Locust Lane(35)

“What the hell is going on?”

“Didn’t anybody tell you?” Celia asked.

“As if. The cops just showed up and dragged us down here.”

“They were all with that girl last night, the one who was murdered at the Bondurant house. Jack and Hannah and Christopher.”

Alice’s green eyes lit up with shock.

“Jesus Christ. That’s insane. I mean … what? How does that even…”

“It turns out they’d gather there while Bill and Betsy were away.”

“But what happened?”

Celia snuck a look at Hannah. She was pulling her hair in front of her face, creating a curtain through which she watched the two women. Hiding in plain sight.

“It looks like Christopher might have done it,” she said in whisper. “Jack says that he and this girl were fighting.”

Alice’s jaw actually dropped.

“No way.”

“I think he’s in there right now.”

“Christopher? Our Christopher?”

Celia nodded.

“Jack and Hannah weren’t, like, there when it happened?”

“No, they’d left beforehand,” Celia said. “They only just found out about it this afternoon. None of us knew anything until the police called Oliver.”

“Have you seen Michel?” Alice asked. “Have you talked to him?”

“No.”

“Do you think he’s in there with him now?”

“Alice, honestly, that’s all I know.”

“I can’t even begin to process this.”

“Is Geoff coming?”

Alice didn’t respond. It was as if she’d suddenly forgotten she was in a conversation.

“Alice?”

“Yeah, no, he’s on the way.”

“So what do you know about this Eden girl?”

“Celia, I don’t know anything about anything.”

Geoff arrived. Alice went to meet him. Celia watched them, this miserable couple. Whatever they were saying quickly degenerated into a whispered argument. And then Geoff went to see his daughter, who rose to embrace him. They spoke quietly. Alice, meanwhile, left the building, running the gauntlet of the press like a star arriving late to her premiere.

Jack emerged a few minutes later, followed by his father and the detective. Oliver looked calm. He nodded to Celia and she felt the big fist of tension that had clutched her chest for the past few hours finally relent. The detective gestured for the Holts to enter as Oliver led Jack to Celia. As the two young lovers passed, Jack met Hannah’s eye. He gave his head a quick shake. A simple gesture, yet one that seemed so heavily freighted with secret meaning that Celia was certain the detective was going to stop everything and demand an immediate explanation. But she hadn’t seen it. Neither had Oliver, or Geoff. Only Celia.





ALICE


Geoff was at work when the cop arrived. Alice was asleep, having polished off the bottle of Chablis after their fight in his office. She no longer worried about his criticism regarding her drinking. She had more important things to think about. She needed to connect with Michel. She desperately wanted to text him and demand an explanation for the cold shoulder back at Papillon, but sensed that would only make matters worse. As much as she hated to admit it, there was nothing she could do but wait.

Before passing out, she’d rummaged around online. They were now saying that a suspect was being held. An Emerson youth. Unnamed, although Alice knew that wouldn’t last long. The local gossip machine would be going apeshit on this one. It was creepy that the killing had happened so close by; that the victim had been someone she’d seen at least a dozen times. They were saying she was from out of town, staying with relatives. Alice wondered if she’d been hiding out from a stalker who’d finally tracked her down. She could certainly relate. She’d dealt with her own share of overly attentive suitors, including the charming Nate in Nashville, who’d shown up on her doorstep with a pistol after she’d suggested they might want to start seeing other people. The cops had offered to beat the shit out of him in lieu of formal charges. She’d demurred, though she suspected they did it anyway. What with Nate being Black and Nashville being Nashville.

She put her phone to sleep and finished the bottle. A familiar urge was now dancing around the edges of her consciousness, dormant for the past few years, but clearly still part of her DNA. Just leave. Fuck it. You tried settling down. You traded freedom for security. You tried being Good Alice and it didn’t work out. And so you unleashed Bad Alice. But this isn’t the place for her, either. Whichever way you sliced it, Alice shouldn’t live here anymore. Just pack your bags and cash out.

Alone and miserable and more than a little drunk on a Wednesday afternoon, Alice started to wonder if she was destined to fuck up every last thing she undertook. Every relationship, every job, every aspiration. She wondered if Bad Alice would always be lurking in the shadows, waiting to pounce. Knock it off, she told herself. You don’t fuck up everything. This was just her self-pity talking. Things were different now. You have Hannah. You’d certainly worked miracles with her, given what a basket case she was when you first arrived. And Michel. You’re still in love with him. Capillaries still dilated when she thought about him; her heart went boompity-boom. She’d turned her back on just about everything she could think of during the course of her life, but not on true love. He just needed to talk to her so she could make him understand that the scenario she’d hypothesized the other night was just one of many. Divorce, no divorce; money or no money; bed or sofa or the back seat of a car. For fuck’s sake, she would even become a Catholic, whatever that entailed. If he really wanted to be done with her, he’d have to look her in the eye and say as much. But he didn’t want that. He was just freaked out by the notion of taking another man’s wife—and of finally saying adieu to his own dead one. Once she made everything clear to him, they could be together again.