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“I just meant quitting the agency,” Elizabeth had assured them, “not giving up on real estate altogether.” That was a bit of a lie. In truth she’d been close to taking a break from her career to concentrate on home life as things were rocky with Court. Make that rockier. Their marriage had never run smoothly.
At a meeting with the half dozen other moms who belonged to the larger Moms Group, Tara had cornered Elizabeth in the conference room of the preschool. “So how’s it going with Crazy Mazie?” she asked.
Elizabeth mentally kicked herself for ever mentioning the nickname.
Several other of the women tuned in, all wanting to know what had happened at the real estate agency.
More than a little miffed at Tara for bringing up the sensitive subject in front of everyone, Elizabeth downplayed her answer. “Surprisingly a lot better,” she said with a smile she didn’t feel. “She’s been a lot nicer lately, so maybe we were just going through a rough patch.”
Everyone except Jade seemed to buy her story. She regarded Elizabeth with questions in her dark eyes, but the conversation turned back to the next preschool function—“fun night”—a type of carnival aimed at securing more donations from the parents and nearby businesses. At least for the moment, the subject of Elizabeth’s relationship with her boss was over.
Six days later, Mazie was dead.
According to all reports, Mazie had driven her car off I-55, her Mercedes going airborne to crash on the road below. She’d been rushed to a local hospital, but succumbed to her injuries a few days later. Mazie had never awakened from her coma.
Elizabeth was shocked, sick, and disbelieving. She immediately thought back to her conversation with her friends in the Moms Group and cringed inside.
When Vivian called later and whispered, “Oh, my God, Elizabeth! Oh, my God,” Elizabeth held her phone in a white knuckled grasp and trie
d with all her might to pretend that she thought it was just an odd and sobering coincidence.
“It’s . . . it’s horrible,” she whispered. “I can’t believe it.” Staring at her pale reflection in the window over her kitchen sink, she added, “I guess, bad things just happen.” But she’d hung up shaken.
And bad things happen when you wish them so.
The thought made her nearly throw up in the sink. She splashed water over her face and somehow pulled herself together as she mentally repeated the mantra it’s not your fault. It’s not your fault.
When her other friends called, she dealt with them as she had with Vivian, whispering words of shock and horror as those emotions were real.
As she sipped Court’s “special” merlot, Elizabeth stared out the window. Neither she nor Jade had brought up the jungle gym incident again, but sometimes she felt Jade’s gaze lingering on her as if puzzling her out, questions forming in her mind. Jade had half-guessed about Elizabeth’s gift of foreshadowing.
But she hadn’t a clue about Elizabeth’s gift for causing death.
Do bad things just happen? Elizabeth wondered. “Bad things like that? Did they? If so, what about Officer Unfriendly?” she whispered.
She watched the storm clouds scud across the sky and felt the same coldness inside that had enveloped her the first time someone had died and she’d wondered if she’d been at fault. Impossible, right? Crazy. And yet eight months earlier . . .
Officer Seth Daniels of the Irvine Police Department pulled her over when she was traveling five miles over the speed limit. Really? Five miles over the speed limit? In Southern California? That was hardly worth stopping someone. Elizabeth almost laughed. It felt like it was breaking some unspoken, sacred code to pull her over for such a minor offense.
She said as much to him as he stood near the open window of her car, traffic moving behind him. Her comments brought a cold smile to his face that was a little spooky. When her easy, half-joking persona failed to get results, she tried reasoning with him, but he just gazed down at her implacably, that icy grin never quite leaving his face, as if he were enjoying the show.
She got the feeling he savored her discomfort, so she dropped all pretense of friendliness and said, “You’re kidding, right? Five miles over?”
“Not kidding,” he responded, writing her up a four-hundred-dollar ticket and handing it to her with a flourish.
What an asshole! Her blood pressure hit the roof. Feeling her lips compress, she snatched the ticket from his hand and threw it to the passenger seat, never taking her eyes off the officer.
Daniels, a man in his late forties with male pattern baldness marching over his scalp and hiding beneath his hat, said with a faint sneer, “You beautiful women think you can get anything you want.”
Elizabeth almost ripped up the ticket in front of him but had somehow managed to hold herself back; he would’ve probably arrested her on the spot.
Shaking his head, he added, “Have a nice day,” and headed back to his cruiser.
All the way home she fumed, her head filled with vile forms of retribution for Officer Unfriendly.
When she went to court to have the amount of the ticket reduced, there he was, still smirking. She forced herself to make eye contact with him, giving him her coldest glare packed with negative thoughts, the uppermost one being she wished he would just disappear forever.
She got that wish.
