And Now She's Gone(9)
“Did you know that Isabel took Dr. O’Donnell’s dog?” Gray asked.
Nan snorted. “Does it look like I give a fuck?”
“Looks like you’re a dues-paying member of Gives No Fucks Sorority Incorporated, but you should probably know that she kidnapped the man’s dog.”
Nan harrumphed. “Serves him right.”
“Okay, screw the dog, screw Ian. What can you tell me about Isabel’s state of mind?”
“She was upset a few days before we all left for Memorial Day weekend.”
“You know why?”
Tight jaw and crossed arms again for Nan.
Squinty eyes and acid stomach for Gray. Her neck tensed as she tried to wait Nan out. But she wouldn’t win this waiting game, not against a woman who kept the lights on for truckers and prodigal sons.
“I’m sure,” Gray said, forcing patience into her words, “that you want us to find—”
“Us?” The old redhead scowled. “You ain’t the police, and if I’m gonna tell anybody anything about what was going on, it’s gonna be them, when they come to talk to me.”
“But the police aren’t interested. She’s been gone for about seven weeks, right? They’re not looking for her because they don’t think she’s missing. But if you know something, if you know the truth, you have to tell me so that I can alert—”
“You think I’m an idiot?” Nan whispered. “You think I’m one of those young things with barely a thought in my head?”
“I think you have millions of thoughts in your head, and that’s why I need your help.”
Nan plucked lint from her cotton blouse and let the fibers float to the carpet. “I don’t know who you’re working for, young lady, but I do know that I ain’t gotta say shit to you.” The old woman chewed on her tongue—she wanted to say something else, because old gals like Nan Keaton liked saying plenty of things.
But just as Gray was about to give up …
“Problem is,” Nan said, “Isabel ain’t all that innocent in this, either. But she did what she had to do, cuz that’s us women. Doing what we gotta do to survive. And sometimes? That ain’t nice. Sometimes, that ain’t easy. But we get to be aboveground for one more day.”
TEN YEARS AGO
A FAIRY TALE AWAITS
Girls’ trip!
Las Vegas with Zoe, Jay, and Avery!
Tonight, Natalie thought, the town looked showgirl gorgeous. Fake everything, uh-huh, but shiny and clean and impossibly slick and painted. At noon, thermometers had hit 110 degrees, but once the sun had dipped, temperatures dropped to one hundred. Two hours before midnight, the sky was still bright as the afternoon—neon signs and car headlights, digital billboards and the glint of chrome and brass everything.
That night, the girls partied at TRUE in Caesars Palace. After five blowjob shots—delicious concoctions of Baileys, Kahlúa, amaretto, and whipped cream—Natalie stumbled onto the club’s VIP deck and right into Sean Dixon, the club’s promoter and the most gorgeous man she’d ever met. With close-cut wavy hair and skin the color of Southern pecans, he was a big man who moved like a dancer. Smooth like Cab, smooth like Fred. Slick. Yeah, Sean Dixon was slick.
He said, “I like your smile, Shorty.”
Yeah, okay. Her smile, and not the hot-pink dress wrapped tight as sausage skin around her hips and ass?
She said, “Thank you. I like your eyes.” Hazel to brown on cue, those eyes cut her open, right there on the spot, they were that sharp.
He bought her another drink and they talked about everything and nothing. The first black president. The dangers versus the rewards of eating raw cookie dough. Her job at the Oakland Museum of California.
She liked his confidence.
He liked her reference to Marlon Brando hiding in the shadows in Apocalypse Now.
Later, the couple escaped to his suite on the eighth floor. He touched her, and she shimmered like silver dust on a butterfly’s wings, like golden sunbeams through crystal raindrops. She held her breath as she straddled his waist. Not wanting to burst. Not wanting to release any of the crazy excitement that ricocheted through her veins. Her joy was fragile—a new thing, a rare thing, the finest china dangling from a cliffside.
She was twenty-nine years old and nothing had ever gone her way—why would this?
So she held her breath.
“Stay the night?” Sean asked, after they made love.
Worried, Natalie glanced at the window and imagined her friends wandering the Strip in search of her. And then, in that same window, she saw everything shining like gemstones. The world was so … alive.
“My girls,” she said. “They’re probably freaking out.”
“It’s damn near three o’clock in the morning. They’re finished freaking out and now they’re in bed with curlers in their hair.” Sean laughed and rubbed her arm. “Stay, babe.”
She tried to laugh. “You’re probably right.”
“If you’re gonna stress out, though, just call them. Where are you guys staying?”
She grabbed her cell phone from the nightstand. “Circus Circus.”
He snorted. “Seriously? That place is ghetto as fuck.”
Natalie tapped Avery’s number. “Sixty dollars a night—can’t beat it when you still have student loans to pay.” She didn’t have loans—her parents hadn’t needed to borrow—but Sean didn’t need to know that.