? I’m sorry Aunt Hattie, but listen real quick.
We lure him out here, where no one would ever think to look for him, at least not for a long time.
I think that makes the most sense. Then we could…
I don’t know…make sure he’s dead. Get rid of the body, just like—”
“Like what?” I asked, surprised at the hint of venom in my voice. “Like last time?”
“Well, yeah,” Frances said. “Then I could ‘come home from my beach trip’ and report my husband missing.”
“No.” Bunny shook her head. “Nuh-uh. When Burt was traced back here—and he absolutely would be—it’d put your aunts under a lot of scrutiny, and we ain’t doing that.”
“But I think—” Frances began, but this time Ruth interrupted.
“Frances, hon. That’s too much.” Ruth’s expression was pained. “Burt’s not gonna get away with everything he’s done, but we gotta do this exactly right.”
My sister fidgeted with her necklace, her eyes going vacant, but she nodded. “Fine. As long as he’s good and dead before we leave.”
“Don’t you worry, baby,” Aunt Hattie-May said, hands going to her ample hips. “He’s not getting out of this alive.”