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She checked on Renee, then double-checked all the doors and windows before settling in front of the fire again. She, Renee, and the dog were barricaded. Safe. She just needed to get through one more night; then she would call Ian in the morning. Meet him somewhere. Find a new hiding spot.
Maybe you don’t need one. Maybe Ray Watkins sent that last letter and is moving on with his life.
She didn’t believe that for a second.
Then call Ian back. Call him now.
She picked up the burner phone, thought it over, and slipped it back into her pocket.
She’d been half-crazed when she’d left him and filed for divorce, certain that he’d been cheating on her. Now, though, she wasn’t so sure. Or perhaps, because she was facing a life-and-death situation, whether he’d had an affair or not wasn’t so big a deal.
Who’re you kidding? If the guy can’t be faithful, he’s not worth your time....
She settled in next to Renee, listening to the fire hiss and pop and knowing sleep, tonight, would be elusive.
As it had been ever since Ray Watkins had been released from prison.
She thought of him as a young man. His swagger, his bravado. How he’d loved being the eye candy escorting Tina Champagne to openings of her latest movie, or at restaurants, or hosting parties at her home. But there had always been a rough side to him, and a glint in his eye that had bothered her, even as a girl. Something about the way he treated Mama, the way she let him treat her.
Much later, Lucy had learned from Marilyn that he’d had a wandering eye, that he’d cheated on Mama, and that was the reason Tina Champagne had sent her daughters abroad. Marilyn had explained it all before she’d left the boarding school for college in France.
“It’s probably my fault,” Marilyn had explained while packing her bags in the small dorm room she’d occupied for the past two years. Wearing a yellow dress Aunt Beth had sent, one Marilyn had declared, “gross, but at least not a uniform,” she was searching through the piles of clothes still on her stripped bed.
“Your fault?” Lucy sat on a stool near the arched window over the desk, while all of Marilyn’s things—her clothes and jewelry, a diary, and her makeup kit—were being shuffled haphazardly into two suitcases.
“Yeah. My fault.” Marilyn flipped her hair over her shoulder. “Where the fu–where’s my brush? Damn it, it was right here.” She began rummaging through the small piles.
“What do you mean?”
“Oh, it was because Ray was into me, y’know.”
“Into you?” Lucy repeated.
“You saw it,” she declared. She turned her head to stare at Lucy and arch her eyebrows. “I mean, like into me. As in physically.”
“What?”
“That’s what pissed Mom off. Y’know, cuz I was only like seventeen.”
When Lucy just stared at her, Marilyn added, “You’re such a child.”
“Almost nine.”
“Going on three. Where’s my brush?” She began throwing in the neatly folded blouses and sweaters and a pair of jeans, all she had with her other than the navy blue uniform of the school. “Did you take it?”
“No.”
“You’re sure? Cuz I know you’re a little klepto. First my ring. My ruby ring.” Her eyes narrowed on her. “Did you take it?”
“Your brush?”
“My ring. I haven’t seen it for like three days!”
Lucy asked, “You liked him?”
“What—who? Oh, Ray?” She shook her head as she pulled the thin mattress from her bed. “Not really. I just did it to piss Mom off, and it worked. But he was only a few years older than me, y’know. Oh—there it is!” She scooped up the brush. “How’d it get . . . ?” Again she looked over her shoulder to meet Lucy’s gaze. “You hid this here, didn’t you? You’re such a little head case. I know what you used to do to your dolls. To mine! I found them, you know, the naked bodies. Of those Barbie and Ken dolls.”
Lucy didn’t respond.
