“She had access to my cell phone records, detailed records that you can only get if… well, if you’re an attorney or a spy. She knew a lot, but I wasn’t sure how much—and she tricked me into filling in the blanks. Then she threatened to go public with it—to the press, to your mother, to our friends in New Canaan, to my parents.”
Joel’s parents, the owners of the Biblical Dinner Theater in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. Adultery wouldn’t be looked kindly upon by them, Angie supposed.
“She said if I left quietly, if I left without taking anything, she would tell everyone I’d gone on vacation, and then, after the summer, when the boys were home from camp, she would say we decided to separate. She would say it was a mutual decision.”
Joel and Angie both turned to watch the cabbie back out of the driveway and take off down Hoicks Hollow Road. When Joel faced Angie again, she could see how rattled he looked. He held out his arms. “Come here.”
She hesitated, thinking about JP nocking an arrow for Angie to shoot. She heard JP say, Line up the pin.
But she wasn’t strong enough to resist Joel. She loved him. Forty-eight hours of silence hadn’t changed that. She stepped forward, and he grabbed her up.
“There’s my girl,” Joel said in her ear. “I missed you. I’ve been trying to find a way to get out of my marriage without blowing my life to bits. Dory is tough, Ange.”
Angie nodded against Joel’s chest. She had missed the way her face rested right against his heart; she had missed the way he smelled. And she understood what he meant. She, Angie, was an island—especially now that Deacon was dead. She wasn’t responsible for anyone; she didn’t own anything. Joel had a wife and kids, a house, a car, a community, friends. On Tuesday nights, when the restaurant was closed, he had a poker group. He was a member of the Lions Club, and he ran the Toys for Tots drive at Christmastime. His life was more than just the restaurant and the city and her. A lot more.
Angie lifted her face to Joel’s, and he kissed her, their first kiss since she was in his car on Seventy-Third Street. She let herself get lost in it. He whispered, “Where can we go?”
“The house,” she said, pulling his hand.
“Is your mother inside?” he asked.
“Unfortunately, yes,” Angie said. “You’ll meet her in the morning.”
Angie led Joel up onto the porch. She stepped over the board that JP had replaced; she couldn’t think about JP right now. The front hallway was empty. Angie led Joel up the stairs, to her room. She put a finger on her lips and shut the door. Joel scooped Angie up in his arms and laid her down on the bed.
Mouth, neck, breasts, tongue, nipples, ribs, belly, the curve inside her hip… ohhhhhh. Joel. Joel! He had to sandwich the side of his hand in her mouth so she wouldn’t scream and set off alarms. Sex sex sex sex sex. It meant nothing, Angie thought. And it meant everything.
BELINDA
A little girl in a sparkly silver dress with double diagonal fishtail braids empties the jar of glass onto the floor and begins to sort it by color: white, brown, green, blue, lavender. The glass is broken but not sharp. It has smooth edges and frosted surfaces. It’s beach glass—shards pulled from the ocean after years and years of tumbling through the sand and salt water. Among the pieces of glass, the girl finds a packet of something that looks like brown sugar. The girl loves brown sugar; she eats it on toast. The girl opens the packet and empties it into her mouth.
Belinda woke up with a start.
No!
She looked around the dark room—Nantucket. Belinda was in Clara’s narrow, uncomfortable nursemaid’s bed, under one thin sheet. She’d had a bad dream about… about… it slipped down the drain. Gone. She couldn’t remember what the dream had been about. It was something bad, something with a hole or a cavern.
Then she had it back. It had been about Ellery. Ellery mistaking the heroin for sugar, Ellery eating the heroin.
Good God, Belinda had just left the heroin downstairs in the powder room. After a glass of wine and the disturbing conversation at dinner, Belinda had forgotten all about it.
She slipped out of bed and crept down the stairs to the powder room. The packet of heroin was exactly where she’d left it, tucked under her special piece of beach glass. She plucked it out and carried it back upstairs.
She sat on her sorry excuse for a bed with the heroin in her lap. What to do?
She tiptoed down the hall to Hayes’s room and tapped on the door. No response. Certainly he was fast asleep. Well, Belinda didn’t care. She opened the door and stepped in.
Hayes was in bed, snoring. The duffel, which had been agape that afternoon, was now zipped up tight. If Belinda opened it, she knew what she would find: more packets, needles, rubber tubing, a spoon, a lighter. She wouldn’t go through Hayes’s things while he slept. But she did want to talk to him.
She sat on the edge of his bed and shook him awake. He opened his eyes and saw her and most likely thought he was the one having a bad dream. He tried to sit up. Belinda put a hand on his arm to reassure him, and a finger to her lips. The last thing Belinda wanted was Laurel rushing in and finding Belinda in Hayes’s bedroom again.
“Hayes,” she said. “I need to talk to you.”
“Now?” he said. His voice was froggy. “In the middle of the night? What the hell for?” He scooted his body toward the wall, away from Belinda.
She held up the packet. “I found this on the floor when I came in here earlier,” she said. She shook it. “This is heroin, yes?”
Hayes reached up to grab it, but Belinda snatched it away. “Answer the question, Hayes. Is it heroin?”
“It’s mine,” Hayes said. “Give it to me.”
“Hayes,” Belinda said. “Is it heroin?”
Hayes let his arm fall to the bed. “Yes.”
Belinda nodded. She felt pleased with the admission. He had said it was his. There was no denial.
“How often are you using?” she asked.
“It’s none of your business,” Hayes said. “Now give me that, and get out of my room, please.”
“It is my business,” Belinda said. “You’re my stepson. I care about you, and I don’t want to see you doing this to yourself.”
Hayes grabbed the packet out of Belinda’s hand. “You know nothing about it,” he said. “You know nothing about my life. You know nothing about me.”
“I’ve known you for nearly thirty years, Hayes,” Belinda said.
“Get out, please,” Hayes said.
“I could just tell your mother,” Belinda said.
“Why would you burden her with this?” Hayes said. “She has enough to worry about.”
“If it were my child, I’d want to know,” Belinda said.
“Yeah, well, I’m not your child. Angie is a good kid. You got lucky.”
“I won’t tell Laurel,” Belinda said. “But you have to. She knows people who deal with this in the city, I’m sure. Treatment facilities, programs, methadone clinics…”
“My mother has enough on her plate,” Hayes said. “Anyway, it’s not as bad as you think. It’s a casual habit.”
“A casual heroin habit,” Belinda said. “I see. I assume the reason you look like you went fifteen rounds with Floyd Mayweather is because you went out looking for drugs?”
Hayes rolled away from her to face the window, the packet clenched in his hand. “Good night, Belinda,” he said.
“Tell your mother before the end of the day tomorrow, or I will,” Belinda said. “She loves you.” With that, Belinda stood up. “We all love you, Hayes.”
HAYES
We all love you, Hayes.
He closed his eyes. Sleep was right there, like an ocean. All he had to do was jump in.
Tell your mother. His mother would be disappointed. No, delete that. She would be destroyed. She had only one child, Hayes, her golden boy. Laurel had been nineteen when Hayes was born, twenty-eight when Deacon left. Deacon’s life had become very populated—with Belinda first, then Angie, then Scarlett and Ellery, and always Buck—but Laurel had just been Laurel. She had dated here and there, and she threw herself into her career, but somehow she’d always made Hayes feel as though her first job, above and beyond everything else, was being his mother.