At the Quiet Edge(71)

“Come over for wine!” Sharon suggested again, and Lily ignored her, despite a sudden rush of gratitude. She was grateful. Grateful for Everett to have an extended family of sorts, two more adults looking out for him. Two people who might keep him safe from the big, bad world out there.

A world that apparently included his father. The energy drinks were probably a coincidence. But if they weren’t . . . why had she jumped in to protect Jones?

Still . . . she sighed because she knew exactly why. If the police caught him here, right in her backyard, they’d be determined to bring Lily down too, sure she’d been aiding him. And everyone in this town would know the same thing. They’d feel it in their bones. She’d be a villain again, and this time Everett would be included, a little family gang of thieves, permanently tattooed with their crimes.

She couldn’t believe he’d managed to do it again. Pull her into his grimy web just enough to get her stuck, wrapped with the phantom threads for the rest of her life. Lying to everyone again. Lying for him.

Damn him.

She wanted to call Jones now. She’d thought she had the upper hand before, thought he’d been far away and she’d been above it all. But now she was flailing, off balance, desperate to protect her son and this bright new future shining right at her fingertips.

Maybe they could move immediately. She had enough money saved for a security deposit. They could move fifty miles away. One hundred. They could leave this place behind. Leave Jones and Mendelson and even Alex and his uncle. Just walk away, get a new phone number, and start fresh.

Lily sat down at her computer and pulled up a map of all the Neighborhood Storage locations she’d be managing. Then she searched for towns that would provide easy access.

They could go to Oklahoma. A different state entirely, no charges against Jones Arthur there, and not one person who knew them.

She was doing a virtual tour of a house in Stillwater, Oklahoma, when a car pulled through the gate, a man she thought might have been Dr. Ross, though he didn’t turn toward her as he inched past.

Why was she so nervous? Mendelson didn’t even know about the drink cans.

When the police had first taken her in for questioning, she hadn’t quite believed what they’d told her about her husband. After they’d insisted she must have been involved too, she really hadn’t believed them. They had everything wrong. She hadn’t done anything illegal, so Jones probably hadn’t either.

When she’d finally gotten home and retrieved Everett from a kind neighbor, walking through her front door had been the breaking point. They’d destroyed Jones’s home office, torn each drawer out of her kitchen, left every single room of her house in chaos. Even Everett’s clothes had been removed from his dresser and tossed on the floor to be trampled by their shoes.

Monsters. That’s what they’d been. Monsters who’d come to devour her life.

Jones couldn’t have stolen all that money. They didn’t have money, aside from a modest savings account and Jones’s small retirement fund. She’d set her jaw and started cleaning, beginning with Everett’s room so he could go to bed that night without one thought of what had happened.

By 6:00 she’d been watching for Jones to pull into the driveway. By 7:00 she’d assumed he was spending the night in jail. By 8:00 she’d locked all the doors and shut herself and Everett in the bathroom so he could play in the tub and she could hide.

She’d been primed for his phone call when it finally came at 1:00 a.m. and had snatched up the receiver, gasping out his name.

“You know the place Everett likes to skip rocks?” he’d said. “Meet me there. Bring your keys. Please. I need help, baby.”

And so she’d gone. As soon as Jones hung up, she’d left Everett deeply asleep, and she’d stolen out her back door to jog the three blocks to the duck pond at the local park. The cold had seeped into her as she stood there, vulnerable, waiting for a police spotlight to explode on her at any moment, to illuminate her like a flamethrower and consume her.

Instead she’d heard the whisper of her name from a line of fir trees and moved closer as if there were a rope pulling her toward a pit. “Jones?”

And then his arms had been around her, his face buried in her neck. “I don’t know what’s happening,” he’d sobbed over and over.

She’d held him tight until he’d calmed enough to speak. “I’m being set up. I think I found incriminating evidence in the books at the dealership. I told the manager about it. That’s the only thing I can think of. It must be him. It must be Rolly.”

“Oh my God,” she’d breathed over and over. “Oh my God.”

“I’ve hired an attorney,” he promised. “He knows what’s up, and he’s willing to help. But I am not going to turn myself in to those bastards. Rolly’s cousin is the chief of police. If they get their hands on me, I’ll never be seen again.”

“They can’t do that!” she’d responded.

“I’ll get railroaded into prison, Lily. I just need to lay low for a couple of days until the real evidence works its way through the system. I’ve contacted the newspaper already. It’ll go public. I won’t let them get away with this.”

“Where are you going to hide? I’m sure they’re watching the house!”