The Final Victim(79)

Brian asks countless questions and goes on and on every time he calls about how much he misses her. Translation: everything is falling apart around the house without her there to keep it together. There are bills to be paid, and calls to be returned, and appointments to be kept… It's all so overwhelming.

Then there's Lila, who keeps telling her how happy Wills is going to be when his mommy comes home to take care of him.

Lila. She'll have to be let go. If not immediately, then as soon as Phyllida can bring herself to do it. There's no money for household staff, not now. She's been scraping together the nanny's salary every two weeks as it is.

Not to mention the way she and Brian have been living off their credit cards for a couple of years now, undaunted by the mounting interest and finance charges.

Phyllida always knew that even if Grandaddy lived to be a hundred-and well he might-her inheritance would come along eventually to bail them out and guarantee that Wills's college tuition will be paid, no matter where he wants to go.

There was never a need to worry about what they owed; never a reason to stop spending. What's a few hundred thousand dollars in debt when you're worth millions?

Not anymore.

She's never going to be wealthy.

She's never going to be an actress.

She's never going to be anything she dreamed of.

As she passes Melanie on the stairs, she wonders what on earth she's going to do. How are she and Brian going to pay off any of that debt now that the promise of a vast windfall has been whisked from their future? How will they survive?

These last few days, as her anxiety escalated, she could only, assume that Gib, too, must have felt this… desperate. This hopelessly trapped, facing a lifestyle unfit for a Remington.

Unfit for poor little Wills, whose toddler cronies and their nannies will continue to meet a few times a week at one palatial Beverly Hills spread or another while Phyllida pushes him on a swing in the park. Parks are still free, right? Swings are free?

"Well, some of his friends have yards that are bigger than parks; their parents rent carousels and petting zoos for birthday parties. Where will Wills have his? Chuck E. Cheese?

"Urn, Mrs. Harper?"

"Yes?" Having reached the bottom of the stairs, she turns to look back at Melanie, up at the top.

"I just wanted to ask if there's anything I can do. If you need to talk, or anything. You know… You just look so upset, and… I know what it's like."

Oh? Your brother was arrested on attempted murder charges, too?

Phyllida curbs her tongue. She might not buy the woman's all-chipper, all-the-time act, but she shouldn't be rude to her. Maybe she really is just trying to help. At least somebody around here is.

"Thank you," she says awkwardly, wishing Melanie would just continue on to the next flight of stairs and leave her to her own business.

But the nurse goes on, "I just know that you're far away from home, and your little boy, and you might feel like you're all alone, and you might really need a friend. Really, I've been there."

Phyllida nods and offers what she hopes is a pleasant smile even as she thinks, Go away, will you? Just go away.

But when Melanie gets the hint and does moves on, Phyllida finds herself feeling vaguely abandoned.

Which is ridiculous.

Because she doesn't want to talk to a nurse about her problems. She doesn't want to talk to anyone.

She just wants…

What? To go home? That isn't it. Not with the mess waiting for her in LA.

All right, so what does she want?

All I want right now, she thinks grimly, is to curl up and die.

*

In her room, Lianna pulls on the dress she wore last weekend in anticipation of seeing her father.

He's coming back to Oakgate to take her to dinner tonight. It was his idea, to make up for the disappointment of last weekend.

She begged her mother to let her go, and to her surprise, Charlotte relented. Apparently, Lianna is no longer grounded.

Mom never said anything about her earlier punishment when she picked her up at Devin's Monday night after a long day at the hospital. She was more cordial than usual to Devin's parents, and thanked them for keeping Lianna all day and seeing to it that she ate lunch and dinner.

Naturally, Mom couldn't have known that lunch was nachos at the mall food court, dinner was three Krispy Kreme donuts, and that Devin's mother and stepfather didn't even know she was around until right before Mom showed up to get her.

The last few days, Lianna has been trying to work up the nerve to ask her mother for her cell phone back. But she's afraid to even remind her mother that she took it away, just in case she also forgot she grounded Lianna.

She's also skittish about sneaking out to meet Kevin, though he keeps urging her to do it. She will, eventully, just not yet. It isn't just that she's afraid she'll get caught-it's that she's afraid of what will happen between the two of them when she's alone with him again.

So she's spent an entire week hanging around Oakgate, bored out of her mind, unable even to speak to her friends and Kevin, unless she calls them from the main line usually with zero conversational privacy.

There was nobody to talk to around the house but Nydia. Oh, and Aunt Jeanne's chatterbox nurse, Melanie, who likes to drift downstairs whenever Aunt Jeanne is napping.

But anything, even total social isolation or listening to Melanie chirp on and on about her life story, is better than going back and forth to the hospital in Savannah every day with her mother and Aimee.