Starter House(83)

Several days past ready. Lacey took the orange shovel and waited outside as Ella Dane hauled the cooler down to the beach. The courage it must have taken Ella Dane, with no money, no job, no skills, to take her child and run for safety. She had fled, but Beth Craddock hadn’t. Maybe she hadn’t sensed danger until too late. Greeley Honeywick moved to the other side of the country, but CarolAnna had stayed in Forrester Hills, and Harry lived next door. Lacey had to get Ev Craddock to talk to her.

“This is the place,” Ella Dane said.

They dug into the sand. It was harder work than Lacey had expected, and she had to do most of it, because Ella Dane’s arm hurt. Nine inches below the surface, she reached a layer of splintered shells. She put all her strength into digging so she wouldn’t have to think about the little girl in the blue swimsuit, and the story of the life she hadn’t lived behind Grandpa Merritt’s green door. She had to recast all her memories. The things she’d been most bitter about—Ella Dane taking her away, Grandpa Merritt dying alone—were things she had to be grateful for, now. It was more than she could manage all at once, so she concentrated on the sand. It was like digging through broken glass. The green sky faded to gray-violet in the east, and then deepest blue, although the landward horizon was all in flames, great red and yellow clouds towering into a city of fire. The sea sighed in a quiet rhythm, shallow waves fainting along the shore, and the air crawled cold off the water.

Ella Dane opened the cooler. Lacey took a few steps back and upwind, hoping it looked like a gesture of respect. Had she ever thought Bibbits smelled bad in life? This was worse, a sticky smell, thick, gummy, an invisible glue. It clung, even in the sea air. She’d have a shower when they went inside.

“Bibbits,” Ella Dane said solemnly, “was a good dog, even though a lot of people didn’t think so. He had an old, wise soul and a loving heart. I have had other dogs before, and I will have other dogs again, but there will never be another Bibbits.”

Ella Dane stood with her head down. Lacey did the same, wondering how long they would wait in quiet respect—and then, she realized that Ella Dane was waiting for her to speak. She took a deep breath, and the smell of Bibbits lodged in her throat, so her voice was thick and her eyes streamed as she said, “Bibbits wasn’t an easy dog to get to know, but he was sweet.” He’d kept her company. At the end, he’d tried to protect her from Drew. He had done everything a dog needed to do, but that was private, between the two of them. Ella Dane waited another half minute. Lacey said no more.

Ella Dane tipped the cooler over the hole, and Bibbits slithered reluctantly out, his hips catching on the cooler’s rim. Ella Dane shook the cooler, and the dog came loose with a tearing sound. The smell blossomed. Lacey quickly shoveled sand into the hole while holding her breath, and Ella Dane stood weeping without sound or motion, like a statue in the rain.





Chapter Thirty-seven

ERIC’S ALARM CLOCK went off at four on Saturday morning. He lay for a moment moaning, feeling blunt pains in every bone; he felt about a thousand years old. Four in the morning, oh God, why? He had stayed up late Friday night to read Lex Hall’s juvenile record, which Sammie Vandermeijn had unearthed. Interesting, even frightening in spots, but it could have waited.

Lacey. Ella Dane had called to tell him where they were. He was going to drive down to Spinet Cove and talk to her, just talk. And listen. More listening than talking would be good, no matter how crazy she sounded. Maybe there was something in what she said, something in the house. Maybe being pregnant, the hormones, the baby, something had opened the back of her mind, let the past blow in like leaves through the kitchen door. She’d been afraid of the stairs before she knew anything about the house’s history. He’d swear to that in her defense.

They’d never had a fight. Not like this. Sometimes they argued, but they found their way to agreement, eventually, and he always remembered, no matter how annoying she was, that he loved her. He hoped she would do the same for him. Their marriage couldn’t end this way, on their first bad fight. He drifted back to sleep and half dreamed that she was beside him in the warm bed. Lacey, not the Lacey he’d seen in the hotel, but the Lacey of last year, slim and cheerful and healthy, fearing nothing. She could be that girl again. She was still that girl.

The second alarm went off, 4:15; 4:15 on a Saturday morning, oh God. He shambled to the bathroom and looked at the mirror. That was a 4:15-in-the-morning face if there ever was one, a look at his future if the next fifty years went wrong. If today went wrong, if Lacey didn’t come back. He swung the medicine cabinet open for aspirin, and halfway through its arc the mirrored door caught a reflection of something, a blond head turning swiftly away, the white edge of an arm and a hand.