The Girl Who Survived(22)

Once inside the house, she heard guitar music and smelled the musky scent of marijuana, both of which were emanating from Roger’s studio, a room near the back of the house that had once been Samuel McIntyre’s den.

Faiza found him seated on the old olive-green couch, the one piece of furniture she hadn’t replaced. The heel of one booted foot rested on a coffee table where notepads and sheets of music that had been scribbled upon were scattered around a glass bong. He looked up and the music stopped. “Hey, lady,” he said around a smile as she stood in the wide hallway, just outside the open French doors. “I wondered when you’d come back.”

“Traffic,” she lied, not going into the fact that she’d sat for half an hour outside the house just staring at it and already grieving for its loss.

Satisfied, he turned his attention to his guitar again and she noticed, not for the first time, that his once-lush brown hair was now graying, his narrow face starting to show lines that went beyond crow’s-feet, his pale eyes beginning to peer from behind the deep folds of his eyelids. Once a charmer, a little rough around the edges and tough as nails, he’d weathered as he’d aged.

He strummed, then looked up again. “Come sit.” He patted the lumpy cushion next to him. “I’m working on a new song.”

Nothing new there, but she took her spot and listened as he plucked the strings and hummed an easily forgotten tune. “Don’t have the lyrics yet,” he said. “Maybe you could be my inspiration.”

“Maybe,” she said. “But we have to talk. We’ve got a problem.”

“Such as?”

“You know Jonas was released.”

“Mmm, yeah. Bummer.”

“It’s more than that. Because Kara’s turning of age,” she reminded him, slightly irritated that he wasn’t taking this monumental change seriously. “Pretty damned soon.”

He plucked another note. “So?”

“We’re going to have to move.”

“Don’t think so.” He hit a chord that was purposely off-key, then set the guitar on the floor next to the couch.

“Seriously, Roger.”

“Oh, come on, babe. Possession is nine tenths of the law.”

“Take it up with the courts.”

“I will.” Then he grinned and winked at her. “I mean you will.”

“Don’t,” she said. “I’m not in the mood.” She leaned back on the old worn cushions. “Besides, I’ve thought about it. Margrove has worked hard for this, Jonas’s release. He can’t be charged again for the same crime. He’s free as a bird and, as such, will want his inheritance. All of it. And probably more.”

“But he’s only out until he fucks up. Right? Then he’s back in the slammer.” He winked again, which was really beginning to annoy her. “It won’t be long. The kid’s got a temper. Never could control it.”

“He’s not a kid anymore, but you’re right about him being a hothead,” she said, having always considered Jonas arrogant and violent. He’d been a teenager with a cruel streak that bordered on savage. She doubted it had diminished in prison, despite what those idiot Internet fans of his thought. “Lord knows I never liked him,” she admitted, trying to find a way not to change her lifestyle. “But until he ends up behind bars again or . . . God forbid, dies, he has legal rights to his inheritance, and that includes this house, the mountain place and, if he pushed it in court and sued us, he could possibly take everything we own.”

“Nah, don’t think so.” He sent her a sly look. “Won’t happen.”

“I’m just saying, it’s possible.” She crossed her arms over her chest, stretching the seams of her designer jacket. A Prada cashmere that was worth a small fortune. No, she thought, she wasn’t ready to lose it all. Not yet. And if she could come up with some way to keep what she’d grown accustomed to, she’d buy a new couch to celebrate—something in leather, maybe even a sectional in a soft pearl gray. But, first things first: how to stop the inevitable.

Roger pulled at his lower lip, just as he always did when he was turning a particularly thorny problem over in his mind. Obviously he wasn’t ready to give it all up either.

Finally, he said, “We’ll find a way out of this.”

“How?”

“You’ll think of something,” he said, nodding as if in agreement with himself. “You always do.” Then he reached for the bong and took a hit, holding his breath. When he finally exhaled in a cloud, it was in a smile, the smoke wisping between his teeth and gums in a grin that reminded her of the damned Cheshire Cat in the Disney film. He reached for his guitar again and wrapped calloused fingers around the neck. “You know that, don’t you, babe? You always find a way to get what you want.”

*

The wine had gone to Kara’s head.

Big time.

Beyond buzzed, she scrounged in the kitchen for something, anything to eat. She hated to cook, rarely had anything of significance in her refrigerator and settled for some kind of crackers—Artesian, the package claimed, and some kind of cheese with no package to give it a name as she’d tossed it into a ziplock a week or so ago.

Didn’t matter.

It would work.