Susan kept walking.
“The police. My husband’s confession won’t stick.”
“Why’s that?” Joyce knew Susan couldn’t help but ask. Curiosity has a way of pushing people towards endpoints they’d otherwise avoid.
“Before I explain, there’s something you need to know about my husband.”
“All right.” Susan put her phone in her pocket.
“He’s been cheating on me for years.”
“That’s not noteworthy. Lots of guys cheat.”
“It wasn’t much of an issue until we both ended up sleeping with the same man.”
“Oh.” Susan’s mouth made a wide circle, her eyebrows raised. “I thought you were…”
“Happy? In a way, I suppose we are. But you see, the reason I know my husband didn’t kill anyone is because he can’t hurt anything that he loves.”
“You might think that,” Susan began.
“No, I know. He loved Trina, almost as a daughter. And he loved Dermot.”
“Dermot. My brother?”
“Yes. Simon and I were both seeing him.” Joyce watched the information settle on Susan.
“And your husband was in love with him.” Susan sounded circumspect.
“I believe so, yes.” Joyce shrugged. She’d never expected Dermot to be faithful. He was one of those pretty boys, although his sleek edges were blurring as some of his bad habits caught up with him. Dermot wanted to find a way to be everything to everyone, including himself.
Susan shook her head. “But Simon hurt you, by having his affair. It doesn’t add up. You can’t assume people you know well, even people you love, are who they appear to be.”
“That’s just it.” They had been creeping along the sidewalk, Joyce urging with her own body language to move them towards her Porsche. They were at the car now. The gun throbbed in the back of Joyce’s mind. She needed to get Simon out of this predicament. “Simon doesn’t love me. It’s me who loves him.”
Susan shook her head. “Why love someone who can never love you back?”
Joyce’s eyes locked on Susan’s for a beat. “Get in. I’ll give you a ride back to your car.” Joyce unlocked the doors.
After a moment, Susan climbed in. Joyce started the engine, planning out the route she’d take in her head.
They weren’t going back to the park.
CHAPTER FORTY LAURA
Rosie would stay with Laura at the trailer tonight. After the man left and Laura received Addy’s message about Trina, she called Rosie. Laura didn’t know what else to do, besides sit on the cheap carpeting and weep. Laura wasn’t done with her shift until an hour later, and by the time she arrived at her trailer it was starting to get dark.
Laura glanced around the woods by her home. She couldn’t be certain that the man, or anyone else, hadn’t followed her from the hotel, although she’d driven around in circles for a while just in case any of the headlights behind her were more than people running errands and heading home from work. She put her key in the lock and stepped inside the trailer, which was warm and smelled of stale coffee from this morning. Laura went over to the coffee pot and turned it off. She’d forgotten to flip the switch before she left today, and the coffee had been burning off slowly in the urn. She was lucky the trailer hadn’t caught fire.
A hum in her pocket signaled she was getting a call. Her heart thudded as she reached to answer it, thinking that it couldn’t be more bad news, because almost everyone she loved was already dead.
It was Rosie.
“I’m sorry I’m not there yet. I’m waiting for my cousin to get home from work so I can borrow the car,” she explained.
Laura assured her it was fine. That she was fine.
Although Laura had no way of knowing if that were true.
“Do you want to stay on the phone until I can come over?” Rosie asked.
Laura sat down on the couch. She chose the same spot where Dermot’s sister sat when she delivered her revelations about her brother. Susan was so polished and elegant. Like the ballerinas in the Nutcracker play Laura went to once with her mother at Christmastime. They’d looked like angels, dancing on the stage, and all Laura could think was that she’d never feel or be as pretty as those women.
She’d never said that to her mother. Her mother was the kind of woman who assumed the world knew she was gorgeous, and that everything would always be okay.
“It’ll work out,” she would say to Laura any time she came to her mom with a problem, whether it was a boy pulling her hair in the playground or an F on her math test. It was only now, that Laura’s life was imploding and she was totally, utterly alone—except for Rosie—that she realized her mother’s nonchalance was more carelessness than trust in the goodness of the world. She simply didn’t want to be bothered with her children’s worries, Laura thought now.
“Are you really going to have this baby?” Rosie asked, not waiting for Laura to answer her first question.
“Yes,” was Laura’s automatic reply.
“What are you going to do with a baby?” Rosie wasn’t accusatory. She seemed genuine in her question.
Laura wasn’t sure how to answer her.
Laura leaned back into the cushions of the couch. She felt a deep, dark hole humming inside her, and poor Rosie was going to get sucked into it if she wasn’t careful. “You mean, now that my boyfriend and brother are dead? And the one person who I thought could help was murdered too?” She meant Trina, of course.
Rosie’s voice became urgent. “What do you mean?”
