Starter House(68)
“It’s a little boy. I can’t go home, Eric, listen to me, I can’t! He’s hurt people. People died there—a baby, it drowned in the bath.”
“That was a long time ago. It’s our house now.”
She wiped her eyes and glared at him. “You knew and you didn’t tell me?”
“I just found out today. And it isn’t even the same bathtub. Harry replaced it, remember? So you’ve paid for the room already, you might as well stay till morning, and then you’ll feel better and you can come home.” He sat down again, and she let him take her feet in his hands. “Look how puffy you are. Dr. Vlk says she wants to see you Monday; you’d better ask her about it. There’s a spa. You and your mom can have a girls’ day out tomorrow; you know you need a haircut.”
“Well, I’m so sorry I’m not up to your standards,” she said. But then he took her left foot in both hands and pushed his thumbs up along her sole. She sighed. “That feels so good. You can keep doing that. I’m sorry.”
“What happened to Ella Dane?”
“It cut her. With a broken plate.”
Eric’s hands paused on her foot, and she wiggled her toes to encourage him. “You broke another plate?”
He would worry about the plate. “I can’t go back. It’s not safe for the baby.” No living baby since 1971, Greeley Honeywick had said. How could she be so specific? “Please come with me,” she said to Eric. “We can sell it.”
“We can’t afford to sell it. There wasn’t five hundred bucks in checking. You went into the overdraft. The bank charges a seven-dollar fee and twenty percent interest, in case you want to know. You can’t live in a hotel.”
“I can’t go home.”
He was rubbing her ankles now, one in each hand. It felt wonderful. He said, “Where can you go? You can’t get any more money from the bank.”
“Why not?”
“There isn’t any. The overdraft’s maxed out. The fees pile up; you have no idea how much trouble we’re in. And there’s nothing wrong with the house.”
She knew that tone. Eric was terrible at keeping secrets. “You’ve found out something,” she said. “What’s going on?”
“What’s going on is, I’m going home, to our house that we bought together. You can take your weekend, get it out of your system, and come home. Somebody has to be the adult here.” He patted her feet one last time and stood up from the bed. “Right now, Lacey, I’m walking out of here. I’ll do everything I can to fix this, but you have to help me. Come home with me. Please.”
Lacey shook her head, and her cell phone began to ring on the nightstand. She checked the number but didn’t answer. It was a return call from Everett Craddock’s motel in Spinet Cove. “Who is that?” Eric asked.
“Somebody who knows the truth. Eric, if you’d only listen.”
“You are exactly like your mother. Exactly like.”
Outraged, she bounced against the pillow. “You said that? You didn’t say that.”
“I did say it. But I don’t want to walk out of here without you. Please.”
She folded her arms over her belly. “If you loved me . . .” She hated to hear herself say it, but it was too late to stop. “If you loved me, you would believe me. Even if it was impossible to believe. If I go back, the baby will die.”
“I can’t do it. I can’t believe that. Lacey, I’m sorry, I just can’t.” He stood in the door, waiting for her. She looked at her knees, not raising her face even when the door whispered along the carpet. He was going; he was gone. After everything. After she had made him face the world when Foothills Financial collapsed; after he’d refused to sell her ring. She twisted the ring, but her finger was so swollen, she couldn’t get it off. He’d helped her with her job search, she’d called Uncle Floyd and asked him to hire Eric—after everything, he was walking out, because of a house, because of money? Lacey pulled the pillow from the head of her bed, hugged it tightly, and wept into it. But he couldn’t hear her, and he wasn’t coming back.
Ella Dane came back in and sat at the computer a few minutes after Eric left, and mercifully she said nothing either in comfort or blame. Lacey sat next to Bibbits, stroking him for the comfort of his small warm body. His fur felt dry, and when she rubbed his ears, there was something wrong. He was sleeping at last, poor thing; the shock of Drew’s attack and the sudden removal from the house had upset him terribly. At least he wasn’t coughing.