The laptop sat as dead weight on Trina’s thighs. She moved it to the coffee table, leaving it closed.
She met Rosie’s eyes over the kitchen counter. “I need coffee if we’re going to get into all of this kind of tradecraft bullshit,” Rosie told the group. “Who else needs some?”
She brought over four mugs and set them on the coffee table, but then snatched up the one in front of Laura. “I’ll make you some tea. Coffee is bad for the baby.”
Laura fidgeted in her position on the couch. Trina noticed her hand go over her stomach for a moment, and then move back onto her leg.
Sipping the warm drinks seemed to settle all of them, and the tension that’d been in the air since they discovered each other dissolved into an almost-friendly quiet.
“He and I carved our initials into a tree, at the start of one of the trails by my house.” Laura avoided looking at anyone while she spoke. “And then, walking into town today, I saw another carving, with his initials, and someone else’s, at the trailhead that links onto the main road. We didn’t do that hike together, but Dermot said one time that he loved the way it opened up at the top, by the vista.” Her voice trailed off.
“It could have been anyone.” Rosie reached out and put a hand on Laura’s knee reassuringly.
Laura shook her head. “No, it wasn’t. I’m sure it was Dermot. And the carvings were fresh, fresher than it would look if I went back and found our initials.”
Addy had been sitting, staring at her feet. Now, she spoke up. “What were the initials?” Trina sat closest to Addy, picking at the corners of her nails while her thighs pressed her hands together.
“What does it matter?” Laura asked solemnly. “They weren’t mine.”
Addy turned suddenly to Trina. “Did you sleep with him that night?”
Trina didn’t even try to stall. “Yes. That’s the only reason I went up to his room. He was a one-night stand, not a boyfriend. I’m certain he didn’t carve my initials into that tree.”
“Were they mine?” Addy asked Laura.
“What are you saying?” Rosie narrowed her eyes. “Were you sleeping with him too?”
Addy remained silent again.
“Oh good Lord.” Rosie let out a long sigh. She reached up and took a sip of her coffee before responding. “Don’t tell me one of you is pregnant, too.”
“No.” Addy looked around worriedly. “It was just a few times. We were both lonely. It wasn’t a relationship.”
“No, the initials weren’t yours,” Laura chimed in. She surveyed the room with her light-blue eyes, something like pain pulling at the corners of her mouth. “I knew he had other women he was with. I just thought…” She ran her hand through her hair, scraping it back from her face. “I just thought he’d stopped once he knew I wanted to be with him.”
“I’m sorry,” Trina and Addy said simultaneously. Trina continued. “I didn’t know. He was just a guy I was using to try and forget about my life for a little bit.”
“It was awful, seeing you there with him,” Laura said. Trina tipped her chin up defensively, and then stopped herself. There was something different in Laura’s voice.
“I’m so sorry,” Trina offered again. And she meant it, not just for Laura, but for herself.
“I had to call, every chance I had, to try and get them to release his body to me from the morgue,” Laura continued. “He didn’t have any family. Not that I knew of, at least. And I couldn’t even afford to bury him, so I was going to cremate him instead. But then his sister showed up, and she’s the one who’s going to bury him now. I thought he was faithful to me, and he wasn’t. I thought he didn’t have any family left, and he did. What else did he lie to me about? Every day, it’s like there’s another stone I have to turn over, and underneath is only ugliness. Maggots and huge black beetles with pincers. And death. And now I’m supposed to have a baby? None of it is right. None of it is fair or makes sense.”
Laura finished and stared into the middle distance. Her face was ashen, but her eyes flashed as they started to sweep from one corner of the room to the other. “There’s no sign that I was ever here. That I was a part of his life.”
And that’s when Trina accepted what her gut had been telling her this entire time they’d been sitting and talking.
She could have done it. This small, foolish girl could have killed Dermot.
What Trina was going to do about that, she had no idea. The only thing she was certain of was that Dermot Carine wasn’t afraid to hurt people to get what he wanted, and that was probably why he was dead.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT SIMON
Trina’s apartment was dark when he arrived. He didn’t know why he was there, except that he didn’t want to go home. Simon didn’t have a key to her apartment, of course, so he sat in the car, considering whether Joyce was home yet and if he should stop by the liquor store on his way back to her. He hadn’t driven drunk in his car since the accident last year, but if there was ever a time to start it seemed like now, with that young man and all his potential dead, the police homing in on the woman whose fiancé Simon killed as their main suspect, and his wife encouraging the process like a twisted sort of ringmaster.
He stayed for another ten minutes, and then decided to run to the store on the corner, buy a cheap bottle of whiskey—anything would do—and then drive back to his office and get horribly drunk, eventually slumping over in his office chair to sleep it off. No one would be at the office now, all the appointments were cleared for the day. He could be alone with his thoughts.
Trina’s neighborhood was fine, but it wasn’t the posh area that Simon lived with Joyce. A few teenage boys hung out on the corner in puffy down jackets, their breath misting in the cold air. A siren cut through from somewhere in the distance. Simon turned up the collar on his coat and walked towards the neon sign flashing “R&S Convenience” above the corner store.
A bell rang out as he stepped into the store. An older man in a turban sat behind the counter. He gave Simon a nod, his eyes turning back to a television screen propped up in the corner of the front counter. Passionate dialogue in a language Simon didn’t recognize buzzed in the background from the TV.
The liquor was in the back aisle, and Simon snatched a bottle of Seagram’s off the shelf, thought twice, and then grabbed a second. He passed through the chip aisle and tucked one bottle under his arm in order to grab a bag of pork rinds. His stomach rumbled just thinking of their salty, crackly taste. He’d eaten them often as an undergrad, chugging through the day on little to no sleep, copious amounts of coffee, and junk food he could grab from the vending machines in the lobby of the library. He’d had a scholarship to keep, and his dormmate was a philosophy major who smoked pot and espoused wisdom to his little gaggle of friends into the small hours.
The bell above the door dinged again as Simon started to walk up to the counter and pay. Two of the boys from the corner had come inside, along with a new guy Simon didn’t see before. This man was tall and rangy, with sunken cheeks and hair that could use a wash. The two teenage boys moved over to the snack aisle, clocked Simon standing there with the whiskey and chips, and moved swiftly to the door and out back into the cold, their hands empty. Simon looked from their exit to the other man, who was clearly not here with the boys, but had simply walked in with them.
The rangy man seemed startled that the boys left so suddenly. His eyes scanned around the store, eventually catching on Simon. The man moved towards Simon, and the way that he carried his shoulders told Simon that he didn’t need chips. He grabbed Simon by his upturned collar, slammed his forehead into him, and pulled a long knife from the waistband of his jeans. He held on to Simon, his forearm tight against his throat with the knife tucked underneath his chin. The man turned Simon so they were both facing the storeowner, whose eyes were so wide Simon could see the whites of them from where they were standing.
Simon didn’t struggle at first. He’d never been in a fight, and having another man put his hands on him felt almost absurd. After a few seconds, though, Simon reached up with his hands and tried to twist out of the man’s grip, but his knife pricked at the skin of his throat and Simon had trouble breathing.
“Give me all the money, or I’ll kill him and then I’ll kill you!” Spit from the man’s mouth flew out as he shouted at the storeowner and it landed on Simon’s cheek.
“It’s okay,” the storeowner said, holding his hands up. “I’ll give you the money. Just let him go.”
A memory flashed through Simon’s mind of the first time he was in surgery, the clean lines of the incision masking the blood and gore of it all, and how his own blood pounded in his ears when blood swamped the open cavity unexpectedly and his patient’s blood pressure dropped. In that moment, Simon felt like he would die along with this patient.
He didn’t feel that way when he ran over to Tom and Trina that day on the street, after he realized that what he was doing was worsening the situation rather than helping. He knew he wouldn’t die if Tom did, he would just wish that he had.
“What’s your name?” Simon’s voice came out clearer than he thought it would.
