Something flickered across Trina’s face. She got out of the car, pushing Simon back with her door as she opened and then slammed it shut.
Her beautiful face was so close to Simon’s that he could see the gold flecks in her irises. From a distance, they looked green, but standing near to each other, they appeared almost metallic.
“Why was I with him? With Dermot Carine?” Trina threw her hands up in the air.
Simon stumbled as Trina tossed the young man’s name into the wind. No one, not even the police, had said the victim’s name yet. Hearing it, especially from Trina’s mouth, made it all too real for him.
Trina continued. “Why am I with any of the men I go home with?” Trina clenched her teeth. “Because Tom, my would-be husband, was walking with me because I wanted to go get ice cream after looking at the house we were going to buy. It was a beautiful evening. Do you remember?”
Simon nodded, pathetic in the knowledge of where she was about to go. Why did he think having this conversation would help?
“And then a car on the street lost control, and rammed up onto the sidewalk, and Tom threw himself in front of me so that I would be protected.” Tears welled in Trina’s eyes, beginning to stream down her face as she continued. “Which meant he was crushed by the impact.”
She took a deep, shuddering breath, and although Simon reached out to comfort her, she moved away quickly and he let his arm fall.
“The car backs up and drives away. I don’t see the driver, or if there were any passengers. Everything is just chaos, and all I can focus on is Tom, crying out in pain. I don’t even see the color or make of the car, although at the hospital when the police collect Tom’s clothes they’ll find flecks of blue paint on his shirt.
“And then, it’s a miracle! A doctor—even better, a surgeon—is on the same road and sees it all happen. He pulls over, runs to help Tom, and starts performing life-saving measures. I follow his instructions, trying to help where I can, but my hands are shaking and I can barely hear what’s happening because the blood in my ears is pounding so hard.”
“Stop,” Simon’s voice was taut, strung like a bowstring about to snap. “Please, just stop.” He raised his hands up in surrender.
“No, you wanted to talk about it. So, I’m talking about it.”
Another slash of wind whipped through the space between them. A lone dog walker approached from the opposite end of the park before turning and heading back in the direction they came.
“But it turns out this savior of ours was a drunk—is a drunk—and he starts making mistakes. He actually cuts into Tom with a penknife, supposedly to relieve the pressure from the internal bleeding, but he misses and punctures Tom’s spleen, and worsens the bleeding. It also turns out that this doctor was driving after downing a fifth of whiskey, so he was terribly drunk and shouldn’t have been helping anyone, let along cutting them open on the side of the road.”
The weight of his guilt sunk onto Simon’s shoulders, holding him in place while Trina listed out his sins.
“They said he would have survived if you hadn’t been there.” Trina was quieter now, her voice barely audible over the wind. “And nothing happened to you. You’re still practicing, you didn’t even get charged because of Good Samaritan Laws. And now you want to follow up with me, check in on me, give me money. As though I owe you something.”
“You don’t owe me anything,” Simon said, and instantly regretted it.
“Of course I don’t,” Trina replied. “And you owe me everything.”
She stopped and stared at him. A few strands of hair blew across her face, and Simon was reminded strangely of being with Joyce on a vacation to Switzerland, when they were first married. It had been winter, and the skiing conditions were perfect. They were at the top of a mountain slope, the sun shining across the snow, and he’d looked at his wife and realized just how lucky he was to have her.
The energy vibrated off Trina so intensely it was almost visible. She clenched her fists, reached up with a jagged hand and pulled the hair off her face, and then silently walked back to her car, turned it on, and pulled away. Simon was left standing there in the empty park, watching her leave, willing her to go.
CHAPTER NINETEEN LAURA
Laura thought Dermot’s sister would never leave, but Susan finally stood up after another half hour of going round and round about the letter Dermot wrote and made her way out, pausing at the door to put a hand on Laura’s shoulder and remind her she was there for Laura if she needed anything. And then Susan got in her fancy car and drove off, leaving in her wake more questions for Laura than she’d been able to answer.
Laura’s phone beeped. It was a text from Rosie, wanting to get together for drinks or something a little later in the day. By drinks, Laura knew it meant holding court on the sunken couch in the apartment Rosie shared with her cousins, slugging back shots of cheap vodka and shouting at reality TV shows. Laura didn’t really like going, but Rosie was one of her few friends and she didn’t want to be here when Terry got back.
It was just a two mile walk into town, even though it seemed like their trailer was parked in the middle of a vast forest, so it didn’t matter that Terry had the car. Laura could be over to Rosie’s in twenty minutes if she walked fast, thirty if she was tired. And she was always tired now.
She texted Rosie back, telling her she would be over soon, bundled herself into her hand-me-down men’s coat, hat, and gloves but then decided at the last minute she needed to change her outfit. She still had on her work clothes, and she didn’t need to be seeing friends in the dingy polo and polyester pants issued by the Marriott. Laura rummaged around in her closet and eventually found what she was looking for. Dermot took her shopping a few weeks back, insisting she get whatever she wanted, and so she’d asked to go to one of the little boutique stores in town with mannequins that always featured tiny black dresses with strappy heels and chunky necklaces.
“I’d thought something more like a sweater,” he’d teased, moving over to the storefront next door that sold hiking gear and their window display of colorful fisherman’s sweaters.
“You don’t need to buy me anything,” Laura told him.
“I know.” Dermot smiled, running his hand through his dark hair. “But I want to say thank you, for everything you’ve done to help me these last few months. Being with you.” He paused, and in that pause Laura heard more than anything Dermot could have said to her.
Dermot went on. “Being with you has been one of the few things in my life that have made me happy. Truly happy.”
Laura stared at her closet, remembering those words. She pulled out the dress he’d bought for her, not too short or tight—Dermot had insisted—but a beautiful fabric and cut. Body conscious without being sleazy. There was a word for the type of dress, but she couldn’t remember it. It was higher end than anything else Laura owned. She’d come out of the dressing room and she swore she saw Dermot’s face light up with desire when he first saw her. He’d shifted his features quickly into one that was more brotherly, but Laura knew what she saw.
That had been the beginning of the end, she thought now.
Laura pulled off her clothes and slipped the dress over her skin. The fabric felt rich and clung in all the right places. Looking in the mirror, she expected to see a beautiful woman staring back at her. Instead, she saw her gaunt face and pale skin. The dark circles under her eyes and sunken hollows around her collarbones. She was a ghoul, not a princess.
She ripped off the dress, let it crumple into a pile on the floor, and grabbed whatever she found first in her closet to wear. A chunky sweater, paired with clean but beaten-down jeans, and she walked quickly back to the front of the trailer, rushing out the door while still pulling her coat and hat on.
Snow and a crust of ice crunched under her boots as she walked. She ran her fingers over the roll of bills coiled in her pocket. The pharmacy should still be open in town.
Susan’s voice rolled around in her head as she walked. “He said he’d killed him.”
Tom.
But neither Susan nor Laura knew who Tom was. Dermot’s sister said she couldn’t think of anyone from his childhood or high school years that she knew of, and Laura had no memory of a Tom coming up from Dermot’s catalogue of clients he worked with. She’d told Susan Dermot didn’t seem to have too many friends. He was always working, meeting with clients all over town.
Except when he was with her, Laura silently added.
None of it made any sense.
Laura kept walking, trying to think through everything that had happened in the last few weeks. Losing Dermot, his sister showing up—claiming that Dermot confessed to killing someone. Laura missing her period. Terry getting angrier and angrier each day, and Laura never sure what was going to upset him.
