Her ash blonde hair was cut blunt, her skin was pale under her tan, she had some bruising and swelling on the left side of her face, there were a bunch of tubes sticking in her and her eyes were dead.
Those eyes came to me the minute I walked in and that was all I could think, her bright, shining, usually smiling, always friendly eyes were dead.
I swallowed back tears and looked across the room to see two women, an older one, dressed conservatively, a younger one, dressed a lot like me but in jeans rather than shorts. I knew, because Shambles told me, they were Sunny’s Mom and sister.
“Hi,” I said softly. “I’m Lauren, a friend of Sunny’s.”
The Mom nodded and looked at Sunny.
The sister said, “Hey.”
“I…” I looked at Sunny before I looked back at her family. “Can I talk to her?”
They both stared at me without speaking.
Shambles, who had come in behind me, said quietly, “Mom, Moonbeam, she means alone.”
They looked at me again, they looked at Sunny. I tried to look reassuring, Sunny just looked blank and Shambles took control, herding Sunny’s family out the door.
He stood in it and nodded to me then it closed on him.
I walked to Sunny and sat at the very edge of the seat of a chair that was pulled close to her side. I looked to her and she was staring at the ceiling.
I took her hand in mine. It was limp. I leaned forward and pressed it against my face, my eyes smarting and I felt the wetness escape and glide down my cheeks. I knew she had to feel it too.
My eyes closed.
“I’m sorry, baby,” I whispered to her hand. “I had magic, I’d take this away.”
I opened my eyes, kept her hand to my face and looked toward her head which had turned and her gaze was on me.
Still dead.
“I can’t do that,” I was still whispering.
She didn’t reply.
“You and me,” I kept whispering, “honey…” I pulled in breath and let it out, “we have to do the next best thing.”
Nothing about her face changed. Not a thing.
“You don’t think you’re strong enough but we’ll find your strength together.”
She looked back at the ceiling.
“He has to be stopped, Sunny.”
Suddenly, she yanked her hand forcefully from mine.
Too fast, I went too fast. Darn.
I gave it a minute then got up and sat on the side of her bed but she turned her head away.
I leaned toward her, not too close, not threatening and I laid it out.
“I’m wired. They’re listening, the police, the FBI, you need to know that.”
She swallowed.
“They can hear but this is just you and me, baby. Right now it’s just you and me.”
No response.
I closed my eyes and bit my lip, opened them and urged, “Please, talk to me.”
Sunny remained silent.
I wiped my face and looked out the window not seeing the landscape there only thinking of finding some way through.
Then it came to me. I should tell her the truth.
“I stayed in Carnal because of you,” I whispered.
I heard movement and I looked back down at her to see she was looking up at me.
I nodded. “It’s true. You and Shambles. Betty and Ned too. Banana bread and Middle Eastern night and knowing I was going to have friends, good ones, ones who genuinely cared, didn’t just say it but acted it… when I met you guys, I knew I was home.”
Her lip quivered.
“I’d been far from home a long time, Sunny, lost and wandering, it’s scary to be in that place alone.” My voice dropped to a whisper. “Thank you for bringing me back home.”
“Petal,” she croaked, her voice thick.
“Talk to me, baby,”
She shook her head.
“You’re safe here, you’re safe with me,” I promised her.
She kept shaking her head so I grabbed her hand, leaned deeper and pulled her hand to my chest, encasing it in both of mine and holding strong.
“You’re safe with me,” I repeated and squeezed her hand. “You can’t wander, lost and alone in your head forever. You can’t.” I squeezed her hand again. “Give me the chance to return the favor, honey, let me give you a little of what you gave me. Let me bring you back home.”
She stared in my eyes for a long time.
Then she opened her mouth and talked to me.
And I realized, even after Tate and Special Agent Tambo’s coaching before I went in her room, I wasn’t prepared.
They didn’t warn me that words could burn straight into your brain.
Sunny’s did in a way that I knew it would take years for those burns to heal.
And when they did, they’d leave scars.
But I’d got her to say the words.
My job was done.
* * * * *
When I walked out of Sunny’s room the door didn’t even close behind me before I felt Tate’s arms close around me.
I shoved my face in his chest and held on tight.
“You did good,” he whispered into my hair.
I nodded against his chest.
He held me awhile then kept me close as his hand went under my t-shirt. I felt his fingers move on me, taking the kit that was attached to my waistband, then going up, his big body shielding mine from onlookers as his fingers followed the thin cord, he carefully ripped the taped microphone off my chest and his hand moved out of my shirt.
Tucking me to his side, he turned to Tambo and handed him the wire.
“Don’t know how to thank you, Miss Grahame,” Tambo said gently to me. “That had to be tough.”
I nodded and said quietly, “It’s okay.”
But it wasn’t okay, my brain was burning and dang, but it hurt.
Tambo nodded back.
“Bub, let’s get Laurie home,” Tate called to Jonas and didn’t wait for a response, he started walking us down the hall.
“I’ll see you tomorrow, Shambles,” I said as we made it to him and Tate stopped when I spoke.
Shambles looked toward Sunny’s door then back to me. “You think she’ll talk to me now?”
“Go and see, honey,” I prompted.
He nodded, leaned in and kissed my cheek then hurried down the hall.
Tate started us moving again. We were stopped at the elevators when I felt a hand take mine.
Tate tagged the elevator button and I looked down to see Jonas looking up, studiously avoiding my gaze and staring at the red digital display over the elevator telling us what floors it was moving through like this display might communicate to him straight from God that week’s winning lottery numbers.
And he did this holding my hand.
* * * * *
I didn’t pay much attention as we walked through the grocery store. I was focused on getting ingredients for chocolate chip cookies and the pasta-dijon mustard-mayo-pickle salad that was another one of my specialties that Brad hated due to its abundance of calories and fat. Tate was going to grill burgers for dinner that night and my pasta-dijon mustard-mayo-pickle salad went perfect with hamburgers.
I didn’t pay much attention when we loaded the groceries in the back of the Explorer and I didn’t pay much attention as we started to head home.
I only paid attention when Tate parked outside La-La Land and Jonas jumped out.
I focused on Jonas as he ran to La-La Land and I watched him lean a store arranged bouquet of flowers against a long, thick line of flower bouquets that had already been laid there.
I turned to Tate.
“He saw ‘em when we drove through earlier,” Tate answered my unspoken question. “He asked me at the store while you were takin’ a year to pick between spiral pasta and macaroni. He wanted our flowers to be there.”
Our flowers.
Our.
I looked back out the windshield to see Jonas jogging toward the SUV. He hefted himself in
and closed the door.
I stared at the flowers the folks of Carnal had laid out to show Sunny and Shambles they had the town’s support.
Carnal was a good town. It was home.
I licked my lips as Tate pulled out of the parking spot.
Then I said, “I didn’t take a year to pick out pasta.”
Jonas chuckled.
All Tate said was, “Babe.”
* * * * *
“Petal, it hurt.”
My eyes opened.
The room was pitch. No moonlight because Tate had closed the curtains.
It was the middle of the night and I couldn’t sleep. This was the fourth time Sunny’s voice woke me up and her saying “hurt” in that tone that told me exactly how much it hurt, exactly how it felt when the blade sunk in her flesh, exactly how exquisite the pain was, exactly, I knew I wouldn’t get back to sleep again.
Carefully extricating my arm from around his waist, I rolled away from Tate’s back to rest on my opposite side.
Earlier that day, we’d come home to find Neeta’s car gone. Tate discovered through a phone call to Pop that Wood and Stella had come to collect it.
We’d had lunch, I made cookies while Tate and Jonas cleared the gutters of leaves (and yes, I’d let Jonas have some dough, a lot of it). This took them awhile so I sorted our pool bags, did laundry, changed sheets and ran the vacuum cleaner in random rooms, all this intermingled with sitting out on the deck and listening to them work and talk.
When they were done they played multiple games of horse at the basketball hoop that was mounted over the garage door. Sometimes I watched (okay, mostly I watched) while I sipped grape Kool-Aid.
The Kool-Aid reminded me of Carrie and Mom and Dad and home so I went into the house, got my phone, went back out to the deck and called them while I watched Tate and his son play basketball. I told my family about Jonas; about Neeta; I told my sister about Tate loving me and me loving him (she was cautiously happy for me, still thinking it was too soon but also liking Tate so she didn’t give me much guff); and I told them all about Sunny. I didn’t want to worry them but I also didn’t want to keep it from them. They didn’t like hearing it but they also made it clear they’d prefer it that way rather than me keeping it buried like I did with Brad and when I wandered the country looking for Carnal.
As for me, it felt good telling them, I needed to do it, to give it to them and they took it, as families do.
After basketball, I was off the phone and Tate and Jonas came to me. Tate took my newly refilled with Kool-Aid, retro, pink glass and downed a huge gulp.
When his hand dropped, his eyes narrowed on the glass then came to me.
“Jesus, Ace, that’s like suckin’ back a mouthful of sugar.”
He said this like it was a bad thing.
“I know,” I replied. “Isn’t it yummy?”
“Yummy,” Jonas muttered, his voice filled with humor. “Goofy.”
“Do you want some?” I asked Jonas.
“He knows where it is,” Tate answered for his son and then looked at the boy. “Get me a water while you’re in there, Bub.”
Jonas nodded and raced to the house, his arm still curved around the basketball.
I knew why Tate sent Jonas on his errand when he put the glass on the table beside me and leaned into me, a hand to either arm of my chair. He was sweaty, his hair around his neck and ears was wet and curling and there were more wet bits plastered to his forehead, as his t-shirt was mostly plastered to his chest.
Another kind of yummy.
“How you doin’?” he asked softly.
I took in a breath and on the exhale shared, “How I’m doing is, I keep thinking about it and she told me all of it but I still think we didn’t get much.”
“We got more than we had,” Tate replied.
“That’s true but it’s not enough,” I said. “He was wearing a ski mask.”
“Bad luck,” Tate muttered. “He came prepared.”
“She was too scared to notice the color of his eyes and he didn’t barely speak,” I reminded Tate of what he already knew since he’d been listening in with the Feds.
“She’s talkin’ now and they’ll get someone in to work with her, get more. But now we know he’s built, strong, not a wimp, and we know he’s white. We also know it wasn’t opportunity. He’d seen her before.”
“How do we know that?” I asked and, unfortunately, Tate moved away but pulled another chair close to mine and sat down.
“He came prepared,” Tate repeated as he leaned down, wrapped an arm around the backs of my knees and then lifted his legs, feet to the railing, pulling mine up, twisting me in my chair and throwing my legs over his.
“The ski mask,” I guessed.
“Yeah, it’s July,” Tate stated. “He was also wearin’ gloves. Left no prints on her bike, left nothin’.”
“But it’s him, the one who killed Tonia,” I stated.
“It’s the same kind of knife so that’s a good assumption.”
“I don’t get it.”
“Shambles was with her before,” Tate told me. “Tambo talked to him. She’d go out and draw down the sun on her own but not at that spot. At that spot, Shambles was always with her.”
“So this time, alone…”
“He’d seen them together, she was alone this time, he took his shot.”
“So, planned but not planned, exactly.”
“Not planned exactly but planned, yeah.”
I looked to the trees.
“He lives up there Laurie,” Tate muttered and my eyes shot to him.
“What?” I breathed.
“Bet my fuckin’ life on it, he lives up there,” Tate reiterated. “He knows that spot. He knows those woods. Bet my fuckin’ life he lives up there. He hunts up there. That’s his space. It’s his.”
With what he said and the way he said it, I felt my blood run cold.
“Is Tambo going to check?” I asked.
“Runnin’ everyone now.”
“How stupid would that be, that close to home, to –?”
“Pretty fuckin’ stupid,” Tate cut me off.
“But why?”
He shook his head, staring at the conifers at the front of his home, his mind somewhere else.
“It’s jacked,” he whispered. “Can’t get my head around it. Nothin’ fits but it all fits. Eight identical murders and now this, all the same MO, but all wrong.”
We heard the sliding glass door go at the same time I heard Jonas saying, “No, Buster, you stay inside.”
Quickly, I leaned close and whispered to Tate, “She said he said ‘sorry’.”
His arm slid around my shoulders and pulled me closer so my side dug into the arm of the chair but I didn’t care because the rest of me was resting against him.
“Yeah,” Tate whispered back.
“That’s creepy, Tate.” I was still whispering.
“It’s all creepy, Laurie.” He was also still whispering.
He was right about that.
Jonas made it to us and he handed Tate a bottled water. Then he dragged a chair close to his Dad and sat down with his own glass (not pink, one of Tate’s old ones) of grape Kool-Aid and a handful of cookies which he proceeded to start eating.
“You like grape Kool-Aid, Jonas?” I asked him.
“Cherry’s better,” he muttered, mouth full and then turned to face me and grinned a chocolate chip cookie crumble grin. “But it’ll do.”
“I could do cherry,” I stated and then finished on a mumble to myself, “Or I’ll buy another pitcher. They had green ones too.”
“Dad, Laurie’s fillin’ the house with girlie crap,” Jonas told on me while I was sitting right there.
Tate was staring at the trees and I watched him smile at them while he murmured, “Yeah.”
Clearly Tate didn’t mind me filling the house with “girlie crap”. I gave Jonas a “so there” look and Jonas rolled his eyes.
Then he asked, ??
?We gonna eat hamburgers or what?”
“Soon’s Lauren makes ‘em,” Tate answered.
“I thought you were grilling them,” I said to Tate and he looked down at me.
“Yeah, I’m grillin’ ‘em, not makin’ ‘em.”
“So I have to do the icky, squishy part?” I demanded to know.
Tate smiled at me, “Yeah.”
Before I could protest, Jonas spoke.
“I’ll do the icky, squishy part,” he offered. “I like icky and squishy.”
“It’s all yours,” I muttered.
“Cool!” Jonas cried.
“After a shower, Bub,” Tate stated.
“Right,” Jonas replied, shoved the last cookie in his mouth, jumped up and ran to the house.
Tate looked back at the trees. I rested my head on his shoulder. We sat together silent for awhile before Tate broke the silence.
“He thinks you’re the shit, Ace.”
He meant Jonas.
“That’s good since I feel the same way,” I replied.
We were quiet again, then, for some reason, he asked softly, “You love me?”
My heart skipped and my body got tight.
But again my mouth answered for me, “Yes.”
His arm gave me a squeeze and he muttered, “Good.”
He fell silent and I focused on getting my heart rate normal even as I worried about the fact that he kept asking me that question, and getting his answer, and seeming content with that but not returning the sentiment.
Because I was worried about it, I couldn’t get my heart rate normal and my mouth formed more words.
“Do you… uh…” I got out before my brain shut my mouth down.
His arm squeezed again, differently this time, curling in and my head lifted up to find his had turned and he was looking down at me and, witnessing the look on his face, I found my heart rate accelerating startlingly.
“Never doubt it, Ace,” he declared on a growl.
“Okay,” I whispered then asked, “Why do you keep asking me?”
“‘Cause I like hearin’ you say yes.”
I lifted my hand and placed it on his bearded jaw as his head tipped down and he kissed me. It wasn’t hard and demanding, it was soft, sweet, wet and deliciously long.
After Tate and I made out on the deck, I supervised Jonas’s hamburger making at the same time making my pasta salad and we did this while Tate showered. Then Tate grilled. Then we ate out on the back patio while Jonas and I chattered and Tate infrequently interjected since Jonas and I chattered so much. We had cake after hamburgers. Then Jonas and I did dishes while Tate called Krys to make sure everything was okay. Then we camped out in the living room and watched comedies.