“Miss Weiss,” the judge said, “are you ready to proceed?”
Laura Weiss—youngest member and granddaughter of the founder of Weiss, Cashman, and Snow—stood and smoothed her gray business suit. “Yes, Your Honor. I call Mack Jacobs to the stand.”
When Mavis Kent married Aaron Latimer, she thought she was marrying up. It made sense in a distorted way. Aaron was drop-dead gorgeous, with dark wavy hair, long lean-muscled limbs, and sun-kissed skin. All the other girls wanted him, but Mavis—plain, bookish schoolmarm that she was—nabbed him.
People whispered, “It will never lastâ€, if Mavis heard she ignored them. To her, marriage was forever.
They’d been in the kiddie park for half an hour when Johnny decided to set the playhouse on fire. Matt didn’t want him to. He thought of the tiny kids, like his brother Sam, who would show up here tomorrow. They’d expect to play house inside, using their sippy cups and Goldfish for pretend tea parties. Instead they’d find a shell of charred wood, the smoke spiraling up to the sky like exorcised demons. Some would cry. Sam would be the first. “Sensitive,†Mom called him. Matt hated it when Sam cried. The tears welling in his brother’s eyes always made him feel powerless. Matt lived for the adoration in Sam’s eyes when Matt got it right.
But you didn’t tell stuff like that to Johnny. One, he’d kick the shit out of you. And two, he’d burn the house in front of the kids. Just to prove he didn’t care what they felt.
What kind of bullshit was “Take Your Kid to Work” day? Jerry Fry swore that if he ever met the paper-pusher who’d dreamt up that faggoty excuse for a teacher’s holiday, he’d make the prick lick his balls. Lick ‘em after he’d been driving this piece of shit delivery van all day with no air conditioning.
Jerry flicked his smoke out the window and concentrated on the potholes and roadtrash, the chop-shops and brick factories, a low-flying Cessna in the clear blue sky. Anything to avoid looking at the boy in the passenger seat. The sight of Paul made his stomach hurt, the kind of hurt no antacid could touch.
I’m getting tired of making lemonade. You know, if God hands you lemons, make lemonade? Maybe my life would take an upward swing if He’d choose to toss a few apples my way. I know I’d enjoy easing a big forkful of apple pie into my churning belly right about now, maybe with a little vanilla ice cream dripping down the sides. There’s just something about the scent of cinnamon and the sugary taste of warm apple pie that calms the nerves in a tense situation.
Bethany pulled her car into the gas station parking lot and parked it as far as she could from the growing snow drifts. That had been her mistake the last time she had tried this. The tires of her rusting Corsica had caught in a snow bank and she had spun her wheels for several minutes until the cops came for her. It had been an amateur’s mistake, one that she had dreaded relaying to her fellow inmates at Taycheedah, and she had no intention of doing it again. As it was her mother was probably already angry with her for the years of missed visits, and another conviction for Bethany would only change that anger into righteous wrath.
There is a dark world you can only get to through love, when you realize you’ve given all you can, and it’s still not enough to hold on to someone. There’s power when you have nothing left to lose.
You think of these things as you walk briskly down the crowded aisles of the store, high heels clicking a warning to those ahead. You pass men, not looking for long enough to catch their eye. You stop a woman who seems to work there and ask her where the ties are kept.
Dark ones. Ties suitable for a funeral.
The punk kid slouched against the broken street light on 102nd Street obviously thought I was in the wrong neighborhood. Six years I’ve been in the City, but people still pick me out for a sucker. I guess it’s true what they say, you can take the girl off the farm, but you can’t take the farm out of the girl. Or something like that. It generally works out to my advantage, except in dark alleys.
The kid sticks a hand in the front pocket of his hooded Black Death sweatshirt and pries himself off the pole. “Fancy lady like you,†he leers, “maybe you need some help crossing the street?â€
“Look,†I say, “you sure as hell don’t look like a boy scout and I’m really not in the mood.â€
Once the police let me back into my house, I couldn’t believe the mess they’d left behind. They weren’t responsible for all of it (fingerprint powder—yes; bloodstains—no) but somehow I never expected to return to such an obvious crime scene. This was, after all, my home.
Where to begin?
Coming awake into the darkness of a blindfold was shocking, and not a little disorientating. Jake Burrows could feel his heart pounding right up into his throat, the vibrations of real terror. He swallowed, trying to quell the pulse of it and with several deep breaths its rate did begin to slow.
He caught a grunt of laughter across the floor, and the creak of a chair followed by the heavy movement of someone rising to their feet. A big man, by the sound of it.
“Looks like our guest has finally decided to put in an appearance.â€