Shadow Notes by Laurel Peterson (cool books to read txt) 📗

slept dream-free. Instead, the moment Mother shut out the light, images started tramping furrows in my brain, like a circus horse on a tether, round and round and round. Only Mother’s “little something” eventually knocked them down enough that I could rest in a sort of nether world, halfway between dreams and waking, halfway between truth and desire.

Chapter 24

Mother woke me at nine the next morning; we had to be at the church by ten-thirty for the funeral service. If we got there a little early, she said, she’d call Chief DuPont about the interview she’d promised him. I hoped the man Hetty had been having an affair with would be there as well. Somehow, I had to identify this guy; he might know what got her killed.

Between my general exhaustion and the bump on my head, I felt as if I were negotiating the world from inside a bad Halloween mask—the kind where you can’t really breathe and it gets all steamed up and you have to press the mask to your face so you can see what’s to the sides as well as straight ahead.

As I shut off the shower, the front door bell rang, a pealing set of tones meant to evoke Notre Dame. My father had installed the whimsy after an anniversary trip to Paris. A loud and imperious knocking followed the chimes, then the chimes rang out again.

I flung a towel around my head, threw on my robe, and ran down the stairs while tying the belt. Mother had gotten there first. Mary Ellen stood on the front step.

“Ringing once would have done the trick, Mary Ellen. No need to bring the house down.” Mother’s icy tones were never better employed.

“Let me in.” She pushed past us, shutting the door quickly. She looked perfectly turned out as always, her white shirt tucked into black riding pants, her boots spit-shined. “I have to talk to you, Constance.”

“Why should I talk to you?” She ran her hand through her hair. Not a strand dared fall out of place.

“Because no matter how much you hate me, you’re curious.”

The cold floor tiles were frosting my bare feet, but I wasn’t missing a second of this. I wiggled my toes to keep the blood flowing. Mother noticed. Mother noticed everything.

“Whatever it is,” Mother said, “I’m not going to stand here while Clara gets pneumonia. “Honey—”

Was she addressing me?

“—put some warm clothes on. Mary Ellen and I will be in the kitchen.”

She faced Mary Ellen again. “I’m not talking to you without a witness, and you have twenty minutes, minus however long Clara takes to dress.”

I hurried up to the bedroom, squeezing water from my hair on the way. I grabbed flannel-lined jeans and a heavy sweater and took them into the bathroom where I shimmied into them with one hand while using the hairdryer with the other. Five minutes later I was no glamour-girl, but I was presentable.

I rushed back down the stairs and into the kitchen. Mary Ellen and Mother had arranged themselves on opposite sides of the kitchen table, like opponents in a union negotiation. Sun streamed in over my mother’s shoulders, probably blinding Mary Ellen. I imagined that Mother had directed her to that side of the table deliberately. Between them, a tray with the coffee carafe, mugs, sugar, and milk rested like the Berlin Wall. Neither woman was speaking. Mother flipped through the Wall Street Journal. Mary Ellen watched her.

“Want me to pour?” I asked. Mother nodded without looking up. She’d found the editorial page. “Mary Ellen?” I asked. She nodded. I filled a mug and pushed it toward her, then poured one for my mother. I poured one for myself and sat down. Mary Ellen doctored the drink with milk and three teaspoons of sugar, stirring vigorously.

Mother took hers black and reluctantly put the paper to the side. “Well?” She folded her arms.

Mary Ellen sipped her coffee. “You should stop meddling in our affairs.”

“Meddling?”

“You and Clara are poking around where you don’t belong.”

My mother let out a raucous laugh, like a drunken snort. “Please. You gave up all rights to ask me for anything thirty-six years ago when your sociopathic brother raped me in a parking lot. Thirty-six years that he’s been running around free on this planet doing god-knows-what to who-knows-whom else. Thirty-six years that you’ve been backing his story and telling everyone in this town what a liar I am.”

I’d never heard her so furious or raw or honest. It was painful.

Mary Ellen remained impervious, the ice queen in her ice castle. “If you don’t, we’ll make sure Clara’s dear friend Paul is brought up on sexual harassment charges, and Clara’s other dear friend Bailey loses her law license for conspiring with the Democratic candidate while working for Republicans. And then there’s dear HIV-infected Richard. So many delicious possibilities for him.” She said it all without a trace of emotion.

If I’d been a different person, I would have reached across the table and banged her head against the wall until her eyes glazed over and she died. The hatred shocked me. It felt a little too close to my Winters biology and too far from the person I wanted to be.

“And to prevent this, you want us to do what, exactly?” Mother’s demeanor was as icy as Mary Ellen’s. It was as if the threats hadn’t registered.

“Clara will resign from the campaign. Can’t have the scandal of a firing. You will burn the DNA report. Clara will stop running around town, talking to everyone she can find about Hugh’s death and your past.”

“Hugh’s murder remains unsolved?”

“And Hetty’s. So tragic.” She pouted. “You know Andrew is obsessed. If you don’t acquiesce, he will find a way to eliminate all the…obstacles.”

“You mean he’d murder us, too?”

She shrugged.

I looked at Mother and Mother looked at me. Having watched a lot of TV, as far as I could figure in my TV-educated mind, we’d just witnessed a confession to plan murder and conspiracy. Maybe it