The Wrong Family(45)

Can’t, he texted back. I have that work conference.

Winnie vaguely remembered something about a work conference, but he’d been complaining about going.

Get out of it

Can’t

Can’t or won’t?

Both...?

She was furious at him for that question mark because she could see his expression as he typed it—stick it to the wife, it said.

Where is the conference?

His answer came back impressively fast, so fast that he couldn’t have made it up on the fly...or could he? If he’d planned it...

Puyallup

Wow. Okay. Priorities.

Winnie was so angry she tossed her phone in her purse and didn’t look at it again until lunchtime. Didn’t he understand that they needed this? It was like he wasn’t making any effort at all to be a family lately. When she finally dug her phone from underneath all of her crap, she was sitting in Lola’s with two of her coworkers, sipping coffee and working on a pastry.

Just seeing his name made her feel angry all over again, but after reading his text she excused herself to the bathroom to read it again.

I’m really trying here, Winnie. I can drive you up. Spend Saturday and Sunday with you before I have to head back. That’s the best I can do for now.

She nodded at the empty stall. Okay...she could work with that. She’d pack her pot, of course, she’d need it up at the cabin with Shelly.





      21


JUNO

In the sixties, Juno’s mother had owned a beauty salon called The Slick. Back then, women drove from all over the county to visit Hoida Pearl at her salon for a Vidal Sassoon cut, incredibly radical for the time. The salon was in a strip mall with a five and dime, a laundromat, and a butcher. Salon, chores, dinner, the women in the community joked—all in one! Juno spent many weekends and afternoons at the salon, washing and folding the towels for her mother, listening to the ladies talk. She learned that if they noticed her presence they’d share looks, pointing her out with their eyes. “Young ears in the room!” one of them would sing, and then her mother would sashay over to the register, her heels clipping on the tiled floor. Juno would hear the whoosh of the money drawer as it opened, followed by the clink of change as Hoida scooped some out. It was then that Juno understood that she was being dismissed and bribed all in one.

“An ice cream for you, mija, and cigarettes for me.” The change was cold in her palm.

To argue would have been pointless, and Juno wanted the ice cream. From then on she’d learned that by staying out of sight—say, by the towel closet—they’d be more apt to spill their guts, dirty laundry tumbling out of their mouths a mile a minute. She’d known things about everyone in their town—the local Baptist pastor and her pediatrician, Dr. Mynds, included.

At this moment, she was grateful for the skills she’d honed in the salon.

Juno vibrated with something like anticipation as she lay in her nest. Above her, in the house proper, Nigel pulled open the door to the closet and tossed his work bag inside. She listened as his footsteps clambered up the stairs, calling out for Winnie and Sam. They were going away for a week to ski with Shelly’s family; obviously, Shelly was speaking to Winnie again after the Dakota episode. Though from what Juno had gleaned, Dakota was anything but okay with what had gone down in the Crouch residence that night. He’d left two messages on the house phone, threatening Nigel in gruesome detail, and accusing him of ruining Dakota’s life, in the slurred tones of a man who’d lost his family and was rapidly drinking himself to death.

Drunks seldom looked inward, and when they did, they usually ended up drinking more. Dakota was obviously looking for someone to blame and Nigel was the winner winner chicken dinner. Juno knew a ticking time bomb when she saw one. But Nigel had deleted both of the messages without Winnie ever catching wind of them.

They’d collected their snowsuits and skis from Hems Corner yesterday, loading everything into and onto Nigel’s Subaru. Now she heard all three of them come down the stairs, their voices loud and excited. Juno would have the house to herself, and she had plans.

She’d spent days lying in the crawl space thinking of nothing but her growing suspicions. While her body throbbed around her, she withdrew into thoughts, accumulating theories into an overflowing bin in her brain. It wasn’t good when she got like this; she couldn’t sleep, couldn’t focus on anything else. She ate aspirin (it was aspirin these days), chewing it to a paste and swallowing with a slight gag. She’d taken some of Winnie’s marijuana, too, from a little Altoids tin she kept in her toiletries bag under the sink. Juno had laughed out loud when she saw the six little joints rolled to perfection. She’d taken one without even thinking about it. Her pain these days superseded her caution. With the aspirin still coating her throat, she slipped into a haze of dull pain and unwelcome remembering.

Kregger was telling her that enough was enough. He was angry and he rarely got angry. Juno was fighting back, defending herself. This was her job, she insisted; everyone took their job home to some degree. Kregger looked at her in bewilderment. You cannot be serious, Juno, you cannot...

The vibrations from the door slamming roused her slightly. The alarm was beep-beep-beeping as it prepared to arm. She breathed deeply, the smell of the marijuana mercifully covering the other smells in the crawl space. She lit the joint again, dragging on it heavily, the paper sizzling. It hit her where it mattered—all around her pain, body and brain. Leaning back, she edged the joint out on a Coke can to her right, then propped it inside the pull tab.