Killer Summer by Lynda Curnyn (e book reading free .txt) 📗

walking again, if only because I didn’t have to look at his eyes anymore, see the hurt, the anger—some of it, I sensed, directed at me.

Within moments, we were standing in front of Maggie’s Dream, and I watched as Myles gazed up at the dark house. At least he didn’t look so mad anymore. But it hurt, still. Hurt so much that he felt the only way he could have what he wanted was to walk away from me.

“I guess I better go before this melts,” he said, turning to me and aimlessly waving the bag he held in the air.

“Yes, you better,” I said.

Then I stood on the road, watching him walk away until he disappeared into the darkness.

Chapter Twenty-seven

Maggie

We all die alone. But some of us take hostages.

They say a parent lives on in his or her children. I don’t think I truly understood this until my own father died. I was thirty-five when he passed. I hadn’t seen him for six years, hadn’t known him for even longer.

But I went to the funeral, of course. A child knows her obligations after all. Especially an only daughter.

It wasn’t pretty. It’s never pretty when a man dies of cirrhosis of the liver. I’m not talking about the body itself. My father looked as placid as he had looked in life. The mood at the funeral was ugly though. There really isn’t anything nice to say about a man who lived his life for the drink. And died by it. He didn’t suffer, at least not in a way anyone could see. Didn’t lie in a hospital bed receiving get well wishes from loved ones.

Didn’t even really have to die, at least according to Tom, who didn’t believe in diseases of the spirit. Diseases of the body he could sympathize with, but a failure of will was something he simply couldn’t buy.

I suppose I didn’t buy it either, until I stood before my father’s coffin, saw the shape of his mouth, so like my own, the line of cheekbone that marked me and my brothers as family. And understood what it meant to give up.

It lived in me, that desire, to chalk everything up to missed chances and dashed dreams. To take comfort in a solution that could destroy you.

I also realized that, although I hadn’t had a father for years, I had been living all this time with the possibility of him. The hope that I could return home and find somebody there to care for me. Because as ill as he was, my father had taken care of us once. My mother’s bipolar disorder made him the better parent by default. He hoisted us onto school buses, packed lunches for us—when there was lunch to pack. Helped us fill out college applications and outwit the financial aid departments.

And then, one day, he was gone.

“Everyone is responsible for their own happiness,” Tom said as we drove home from the funeral.

I wasn’t sure who he was referring to, my father or me.

Which was why, when my small inheritance arrived in the mail a few months later, compliments of the pension my father didn’t live to collect, I took it as a sign. Imagined my father had died so that I could live a better life myself.

I knew twenty thousand dollars wasn’t enough to escape my marriage. I had, after all, become accustomed to a certain kind of life. But as it turned out, during my seemingly pointless job in accounts payable for the radio station, I had discovered I had a good head for numbers. And though at the time I had been disappointed to realize my gift was for numbers and not music, now that I actually had some money of my own, I was going to put that gift to work for me.

After all, my happiness depended upon it.

Chapter Twenty-eight

Sage

I could use a ghost right about now.

After less than a week of walking in Maggie’s shoes, I was starting to wonder if I really had what it took to fill them. Especially as I sat poring over the budget she had set up just weeks before she died, trying to make sense of it.

Not that Maggie wasn’t organized. In fact, ever since I had moved into her office, I realized she might have been more zealous about her organizational systems than even Tom was. The problem was, though I knew just about everything when it came to the selling and merchandising of skin, I knew zip about budgets.

So much for my good head for business, I thought, running a hand through my hair again as I stared down at the mass of numbers in front of me. I had even resorted to calling Tom yesterday, but the only thing clear to me when I finally got him on the phone was that there was a reason why Tom had needed someone else to run Edge. He had his hands full with Luxe. His assistant interrupted our conversation so many times with various emergencies that I finally gave up. I didn’t want to overburden him, after all. Or worse, make him realize I didn’t have that head for numbers he’d once relied upon Maggie for.

I could practically hear her laughing at me from the grave.

Which was probably why I took that framed photo she had on her desk of her at the ribbon-cutting ceremony for the showroom and tossed it right in the trash.

Along with the fussy little stained glass flowers she had hanging on the windowsill and the pink mouse pad she kept by the computer.

This place was going to need a little redecorating, to say the least.

But I certainly couldn’t tackle that today, I thought, looking at the clock and realizing it was close to noon. I wanted to get this budget business done before lunch.

Before Vince arrived anyway.

When I learned from Tom on Monday that Vince was coming