The Perfect Match (Blue Heron #2)(107)

Spike was dozing on the ample bosom of Emily Gianfredo and looked too comfortable to be removed. Honor sat down and tried to watch the flick.

“It’s the son,” Mildred announced as Janet Leigh drove toward Bates Motel. “He killed his own mother and kept her body. He dresses up in her clothes.”

“Thanks for ruining it,” grumbled her husband.

“You’ve seen this! You just forgot. We saw it with the Merrills when it first came out. You remember, at the theater before it burned down?”

“I’d rather have someone stab me than live here,” Goggy said, sniffing.

More wine? asked the eggs. Thanks, I’d love some, Honor mentally answered, and poured herself a second glass. The day called for it.

Once again, she was in love with someone who didn’t love her back. Once again, she’d managed to tell herself a pretty little story with butterflies and Lindt chocolate truffles and a devastatingly wonderful man who adored her but just didn’t quite know it.

And, she sensed, once again she was about to be dumped.

Something had happened with Charlie, that she knew.

That ten days (ten and a half) after the ball had been...everything. Tom had brought her flowers one day (and yes, pathetic female that she was, she saved a rose petal, because dang it!—no man had ever brought her flowers before, if you ruled out Dad). He pressed her against the wall and kissed her till her knees wobbled, and they did it on the kitchen table. The kitchen table, people! Come on!

The sowing ceremony with her family...had she ever even pictured being the woman chased by her honey so he could steal a kiss? No. She hadn’t. Then, the day of the plane ride, the culmination of everything. For a little while, it had felt so perfect that the air itself shimmered. They’d been a family, a couple and their teenage son, biology be damned. And when Tom had kissed her hand and smiled at her, there’d been something in his gray eyes she hadn’t seen yet.

Peace.

And maybe a little love, as well.

I believe that’s called wishful thinking, said the eggs, their eyes glued to Anthony Perkins as he peered through the knothole. Is there any popcorn?

“Oh, no, she’s getting in the shower,” Mildred observed. “Honey, don’t do it! He’s about to kill you!” Honestly. It was like watching a movie with Faith.

“I can’t see,” Margie Bowman said. “Juanita, why did you get that perm? Your head is too big now. Sit in the back next time.”

So far as Honor could tell, there were two possible scenarios for the future. One, she’d marry Tom and live in pathetic hope that he’d come around. Have a baby if she was lucky. Yearn for Tom to love her. Gradually adjust to the fact that he didn’t, or couldn’t. Work out a divorce when the time came. Move back in with Dad and Mrs. Johnson and raise her child, always a little melancholy to see those pieces of Tom Barlow in him or her, always blue when Tom came to pick up the kid for Wednesday night dinners and every other weekend. She’d come to Rushing Creek and do Watch and Whine and gradually add her own aching knees and lactose intolerance to the list of complaints. Send her child off to college and move in here and talk to her shriveled ovaries, the eggs long since committed suicide.

Two, see above, minus the kid.

“Anthony Perkins would’ve made an attractive woman,” Frank Peters said as Norman Bates killed the detective. “He has nice eyes.”

“My mother had that same dress,” murmured Louise Daly.

When the movie ended, Honor turned up the lights, wincing at the sight of Victor Iskin and Lorena Creech making out in the back row. Emily handed Spike back. “She’s an angel,” she said.

“Thanks, Mrs. Gianfredo,” Honor said. “It’s true,” she murmured to her dog. “Hey, where’s everyone going? We still have the discussion.” Pathetic, that she’d rather stay here than head home to face the tension there.

“Sweetheart, the Girl Scouts made grape pies for their baking badges, and we don’t want to miss out,” Goggy said.

“We? Are you eating here? What about the food poisoning?”

“That’s different,” Goggy said. “This is the Girl Scouts. They’d never poison me. Your grandfather is meeting me here, so you go along. Tell that handsome Tom I said hello.”

“Okay,” Honor said. She waved as the Watch and Whine audience tried not to trample one another in their rush to get to dinner.

With a sigh that she couldn’t suppress, she put Spike in her bag, stood up and started packing the movie projector.

“Honor?”

She startled, banging into the cart, and Spike barked, then whimpered. “Brogan!” Honor said, clearing her throat. “Hey. How are you?”

“I’m okay,” he said. “I called your office. Ned told me you were here.”

“Yes. Psycho. Part of the movie club.”

He gave a ghost of a smile. “Do you have a second?”

His face was drawn, jaw tight. She glanced around; the auditorium was empty even of Victor and Lorena now. “Sure. What’s going on?”

Brogan ran a hand through his thick hair. Bent down to pet Spike, who really only resented Tom, come to think of it, then straightened up again. “I’m really sorry to do this to you, On. It’s just...” His voice broke. “It’s just that you’re my best friend, I think.” He swallowed.