Randall didn’t know if Maurice was right about the timings, but he was as sure as hell that he hadn’t killed that poor young woman. “What did you do to Annie?”
Maurice lifted his chin. Randall couldn’t tell if he was being proud, or shamefaced. “I made a move on her,” he said defiantly. “I’m ashamed of it now, as I was then.”
Randall couldn’t stifle a laugh. “You made a move on her?” he asked, his initial humor fading fast. “What exactly does that mean? Did you hurt her?” he said, standing up and grabbing his cane.
“No, no, no. I tried to . . . Listen, Frank, I’ve never been able to understand women, now or then. I’m more or less a virgin. I wanted to kiss her. I guess I was jealous. I may have grabbed her too hard, but nothing beyond that happened. I’m so sorry.”
Randall’s hand cramped on the cane. Maurice looked so pale and pitiful in the armchair, but Randall still had to fight the rage welling up in him. He lifted the cane behind him, feeling its weight. “Did you kill her?” he asked, the cane lifted high above his head, ready to strike.
“Kill who?”
“Annie, of course.”
Maurice’s head darted from side to side. “What? No, no, Frank. You killed her, remember?”
“I didn’t kill her.”
“Then why did you spend all that time in jail, brother?”
It would have been a mercy to bring the cane down on his brother’s head, but Frank resisted the urge. “I’m going to bed. If you’re still here by the time I get up, God or no God, I will strike you down. Do you understand me?”
Maurice nodded, sitting back in his chair as Randall went to the bedroom, closed the door, and bolted it shut.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Laurie had no option other than to send the officers watching Frank’s house back to the station. She couldn’t justify leaving them there when every available body was needed to help with the evacuation, and what could be an imminent disaster if Hurricane Heather made landfall. She’d come close to going back and arresting Frank, but at this stage, and with the lawyer Mosley breathing down her neck, it was too much of a risk.
She thought back to that first day here, when she’d stopped Warren and his friends from giving Frank a beating. Maybe things would have been different had Frank left the island, as Warren had wanted. She’d enjoyed getting to know Frank, but at what cost?
Driving off, she reminded herself that she couldn’t keep second-guessing her actions. What she needed was some rest and fresh perspective. Sleep felt like a privilege at the moment but things would feel much worse if she didn’t catch even a couple of hours. Despite which, she found herself making a round trip of three houses before returning home, stopping outside the Harringtons’， Tilly’s father’s house, and finally Rebecca Whitehead’s. The lights were off at each place and no sign that anyone had stayed behind. Still, she lingered outside Rebecca’s house on the chance that David would turn up.
The quiet was eerie, the only sound the hum of the wind rattling through the streets. To Laurie, it felt as if the storm had abated, which from previous experience wasn’t necessarily a good thing. The calm before the storm wasn’t just a saying.
As she drove away ten minutes later, she couldn’t deny the feeling of disappointment. The night she had seen David and Rebecca together at the coffee house felt like a distant memory, yet she was no closer to finding out what was actually going on between them. She understood now that it was the doubt that was doing the most damage. If only she’d confronted him about it, then she would at least have known where she stood. As it was, she was in limbo and now she and David would spend the next days apart . . . and it was difficult to see that ever being reversed.
Back at their apartment building, she was pleased to see that nearly everyone had left. Although they were inland, the impact of any potential storm surge was unpredictable. It seemed that people were taking the warnings seriously, and even if that meant some uncertain and uncomfortable times trying to evacuate, it was good to see.
Inside, Laurie switched on the news and began to understand why more people than expected were leaving the island. The National Hurricane Center had adjusted their predictions. Any hope that Galveston would be spared now seemed unlikely and landfall was expected as soon as lunchtime tomorrow.
She needed to pack her last few essentials and leave, but was unable to switch her mind from the investigation. Gathering printouts from the case, she spread sheets of paper across the living-room floor, photocopied images of Annie Randall, Grace Harrington, and Glen Harrington’s corpses taking center stage. It was hard not to think she was wasting her time. Glen’s suicide didn’t necessarily imply any guilt over his daughter’s death, and until forensics came back there was nothing concrete enough to link either Frank or Glen to Grace’s murder.
That didn’t stop her from reading through everything again until her eyes ached. She was convinced something was missing that would open the investigation up, but as she’d told herself on many occasions, a feeling wasn’t enough.
It was early morning before she finally put the files away. She needed some exercise, and completed a twenty-minute HIT session from a video she’d saved on her laptop. Dragging herself to the shower to wash off the sweat, she caught a glimpse in the mirror and froze. She barely recognized the harrowed features on her face, or the angular contours of her body as she pivoted where she stood. She was tired, overworked, stressed, her PMS was kicking in. Now wasn’t the time to think about the changes she’d put herself through, but she couldn’t help it.
Even now, the thought of looking at herself as she’d once been repulsed her. Not long after the pregnancy test had proved positive, David had decided to make a video diary of Milly. This had mainly consisted of recording Laurie changing shape as he sang absurd made-up songs to her slowly swelling belly. She chuckled at the memory, though as she showered, the water flowing over her toned, muscled body, it was hard to believe she’d ever been that way; that a life had existed within her.
She was self-aware enough to understand that, consciously or not, she’d purposely transformed herself over these last months. Her manic exercise routine employed to rid herself of any visual memory of her pregnancy. She was also self-aware enough to understand what a complete waste of time it had been. Health benefits aside, the exercise did nothing to rid her of the memories of Milly’s stillbirth. She’d been literally running from her problems this last year, and it had only made things worse.
After drying, she climbed into bed, the darkened landscape eerily silent outside her window. She glanced at her phone, checking for any last messages, then allowed her fingertip to hover over the photos app, but she couldn’t bring herself to look at the woman she’d once been. That person was a relic, an overblown representation of the mother she hadn’t become. She knew without looking how much she would hate the images of her extended stomach, her cherry-red face round and glowing, her little pudgy arms and legs.
Though as she fell asleep, she knew there was nothing she wouldn’t give to be like that again.
Chapter Thirty-Three
It was too late for reconciliation. It was a shame Maurice had waited so long to tell him what he’d done. Randall could have forgiven him. Their upbringing was in part to blame, he knew. Neither of them had been given anything remotely approaching a normal model of how someone should act with a member of the opposite sex. He and Maurice hadn’t been the only ones who had taken a beating from Randall senior. Their mother had fled her abusive relationship when Frank was four, and Maurice had been the one to endure witnessing the damage their father had inflicted on her. Clearly it had messed him up.