Third to Die (16 page)

“Did you cheat?” Veronica’s green eyes, the eyes she’d given to her daughter, sparkled with interest when she asked the question. She thrived on scandal.

“No,” Isla sighed, feeling her patience wearing precariously thin.

“Then what the hell happened? Why would you just up and leave a good man with a decent, stable job?”

“We just drifted apart, you wouldn’t understand.”

“You’re right, I don’t,” Veronica shook her head of permed blonde hair furiously. “You never did know when you had it good. You’ve always been spoilt, I blame your father.”

“Can I just finish unpacking?” Isla pleaded.

“Fine, dinner will be ready in twenty minutes.”

“What are we having?” Isla felt relieved that dinner would be a meal that she hadn’t had to make.

“We are having meatloaf, you are having a salad.”

Isla frowned at her mother.

“You’re a little doughy, sweetheart, you’ll thank me. Especially since you need to lasso yourself a new man.”

With her damning parting words Veronica swept out of the room, leaving only the scent of lavender in her wake.

*

“Mommy?” Meegan rubbed sleepily at her eyes and moved towards her mother’s voice.

“Hey, baby girl,” Isla said softly. “Do you want some dinner?”

Meegan squirmed in the middle of the bed where she’d been placed, surrounded by an island of pillows since Isla’s mother didn’t have a crib.

“Grandma made meatloaf.”

“Ooh!” Meegan quickly wakened hearing this and extended her pudgy arms towards her mother so that she could be picked up.

“Daddy here?” she asked as Isla hoisted her up, struggling slightly beneath the little girl’s weight.

“No, Daddy’s working.”

Meegan’s face instantly began to bunch up; the first stage of a screaming fit.

“He’s going to be working for a while,” Isla added as the little girl held her breath and her cheeks became worryingly red.

“But you’ll see him soon,” Isla quickly promised. Not good enough. Meegan’s eyes were now watering.

“And we’re moving back to Chicago.”

“Oh?” In the blink of an eye the redness was gone and Meegan was staring sweetly at her mother.

“Did you miss the city?” Isla smiled.

“Yes,” Meegan nodded sincerely.

“Good.”

*

“I feel sorry for the little one,” Veronica declared over the dinner table. “All this moving about can’t be good for her.”

“Eh?” Isla’s father, Harold, had become extremely hard of hearing in recent years but through his own vanity he refused to have a hearing aid fitted.

“Meegan, all this moving about,” Veronica spoke loudly and slowly so that her husband could hear.

Harold nodded slowly in agreement.

“Mother, she’s fine,” Isla insisted as she nudged some lettuce leaves around her plate with her fork and covetously observed the other plates laden with meatloaf, sweet potatoes and gravy.

“Meegan is excited to return to Chicago.”

“Eh?”

Meegan shot her grandfather a bewildered look each time he gruffly spoke out.

“Chicago, Dad,” Isla lifted her voice and spoke directly at him. “We’re going back.”

“You just left!” Harold exclaimed.

“We didn’t just leave,” Isla muttered. “We’ve been there months.”

“Eh?”

“Isla, you know you need to speak up so that your father can hear you,” Veronica said in her usual disapproving tone.

“He needs a hearing aid,” Isla told her flatly.

“His hearing is just fine, isn’t it, Harold?” Veronica basically shouted the latter part of her comment.

“Isn’t what?” Harold looked confused. His thinning grey hair and his declining senses made him seem all of his seventy years. Isla remembered when he had been a strong, confident man with jet-black hair and rapier wit. He always adored Isla. Anything she asked for, he gave her.

“Are you really sure you want to go back to Chicago?” Veronica looked directly at her daughter, concern causing some of her carefully concealed wrinkles to appear.

“Chicago!” Meegan echoed merrily as she abandoned her spoon and shoved both her hands into the bowl, causing gravy to splash everywhere.

“Oh no!” Veronica turned, horrified at the mess.

“I’ll get it,” Isla stood up and went to head for the kitchen. “And I’m sure about Chicago,” she clarified.

“And what about Aiden?” Veronica called after her as Isla began looking for a cleaning cloth.

“He’ll stay in Avalon,” Isla shouted back.

“All alone?”

Isla straightened. She’d never stopped to consider how alone Aiden truly was.

“Yeah, alone,” Isla shrugged, trying to appear nonchalant as she came back and started cleaning up Meegan’s mess.

“He doesn’t have any family, does he?” Veronica continued.

“He’s made friends there, and he’s reconnected with his old high school friends.”

“So is that why you left?” Veronica shivered with excited anticipation as she felt that she’d successfully sleuthed her way to the cause of her daughter’s divorce.

“No, Mother,” Isla sighed as she wiped the cloth she was holding across Meegan’s chubby cheeks.

“Are you going back to Chicago?” Harold delivered the question with unnecessary volume.

“Yes, Dad, we’ve just been over that,” Isla shot her mother a concerned glance.

“It’s a big city.”

“Yes,” Isla agreed. “That’s what I’m banking on.”

There was one person she certainly didn’t want to run into when she returned to Chicago.

*

Brandy awoke in the darkness of her bedroom and quickly scrambled for the lamp. She hated to be alone in the dark. She was breathless and beads of sweat had gathered on her forehead. The nightmare had come again.

Shaking, Brandy looked around the room, taking in the familiar furniture, the pale pink of her bed sheets.

“You’re safe,” she whispered to herself. “You’re safe.”

In the depths of dreams Brandy wasn’t sure which terrified her more; the brutality she endured as Brandon’s wife or the horrors she’d seen during her incarceration.

The nightmare was always the same. She was trapped in a box and someone was violently shaking it. She smacked against the sides, heard her own bones snap and then water began to fill the box, began to immerse her body, cover her face and just as she was about to take her final, water-filled breath she would wake up, soaked in sweat.

The nightmares were exclusive to Chicago. She’d been having them for as long as she could remember. Sometimes she wondered if she’d been broken long before Brandon raised his fists to her.

“You’re safe,” Brandy uttered again. She reached beneath her pillow and pulled out a small slip of paper on which she had neatly written a note to herself;

You are Brandy Cotton. You live in Chicago. You are safe. No one is trying to hurt you.

Brandy read the note with trembling hands, willing the words to sink in. Glancing at the unoccupied half of the bed, her shoulders slumped. The fear which haunted her nightly was wretched, but it was facing it alone that she found exhausting. For so long in her life she’d been alone, discarded by those who should have loved her. And then she met Aiden and she wasn’t alone. She had someone who cared about her, someone who wanted to save her.

“Damn it!” Brandy scrunched her note into a ball and angrily threw it away from her bed. As horrid as her nightmares were, they paled in comparison to the gaping hole which now resided in her chest, a hole which only Aiden Connelly could fill. But he was back in Avalon, with his wife and daughter. He had made his choice, leaving Brandy to face her demons alone.

*

The scotch did little to numb Aiden’s pain. He’d started on beer and then quickly moved on to something stronger. He wanted the kind of detachment which only liquor could bring. He needed to forget all about the mess that was his life and drift away on a blissful cloud of indifference.

But even in a drunken stupor, as he sat on his sofa staring absently out at his garden, he couldn’t stop thinking. It was as if his mind was taunting him, refusing to ever completely switch off and give him peace.

The mystery surrounding Justin’s death kept pressing against his temple, demanding his attention. Aiden sipped more of his scotch. He’d deal with the sealed files; deal with the questions about what happened, but not now. Now, Aiden needed to mourn the conclusion of his marriage, needed to forget how wretched it was going to be to be apart from his daughter.

He didn’t know if he could stand being apart from someone he loved. Then, with drunken clarity, he realized that he’d already been living that way. Ever since Brandy left Avalon for Chicago.

Aiden squeezed his eyes shut with despair. Should he call her? He wasn’t sure where his cell phone even was. Had he left it in the kitchen? He was about to get up and try to locate it when rain began splashing fiercely against the glass of the window. Aiden looked out at it, startled. He’d been so consumed by his own dilemmas that he hadn’t even noticed the darkening sky above Avalon.

Now the rain was being released in torrents, accompanied by the distant rumblings of thunder. Aiden carefully approached the window and slid it open, letting in the cool wet air of outside. Then, in just his socks, he stepped out onto the lawn, the thin fabric covering his feet instantly absorbing an uncomfortable amount of water. But Aiden didn’t care. He lifted his gaze skyward, letting the rain fall upon him. The raindrops merged with his tears as they soaked his hair and his clothes.

For a while Aiden just stood there, wishing that the rain had the ability to wash away his pain.

*

The following morning the rain had ceased but the clouds had yet to depart. As Aiden made himself a fresh cup of coffee, he looked out at the light-grey sky and felt that its sombre appearance perfectly reflected his melancholy mood.

He stirred a dash of cream into the aromatic liquid and tried not to notice how still his house was; how empty it felt. He needed to get out. Sitting there alone all day would only drive him crazy.

Aiden pulled his cell phone from his jeans pocket and began to scroll through the names in his contact list. It began to dawn on him how few friends he’d actually made in Avalon. But there was one person who had been kind to him ever since his arrival, someone who hadn’t turned their back on him even when he fought Brandy’s corner.

He swept his finger across the relevant contact and had to wait through six prolonged rings before someone answered.

“Hello?” Edna Copes sounded weary as she answered the phone.

“Edna, hi, it’s Aiden. I was just wondering how Edmond was doing.”

“He’s,” he heard her take a sharp intake of breath. “He’s doing well. You know Edmond, always putting a brave face on things.”

“Do you think he’d be up for a visitor sometime today?”

“Yes,” Edna seemed to brighten at this. “I think that would do him a world of good.”

“Great, I’ll be round later.”

Aiden ended the call and looked back out at the cloud-covered sky. There was something unnatural about going through his morning ritual alone and it made him feel tense and on edge. He was used to see Meegan’s face across the table, usually playing with her own breakfast. He missed how Isla would always enquire about his day ahead. They provided the soundtrack to Aiden’s life and without them all he had was stony silence.

*

Several hours later, Aiden backed out of his driveway. His body ached from the remnants of his hangover but at least his head was clear. He drove out of his neighbourhood, saw his little house disappear from his rear-view mirror and then turned towards central Avalon, and beyond that, Edmond’s home.

He had been driving for about ten minutes, having just entered a long stretch of road which led out to the grander homes of the town when he came up behind the sherriff’s patrol car.

“Just great,” Aiden muttered to himself, hoping that Buck Fern wouldn’t spot him. He wasn’t in the mood to deal with the old man’s daily dose of vitriol.

As he followed the patrol car, he noticed how it was swerving widely, crossing over the central line in the road and then slowly returning back into the correct lane.

“What the hell?” Aiden frowned as he hung back from the vehicle. There were no other cars currently on the road.

The patrol car continued to swerve. There was clearly something wrong with the driver. Suddenly, without any warning or indication, the car promptly ground to a halt. Thankfully Aiden had time to brake behind it without barrelling into Buck Fern’s trunk. He considered driving around the now stationary car. The road behind him was still clear. But he didn’t.

Groaning in frustration, he opened his car door and stepped onto the road, making sure to flick on his hazard lights before doing so. The air smelled of burned rubber and rain. Even though the ground had dried overnight, there was still moisture about, making the day feel excessively humid.

“Sherriff?” Aiden called out to the old man as he slowly approached the patrol car. “Buck, are you all right?”

Just before he reached the driver’s side door, it creaked open and Buck Fern stepped out. Yet he didn’t so much step as fall. He awkwardly exited his patrol car, behaving as if he’d forgotten how to use his legs.

“Jesus, Buck, are you all right?” Aiden immediately moved to help him, gripping the old man beneath his shoulders and helping him stand up straight. He moved him so that he was leaning against the patrol car and then he smelled the liquor.

Buck Fern reeked of alcohol. Not the heady hops smell of beer, but the dense odour of hard liquor.

“Get out of here, Connelly,” Buck directed the comment to an empty space in the road. His breath was so potent that Aiden feared that if the old sherriff went near an open flame he’d combust.

“Sherriff, you’re drunk,” Aiden said abruptly. “And on duty,” he poked at Buck’s chest, where his sherriff’s badge was placed.

“I’m not…drunk,” Buck declared as he started to slide down the side of the car.

“Dammit.” Aiden hoisted the man back up. “What the hell are you playing at, Buck? You’ll lose your job for this. You know that, don’t you?”

Buck reached forward and rested his hand on Aiden’s shoulder. Then he leaned past him and spat on to the asphalt of the road.