Equilibrium (26 page)

“I’m sorry,” Darcy said, when the bell finally stopped ringing. She tried projecting everything into her apology. She understood how much she’d already hurt Heather, and she hoped forgiveness would extend into the future, if her plan went no-second-chances wrong.

Heather’s gaze flitted around the empty hallway. “We’re already late.”

“Better late than never?” She shifted toward Heather, angled her face until she caught Heather’s gaze.
Please.

Darcy’s chin quivered, igniting a mirror expression in Heather, like when they were in elementary school and one scraped knee set off two identical wails.

“Not now,” Heather said, as if she had all the time in the world to decide, as if tomorrow were a sure thing. Heather’s pink-and-green hibiscus print backpack jounced down the hall and disappeared around the corner.

Darcy took a turn at statue. Her hands remained crossed at the wrists, and she waited for an answer that wasn’t coming.

“Not now” might mean “never.”

Chapter 30

F
ive days before the prom was probably the only chance Darcy would get to wear the to-die-for prom sandals. She walked behind Nick on tiptoe toward the cottage, clutching the two bottles of soda she’d just purchased from Yogi’s, careful not let the heels of her glittery silver sandals dig into the soil and aerate the overgrown path. She smiled, giggly with nerves, at the senseless practice. Clearly, she was worried about the wrong things, like a prisoner on death row fussing over the menu for her last meal.

Nick opened the cottage’s door, set down the cooler, and then came back for Darcy. He swept her into his arms like a fantasy prince would, and she latched her fingers behind his neck, not wanting to let him go.

He set her down in their retro kitchen, snapped on his business face, and continued with yesterday’s crazy-sick plan. “We do pre-prom at Stevie’s,” Nick said. “Go to the prom for exactly an hour and a half. We do the couples photos, chat with the teachers, and make the rounds to all the tables. Then we drive to Nashua, make it there by nine the latest, and you wait two blocks away on Vine.”

Darcy’s pulse accelerated, a whirring in her ears, as she reviewed her counterplan. She might not know Nick as well as she’d thought. But if she screwed up, she was counting on her belief Nick would never hurt her.

Unless that was another lie she told herself.

“Then we go back to the prom, easy-peasy lemon squeezie,” Nick said. “Did I miss anything?” Nick tried a grin, and Darcy pictured the scared six-year-old boy, a towhead in fire-engine-red footed pajamas, hiding behind his bedroom door, watching helplessly as his father beat his mother. Nick seemed to imagine the past could’ve happened differently, as if he could’ve helped his mother ten years ago by killing his father on Saturday.

Darcy couldn’t let him.

“Nick? Don’t forget my little red present.”

“For after?” Nick asked, stumbling over his words.

Remarkably, they still talked about returning here to the cottage after the prom and the murder, and spending the night, as though the two events—murder and deflowering—would take place in universes light-years apart.

Darcy took Nick’s hand, wondered whether years from now she’d remember the square shape of his fingernails, and how the back of his hand felt cool while the palm radiated heat. She wondered whether “years from now” would even happen. She glanced at the cooler and met Nick’s eyes. “Right, we’re waiting till after the prom. But I was thinking, maybe we could rehearse now with the usual.”

He bit at his lip, and his for-real smile deepened her breath. “Twist my arm,” he said.

She snatched up their sodas and led him into the bedroom. Late-afternoon light shone on their clean, white, untouched bedding.

Sometimes, you had to do the opposite of what was expected. Sometimes, nothing was as it appeared.

Sometimes, you had to betray the boy you loved.

Nick kicked off his sneakers and tossed his black hoodie onto the wood floor, the sleeves splayed in surrender.

Darcy uncapped the sodas and handed Nick his bottle. “I’m sorry” lighted on her tongue, and she sipped her Sprite, swallowing her apology. Nick gulped down half his caffeine-free Coke, and she waited for him to taste her betrayal, bracing for an accusation she couldn’t deny.

Instead, Nick set his Coke on the floor and pulled back the bedding. He shrugged out of his T-shirt, unzipped, and stepped from his jeans.

Darcy took a deep breath to slow her racing heart. She lowered herself to the mattress and stared into the shadowed corners of the room. She worked the straps of the sandals over her heels. Kneeling, she tugged her T-shirt over her head and unhooked her bra. From behind, Nick’s hands cupped her breasts. His mouth heated her neck, and he pressed into the small of her back.

She turned to face him. Guilt strung her spine, from the ache of her tailbone to the chill at the nape of her neck.

Fingers interlaced, hands behind his head, Nick lay on his back, and Darcy set not to lovemaking, but an act of love.

When Nick was finished and sated, he rolled from his back to his side, his eyes already half-moons. “Don’t let me sleep for more than half an hour. Okay, princess?”

“Don’t worry. I’ll take care of everything.”

And she had. After she’d bought their sodas at Yogi’s, she’d laced Nick’s Coke with the Valerian drops she’d swiped from the medicine cabinet. She knew from experience the herbal sleep aid wouldn’t harm him.

She pulled the comforter up to Nick’s shoulders, the final piece of her three-part plan to sedate him: herbal sleep aid, sexual release, physical warmth. But she wasn’t sure until Nick’s breathing had turned shallow whether her plan even had a chance. She wasn’t sure how much time her plan had bought to save him.

Darcy gathered her clothes and crept into the kitchen. After she’d slipped her clothes back on, she gave her attention to the cooler and its contents, the gun and ammo beneath threadbare pear- and peach-covered dishrags.

Before they’d met, Nick might have carried out his plan on his own. The fight with his father would’ve followed the same path—the same angry words spoken, and the blows would’ve still landed on their mark, leaving purple bruises beneath Nick’s pale lashes.

The past, Darcy couldn’t change, but the future lay before her, acre upon acre of flat open landscape, waiting for her design. She tiptoed to the bedroom doorway, peeked at Nick for one last time, and saw all of him. The scared little boy, helpless against the strength of his father, twitching with every blow that met his mom. The angry teenager, plotting violence against violence. Now a third version of Nick peeked over the horizon: Nick the man.

She snatched the cooler from the dinette table and slipped Nick’s car keys in her pocket to give herself a head start. She clamped the sandals under her arm, eased open the back door, and shut it soundlessly behind her. Pine needles pricked the soles of her feet. She ran past Nick’s wake-up-call loud car and headed for the main road, hoping she could hitch a ride home before Nick came to and realized the girl he’d thought he could trust had betrayed him.

For all she knew, Nick’s father’s temper would never move beyond the length of his arms, the curl of his fists. Not every father carried his threats through to the most extreme conclusion.

When Darcy had argued with Mom about Aidan lecturing Nick on respect, Darcy had said,
He’s not my father.
She should’ve added,
Thank God.

Thank God, every man wasn’t her father.

Darcy was willing to take the chance because she couldn’t accept the alternative. Bottom line, she couldn’t help Nick kill his father, and she wouldn’t help him destroy himself, either.

The way Mom had taken care of Daddy had taught Darcy you never give up trying to help the people you love. She would bring the gun to Mom and tell her about the murder plot.

This time, no one would die.

Chapter 31

L
aura was throwing a pity party, mourning the relationship she’d killed.

She’d fashioned her bedroom into a nurturing nest, complete with long-stemmed white calla lilies arranged in a cut-crystal vase on her night table. She’d taken a tray upstairs outfitted with green tea in a rooster-decorated porcelain teapot and matching china cups and saucers she rarely used. While the tea had steeped, she’d invited Maggie and Elle. Steaming cups in hands, Laura had confessed the whole Aidan story.

Neither of her friends had been surprised. Laura had been successful in hiding neither her madly in love aura nor her afterglow.

All three women agreed Laura had screwed up massively when she’d broken it off with Aidan.

Maggie drank down the rest of her tea and set her cup on the bureau. She regarded Laura for so long, Laura thought Maggie must’ve been reading her aura against the light walls. “It’s easier than you think,” Maggie finally said, using the title from a book on Buddhism Maggie read at least once a year.

“Meaning, I should meditate my way to enlightenment?”

Maggie laughed. “Meaning, you should tell Aidan you made a mistake and you want him back.”

Exactly what Laura had been thinking all day, ever since she’d debunked last night’s misguided logic. But whenever she imagined the scenario, a cottony sensation lined her mouth, and her heart misfired. What was stopping her?

Maggie came across the room and kissed Laura on the forehead. “And now, dear heart, I must be going. I’ve a class to teach.”

Elle stood and smoothed her skirt.

“You too?” Laura asked.

Elle bent down to hug Laura and whispered in her ear, “You deserve someone wonderful like Aidan.” Then when Laura’s eyes threatened to tear up: “About time you ended your sex drought.”

Maggie took her and Elle’s teacups and placed them on the tray. “That’s right. It’s good for you. Balances the chakras.”

Laura was still smiling when Maggie’s and Elle’s vehicles fired up and left her driveway. The hot tea lit her skin, and she rolled the coverlet off her jeans and pushed back the sleeves of her T-shirt.

The rumble of an unfamiliar car’s engine turned into the driveway. A car door slammed, and the rumble trailed down the street. Moments later, the broken screen door banged the frame and echoed through the bedroom window. Troy was spending the night at Michael’s. And Darcy wasn’t supposed to return home until later.

Unless her daughter had forgotten something she couldn’t live without.

Laura’s stomach tensed, and she ran down the four steps to the landing, chewing at her cheek. “Darcy?”

“Mom?” A whittled-down version of her daughter’s voice spoke, and then Darcy materialized at the bottom of the stairs, barefoot and carrying a battered cooler. Darcy’s hair, brushed and hair sprayed when she’d left for school this morning, now frizzed around her face, fringing her daughter’s pallor.

“Angel?”

Darcy left the cooler on the bottom steps and came flying up the staircase, arms spiraling, as though Laura’s voice had unhinged the rest of her. At the landing, she caught Laura about the neck.

“I can’t—we have to—” Darcy wrestled with her breath, and Laura breathed for both of them.

She guided Darcy into her bedroom and slid over the tea tray so they could both sit down. She culled through Darcy’s jumbled speech and determined her daughter had stolen Nick’s car keys so he couldn’t come after her and hitchhiked home, an activity Darcy wouldn’t have admitted to unless the reason were unimaginably worse.

“Darcy?” Laura waited for her daughter’s breathing to slow, waited until Darcy looked her in the eye. Laura waited till she could push the question through her throat. “Did Nick hurt you?”

Darcy shook her head, suddenly quiet.

“Okay. Bare bones,” Laura said.

Darcy sucked in a breath, her eyes bulging in her head. “Nick’s father used to beat his mom. He beat up Nick and threatened to kill him, his mom, and his grandmother, so Nick got a gun to kill him first.” She gulped the air. “And if the police come after Nick, he’ll kill himself, and I snuck off with the gun.”

Tides roared in Laura’s ears.

Laura’s mind short-circuited, unable to process this horror story, coming from Darcy’s lips.

“I wouldn’t help him go through with it. I don’t want to hurt anybody.”

“Of course not. You’re a good girl, Darcy,” Laura said, and the statements sent her daughter into a crying jag.

She tried jolting her daughter into rational thought. “Darcy! Where’s Nick?”

“At the cottage. I left him sleeping at the cottage,” Darcy said, as though Laura should have a clue about some cottage.

“And the gun. Where’s the gun?”

“I took the gun. I . . .” Darcy glanced at the tea tray set at the foot of Laura’s bed, the night table.

“Where is it now?”

“I don’t know!”

“You took the gun, and then . . .”

Darcy’s gaze flitted around the room.

“And then?”

“Nick, his car keys, the cottage—”

The screen door smacked against its frame. Footsteps pounded through the mudroom, the kitchen, the living room floor.

“It’s in the cooler!” Darcy jumped up, but Laura sprinted ahead of her and slammed the bedroom door in her face.

Laura raced down the stairs, made it to the landing—

Too late.

Nick stood at the foot of the stairs beside the open cooler. Red-faced and panting, he jabbed bullets into a revolver, and a bitter tang coated Laura’s tongue.

Nick snapped shut the gun’s cylinder and aimed the revolver at Laura’s head. “Where’s Darcy?”

“She’s not here,” Laura’s said, and her hand flapped against the banister.

She’d give Nick her baby girl over her dead body.

A dark bruise blackened Nick’s left eye socket, evidence of his father’s beating. Not much different than what Darcy had emotionally endured from Jack.

Laura looked Nick in the eye and saw a scared boy, shaking in his untied sneakers. “Put the gun down, Nick. You don’t want to do this.”

Laura’s bedroom door sprang open, and Darcy tore down the stairs to the landing.

Nick pointed the gun at Darcy. “Get down here!”

“It’s okay, Mom. I’ll go with him.”

Laura jutted out her arm and stepped in front of her daughter, like when she’d halt a six-year-old Darcy from crossing against traffic. “Darcy told me about your father.”

“I don’t have a father!”

There was a reason for the fire escape, beyond an easy means for her daughter to sneak out. If only her daughter would understand her message. “Darcy, go to your room!”

“I’m not leaving you.”

Was the gun a double-action revolver, like the weapon Jack had pilfered, requiring nothing more than a moment of impulsive action?

One pull on the hook trigger could end Laura’s life.

A cacophony of garbled voices. A collage of still frames. The same story replayed in slightly altered versions. Laura as a child, aching for the father who’d abandoned her before she was born. Laura from a year ago, mourning the husband who’d killed himself after a long illness.

She focused on Nick’s eyes and took a step, her hand stiff as ice against the railing. “You’re a good son, Nick, trying to protect your mom.”

“Don’t talk about her! You don’t even know her! You don’t even know what he did to her!”

“You’re right. I don’t know what it was like for your mom. But I know how impossible it is to handle a man who’s out of control. All I ever wanted was to keep Darcy and Troy safe from their dad. All I ever wanted was to keep their dad from hurting himself. I never even thought about myself. I bet your mom never thought about herself, either.”

Laura hesitated, breathing into her stomach. “I’m sure her only thought was to protect you. How would she feel if you got hurt now, Nick? How would she feel if she lost you?”

Her gaze strayed to the gun, the gleaming black barrel, and her mind trundled back to the day she’d found Jack’s body.

Blood had bearded her husband’s clean-shaven face.

Her legs failed beneath her. She slipped against the railing, and Darcy squealed.

Laura propped herself upright. Chest jackhammering, she walked down the rest of the stairs, and Darcy, damn it all, followed.

Nick’s hands trembled the gun. Sweat beaded along his forehead. He met Laura’s gaze. “Don’t make me shoot you!”

Darcy stepped from behind her mother. “Let me talk to him.”

Laura started to pull Darcy back, and then she stopped herself. Laura had been the one person who could reach Jack, and Darcy would know how to reach Nick. Her daughter knew Nick better than anyone.

Nick probably knew her daughter better than she did. The plain truth stung Laura’s eyes.

“Guns are for cowards, and I know you’re not a coward.” Darcy shook her head. “Not like my dad.”

Laura had thought keeping her opinions about Jack to herself had safeguarded Darcy. Unlike Laura, Darcy wasn’t afraid to speak the truth. “And your dad’s just the same. He’s a coward, Nick. Only a coward would whale on his son. Only a coward would beat his wife.”

A groan rumbled from Nick, and when Laura started forward, Darcy gestured for
her
to stay put. “He’s a coward, Nick, but you’re not. It took guts for you to tell your dad how you felt about him and your mom.

“It wasn’t your fault when your dad beat your mom. But if you kill your dad, you’ll hurt her worse. You’re better than that, Nick. You’re better than your father.”

Her daughter knew exactly who she was. Brown pixels flash-blurred Laura’s vision.

Darcy’s steadfastness could kill her.

“Darcy?” Nick said, looking around like a little boy lost.

Darcy reached her hand out to Nick, the identical gesture Laura had used to pull Jack back to safety when he was dangling over a precipice.

Nick’s jawline flickered, setting off a tremor across Darcy’s shoulders. “Give me the gun.”

Nick’s lips trembled.

“Please, Nick.”

A lifetime of hurt blazed behind Nick’s eyes. “Why did you take off on me?”

“Because I love you, Nick,” Darcy said, and her daughter’s voice choked on
love
. “And I couldn’t let you hurt yourself.”

Nick’s face went white. Tears trickled down his cheeks, and he handed Darcy the gun. She passed it to Laura, and Laura placed it in the cooler.

When Darcy touched Nick’s cheek, he gave in to sobbing and collapsed in her arms, their embrace a homecoming and a farewell.

 

At the bottom of the stairs, Laura sat with her daughter, as if the treads were transfixing them. The air hummed white noise. Paisley filaments drew spiral paths in the early evening sun flooding through the front door’s sidelights.

Outside, three car doors slammed in rapid succession: the backup cruiser, and the arresting officer, shutting Nick in the backseat of his patrol car and then slamming his driver’s side door. An arrest Laura had initiated. Despite Nick’s family history, he needed to take responsibility for his actions.

She hugged Darcy against her shoulder. Darcy opened her eyes and looked up. Her gold-speckled irises shone, her pupils constricting, adjusting to the light. “I’m sorry, Mom.”

“Whatever for?”

“I messed up. You were right to worry about me and Nick.”

Darcy let Laura wipe the tears from her face with her fingertips. For once, she didn’t pull away. “I’m so proud of how you handled the situation. Thank you for trusting me.”

”I should’ve told you when Nick first started scaring me. I thought I could handle him myself.”

When Aidan had spoken to Nick about Darcy’s curfew, Laura had knee-jerk reacted as if Aidan had taken over her responsibility. In truth, he’d only helped her carry the burden. “Even adults don’t always make the right choice first. Being a grown-up just means making the right choice before it’s too late. You’re the brave one. You saved yourself, and you saved Nick.”

“I miss Nick already.”

“I know, honey. I know. It’s really hard.”

“D’you still miss Daddy?”

Laura sighed. “All the time.”

“Me too! I love him, even though he messed up a lot.”

“Sweetheart, his choices weren’t your fault.”

“I know that, Mom. I’m not Daddy. I can only control what I do,” Darcy said, repeating a statement of Laura’s. For the first time, Darcy infused it with true understanding. “But it still hurts!”

Fresh tears slid down Darcy’s cheeks, and she rested her head on Laura’s shoulder. Vibrations traveled from the center of Darcy’s chest. Sobs convulsed her body, radiating heat. The wetness pooled against Laura’s neck, a safe haven for her daughter’s pain, but not a cure.

The heat of Darcy’s body melted Laura’s numbness, and her mind cleared. The roles of Laura-the-caregiver-wife and Laura-the-widow had overshadowed her relationship with Aidan.

Darcy was right. Laura was a control freak. She’d taken the offensive and had insisted on orchestrating every aspect of her relationship with Aidan. Seducing him, keeping the relationship a secret, and then trying to scare him away before he could leave her. All the supposed logical reasons Laura had given Aidan for breaking up had been a conditioned response born of her fear.

Aidan was right. They were great together. The problem was she wasn’t brave like her daughter.

Laura rubbed Darcy’s back, and her breathing slowed, mirroring Laura’s cadence. “I’m sorry, Darcy. I should’ve been more honest with you about how your dad exhausted me emotionally, instead of lecturing you on self-respect.”

No wonder Darcy had become involved with a troubled boy, narrowly escaping disaster.

When Darcy took a sharp breath, Laura did, too, and they inhaled together. “I should’ve been more honest with myself,” Laura said. She’d given her mind, body, and spirit away to Jack as if she didn’t even matter. “No wonder you think I’m a hypocrite.”