Bloodline(69)

I catch the door handle on my stomach entering the restaurant. She laughs. “You’re getting pretty big.”

I pat my belly. “You don’t know the half of it. All my clothes are dirty right across the tummy because I rub it into everything.”

“How’s it feel? I mean, what’s it like to carry another person around?”

“Amazing.”

She smiles. It’s wistful. I almost lose my courage. But I have no other option. There’s a good chance she’s on their side, has already told on me. If they got Ursula to turn, surely they got Regina. Believing that makes what I’m about to do possible.

She slides into the booth. She’s waiting for me to do the same. Instead I raise my voice. “I will not!”

She stares around the restaurant. She has no idea what I’m talking about.

“I’m a mother-to-be. The last thing I need to do is smoke marijuana!”

Regina’s jaw goes tight. Her overbite is barely visible. “You don’t have to do this.”

“You’re the one doing this,” I say, my voice shrill and loud. Everyone in the restaurant is looking at us. Exactly as I planned. “I don’t ever want to see you again.”

Her face crumples. I hate them so much in that moment, the people of Lilydale. They’ve made me into a monster, but what choice do I have? I must make them trust me, or they will take my baby and they will kill me.

I storm out. My work is done. Within minutes, the Mothers and Fathers will know that I’ve severed ties with Regina. They’ll recognize that I am compliant. That will buy me the twelve hours I need to get the hell out of here.



I have Deck’s favorite supper and a bottle of ice-cold beer on the table when he arrives home from work. I massage his shoulders before I join him. If his conscience bothers him at all, he doesn’t let on. When he finishes his beer, I get him another one.

The first one had the sleeping pills ground up in it.

The second one is just for show.

The doctor prescribed me one a night, and so I ground up four into Deck’s beer. I need him to fall asleep early and stay there.

I’m escaping Lilydale tonight.

Before I do, though, I need a guarantee that they won’t follow me and the baby, and I finally figured out the only thing that would suffice.

Deck doesn’t even make it all the way through dessert before he crashes face-first into his plate. I consider gluing his balls to his thigh. I have some time to kill until it gets dark, after all. I decide I don’t have the luxury of petty revenge, though.

Survival is my only priority.

I clean up supper, even though I will not be back. It’s something to do, busywork to distract me until it gets late enough to leave. If a Father or a Mother stops by, my plan is shot. I believe they won’t. I hope they won’t. I hope my stunt in the café with Regina assuaged them.

When the phone rings, I jump. I smooth the front of my shirt. I need to calm myself. Whoever it is, I will tell them that Deck is out.

When I have my emotions under control, I pick up the phone. “Hello?”

“You’re not going to believe what I uncovered,” Grover says, his voice strangled. “It’s worse than I imagined.”

I nearly swallow my tongue. In my plan, I never considered that Grover would call. “I think you have the wrong number,” I say.

I hang up. A drop of sweat rolls down my neck. I intended to hold off on phase two until later, but now it’s too much of a risk. They’ve been alerted.

I check on Deck. He’s still out cold.

After I finish tonight, I’ll never see the shitheel again.





CHAPTER 54

It’s dark outside, but I still sneak out through my back door. I’m wearing a pair of Deck’s dress pants belted above my bulging belly. Over that, I’ve donned an old shirt of Deck’s that I used for painting, and then a jacket. His matching fedora is crammed low on my head. I wouldn’t pass any close inspection, but from a distance, I look more like a man in a hurry than a pregnant woman fighting for her life.

I toss a nervous glance at the Lily house next door. There are no lights on, but it still takes all my willpower not to dash to the car. It’s like their house is watching me. I start the Chevelle. I steer it toward Schmidt Insurance.

Once I have my insurance, I’ll be out of town immediately and forever.

Lilydale is a ghost town at 10:00 p.m. on a weeknight. I pass a single lonely patrol officer, offering a wave and a tip of my hat brim as I drive past. I pull into the lot behind the insurance company, park, and take out the business keys I stole from Deck. I let myself in the back door.

I have the camera, a flashlight, and an idea of what I’m looking for.

I start with the filing cabinets. Becky Swanson is meticulous in her filing. I locate the Aandeg file in the As and confirm that Schmidt Insurance took over insurance payments as an act of goodwill two months before the fire, naming the town of Lilydale as the beneficiary until such a time as Virginia Aandeg could resume payments.

If a person didn’t know how evil Lilydale was, this would look generous.

I locate the same setup in the Gomez family file.

I learned from a library encyclopedia that it’s possible to burn down buildings and leave no evidence. Naming the city as beneficiary is a further way to throw off fraud investigators. Of course, the city and the Mill Street families are one and the same, but an outsider wouldn’t know that.