“Oh, my God. Look.” She nudged her chin. “That’s my girl Neecie—and she’s got her baby boy with her! Give me a minute, okay? I haven’t seen her since they let her out of rehab.” She smashed a kiss against my cheek. “Be right back.”
She threw the door open and giggled her way over to a blue Sentra in the next aisle.
Women.
I sat for a time picking at a hangnail until my stitches started bothering me. I adjusted the rearview mirror and eyed my chin. Damn if the cut didn’t itch something fierce. So did the tape on the bandage.
I was seconds away from a scratching fit when a blur of blonde hair whisked past my peripheral vision. I jerked the mirror to the right. Aw, hell. It was her. Shannon Bradford, one row behind me, fighting with a shopping cart. As she pushed, the thing pushed back, its wheels slipping and sliding over the icy pavement.
Clearly, God, the devil, or both were determined to screw with me. Bad enough one of her damn billboards stood big as day on the same street as Fontana Exxon. Every morning her sunny face greeted me, and now this. I squeezed my lids shut, and tried to forget she was out there, but curiosity chomped at my insides.
Fuck it.
I scooted forward and snagged the mirror again, just in time to witness a bag of rock salt topple from her cart and slap the ground. The plastic burst open, spitting pellets everywhere. Shoppers streamed around her, too consumed by their own Snowmageddon madness to care.
Before I even realized it, I’d wrapped my hand over the door handle.
Oh, hell no. Caution made me uncurl my fingers. I glanced across the dashboard. Amber had since climbed into Neecie’s car and was gabbing away. With Amber being Amber, they’d be jawing for at least another ten minutes. I glared up at the roof and tried to talk some sense into myself, but three seconds later, I was slamming out of the car, muttering curses the whole way.
Even as I stood behind her, I regretted it, but for whatever dumb reason, I couldn’t leave. “Need some help?” I muttered, my voice taut with irritation.
Wearing a brown sheepskin jacket, jeans, and ankle boots, Shannon tore around. The broken bag in her arms hit the ground again in a mad spray of salt. “Jeez. You scared me.” She eyeballed the lot as she knelt to stuff handfuls back into the busted sack.
“You want some help or not?”
“No thanks,” she said, her gaze still sweeping the area.
I smiled.
We’d been the talk of the town for the past few days, so clearly little Miss Priss was dealing with the backlash. Why else would she be casing the parking lot like she stole something? Now she’d been seen consorting with the infamous Butcher Boy again. God, I was trying not to enjoy this, but her paranoia only made me want to extend my visit.
“Move,” I grumbled. “You’re just making a bigger mess.” My sore ribs screamed when I snatched the ruined bag off the ground—a twenty pounder—but I bit back the pain. “Why didn’t you send Jeeves to pick this stuff up for you?”
“His name is Gerard,” came her curt correction. She shoved to her feet, smacking salt from her hands. “Anyway, this ‘stuff’ isn’t for Briar. It’s for a property I’m showing next week. The place is special, so I don’t mind doing—oh, forget it.”
I gave her a ‘whatever’ look and dumped the leaking bag into a stray cart. Salt rained through the plastic grill as she continued skimming the scene for gawkers. “Don’t worry,” I said. “They’ll get bored eventually.”
She glared at me for a long moment. “Why haven’t you returned my calls? I’ve left you six messages.”
More like eight. She’d had my phone on blast all week. “Maybe ‘cause I didn’t want to talk to you.”
She opened her mouth, but a trio of blue-haired old ladies ambled by in a flurry of whispers. Her voice held a cautious undertone when she spoke. “I didn’t write the letter, Trace.”
So she’d said eight times ago. I grabbed one of the three remaining bags and positioned the thing in her open trunk.
She tossed a hand. “You’re just going to ignore me?”
“Naw,” I said in a bored voice. “I’m also gonna finish loadin’ up your car.”
Dark amusement warmed me at her look of outrage. Tiny as she was, she still managed to block my way. “You accuse me of destroying your family,” she spat, eyes flashing, “but you won’t let me defend myself? How fair is that?”
My nostrils flared as the smoky-sweet scent of her teasing perfume snuck up on me. Annoyed, I stepped around her to grab the next bag. “Life ain’t fair, Miz Bradford.”
“Oh, grow up. Someone impersonated me. I have a legal right—no, a duty to dig into this. Darien’s even helping.”
I froze. “So lover boy’s in on this now?”
“‘Lover boy’ isn’t ‘in’ on anything.” She jammed her hands into her pockets as a breeze carried her scent past me again. “He’s an ex-prosecutor, so he can plow through the bureaucratic mire a lot faster than I can. What did the letter say?”
I rolled my eyes. As if she didn’t know. “Beats me. It came with a confidentiality request. So they wouldn’t let me see it, which is laughable since somebody mailed a copy to my mama.” I threw the second bag into the trunk and shot her a look packed with blame. “Must’ve been a doozy considering the fallout.”
Bitter satisfaction filled me once her face fell and she looked away. Outfreakingstanding.
Gossip had almost faded when the Dawson double suicides dropped Temptation, West Virginia back on the map last year. My mother had died with a plastic bag over her head, crucifix in hand, and a bellyful of pills washed down with half a pint of good old Jim Beam.
But my crazy ass daddy had gone out with a bang. Blew his brains out with a shotgun. Bev claimed some of the buckshot was still embedded in the basement wall. Soon afterward, my baby brother Coltrane (Cole for short) ended up at Saint Mary’s Asylum. The boy slashed his wrists with a Ginsu knife and smeared his chest with his own blood after finding the bodies. To this day, he still swears ‘voices’ told him to cut himself.
News accounts glossed over everything with the usual tactless comments from judgmental neighbors:
What else would you expect? The whole family was nothin’ but trash.
Yet I knew the truth.
So did Shannon Bradford.
“Stop looking at me like that,” she snapped. “Just think about this, okay? If I sent the letter, why didn’t I send another one to keep you from getting out again?”
I dug the last bag from the cart and hauled it to her car. “How the hell should I know? You’re the one with amnesia. Maybe you forgot.”
Shannon stared hard at me. “Really?”
I lifted a brow in answer.
She scowled. “I’m going to get to the bottom of this, and once I do, you’ll have no more excuses.”
I laughed at her and dumped the bag in.
“We’re both injured parties here,” she insisted.
Yeah, right. I made a ‘bitch, please’ face, slammed the trunk and shoved the cart aside. Tipping an invisible hat brim, I said, “You have a good day.”
But she caught my wrist when I turned to leave and it felt like some kind of heat ray zapped the spot she touched. The sensation coursed through my blood, melted into my bones.
Her hand wasn’t much bigger than a child’s, but it had the weight of someone three times her size. I stared at where we were joined, then lifted my eyes to her face. She looked as stunned as me. Lips parted, she’d had the same confused expression when we’d stood outside the hospital. Then and now, the world and the last twelve years seemed to fall away.