Paranoid(62)

“Or get an apartment.” A little more defiance.

“You think you could afford one?”

“With a roommate.”

Uh-oh. Where was this going? A roommate like Xander Vale? Rachel didn’t go there. No reason to give Harper any ideas that she might not have come up with on her own. “And you’d need a job, maybe two jobs to make ends meet, on top of juggling school, so you should probably wait. It’s a lot cheaper here.”

“But it’s like I live in a prison.” Harper flung out her arms dramatically. “You won’t even let me go to a concert. Because you don’t like Xander!”

“I don’t know him.”

“Exactly!” She reached into her pocket, read a text on her phone screen, and repeated, “A prison.”

Rachel gave her a you’ve-got-to-be-kidding look. She couldn’t wait until Harper was living on her own and learning the real lessons in life, but not yet; she was still so young, naive in so many ways. So she said, “You’re right, it’s a prison and I’m the warden.”

“You know what I mean!” She actually looked up from the screen.

“Yeah, I do. I remember saying the same thing to my mother and I’ll give you the same advice she gave me: ‘Deal with it!’”

*

He was late.

Again.

Annessa walked through the old school with its unused classrooms, forgotten hallways, and dirty windows, many of which had long been boarded up. St. Augustine’s elementary, once filled with laughter, shouts, and running feet, was now quiet, deathly quiet, empty and cold, smelling of disuse.

Her husband, Clint Cooper, had bought the place, along with other properties in town. Since she’d moved back to Edgewater to deal with her ailing parents, he’d thought it would make her happy to purchase some of the “historic” places around the area, to “revitalize” a town that had suffered with the times. To that end, Clint had purchased a farm outside of Astoria; a sawmill not far from Astoria; the old cannery on the waterfront; and St. Augustine’s, which consisted of this school, a small church, and an attached hospital.

“Let’s make Edgewater a destination, y’know?” Clint had said, thinking he would please her. “We can turn the old school into a hotel, the chapel a restaurant, and maybe condos in the hospital.” He’d been on the deck of their penthouse, smoking a cigar, the lights of Seattle shining a bright backdrop. As he’d told her about his plan, he had grown enthusiastic. “How about refurbishing the Sea View cannery into a mall loaded with quaint shops? Condos too, being as it’s on the river, great views, fantastic wildlife! I know the building would have to be razed, but we can go off the footprint, make people think it’s just as it was. The history of it all, the jobs it created, and then there’s that murder that took place. Adds to the mystique, y’know.”

“I was there,” she’d reminded her husband, who was drawing on his cigar, the tip glowing, smoke coiling over his balding head. “No mystique. It’s horrible.”

“People like horror.” And off he’d gone, dreaming of building something unique.

What he didn’t realize was that she didn’t care about Edgewater. So the town was dying, so what? Yeah, she’d go back, look after Dad now that Mom had passed, but it was temporary. Or that had been the plan. Her plan. But where she’d seen duty her husband had glimpsed opportunity.

A mistake.

And being here now, in the old school, was a little unnerving. She walked into what had been a bathroom for primary students, with its low sink and row of stalls. Girls’ bathroom, she thought. No stained urinals still hugging the walls. She caught sight of her reflection in the dusty, cracked mirror. Tall and slim, her hair glossy and almost black, her eyes, with the aid of colored contacts, an intense turquoise. Still attractive. Even wealthier than she had once been. Far wealthier.

And lonely as hell.

No children.

Grown stepchildren, and young stepgrandchildren who didn’t know her and didn’t care to.

An aging lion of a husband who cared more about his latest golf score, his next development, and the figures in his bank accounts than his trophy wife.

Clint just had never “got” her. Didn’t understand.

Never would.

Thirty-two years was a helluva age difference. For God’s sake, she was avoiding her twentieth high school reunion and he was collecting social security! A thought that hadn’t occurred to her fifteen years ago when she’d been swayed by his money and Clint, at fifty-five, had still been dashing, trim, and worldly and . . . and it had all been a load of crap.

So here she was, waiting for a lover who didn’t care any more for her than her husband did.

Disgusted with herself, she heard the steady drip, drip, drip of a pipe that hadn’t quite been turned off, and she walked into the hallway again, remembering wearing uniforms and running out to the play yard, where there had been a covered area, a tetherball pole, four-square courts, and a few pieces of aging and probably unsafe equipment. Now, as she peered through a locked door, she saw only rubble in the open area where she’d once screamed and laughed.

Her first eight years of school, well, nine, counting kindergarten, before she’d been enrolled in public school. Edgewater High.

Twenty years past.

She probably should have gone to Lila’s reunion meeting, but the truth was she couldn’t stand the woman. Nor had she felt any different twenty years ago when Lila had been jealous of her and her father’s money. And for her part, Annessa, studious, hadn’t liked the flinty blonde who had flitted from one boyfriend to the next, always looking for someone a little more popular or wealthy or cool or whatever. Lila had flirted with just about any boy, or man, for that matter, as she’d always gone for someone older.