I said, “Mona, Tanisha said you came here because you wanted to apologize, but I don’t think that’s it … and I don’t think you came here to ask me for help with your grandmother, either.”
She shrugged defensively. “It’s a free country. I can do what I want.”
I lowered my chin slightly and gave her my best no-more-bullshit look. “I can’t help you if you’re not going to be honest with me.”
She looked down and was quiet for a moment. I wasn’t sure how old she was, probably in her mid-twenties, but it suddenly occurred to me that she was about as emotionally mature as an eight-year-old girl.
I said, “Mona … what is it?”
Her eyes started to fill with tears again, and she reached up and wiped them away with her sleeve. “I don’t know. Tanisha said you’re the smartest person she’s ever known … and then, you said something that hit me, you know? Kind of like a bullet in my heart, and then I thought Levi must have said something to you … I thought that was why you went to his place.”
I frowned. “I don’t understand. What did I say?”
She turned to me, and I suddenly felt like I had a view all the way down to the bottom of her soul. “It was outside Levi’s trailer, you said … ‘I’m sorry you’re so tortured.’”
I put my hands on top of hers. “Oh, Mona. I’m sorry. I was upset, and you have to admit you weren’t being very nice.”
She shook her head. “No. It’s not that. I mean … how did you know?”
“How did I know … what?”
She took a deep breath and slowly pulled her hands out from under mine. Then she carefully opened the top few buttons of her blouse and parted it to the side.
I gasped.
There on her chest, what I’d originally thought was a tattoo was a field of bruised skin, deep purple, and scattered across it were small dark spots, almost black, each about the width of a pencil eraser … or, I realized with a sinking feeling, the lit end of a cigarette.
I whispered, “Mona … who did this to you?”
She looked up, her black eyes completely still.
“I did.”
* * *
I must have been in a complete fog after I left the diner, because I barely remembered talking to Judy or Tanisha except to say that I was fine and that I’d have to explain everything later. As I got behind the wheel of the Bronco, I glanced under the seat where I’d hidden Mrs. Keller’s package and then pulled my cell phone out of my backpack. I had already dialed Ethan’s number before I even realized what I was doing.
“Hey, babe. What’s up?”
I gulped. “Well, I guess this is one of those phone calls where I’m supposed to let you know if something unusual happened.”
“Uh-oh. Should I be sitting down?”
“Well, it’s not that big a deal … I don’t think … but I just had a little chat with Levi’s fiancée. She was waiting for me at the diner.”
“What? How did she know you’d be there? And what the hell did she want?”
“Tanisha told her, and to be honest, at first I thought she wanted to hurt me, but it turns out she needs help, like really bad. The whole thing about them being engaged? It’s a lie. She made it up so her grandmother wouldn’t worry about her.”
“Dixie, you do realize what you’re dealing with there, right?”
“Yeah, I know…”
“I mean, that woman could be dangerous.”
“I know, but Ethan, the thing is … she hurts herself.”
“What do you mean?”
“She showed me on her chest. She has all these places where she’s burned herself with a cigarette, and the skin is all black and blue.”
“Oh, man, Dixie … I don’t like this one bit. Why did she show you?”
“I don’t know, except when she came up to me outside Levi’s trailer, I said something to her that must have stuck. She was being so nasty, and it just came out of me. I said I was sorry she was so tortured … I didn’t mean anything by it, but apparently she thought it meant Levi had talked to me about her.”
“Okay, first of all, I’m really glad you called…”
“I know. I wanted to hear your voice. It was terrible.”
“… but you need to call Detective McKenzie right away.”
I paused. From his tone, I knew exactly what he was thinking.
“Dixie, I could be wrong, but a person capable of that kind of violence to herself…”
I wanted to say no. I wanted to argue with him and tell him if he’d seen what I’d seen, if he’d looked into Mona’s eyes and seen the fear and sadness there, he’d never think for one minute that she was capable of hurting a fly, much less Levi, a man she clearly loved. But of course he was right. I think I was so convinced there was some connection between what had happened to me at the Kellers’ house and what had happened to Levi that I was blind to reality.
“Okay. You’re right. I’ll call McKenzie right now.”
“And Dixie, I don’t think you should talk to Mona again.”
I sighed. I figured this wasn’t exactly a good time to let him know I’d promised to help her. I said, “Duh. What do you think I am, a complete idiot?”
“Ha … well, not a complete idiot, no.”
“Thanks.”
“Hey … speaking of complete idiots … I’m sorry about yesterday.”
My throat tightened. “What about it?”
He sighed. “You know, about what I said … I was just making a joke. I don’t want you to think having kids is on my agenda right away, because it’s not. It was thoughtless on my part, I really didn’t mean to…”
I pulled the phone away from my ear and glanced down at the screen. I said, “Hey, Ethan, this is Detective McKenzie calling me now.”
“Oh, okay, yeah.”
“I’ll call you back.”
He said, “Yeah, yeah, no problem.”
I flipped the phone shut and dropped it down in the cup holder like a hot potato.
I had agreed to give Mona moral support when she told her grandmother the truth about Levi, but only on one condition: that she have a doctor look at the burns on her chest. She had balked at first, saying there was no way she could afford a doctor since she didn’t have health insurance, but I told her I’d pay for it myself. I gave her a lecture on a topic with which I am well familiar—how avoiding a doctor when there’s a clear medical risk is totally irresponsible, completely risky, and one hundred percent immature. Of course, I had fully expected her to flat-out refuse, but to my utter surprise she agreed.
I told her I had a friend on the staff at Sarasota Memorial, Dr. Philip Dunlop, and that I would ask him to give her a call. How I came to know Dr. Dunlop is a whole other story, but let’s just say he owed me one. I wanted to call him right away, because I knew the sooner Mona got some medical help, the better off she’d be.
In other words, I didn’t have time for chitchat with Ethan. I don’t usually just flat-out lie to him like that, but I had no idea what he was talking about, and frankly, I didn’t want to talk about it.
24
There’s a secret club, a sort of underground society, that only people who’ve lost a loved one know about. There are no membership cards or annual dues or quarterly conference calls or anything like that. The only way to recognize another member is by a particular look in their eye. It’s a mix of things—sadness, joy, longing, wisdom—but when you become a member yourself, you gradually develop a talent for recognizing it, sort of the way a sommelier learns to recognize a fine wine with just one sip. When Mona looked up at me, her blouse parted slightly to reveal the damage on her chest, I knew.