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“They don’t have anything to do with us, Lily. Zero. I should be upset about your self-righteous behavior, but I’m willing to work on it.”
“You think I’m self-righteous?” she asked, mortified.
“I do,” Dan said. “You’re judging people you don’t know. Alison is a great mom and a good friend to Lisa. She loves Adam, who is your boss, I think I need to remind you of that, and when you’ve needed her help, she’s come without delay to lend a hand.”
“She screwed her brother and had a kid with him.”
“In your eyes, that’s what everything comes down to.”
“Pretty much.”
He opened the door to throw the trash in a receptacle, including her uneaten burger and root beer. Watching him, Lily didn’t say anything, didn’t feel the need to apologize or try to rationalize why she felt the way she did. It was her personal belief that there was a line that shouldn’t be crossed. She felt strongly about her moral convictions, and there wasn’t anything that could change her mind.
“Do you feel that once Alison found out she was pregnant, she should have gotten an abortion?”
“No! What do you take me for?”
“So the baby is okay. It’s the act that caused her birth that you object to.”
“I can see what you’re getting at, Dan, and I’m not falling for it.”
“Okay, well, I guess we have to agree to disagree, then.”
“I’m not sure it’s that easy.”
He looked over at her before he put the car in reverse. “What do you mean?”
“I don’t want any part of that. Your ex-wife is married to Ryan. They’re raising your sons, which I find almost impossible to believe.”
“Why?” Dan asked, baffled.
“Because the man is a reprobate, Dan. He’s about as immoral as they come.”
“What do you want to do, then?” he asked, watching her.
“We’re through.”
“Oh jeez, now you’re judging me again. That sucks, Lily.”
“I’m not going to Pam’s either, and see Ryan interacting with everyone like his shit doesn’t stink. He makes me sick.”
Dan suddenly wondered if Hocus had ever read Lily’s palm or gotten any vibe from her.
“What do you think of the palm reader at the coffee shop? It seems to me that you should be appalled by the travesty of a soothsayer working on the other side of the wall.”
“It’s nothing more than a gimmick to get people in the shop,” she said, her nose in the air. “It’s like a sideshow at the carnival. I remember as a little girl, my father taking us to Mayfair and the hawker outside one of the sideshows yelling, ‘Freaks are not born of freaks! They are born of normal people like you and I!’ All I could think of was, my god, that idiot thinks he’s normal! Hocus thinks she’s normal. Now I guess Ryan and Alison fall into the same category. They are freaks.”
Listening to her pontificate was his breaking point. Dan pulled out of the drive-in parking lot and headed back to town. Stoney silence reverberated as he pulled in front of the drugstore.
She didn’t speak as she got out, or look back at him on the way to the door next to the drugstore entrance, so he pulled away from the curb and drove to Pam’s house.
Chapter 3
Ryan erected a sign at the front door, instructing guests to walk around the side of the house to the terrace. Pam could finally greet guests in back where the action was happening instead of standing in the third position of ballet, answering the front door.
By two, the beach behind Pam’s house was packed. A cabana had been erected this year with six individual changing rooms, alongside a string of portable toilets and hand-washing stations. The door to the house was locked, and only family was going in and out.
“It’s a little insulting,” Marian Cooper, next-door neighbor, stated, her nose in the air. “I’ve been a guest in this house for several years, and now she locks me out?”
