Bitter End (Seychelle Sullivan #3) (8 page)

“Sey, what’s the matter with you?”

“B. J., I don’t have time to tell you the whole story right now, but Molly and I used to be friends. Best friends. And then it ended.”

“So, that was then and this is now. Now we need to get in there and make sure the two of them are okay. It’s about basic human decency, Seychelle. It’s what we’re going to do.”

It was only when we got to the front door that we saw the light from the single candle burning on the coffee table. Molly was wrapped up in an old hand-crocheted afghan, sitting upright on the couch, staring at the flame. She looked up at us when we entered, her face expressionless.

“Oh, Sey,” she said, “come in. Thanks, you know,” she said, nodding toward the back hall. She spoke in an odd monotone.

“Hey, no big deal. Molly, this is my friend, B. J. Moana. B. J., Molly Pontus.”

Molly scooted over and patted the couch next to her. B. J. obliged and sat down. I’d been hoping we wouldn’t stay long, so I remained standing, edging a little closer to the door each time I shifted my weight from one foot to the other.

“So how was he today?”

She had directed the question to B. J.

“About as good as you could expect for a kid going through this, but he had some tough moments. He’s feeling typical survivor’s guilt.”

“Ha!” she said, but it wasn’t a laugh. “Tell me about it.”
 

“It’s a normal part of the grieving process—as is the crying,” B.J. said. “He needs to cry, and you shouldn’t discourage him from it. On the other hand, he also needs to laugh, and he shouldn’t feel guilty when he does.”

“You seem to know what you’re talking about.”

B. J. shrugged. “I read a lot.”

I wanted to tell her that she was sitting next to a walking library, that he had two college degrees in fancy stuff like Asian and Classical Studies, whatever the hell that was, but I kept quiet. I felt like I was on the outside again. Like way back with Molly and Pit. The two of them were already talking as if they were old friends. B. J. had that effect on people. They warmed to him instantly and often told him things they wouldn’t tell their own families.

“It’s so hard to know what you’re supposed to do with yourself at a time like this,” Molly said. “Someone you love is dead, and it’s still true whether you ride in a car or sit on a couch. Nothing you do can make that fact go away.” She hiked the afghan up around her shoulders and sighed. “This has been the longest day. Jeannie took me to the police station and they took my statement. That was pretty simple—we were back here by two, but I didn’t know what to do then. I’ve just been sitting here, watching as it got dark. I lit the candle when I got cold.”

“Have you eaten anything?” B. J. asked.

“I’m not hungry,” Molly answered, shaking her head.

B. J. slapped his hands on his thighs. “That’s it. You’ve got to eat. Do you mind if I make myself at home in your kitchen?”

She shook her head. “Feel free,” she said.

After B. J. left the room, I stood there for a while, my hands snuggled deep into the pockets of my sweatshirt. It was clear I wasn’t going to get him to make this a short visit. The silence in the room was like a black hole, sucking all my energy into it. It’s hard to come up with small talk when you haven’t spoken to someone for over thirteen years. I leaned against the wall in that darkened living room, trying to get up the nerve to talk to Molly, to make it like it was in the old days when it was effortless, when we didn’t have to think of what to say. I opened my mouth but the words wouldn’t come. It wasn’t like she was making it any easier, either, just sitting there staring at that damn flame.

“She called me this afternoon.” Molly spoke so softly, I wasn’t sure I heard her right.

“What?”

“She didn’t say anything, but I heard her breathing. I knew it was her,” she said. Then she got up, rearranged the blanket wrapped around her shoulders, and mumbled something about checking on Zale before disappearing down the dark hall.

I walked into the kitchen, where B. J. had turned on the lights. He was chopping some onions on a wood board. Leaning my cheek against the cool steel of the refrigerator door, I wondered what the hell that was all about. She had to have been talking about Janet. I didn’t want to think my old friend was losing her grip on reality, but it didn’t make any sense to think that a new widow was making crank calls. I wondered if Molly needed more help than any of us could give her. I fought down the urge to unload on B. J., to complain about the ache I felt deep in my gut whenever I was around her. He would tell me to let it go, to forgive her and move on. He wouldn’t understand me when I told him it wasn’t that easy.

My stomach growled. I could smell the garlic sizzling in the frying pan on the stove next to another lidded pot. B. J. stepped over to me, slid his hand under my sweatshirt, and rubbed my belly with his free hand while he kissed me on the mouth. His tongue tasted of cool mint. “Hungry?” he asked when he stopped for a breath.

“Hmm, ummm, yeah,” I mumbled, trying to get my brain back in gear. I always had to do that after one of his kisses. “Can I help?”

B. J. turned back to the counter, swept his onions into the pan with the garlic, handed me the chopping board and knife, and pointed to a pile of zucchini.

Now what kind of man gets romantic, then hands a woman a knife and a zucchini? I looked at the vegetables and then at B. J.’s back as he lifted the lid, stirred some rice in butter, then poured in water from a measuring cup. “Uh, B. J., what do I do with these? I mean, do I cut them this way, or like this?” I demonstrated with the knife over the squash.

He sighed and took the knife from me. “Why don’t you find the cutlery and go set the table? Then maybe see if you can round up some wine somewhere. Red, preferably. I’m making ratatouille.”

“Ummm,” I said, rolling my eyes as I started opening drawers, not willing to show my ignorance and ask him what the hell that was. “Sounds yummy.”

B. J. did an admirable job of keeping the conversation going during the meal. The more they talked, the more he and Molly found they had in common. They were both fish-eating vegetarians and both were really into all that Eastern religion stuff. Molly’s voice had lost that deadpan tone, and she seemed to be enjoying herself. She leaned her chin on her palm and listened, fascinated, as B. J. told her about how the Samoan people eat taro cooked in a coconut sauce back in the islands. I didn’t know how she was finding a description of eating roots so fascinating—or if it was really his gorgeous face that was keeping her so engrossed. All through our teenage years, every time I liked a guy, Molly wiggled her ass or batted her eyelashes in his direction, and he was drawn off to follow after her. Old habits, apparently, die hard.

As we were finishing up and B. J. was carrying plates out to the kitchen, loading them in the dishwasher and brewing some hot tea, I said under my breath to Zale, “Anytime you want to break out of here and go for a Big Mac, just call me.”

He attempted a smile and gave me a thumbs-up, then asked his mother if he could be excused and disappeared back into his room.

Molly watched him go. “He’s just sitting in there in the dark with his headphones on, blasting that music of his into his ears. He’s going to go deaf.”

“Be careful,” I said. “You’re beginning to sound like your mother.”

“Yeah, right,” she said disgustedly, turning her head away.

B. J. set down the mugs of steaming tea and honey and was about to sit down while I remained standing, my arms straight, hands pressing down on the back of my chair. “I hate to be the party pooper here, but I really need to be getting back. Think you could just take a couple of swigs of that and we could get moving?”

B. J. gave me a quizzical look that reminded me of Abaco when I talk to her. “Okay, if you’re in a hurry, we can do that,” he said. “I’ll just go finish straightening things up in the kitchen.”

“Please, B. J., you’ve done enough,” Molly said. “Really. I can take it from here. If Seychelle has to leave, I understand.” She took his hand in both of hers. “Thanks so much for dinner and for the good company. I needed it tonight, but I’ll be fine now.”

We didn’t say much on the drive to the boatyard, where I was to drop him off to pick up his truck. The zippered side windows did little to keep out the cold night air, but there were other reasons the atmosphere in the Jeep was so chilled.

When I pulled into the parking spot next to his El Camino, I didn’t shut off the engine. The noise made conversation more difficult, and I hoped B. J. would get the hint.

“What’s bothering you, Sey? You hardly said a word tonight, and that’s not like you.”

I took in a deep breath and blew it out, staring at the Jeep’s overhead as though I might find the answer to his question written on the inside of the canvas there. “B. J., I think I just need time. You don’t know the whole story. Hell, I don’t even know what really happened. There’s still a mountain of hurt there between me and Molly. For eleven years—basically my whole childhood—we were the best of friends, more like sisters.” I turned and looked out the Jeep’s window. He sat there, knowing I wasn’t finished, waiting for the rest of it. “Then one day,” I said, turning to face him, “she just disappeared. She’d moved out of her parents’ house and got married to some guy I thought she didn’t even like. I’d been under the impression that we told each other everything, and yeah, she talked about him, but to me she’d always kind of made fun of him. She never even told me she liked him.” But even as I said it, I wasn’t sure a man could ever comprehend the immensity of that. “She never called, never made the slightest effort to reach out to me. I know I’m older now, and I should be able to get beyond this, but I just can’t. The way it ended back then, so abruptly, with no explanation, no communication, and now we’re just supposed to start up again as though the last thirteen years never happened? I can’t do that. There’s a whole lot that needs saying right now, and it’s not about tofu and taro.”

VIII

I had several jobs lined up over the next couple of days. February is the busy season in Fort Lauderdale’s luxury yacht world. Hundreds of huge power yachts from all over the world converge on this little corner of South Florida, and, boats being boats, they always need work done. The parade of yachts headed up and down the New River, into the Dania Cut-off Canal, or down to the Miami River, appeared endless. In the winter there was always more business than I could handle, but I needed to work every minute in order to make it through the slow months from May through October, when the yacht crowd headed off to Europe or up to Newport. They left us here in the heat and humidity, swatting mosquitoes and trying to stretch our savings until the next season.

By Wednesday morning the weather had warmed considerably after Monday’s cold front, and I was back in shorts and a T-shirt as I scrubbed down the boat from stem to stern. The wheelhouse VHF was squawking with the usual traffic, though these days it seemed I was just as likely to get calls from boaters’ cell phones, so I had my portable phone sitting on the bench outside the cottage door.

I’d come back late the night before, after midnight, from a job that involved towing in a sailboat with engine trouble that had sailed over from the Exumas. They were able to get to the harbor mouth with no problem, but they needed a tow up the New River to the dock behind their house in the Citrus Isles. They were worried that the wind would quit once they got in the lee of the condos on the north side of the channel, and since they didn’t fancy wallowing out of control in the channel off the rock jetties, they’d called me on their cell phone after nine o’clock to pick them up outside the breakwaters. Trying to get the towlines rigged outside the harbor entrance in the seaway left over from the previous day’s norther, I’d gotten salty spray all over the deck and wheelhouse. When I’d come out late this morning, the tug glistened like a sugary Easter egg with the thousands of tiny salt crystals that clung to her topsides.

I picked up the hose and sprayed the soapy suds off the windshield and the top of the wheelhouse. Abaco barked and I squirted her with the hose. This was the game she loved to play, barking and sticking her rump in the air, daring me to catch her with the stream of water before she darted off behind the cottage. Water dog that she was, she loved getting wet so much, she’d been known to leap off the dock to chase me in the dinghy when I left without her.

I was trying everything I could to keep myself busy and avoid thinking about Molly and Zale. That morning I’d wandered out in my sweats to get the paper, still half asleep from the late night’s work, and there on the front page of the
Sun-Sentinel
was another story about the shooting and the subsequent investigation. A photo of Nick, Molly, and Zale, all smiling, was centered above the fold on the front page. I’d refolded the paper and thrown it on the couch, unread. Then I’d fixed myself coffee and a bagel, dabbled with my paints for a bit, and come out here to wash down the boat—anything just to try to keep myself from thinking about it, from reading that story.

Maybe I wasn’t rich, and maybe they didn’t write stories about me in the paper, but I liked my life, dammit. And I liked it when I just went to work and did my thing and everyone out there left me alone. In Sullivan Towing and Salvage, I owned my own business, and what I did mattered to the people I worked for. Back when I was a lifeguard for the city, I saved lives on a regular basis, and I put in ten years at that. I’d paid some dues—more than most folks. And now, while my job often involved just helping rich folks move their toys around, it paid well and kept me in the business so that I could be there for the other times when I pulled people off wrecks, when boats would have sunk or people would have died if
Gorda
and I had not been there.

Now, though, I needed to get back to that place in my mind where I realized my job stopped when we reached the dock. Lately I’d gotten involved in a couple of incidents that stretched way beyond just salvaging boats. But I’d had enough. Things had been quiet for me ever since last spring, and I wanted it to stay that way. I’d had enough of getting involved with other people’s problems, enough of police and intrigue, enough of trying to salvage lives as well as boats. In the past year, I’d seen more dead bodies than I had in ten years of life-guarding on Fort Lauderdale Beach. I wanted no more of that.