Practical Magic (Practical Magic #2)(63)
Nothing. Gillian grins and shrugs. Sally swallows, hard. Gary can practically feel how dry her throat is, how the pulse at the base of her neck is throbbing. He’s not certain how far he would go to cover for someone. He’s never been in the position before, and he doesn’t like the feel of it, yet here he is, standing in a stranger’s kitchen in New York on a humid summer day, actually wondering if he could look the other way. And then he thinks about his grandfather walking to the courthouse to legally claim him on a day when it was a hundred and twelve in the shade. The air started to sizzle; the mesquite and the Russian thistle burst into flame, but Sonny Hallet had thought to bring a container of cool spring water with him, and he wasn’t even tired when he walked inside the courthouse. If you go against what you believe in, you’re nothing anyway, so you might as well stick to your guns. Gary’s going to fly home tomorrow and hand this case over to Arno. He can’t even pretend it will turn out all right: that Hawkins will surrender, and Sally and her sister will be proven innocent of assisting a murder suspect, and Gary himself will start writing to Sally. If he did, perhaps she wouldn’t be able to throw away his letters; she’d have to read each one again and again, exactly the way he did when hers was delivered, and before she knew it, she’d be lost, the way he seems to be at this very moment.
Since none of this is going to happen, Gary nods and heads for the door. He has always known when to step aside, and when to sit by the road and just wait for whatever was going to happen next. He saw a mountain lion one afternoon because he decided to sit down on the bumper of his truck and drink some water before changing a blown tire. The mountain lion came padding toward the asphalt, as if it owned the road and everything else, and it took a good look at Gary, who had never before been grateful for a flat tire.
“I’ll have the Oldsmobile picked up by Friday,” Gary says now, but he doesn’t look behind him until he’s out on the porch. He doesn’t know that Sally might easily have followed him, if her sister hadn’t pinched her and whispered for her to stay where she was. He doesn’t know how badly this thing inside Sally’s chest hurts her, but that’s what happens when you’re a liar, especially when you’re telling the worst of these lies to yourself.
“Thanks a million,” Gillian sings out, and by the time Gary turns to look behind him, there’s nothing to see but the locked door.
As far as Gillian’s concerned, it’s all over and done with. “Well, hallelujah,” she says when she goes back to the kitchen. “We got rid of him.”
Sally is already dealing with the lasagna noodles that have been congealing in the colander. She tries to pry them out with a wooden spoon, but it’s too late, they’re stuck together. She dumps the whole thing into the trash and then she starts to cry.
“What is your problem?” Gillian asks. It is times like these that provoke perfectly rational people to say what the hell and light up cigarettes. Gillian looks through the junk drawer, hoping to find an old pack, but the best she comes up with is a box of wooden matches. “We got rid of him, didn’t we? We seemed totally innocent. In spite of that damn ring. I’ll tell you that thing scared the pants off me. That was like looking the devil right in the eye. But honey, we fooled that investigator anyway, and we did a good job of it.”
“Oh,” Sally says, completely disgusted. “Oh,” she cries.
“Well, we did! We pulled it off, and we should be proud of ourselves.”
“For lying?” Sally rubs at her leaking eyes and nose. Her cheeks are red and she’s snuffling like crazy and she can’t get rid of that awful feeling in the dead center of her chest. “Is that what you think we should be proud of?”
“Hey.” Gillian shrugs. “You do what you have to.” She peers into the trash at the globby noodles. “Now what do we do for dinner?”
That’s when Sally throws the colander across the room.
“You are in bad shape,” Gillian says. “You’d better call your internist or your gynecologist or somebody and get a tranquilizer.”
“I’m not doing this.” Sally grabs the pot of tomato sauce, to which she’s added onions and mushrooms and sweet red pepper, and pours it into the sink.
“Fine.” Gillian is ready to agree to any reasonable plan. “You don’t have to cook. We’ll get take-out.”
“I’m not referring to dinner.” Sally has grabbed her car keys and her wallet. “I’m talking about the truth.”
“Are you out of your mind?” Gillian goes after Sally, and when Sally keeps heading toward the door, Gillian reaches for her arm.
“Don’t you dare pinch me,” Sally warns her.
Sally walks out onto the porch, but Gillian is still right behind her. She follows Sally down the driveway.
“You’re not going to see that investigator. You can’t talk to him.”
“He knows anyway,” Sally says. “Couldn’t you tell? Couldn’t you see by the way he was looking at us?”
Just thinking about Gary’s gaunt face and all the worry that was there makes her chest feel even worse. She’s going to find herself suffering from a stroke or angina or something before this day is through.
“You can’t go after that guy,” Gillian tells Sally. There’s not a bit of nonsense in her tone. “We’ll both be sitting in jail if you do. I don’t know what would make you even consider this.”