On the Night She Died
A Quarry Street Story
Megan Hart
Blurb
Friendships. Love. Secrets.
Jennilynn Harrison left them all behind — her sister Alicia. Her friend-to-lover Ilya Stern. His younger brother Niko. The Stern brothers’ step-sister Theresa.
Intertwined lives, all of them damaged by what happened on the night she died.
Copyright © 2018 by Megan Hart
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
ISBN: 978-1-940078-53-3
Created with Vellum
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
The Quarry Street Series…
The Quarry Street Series continues…
Also by Megan Hart
About the Author
Chapter 1
Rebecca
Now
Rebecca Segal hadn’t been home in a long damned time, but if it was really the place where they had to take you in, she supposed a little gratitude on her part might not be out of line.
Yesterday, her mother’s voice on the phone had been shaking, querulous, weak. She hadn’t quite begged Rebecca to leave the sunny shores and warm waters of Cozumel, but the fact her mother might have felt as though she had to plead was more than enough to get Rebecca on the first flight home. She hadn’t even packed her suitcase — there wasn’t anything she owned that she couldn’t afford to replace. She’d gone straight from the airport to the hospital.
Her father had died before she could get there.
Rebecca would regret that for the rest of her life. Not having the chance to say goodbye to her dad. Not being there as he drew his last breath. Not holding her mom’s hand through his final moments. She could have blamed her mother for not calling her sooner, but the truth was, Rebecca had left home years ago and never returned no matter how many times her parents had asked, begged or pleaded, so if there was any blame to be laid, it was solely at Rebecca’s own extravagantly shod feet.
“Hang on,” she told the driver as they reached a stoplight. “Can you go by way of Zimmerman’s diner?”
“It’s called B’s Diner, now. But sure, of course we can swing past,” the guy said.
The driver looked old enough to remember when Zimmerman’s had been in its heyday. For a moment, Rebecca considered asking him how long he’d lived in Quarrytown. Maybe they’d gone to school together. Maybe he was remembering her while she couldn’t place a name to the face.
“How long has it had a new name?”
“About a year now. Do you want me to stop so you can run in?” The driver’s eyes caught hers in the rearview mirror.
Rebecca shook her head and looked out the window. The building was the same as she remembered, but clearly updated. Paint, gleaming chrome, a new sign. She hadn’t been inside a good old-fashioned diner in years. Screw gluten, lactose, sugar and fat-free. Greasy eggs and black bitter coffee sounded like heaven right about now.
“No, thanks,” Rebecca said.
Quarrytown had seen a lot of other changes, not only a new diner. New strip malls filled in what had once been bare fields. Neighborhoods of identical houses lined up along gently curving streets with macadam so new it was still inky black. The old high school was still there, but an entire new wing had changed it drastically.
She closed her eyes and leaned back against the car’s leather seat. She’d been surprised but grateful to find out she could call for a freelance driving service. The driver had told her, when she asked, that the service had only become available in Quarrytown a couple months before. It was nothing like the kind of black car treatment she was used to, but it was better than a cab. If she was going to stay in town for any length of time, she’d have to see about getting herself a permanent ride.
She could probably drive her dad’s. The completely restored 1967 Chevy Impala had been his baby for the past four decades, and he’d been driving it right up until he got sick. The tears threatened then, but she fought them back fiercely. She hadn’t broken down in the hospital, and she sure as hell wasn’t going to do it in front of a stranger.
This car’s tires rumbled, and Rebecca opened her eyes. The house on the hill hadn’t changed. Gray paint with black trim, red front door still hung with the holiday wreath her mother insisted on every year, the way she always put a Christmas tree in the front room where the neighbors could see it, even though the Segals didn’t celebrate the holiday. Rebecca craned her neck for a glimpse of that tree through the glass, but her driver was pulling up the driveway and around the back to the garage too fast for her to see anything but a glare of headlights.
Her mother had gone to stay with her sister Anne and hadn’t been home in the past few days, so the back door opening, along with the spill of light onto the dark driveway, startled Rebecca. She leaned forward over the front seat to tap the driver on the shoulder. “Wait, please.”
“Everything okay, Miss?”
Rebecca hadn’t been a “miss” for about as long as she’d been gone from Quarrytown, but she didn’t correct him. She was too busy studying the silhouette in the doorway. Mom had mentioned a daily caregiver for Dad, but there was no reason for him to be at the house now. Besides, something in the figure’s posture seemed familiar. She frowned, then let out a beleaguered sigh and rubbed at the tension spot between her eyes that she kept meaning to get taken care of with some fancy and expensive injections.
“It’s fine,” she said. “It’s just my ex-husband. He’s not supposed to be here.”
“Do you need me to go in with you? Are you safe?”
Rebecca paused, surprised and a little touched at the offer. “Yeah, it’s fine. I wasn’t expecting him, that’s all. I don’t need you to go in with me. Thank you, though.”
“I’m happy to walk up with you. Make sure it’s all good.” The driver had twisted around in the seat to look at her.
If he wasn’t hitting on her right this minute, he’d definitely thought about it. She could see it in his eyes, a kind of assessing look that Rebecca had grown used to over the years. Even a few days ago, she’d probably have taken him up on the offer, if only because he was young, handsome, rough around the edges but trying hard, and it would have pissed off Richard to see her with another man, even one who she had no intentions of screwing. Well, maybe no strong intentions.
Right now, she was too tired for games like that. “I’m sure it’s fine. Do you have a card? In case I need another…ride.”
She let the words linger, suggestive, keeping eye contact a few seconds longer than necessary. The light in his gaze told her she’d been right about his attraction to her. Another time, Rebecca would have enjoyed it. Used it. Now, she’d turned her own stomach.
She took the card he offered and got out of the car. Richard was still in the doorway when she got to the back steps. She didn’t say anything to him until she’d pushed past
him and he closed the door behind her.
“I made a pot of coffee,” Richard said. “Where’s your mom?”
“She went to Aunt Anne’s,” Rebecca said. “How long have you been here?”
“An hour or so. I stopped over to see if you needed anything. I’m going over to my folks’ house tonight. Don’t worry,” he added in a voice dripping with sarcasm,“I’m not sticking around.”
Rebecca didn’t need to ask him how he’d known where to find the spare key. Hell, Richard probably still had his own house key. Her parents had adored him, and unlike her, he’d never been a prodigal son. He’d been in this house more than she had in the past twenty years and definitely more often in the last ten since they’d gotten divorced.
“Have you talked to Grant?” Her question came out sounding too casual, with an undercurrent of strain. Her son hadn’t answered her texts.
“I left a voicemail for him, but he hasn’t called me back.”
Rebecca took a grim gratification in knowing Grant wasn’t giving his father any more response than he’d given her. It was a cold comfort, short-lived. She hadn’t spoken, actually spoken, to her son in over a year. She’d given up calling when it became clear he was never going to return her messages. Texting, even without a reply, was easier. She sometimes stalked his social media, making sure he was all right. She sent him money that he never refused.
“I told him he could come and stay with me at my parents’ house,” Richard added.
Her lip curled a little bit at that, but she nodded without arguing about it. Grant was over twenty-one. An adult. He could make his own decisions. If that decision was his father and his paternal grandparents, so be it.
“It’s cold,” Rebecca said after a moment when she lifted the carafe from the coffeemaker.
“You know, you could just say ‘thank you.’”
Carefully, Rebecca put down the carafe. She bit her tongue, a real, physical nip of it between her teeth. She held it there as she counted to ten, determined she wasn’t going to lose her shit with him.
“My father died, Richie,” she said finally in a dark, gritty voice that would have scared her, if she’d been on the receiving end of it. “How about you just…go.”
Richard had never been scared of her. That might have been a huge part of the reason why their marriage failed. He’d never been able to see when he’d pushed her beyond the limits of her admittedly short temper. Or maybe he’d simply never cared. Right now, Rebecca was the one who didn’t care. Not about saving her ex-husband’s fragile feelings, not about being nice, and sure as hell not thanking him for doing something she hadn’t asked him to do, something she neither needed nor wanted from him.
“I came here to see if you’re all right —”
“Get out,” she said through clenched jaws when he didn’t move. “This is not your house. He was not your father.”
Incredibly, Richard moved closer to her. His hand, heavy on her shoulder, caught in her hair where it had fallen out of the messy twist she’d been wearing since two days ago, when she’d been sunning herself on the beach in front of crystal blue waters and contemplating the night’s entertainment in the form of a very cute pair of college boys on the activities staff who’d claimed to be working their way through school.
Rebecca shrugged away from his grip, giving his hand and then his face a long, disgusted look. “They’re reading the will on Thursday. Isn’t that what you really want to know?”
“That’s not fair.”
But it was true, she thought, watching his expression. If Richard had been close with her dad, it was because his own father had been Morris’s best friend. They’d done business together. Gone on vacation. Golfed. Rebecca wouldn’t go so far as to say her ex-husband wasn’t sad about her father’s death, but she wasn’t going to pretend, the way he seemed to be, that he wasn’t assuming that he’d been named in the will.
“Life’s not fair,” she shot back, instantly regretting how childish she sounded.
Richard had always brought out the worst in her, even during the times when it had been all right between them. She hadn’t wanted to give him the satisfaction of knowing he’d gotten under her skin, but that would be giving him credit for having the ability to actually figure out the reasons for another person’s emotional response beyond his own. She wasn’t feeling charitable enough right now to go that far.
“Fine, I’ll go. You have my number if you need me.” Richard paused, maybe waiting for her to tell him that she needed him.
Rebecca hadn’t needed him in a long time, and she wasn’t about to start now. She waited until he’d gone out the back door, then locked it and slid the deadbolt shut after him. She wouldn’t put it past him to try and come back.
In the fridge, she found an unopened bottle of Chardonnay, the good stuff. Her throat closed again as she thought about her dad cutting the wine with seltzer water for her mother, who’d always claimed she “didn’t drink” but who could easily put away four or five “spritzers,” when you got her going. Dad had favored heavy reds and smoky bourbon, but right now, an undiluted glass of white was going to have to do for his daughter. She’d raise a glass for dad in a few days, after she’d had time to go to the liquor store.
“God,” she said aloud. “Save me from places where you can only buy booze from the state store.”
Glass of wine in one hand, she headed for the stairs. She’d go to her old room. Take a long, hot bath. Tuck herself between clean, soft sheets. Sleep. In the morning she’d wake up and although her father wouldn’t be there to greet her, at least she’d be here for Mom when she decided she was ready to come home from Aunt Anne’s. Life would go on, not as they’d known it, but they would find a way to adjust.
Rebecca paused on the stairs to look at the array of framed pictures. Her smiling face, teeth glinting with metal braces. Another of her as a child, her hair in pigtails, her smocked dress a reminder of the horrors of past fashions. And there, in an oversized frame, her wedding photo.
She’d been pregnant with Grant in that picture, although at the time she’d been the only one who’d known. Even Richard hadn’t known. She’d carried small. Hadn’t even needed to let her dress out. Shaking her head at the disaster of her early nineties hair, the plethora of ruffles on the gown and its leg-o-mutton sleeves, Rebecca started to go back up the stairs. She paused again, looking at the photo.
She ought to have been happy on her wedding day, and she’d have said back then that she was. It was too easy to retrofit memories, to imagine she’d been cringing inside, that her wide smile had hidden fear and grief. Too easy, now that it had ended, to believe she’d known all along it was going to be a mistake. Looking at her younger self in the picture, Rebecca could remember being anxious but ready for her life to begin. She’d believed she was making the right choice when she married Richard.
With a low mutter, she tugged the picture off the wall. It left behind a fainter, paler mark against the mint green paint. Her wine sloshed in the glass. She tossed back the last of the drink and carried the picture in its frame down to the kitchen, where she set the glass on the counter and opened the back door. A few brisk steps took her to the wooden fence surrounding the tall garbage cans, and a yank opened the gate. The picture barely fit inside the biggest can, but when she shoved it, the glass broke along with the edges of the wood, and she was able to push the entire thing down deep into the can.
“There,” she said aloud into the night. “Much better.”
Chapter 2
Jenni
Then
It was October, but still so warm that the halter dress Jenni Harrison wore was almost too much for her to stand. When she swiped a tongue across her upper lip, she tasted salt. It reminded her of the summer and lazy days floating in the chilly waters of the quarry. Next summer would be the last one for her, she thought suddenly and with a frown. This was her senior year of high school. Next October, if her parents had their way, she’d be firmly settled in so
me dorm, trying to figure out what she wanted to be when she grew up.
She didn’t want to grow up.
But she didn’t have to think about that now. Not tonight. Tonight she was going to be young and dumb and full of…she giggled to herself before she could finish the sentence. That was kind of gross, even if it did make her laugh. Her sister Alicia, two years younger, frowned.
Allie paced the floor of their shared bedroom, clearly nervous, as she repeatedly tucked her straight, reddish hair behind her ears. “Did you get the beer?”
Of course she had. They were having the party across the street, at the Sterns’ house. Galina, Ilya and Niko’s mom, worked a lot of nights and weekends. Her still-newish husband Barry was also often away during the same times. Jenni and Allie’s parents, however, went away for the weekend only occasionally, and never before without having someone come to stay with them. Galina’s mother, Babulya, was almost never gone. If there was ever a time to have a party, this weekend was it.
She hadn’t had to work too hard to convince Ilya to host, but the party was all Jenni’s idea, and you couldn’t have a party without beer. Not a good one, anyway, and Jenni intended this party, this night, to be epic. Beyond anything anyone in this shitty little town had ever seen. If things went the way she’d planned, the dead end of Quarry Street would be on fire tonight — maybe even literally.
Maybe everything would burn.