Mother May I(33)

I hadn’t. My mother had never been allowed to tell this story to the girls. I’d forbidden it. He’d died, still in prison, when I was in high school, so he wasn’t real to them. The world he’d created for my mother wasn’t real to them.

But if Mom brought them home, then what had happened to Robert would be real. It would uproot them from that place I saw on Instagram, all innocence and laughter in Mom’s apple-green kitchen, where Peyton grinned with flour dusting her cheek and Anna-Claire proudly lofted a plate of cookies. They had to stay away.

I sent a text to Trey. Tummy flu still raging! Yikes! I’ll call later! I added four heart emojis, but not the four words I most wanted to send him.

What did you do?

I could see the little dots that meant Trey was texting back. I set the phone on the table, facedown. I didn’t want to get into a conversation. I’d have to tell so many lies. My phone buzzed softly against the brass, over and over. Trey was texting up a storm.

Marshall pushed my phone toward me, gentle and encouraging. He wanted me to stop waiting. He wanted me to answer my husband. His grave expression told me that soon, in hours or minutes, I would have to open up my blinds and let the truth in.

“Bree,” he began, but I turned away. Refused to look at him.

That was when the calypso ringtone started playing with thin, metallic urgency, rattling the cheap phone. It was the sweetest song I’d ever heard.





10




Gabrielle startled, staring at the phone with wide, haunted eyes. I felt blinding hope and terror, both so strong that they threatened to crush me between them.

Marshall was suddenly right beside me, his deep blue eyes blazing, energized. “Keep her talking.”

“Why? We can’t trace it,” Gabrielle said. “We need the cops! I told you!”

“Hush,” I ordered them both, dropping to my knees beside the coffee table.

“Any information could help us,” Marshall said, so fast that the words almost ran together. He was pulling out his own iPhone. He poked at it, then set it next to the chiming burner phone. I could see it was recording.

I nodded, then hit the button to put the phone on speaker.

“Hello?” My voice cracked, so that the greeting was hardly recognizable. “Hello?”

I could hear her breathing. That was all. Just her. No baby sounds.

“I wasn’t going to call,” she said.

“I know.” I felt as if I were a glass vase that had already shattered, and yet all my pieces were still stacked onto each other into my usual shape. The lightest touch and I would fall into a million jangling shards. “But you did. You did call, and I’m so grateful.”

Her voice turned a little grudging. “He’s a good baby.”

She used the present tense, as if Robert were right there with her. Hope squeezed my ribs shut tight, until it was hard for me to breathe. Until it was hard for my heart to keep on beating.

“He is. He is a very good baby.”

I still could not hear him, though. I strained, listening. The silence wasn’t really silence. It was white noise, tinny and airy, same as on our last call. If I had to guess, I would say she had not moved again. Marshall ducked his chin at me, encouraging. He had a little notebook and a pencil in his hands. I hadn’t noticed him get those things. Maybe he’d had them with him the whole time, tucked away in his inside jacket pocket, as if he were still a cop.

“What was really in those capsules?” I asked. “Because I know it wasn’t roofies.”

“Hmm,” she said, her thoughtful noise. “Cyanide, mostly. Or something close to it. I’m not a chemist.” Her voice took on a hungry tone. “I take it you saw what happened? To Mr. Shaw?”

She didn’t sound angry that I had disobeyed, more like she was actively hoping I had seen.

“I couldn’t get away in time.” That wasn’t what she was after, though. I knew the words she wanted, and I had all of them in me. I let a few loose for her. “I was up on a little path, but yes, I saw. I saw him die.”

She released a shuddering breath. Almost pleasure. “I wish I’d seen. But my daughter watched, at least. She was owed that.”

She’d already heard details from her child, and still she was greedy for more. “It wasn’t easy, if that’s what you’re asking. I wouldn’t want to go out that way. It was hard to watch.”

“Hmm.” She made her little noise again. “Well, I told you to go home.” Now her tone was matter-of-fact.

Marshall’s eyes on mine stayed so steady, shoring me up.

I said, “I didn’t call the police. Even after Spence died. I still haven’t told Trey. I believed that you would call again. I hoped you would.”

She snorted, almost angry, then asked, “That story you told, about your mama going to Goodwill two towns over. Was that true?”

“Yes,” I said. Gabrielle’s face was a question. I looked away, down at the phone. The caller ID said Robert. I couldn’t look there either. I turned my gaze back to Marshall, so calm and serious. He was the safest place in the room. His pencil scratched softly against the notebook. I had her talking, like he wanted. I wondered what he could possibly be gleaning from the flat, small things she was saying, but I trusted that it was something. “Yes. It’s true. Why do you ask?”