Over Her Dead Body(77)
Marcela had sulked the entire six-hour drive from Santa Barbara to the Sierras. She wanted to make it “crystal clear” that just because she wasn’t skiing didn’t mean there would be a hot meal on the table for the rest of us at the end of the day. She hated the cold, she’d said. She loathed my “drunk-ass” sister, she’d said. My uncle Roy was “the most boring person on the planet,” she’d said.
As soon as we got to the ski house she went straight to our room and didn’t come out. I made excuses for her: she didn’t feel well, she was carsick, she needed to rest. But the next evening, after spending the whole day in the condo with Nathan, she was a changed woman. Her cheeks were rosy as she danced around the kitchen making peppermint hot chocolate for us when we came in from the cold. Anyone with half a brain could have figured out what had happened. But we believe what we want to believe, and I didn’t want to believe that.
As I watched them tussle—Marcela groping at Nathan, Nathan pushing her away—my rage gave way to sadness. “She’s always been a woman who takes what she wants,” I conceded. “And I’ve known for a while what she wants isn’t me.” It was a relief to finally say it out loud.
Winnie grabbed my hand and squeezed it, and I suddenly wondered if she’d suspected, too. Is that why my sister and I had fallen out of touch? Because it was easier to not talk at all than be together and not talk about that?
“Things will be better now,” Winnie said, and I knew she meant between us. And I felt a bud of happiness poke through my sorrow. As I turned my head to meet my sister’s consoling gaze, the room suddenly started to spin. I thought it was a panic attack, because things wouldn’t be better if we couldn’t get out of here. But turns out carbon dioxide poisoning can also make you dizzy, right before it kills you.
“They’re going outside,” I heard a voice say, and I looked at Winnie, because it must have been her, there was no one else there. “Charlie, are you OK?”
The room banked like a Tilt-A-Whirl, and a second later I could feel cool, hard linoleum pressing up against my cheek.
“Charlie!”
She bent over me, and I looked up into the sweet face of my childhood best friend: the comms director to my astronaut, the hide to my seek. Then, right behind her head, I saw the glint of metal. At first I didn’t know what that shiny silver object holstered to the underside of the kitchen counter was. And then I remembered this was my mom’s secret hideaway. And there was one thing she never left home without.
“Gun,” I said, raising one hand to point.
And that’s the last thing I remember.
CHAPTER 65
* * *
MARCELA
“We’re leaving,” I told my son. “Pack your things.”
“I never unpacked,” Zander said, looking up from his iPad.
“Right.” I peeked at my watch. We had only been here an hour—and a productive hour at that. “Then go put your things in the car.”
“Aren’t we going to see Gran-gran?”
“Not today.”
I shooed him out of the room, and he obediently grabbed his suitcase and marched down the stairs. Theo was sleeping and I hated to wake him, but the sooner we got out of here the better. Nathan obviously wasn’t ready to celebrate our pending union, but he would come around once the $10 million landed in my bank account. What we had was inevitable, no need to chase it. I couldn’t fault him for needing some time to get his bearings. And I suppose it would be prudent to wait a few weeks to come out publicly as a couple so as not to raise any eyebrows. Not that anyone would miss the miserable old troll and her sad-sack son and alcoholic daughter. In time Nathan would realize, as I had already, that they were all better off dead.
As for my children, Theo would never remember his real father, and I had no doubt Zander would come to love Nathan like the (not-deadbeat) dad he never had. His (new!) house wouldn’t be filled with the sounds of Mommy and Daddy fighting all day every day, and what kid didn’t want his own room? I wouldn’t have done what I’d done if I hadn’t been certain we’d all be better off. And it was so incredibly easy—one might say the gods had willed it.
I threw the two dresses I’d hung in the closet back in my suitcase and zipped it up. I was not a sentimental person, but I took a moment to say goodbye to Charlie’s old room, which was filled with trinkets from his charmed childhood—participation trophies from various sports leagues (soccer, hockey, tennis, baseball), bobbleheads from Dodgers games, a fancy electric guitar that he’d probably never learned to play. I felt a swell of satisfaction as I thought about our children—my children—finally getting to do everything their dad had. Zander could get a hitting coach and join a premier Little League club; Theo could get a bilingual nanny and become fluent in two languages. A glorious life awaited us, all thanks to my courage to reach for that brass ring when fate put it within my grasp.
I lifted Theo out of the Pack ’n Play and tucked his sleeping head under my chin. Mercifully, he didn’t wake up, and I took that as an omen of good things to come. I grabbed my suitcase with my free hand, then crossed into the hall. As I started down the stairs of Louisa’s stuffy old crib for the last time, I felt relief that I’d never have to look at that garish lattice wallpaper, smell the musty stink of those heavy velvet drapes, cook in that fussy old kitchen ever again. My suitcase was heavy—and Theo was almost thirty pounds now!—but the thought of our bright future made me feel Wonder Woman strong, and I got to the bottom of the stairs without breaking a sweat.