AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Easy. We lure him in. And then take care of the problem.”
“And Alex?”
“I think Alex is desperate but not necessarily serious.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t think he’d do anything that would implicate himself. He’s smarter than that. With the email to his bosses, like I said, he’ll go away. That—or he’ll take us to court over something frivolous. One or the other.”
Suddenly, I feel stupid for not having thought of this myself. “Right. But why would Jack Mooney go through all this effort, after all this time? And why me?”
“You’d have to ask him.”
“I think I want to.”
“I think that’s a terrible idea.”
“Do you? Because I just want this to end. I want to be able to spend an afternoon with my husband, and leave my children with a sitter and not have to worry that something terrible has happened.”
“I’m sure they’re fine. Call Crowley back.”
Crowley’s phone rings and rings before it goes to what is undoubtedly an old school answering machine. The sun sinks lower in the sky. The car does not go fast enough. Finally, my phone rings, and to my dismay, it is not Lucy. It is Mr. Crowley. He tells me the house is locked up, and he cannot get in. “We’re only a few miles away,” Greg says. “Just thank him and hang up.”
Alex calls me three times in a row. Greg gives me a look when I hold up the screen for him to see. “Don’t answer. Make him put it in writing.”
Greg is right. When I don’t answer, Alex texts. Guess you’re not that smart. You could have had a nice commission. And more. Instead, you’re stuck with that loser, which I promise will be punishment enough.
I click the text, go into my contacts, and block Alex. Then I do the same on Facebook.
Meanwhile, Greg speeds home, racing through the streets of our neighborhood, gaining us a few dirty looks and one middle finger. For sure, the description of our car, if not actual camera footage, along with our license plate number, will be on the neighborhood app for all to see and comment on. I would tell Greg to slow down, but the contents of my stomach are lodged firmly in my throat.
He barrels into the driveway, stamping on the brakes in the front of the house and throws the car into park. He grabs his backpack, removes the handgun, and tells me to wait in the car. As he starts for the house, he pushes the handgun into his waistband.
I do not wait in the car. I am two steps behind him. There’s no sign of forced entry, no sign of anything amiss. At least not at first.
We find Blair in the kitchen, seated next to Lucy's unconscious body, playing on her iPad.
I bolt for the stairs. Naomi is fast asleep in her bed, where Greg said she was when he left her. He dials 9-1-1, while I try to rouse Naomi. I flip on the light and instantly I know something is wrong. Her skin is ashy, and her breathing is shallow. When I call her name, and jostle her, she mumbles incoherently but does not fully wake. My first thought is a carbon monoxide leak. But that doesn’t explain why Blair is fine.
When questioned, Blair isn’t able to explain what happened with Lucy, only that one minute she complained of a stomachache, and the next she was on the floor. When the paramedics arrive, they assess Lucy and then deftly load her on a gurney and into the back of the ambulance. When they do not immediately take off, Greg gives me a look, and I know what he is thinking. This is not a good sign.
Not long after, Lucy’s father arrives. He relays her medical history, which sounds about as uneventful as most young women that age. Members of the fire department arrive and take Naomi’s vitals. They suggest getting her checked over at the ER, and eventually another ambulance arrives to transport her. Greg stays behind; he is going to drop Blair off with Dana and then head to the hospital.
En route, Naomi is mostly unresponsive. It strikes me that in the span of a week, I have held both my children’s hands in the back of ambulances. What kind of person could have such luck?
I mention this to the paramedic, who I expect to conclude what I’m thinking, that I must be a terrible mother. Instead, he seems unfazed. “Like they say,” he tells me, “things come in threes.”
Chapter Thirty-Five
When a detective shows up in the emergency room and asks to speak with me, I find out the hard way what is going on with my daughter. He’s tall and thin, with thick glasses and a balding head. He sports a Christmas sweater and tweed slacks and isn’t at all what I expected.
He introduces himself, and while respectful, he dodges every question I throw at him. Throughout our conversation, he remains evasive, skirting around answering my many questions. But he doesn’t hold back at all in peppering me with his. Most of them revolve around some brownies Lucy is said to have consumed at my house. Had I made them? And if I had, where had I purchased the ingredients?
No, I had not. I explain Blair’s accident. Then I tell him about all the meals we had delivered by friends and neighbors.
According to the detective, Lucy posted a selfie to Instagram with a pan of brownies from our kitchen, captioning the photo with perks of the job. Not long after, while texting back and forth with her boyfriend, she mentioned that she felt sick. Then there was a bit of joking back and forth between the two of them. In her final text, she joked that it served her right for eating our food.
The detective explains that Lucy’s organs are failing one by one, and she has gone into sepsis. Arsenic was detected in both her blood and urine, and her prognosis is quite grim.
