Salem Falls (21 page)

Gilly tuned him out. For all that her father loved what he did, he could be talking about drawing blood from a stone and it would have made the same impression on her. As they reached his office, she sprawled across the white couch along the far wall. “Did you hear about the fire at the Do-Or-Diner?”

“No,” he said, sitting down. “What happened?”

“It was upstairs in Roy Peabody’s apartment. Meg’s mom was having lunch there when it happened.”

“Was anyone hurt?” her father asked, his hands steepled before him.

“Not that I heard.” Gilly sat up, reaching for a bowl of mints. “But people are saying it wasn’t an accident.”

“Addie couldn’t get much insurance money even if she burned the place to the ground.”

“Not her. Supposedly, someone else set the fire. As a warning.” She stared hard at her father, waiting for him to confide in her.

“Gilly,” he said softly, shocked. “You don’t think I’d do anything like that?”

Something in her chest loosened. “No. I just wondered if you knew someone who would.”

“Oh, I imagine any one of a hundred people in this town might have done it.”

“But that’s awful!” Gilly burst out. “He could have gotten hurt!”

“Better him than one of you.”

There was a knock on the door. “Mr. Duncan,” the secretary said, “how much more belladonna did you want ordered?”

Gilly turned. “Belladonna?”

“Let’s start with seven hundred fifty plants,” Amos said. As his secretary left, he turned to Gilly. “What about it?”

“How come you need it?”

“It’s the plant we extracted the atropine from,” Amos explained. “Why?”

Gilly truly believed in fate. It was why, she knew, she had chosen to visit her father on the afternoon that he was working with belladonna, the same plant Starshine had mentioned a day ago when they were discussing witches’ flying ointment. Hash and belladonna, Gilly remembered. Well, she could probably get hashish with a single query to one of the Goths at her school. But even if she didn’t, maybe belladonna had enough strength to work by itself. Maybe she could mix her own flying ointment and no one would be the wiser. And what better time to soar than Beltane?

Courage, she thought. “Nothing,” Gilly lied. “It’s the name of this really phat band.” She leaned over the desk to kiss her father’s cheek. “I’ll see you later.”

“You’re going home,” he ordered. “I don’t want you walking around town alone.”

“It’s not like he’s Jack the Ripper, Daddy.”

“Gilly.”

“Whatever,” she muttered, already halfway out the door. But she didn’t turn left at the hallway, toward the exit. Instead, she retraced her steps back to the R & D lab. Arthur, the lab technician, was mashing those furry white carrots-belladonna. “Miss Duncan,” he said without glancing up. “What can I do for you?”

“Um, my dad asked me to bring a sample of atropine to his office.”

“What for?”

Gilly blanched. She hadn’t gotten this far in her mind. “I don’t know. He just asked me to get it.”

“How much?”

She pointed to a little pool in the base of a test tube. “He didn’t say. I guess that’s enough.”

The supervisor capped the tube and handed it to her. “Wear your gloves out of the lab. You don’t want to touch that stuff with your bare hands.”

“Thanks.” She slipped the vial into the pocket of her fleece jacket, keeping her hand fisted around her treasure as she walked straight home, just like her father had wanted.

“This is the bathroom,” Addie said, blushing faintly.

Jack smiled. “You don’t have to give me the grand tour. Really.” It had been some time since Addie had had to share her space. Add to that the forced intimacy in a relationship still so new Jack could still see the shine on it, and he could not help but wonder if he was making a tremendous mistake.

“And this,” Addie said, her hand on a doorknob, “is Chloe’s room.”

It was the only room in the house Jack had not seen. And as Addie slowly opened the door, he also realized it was the only room in the house that was not neat. Toys littered the floor like landmines, and clothes were draped over the back of a chair. A poster of a boys’ band that hadn’t made a record in nearly a decade was taped to the wall, peeling from one corner. On a shelf sat a parade of outgrown teddy bears, missing eyes and frayed at the limbs. The bed, a confection of pink ruffles, was unmade, as if Addie slept in it from time to time-a thought that tugged at Jack but seemed less heartbreaking than the alternative: that for eleven years, Addie had simply left this room as a shrine.

Still, it was only a bed, and linens could be changed. Toys could be put away. “I could stay here,” Jack suggested. “Give you a little more privacy.”

“No. You can’t.” She stood beside the chair, smoothing her hand over the fabric of an impossibly small white shirt.

“Addie-”

“You can’t,” she repeated. “You just can’t.”

“All right,” he said softly, understanding that this was a line he could not cross. He followed her out and closed the door quickly, thinking all the while of Pandora’s box: of what he had let loose by breaching the seal of this room, and of hope, which might still have been trapped inside.

* * *

The scent of smoke was strong at the diner, but it didn’t bother Selena. “It’s like a barbecue,” she said, watching Jordan wrinkle his nose as he slid into the booth.

“Yeah. Except it’s the facility that’s roasting.”

Addie came to the table carrying two mugs and a pot full of coffee. “Cream and sugar, right?”

Selena smiled at the waitress. “Can I get a cup of hot water, with lemon?”

Addie nodded and went off toward the counter. “It’s disgusting, you know, the way you drink that,” Jordan said. “People use the same thing to wash their dishes.”

“Then think how clean my insides are.” She took the steaming mug from Addie.

“I had a customer who used to drink hot water,” Addie mused. “She lived to be a hundred and six.”

“Get out,” Jordan said.

“Honestly.”

“How did she die?” asked Selena.

“Another waitress here served her coffee instead one day.” Addie winked. “I’ll be back to get your order in a minute.”

Selena watched her go. “She seems nice enough.”

“She comes from good people, as they’d say around these parts.” Jordan shook out his copy of the paper. “Certainly doesn’t deserve all the flak she’s getting now.”

“Such as?”

“Oh, the fire. And the backlash about the fellow who works in the kitchen.”

Jordan raised the paper to read the headlines. With a fork, Selena tugged down the edge. “Hello,” she said. “Remember me? I’m your breakfast date.”

“Give me a break.”

“Don’t tempt me. What’s the story with the guy who works here?”

Jordan pushed the newspaper across the table. Folded to the editorial page, there were no less than six letters addressing the “unsavory influences” that had recently moved into town. Selena scanned the brief missives, all in favor of riding Jack St. Bride out on a rail. “What did he do? Rob a bank?”

“Rape a girl.”

Selena looked up, whistling softly. “Well, you can’t blame a community for trying to protect itself. You ask me, that’s the whole point behind Megan’s Law.”

“At the same time, it’s prejudicial to the person who has to report in. If an entire community identifies a guy by his past convictions, how will anybody ever get past that to accept his presence?”

Selena peeked under the table. “What the hell are you doing?” Jordan asked.

“Making sure you’ve gotten off your soapbox. You know damn well that perps of sex crimes are repeat offenders. How do you think you’d feel if he targeted, oh, fifteen-year-old boys?”

“Repeat offenders,” Jordan said, snapping the newspaper open again, “are good for business.”

Selena’s jaw dropped. “That is quite possibly the most inhuman thing I’ve ever heard fall out of your mouth, McAfee, and believe me, there’ve been plenty.”

“Ah, but defense attorneys aren’t supposed to be human. It makes it easier to sink down to everyone’s very low expectations.”

But Selena didn’t take the bait. She was thinking that Jordan was human, far too human, and she should know, because she was the one who had broken his heart.

“Come on,” Gilly urged. “What’s he going to do? Attack us right on the counter?”

Beside her, Meg squinted at the neon sign overhead. The R had never been quite as bright as the other letters. She could remember giggling about it years ago, because back then the most hilarious thing in the world was the thought of a restaurant called the Doo Diner. “My dad would kill me,” Meg said.

“Your dad will never know. Come on, Meggie. Do you want to be the kind of person who hides in the back when everyone else is fighting the dragon, or do you want to be holding the sword?”

“That depends. What’s my chance of being burned to a crisp?”

“If he molests you, I will selflessly throw my body over yours as a substitute.”

Meg shook her head. “I don’t even want him to know what I look like.”

“For God’s sake, Meg, this isn’t even about him. I’m thirsty is all. He probably won’t come out from the back. We’ll see Crazy Addie and get our milk shakes and go.”

Slowly, Meg backed away. “Sorry, Gill. My dad said I shouldn’t.”

Gillian fisted her hands on her hips. “Well, so did mine!” Meg was already halfway down the street. “Fine. Be that way!” Smarting, Gilly pushed inside the diner. It was virtually empty, except for an old fart at the cash register who was hunched over a crossword puzzle. She sat down and rapped her nails impatiently on the table.

Within moments, Crazy Addie came over. “What can I get for you?”

Gilly glanced at her dismissively. She couldn’t even conceive of living a life so small that you’d grow up in this nothing town and work and die there. Clearly, the woman was a loser. Who looked at the bright ball of her future and thought, Oh, one day I want to be a waitress in a totally dead-end job.

“A black-and-white shake,” Gilly said, and then, from the corner of her eye, saw Jack come down the hallway from the bathrooms carrying a large trash bag.

He didn’t notice her.

“Actually, now that I think about it, I’m not hungry,” Gillian murmured, and walked out. The sunlight was blinding; she stumbled before slipping along the edge of the building, where a fence cordoned off the green Dumpster. Jack was moving around in there; she could hear metal clanging and the rustling of plastic as trash was hauled over its wide lip.

Gilly sucked her lower lip between her teeth, to give it some color. She unbuttoned her jacket, then slid the zipper of her cropped sweatshirt low enough to show the rise of her breasts. Walking to the gate, she waited for Jack to notice her.

He did, after a minute, and looked away.

“Hey,” Gilly said, “what are you doing?”

“Skiing the Alps. Can’t you tell?”

Gillian watched his muscles flex as he lifted another bag of garbage high. She thought about him pinning her, grabbing her wrists in his hands. Hard. She wondered if the girl he had raped had liked it, even a little.

“Food’s a lot better inside,” Jack said.

“I’m not hungry.”

God, his eyes were a color blue she’d never seen. Dark and smooth, like the inside of a fire. There should have been a word for it-Jackquoise, maybe, or-

“Then why did you come here?”

Gilly lowered her lashes. “To ski, of course.”

He shook his head, as if he couldn’t believe she was standing here in front of him. It only made her more determined. “Bet you were the kind of kid who used to poke crabs on the beach to get them moving,” Jack mused, “even if it meant they might snap.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means stick to the bunny slope, Gillian,” Jack said flatly.

Her eyes darkened, caught somewhere between tears and rage. Jack started to leave, but Gillian was blocking the exit. For an uncomfortable moment, they danced around each other, Jack unwilling to let his body brush up against hers, Gillian unwilling to let him go.

“Gillian.”

At the sound of another voice, they jumped apart. Wes Courtemanche rounded the corner, dressed in uniform. “Something tells me your father wouldn’t be delighted to find you standing back here.”

“Something tells me you’re not my father,” Gillian said testily. But she stepped away so that Jack could get by.

“Going home now, aren’t you?” Wes said to the girl.

“I’m not afraid of you. I’m not afraid of anyone.” As if to prove it, Gillian turned on her heel, passing close to Jack. She blew a kiss as she sailed by, a gesture meant for his eyes only that might have been a promise, or might have a threat.