“You don’t have to pretend you don’t want me,” Marcela said, reaching for my belt buckle with both hands. “There’s no one here to see.”
I grabbed her wrists and stiff-armed her away from me. But she took the gesture not as a rebuke, but as an invitation.
“Oh, you want to play rough, do you?”
She pressed forward into me, going up on tippy-toes to try to bite my chin.
“Marcela! Stop it! What’s gotten into you?”
“You have,” she purred. “Don’t you remember? As I recall you quite liked it.”
“I’m going to find Charlie,” I said, pushing her aside. Where the hell are my cousins?
I stepped around her, then walked out onto the porch and dialed Charlie’s number. It went straight to voice mail. WTF?
“I told you they left,” Marcela said, appearing in the doorway. I felt a surge of irritation. They had said they would wait for me before going to the police. Now I was going to have to tell my humiliating account of how Louisa had played me like a fiddle on my own.
“Look, I’m sorry I led you on,” I said. “What I did was wrong. But we have to move past it.”
“No, we don’t,” she said. “We can move into it. We’re free now.”
She stepped out onto the porch and reached for me with an eager manicured hand. I backed away.
“What do you mean, ‘free’？”
“They’re with their mother now. Where they belong.” She said it so calmly, so matter-of-factly, that for a second I thought I was the crazy one.
“Marcela, you’re confusing me,” I said. “I don’t know what that means.”
“It means we can be together now, like we talked about.” We had never talked about being together, not once, not ever. Our rendezvous were never about talking.
“But we don’t know where their mother is,” I backtracked. “That’s why I’m here. To help figure that out.”
“Well, you’re not going to find her, or either of her children,” she said curtly. “I need to check on the boys. When you’re ready to thank me, I’ll be upstairs.”
She turned to go. I grabbed her arm.
“Marcela, what have you done?” My heart was beating in my ears. She looked down at my hand squeezing her wrist, so I eased my grip but didn’t let go.
“Don’t you get it? We get everything now. It’s going to be just like we always fantasized about.” Her voice was calm and soothing, like a kindergarten teacher talking to a five-year-old.
“I’m calling the police.” And she smiled like she wanted to laugh.
“To tell them what? That you snuck into a graveyard to steal your aunt’s dead body?”
“What? No one stole her body!”
“So you say.” She popped her wrist from my grasp and went inside. The rain had slowed to a gentle patter, and I got a chill as I realized I’d just landed in the eye of the storm.
CHAPTER 62
* * *
JORDAN
It was nearly 1:00 a.m. by the time I’d gone to bed, and I woke up tired. Ashley’s story about how that awful old woman had tricked her into recording that message was infuriating, and I don’t sleep well when I’m mad. I’ve heard stories about people faking their own deaths for insurance money, or to avoid prosecution for a crime, but to terrorize their own children? What a psychopath!
I didn’t have any morning appointments, but I still woke up at seven, so I went for a quick run to clear my brain fog—just a few miles around the neighborhood. It was raining, but only lightly, and the game of avoiding puddles helped distract me from my inner turmoil. I didn’t want to abandon Ashley, but more than that, I didn’t want to stick around to watch her hook up with someone else. I would always care about her, but maybe there was a reason we’d never gotten together. I mean, if we were meant to be, wouldn’t seven years have been enough time to figure that out?
I toweled off in the front hall, then knelt by the closet to finish my sorting. Brando trotted over toward me and sniffed the box of baseballs that were currently in the keep pile.
“I know, I know, I should just get rid of them,” I said as I scratched his ears. “What can I say? I’m sentimental.” He cocked his head like he understood.
“Who are you talking to?” Ashley said as she came out of her room dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt, then padded to the kitchen to make her morning coffee.
“I’m going to miss this little guy,” I said, by way of an answer.