“I said put the pistol on the floor!” Tessa barked.
“You were using Mint’s account. Is that how you found out he and Rashida were—？”
“Don’t. Don’t say her name in this house,” Tessa warned, her finger on the trigger. For sure rusty. Or something worse. Army training teaches you, don’t touch the trigger unless you’re willing to pull it.
“Mrs. Mint, I’m not your enemy.”
“Why didn’t you leave it alone? You could’ve just left it—”
“Mom, everything okay?” a soft voice asked.
On Nola’s right, a twelve-year-old girl with a messy bird’s nest of black hair and scabby knees and elbows stood there in the hallway. The daughter, Violet.
“VeeVee, Mom’s talking—go back to your room,” Tessa said, quickly hiding her gun behind her back. Nola did the same, angling her body, trying to look like whatever casual looked like.
The problem was, Violet had her mother’s instincts. “Who’s she?” the little girl asked, pointing at Nola.
“One of my friends. Go back to your room.”
“Why do you have Daddy’s gun?”
“It’s my gun. I told you, we’re friends. I’m showing it to her—she’s thinking about buying one,” Tessa insisted, adding that mom tone that says I promise, we’re fine. “I was just about to show her Dad’s guns. In the garage. Isn’t that right, Nola?”
Nola turned, but didn’t answer. At just the sight of young Violet, Nola felt something standing behind her, something old and forgot ten. For half a second, she didn’t recognize it, and then, like a remembered dream, it was clear as day. In life, we’re taught that old wounds are the deepest wounds. But Nola knew . . . the deepest wounds are the ones you cause in someone else. Especially in someone young.
“Sure. The garage. We were going to the garage,” Nola said, heading up the hallway, Tessa unsubtly pointing with her gun.
Violet watched as they both made their way to the garage. The girl’s dark eyes searched you, frisked you. Nola liked that about her. “Mom, you need me to call the cops?”
“I’m fine, VeeVee. I’d tell you if I wasn’t.”
“No, you wouldn’t,” Violet said with a preteen’s shrug, disappearing around the corner and heading back to her own room.
On the opposite side of the house, Tessa asked, “You like kids?”
“I don’t,” Nola said.
“You like them enough to spare her a confrontation. I appreciate that,” Tessa said, her voice still fake-cheery as she stepped close to Nola and swiped her pistol from her waistband. She wasn’t nearly as rusty as Nola thought.
Passing the kitchen on their right, Nola eyed the outdated glossy marble countertops and dark cherry cabinets, realizing just how long it’d been since she’d been in a suburban home. On the kitchen table was a glass bowl of truly perfect green pears, like something out of a magazine. But the way they shone . . . plastic. All for show.
“Door should be open,” Tessa said, motioning for Nola to give the knob a twist.
The door swung wide, revealing a messy garage, centered around an abandoned workbench that was buried under computer boxes and air-conditioning filters. On the left was a spare freezer, on the right, four bicycles, including a pink one that was covered in Pokémon stickers. On the ceiling, Nola spotted a yellow-brown stain, the color of a bruise and the size of an amoeba-shaped pizza. Roof leak. Let it fester, and it could take the whole house down.
“You think I don’t know who you are? The painter—from Grandma’s Pantry,” Tessa said, calmer now, more in control, as if seeing her daughter reminded her what she was fighting for. It was a bad sign. She pointed her gun at Nola’s chest. “O.J. told me you were at the funeral. That all those years ago, you were one of Archie’s investigators,” she added, her voice cracking as she said Mint’s name. “He’s the one who sent you, isn’t he? O.J. put you on this case.”