Stay (Dunham series #2) (48 page)

Has to be Botox.

One step down, then another, her hips swinging, her
gait self-assured, her demeanor arrogant. Let LaVon wait.

She saw Glenn on the periphery with the rest of the
press, watching as sharply as everyone else, but without the
bloodthirsty look of his colleagues. Glenn would report this, she
knew, and he wasn’t on her side, but he’d be fair and that was all
she needed to feel like she had one friend in the press corps.

Masked and costumed guests on either side of the
staircase watched her, moved out of her way, parting for her and
leaving a clear path to her mother.

Vanessa took the last step, still not knowing what
to say.

“Vanessa,” LaVon said, “Thank you so much for
inviting me tonight.”

“I didn’t,” Vanessa said flatly. “Don’t think I’m
going to cover your lies.” LaVon’s mouth tightened infinitesimally.
Vanessa took a step away from the press to cull her mother from her
handlers. “I guess I don’t have to ask why you’re here,” Vanessa
murmured, and took note when LaVon wrapped her hand around the sand
dollar pendant on her necklace.

“A million dollars would make me go away,” LaVon
replied, equally low. “I know you could write me a check right
now.”

“Mmmm, so you’re easy
and
cheap.”

LaVon’s arm twitched, and the long bony fingers of
her unoccupied hand curled into her palm. Oh, how Vanessa wished
she’d followed through on that aborted slap. “I don’t see Hilliard
here, defendin’ your honor, or Mr. Rapist, either.”

“No, but
I’m
here,” Giselle said low,
squeezing herself between Vanessa and LaVon.

LaVon started. “Who the hell’re you?”

“
I
am your worst nightmare,” Giselle murmured
cheerfully as she wrapped her small hand around LaVon’s upper arm
and clamped down.

“You get your hands off me, ya li’l bitch. You ain’t
nobody to me.” LaVon’s diction was slipping, her anger cracking
that thin veneer and oozing through, and her grip on the pendant
tightened.

“Knox would just shoot you in the head. I’ll
tenderize you with my knife until you’re begging for mercy, and
then I’ll slit your throat.”

Vanessa thought that might have been a little much,
but LaVon stared at Giselle for a long moment before she decided it
might not be an idle threat. Giselle nudged LaVon back toward her
entourage, chatting amiably at LaVon all the way, then joked with
LaVon’s people while surreptitiously keeping LaVon under
control.

Vanessa looked up and around at the press.
“Congratulations,” she finally said coldly. “You’ve made it for
story time. Make yourselves comfortable.”

Tangible shock rippled through the crowd, and they
all gathered in a rough semicircle around Vanessa, who turned and
climbed about five stairs to begin. She saw all the costumes spread
out across the massive rooms, and resentment poured through her.
LaVon had spent the last month dragging Vanessa and the people she
loved through the mud and then had violated her space and an
important Whittaker House event to rub salt in the wound.

“That woman,” Vanessa began, pointing a finger at
LaVon where she stood humbly between one of her handlers and a very
peppy Giselle, “is a liar and a thief and a party to child
molestation and very possibly an accessory to nineteen counts of
murder.”

All the attention whipped to LaVon along with gasps
and murmurs. She shrank into herself and would have fled, except
for the fact that Giselle had her tethered. The shocked press
didn’t know whether to focus their cameras on Vanessa or LaVon.

A shuffle at the front doors attracted her attention
and she saw an entire platoon of sheriff’s deputies and state
troopers file in quietly, gather in the entryway, and fold their
arms across their chests.

Vanessa sighed.

This was the biggest across-the-trailer-park
hollering match a woman and her mother had ever had, complete with
the cops being called out to break it up.

“So since you all,” she said, regaining everyone’s
attention, “have been after me for the last month to speak, I’m
going to tell you what kind of woman you’ve been celebrating and
what really went down with Eric Cipriani sixteen years ago, when he
was arrested and charged with the rape of my sister, Simone.”

* * * * *

43: When Truth Was Paramount

“You are the luckiest son of a bitch who ever
lived.”

“Good morning to you, too, Glenn,” Eric muttered
absently while he worked. “Did you have a good Thanksgiving with
your cat?”

“Have you read this morning’s post?”

“Your blog isn’t my first priority, so no.”

Glenn dropped a copy of the
Chouteau Recorder
on top of the legal pad Eric had been writing on, then dropped his
person in the chair on the other side Eric’s desk.

Eric stared at the headline as if he were trying to
remember how to read; indeed, it felt that way:

Whittaker rescues Cipriani.

Again.

He picked it up and sat back in his chair to read.
“Masquerade . . . ” he mumbled while he read, not wanting to think
about the party he’d nearly attended despite how much it would have
cost them both. “LaVon crashed the party . . . Bitch.” He looked up
at Glenn. “What was Vanessa’s costume?”

Glenn stared at him as if he’d lost his mind.
“That’s your most pressing question?”

“Just tell me.”

“Some pink . . . thing. And black. I don’t know,
like a saloon girl.”

Eric hurt so badly he could barely stand it, but
went back to reading, then he bolted upright. “She
said
that?! What the hell was she thinking? Knox could never prove LaVon
helped Parley kill those women or he would’ve. Shit, now LaVon can
sue her for defamation.”

“Keep reading,” Glenn commanded. “You will note it
is an uncondensed and unedited transcript.”

He did as he was told, and lost himself in Vanessa’s
words.

“Was this extemporaneous?” Eric asked after a while,
impressed by Vanessa’s clarity of thought.

“It had to have been. LaVon caught her completely
off guard.”

It shouldn’t have surprised him. She didn’t use a
script when she taped
Vittles
; why would she need one for an
impromptu press conference?

Most of Vanessa’s story he knew: How she had decided
to go to Knox with Simone’s diary. How many men went to jail
because of Simone and why Knox had protected her. What she had to
live with at home, her starvation, the abuse that only stopped when
Knox had stepped in between her and LaVon.

She spoke of living in a house where a serial killer
visited, spending his nights in her mother’s bed. She spoke of
Simone’s sexual precocity and how LaVon had not only not protected
Simone, but had encouraged her promiscuity. She spoke of Simone
coming home the day seventeen-year-old Eric had snubbed her,
crying, heartbroken, and LaVon laying out the plan to take
vengeance on him. Most of what she said Eric had deduced, although
a detail here or there did give him pause. As far as he knew, she
left nothing out.

She talked at great length about Laura, her
connection to Laura, what Laura had done for her and that she
credited Laura with saving her life. She spoke of how terrified
she’d been to go to Knox, but had walked out of the courthouse that
day with a father figure and a mentor.

Even on paper, her love for Knox came through.

Then she spoke of Eric.

*

But don’t think I was solely motivated by honor. I
was also motivated because I had, well, the teensiest weensiest
tiniest little bitty crush on the big badass of Chouteau High
School.

I want to clarify right here, right now, that it was
a crush from afar. I was twelve, so I think I can be forgiven for
being foolish that way. I had never spoken to Eric, nor he me,
until a year and a half ago when I went home to Chouteau City for
the first time in fourteen years, for my sister’s funeral.

I found out I had a nephew. I found out he had been
named for a man who had done nothing to deserve any of the hell my
mother and sister had put him through. I saw that my mother and
sister had abused this kid far worse than they had me, but only
because I had a fire-breathing dragon shielding me. I saw that my
mother and my sister had used my nephew’s existence to make Eric
Cipriani’s life miserable, to poke him and taunt him at every turn,
hoping that the next poke or taunt would discredit him, bring him
down. Yet Eric did as much for my nephew as he would allow. He
never let my mother and sister’s evil get in the way of helping my
nephew. Eric never broke, never buckled. Never used the law to
persecute my mother or get revenge, never so much as raised his
voice to her or my sister.

So with that all hanging over our heads, the fact
that we could even have some semblance of a conversation, much less
a love affair, no matter how short-lived, is pretty spectacular.
Think about yourself at twelve, the boy or girl you had a crush on.
Think about meeting them fourteen years later. Think about having
that much shared baggage between you. Would you fall in love? Would
you want to?

For years, I’ve been killing myself, trying to get
where I wanted to go, to make Whittaker House this, this monument
to the woman who saved my life. And then I met that incredible man.
And we talked and laughed and made love and fell in love. We wanted
to make it work, but too much time has passed. We have our own
lives that we built.

That man, that incredible man, the one I love. He
has convictions and ideals. He wants to make things better for the
country. He wants to serve the greater good and he thinks his
philosophies are the way to do that. I share most of his
philosophies. There are tens of thousands of people out there who
believe in him already and he has only begun his climb up the
ladder. He has a goal and a plan. He has never not accomplished
anything he set out to do and I know he’ll get exactly where he
wants to go. He has asked me to come with him to help him in that
endeavor, but I said no.

Too many people here depend on Whittaker House for
their livelihoods and I can’t take that away from them. I have
asked him to stay here with me and run Whittaker House because, you
see, he’s an extraordinary manager. He makes people’s jobs easier.
He trusts them to do those jobs and do them well. He believes in
people and their potential. My staff loves him. The boy, my nephew,
loves him like a father. But Eric said no, because all those
thousands of people believe in him and they want to believe in him,
and they think millions of others will believe in him, too. He
believes in them and they know that.

So the next time you watch
Vittles
or you
hear Eric Cipriani asking you to trust him with your vote, you’ll
know our story. You’ll know Eric never touched me when I was a
child, never so much as spoke to me. You’ll know why Eric is still
single, although how long he’ll remain so—

It takes a long time to—

You’ll know why he’s still single. You’ll know the
truth of our relationship. I have never met a more honorable man in
my life, and letting him go is—

Eric Cipriani is the only man I have ever loved.

*

The paper fell from Eric’s hand, and he wiped his
palms down his face.

“Thank you,” he whispered.

“You’re welcome.”

Eric said nothing for a moment when he heard no
gloating or arrogance in Glenn’s simple return. Then, “Shinkle, I—
I owe you an apology.”

“Yes, you do,” Glenn retorted.

Eric had to chuckle at that, but it didn’t last. “I
get it now. You might have been a pain in my ass for the last eight
years—and you most likely will continue to be—”

“You got that right.”

“But I know you would never have done this to us,
make up shit. You— The way you report, it— Well, it spoiled me. I
didn’t really believe anybody would cut my friends and family off
at the knees, because I’m used to the way you work.”

Glenn nodded. “You made fun of me for not getting
Knox’s non-scam because, well, yeah, I would’ve won a Pulitzer if
I’d figured out
how to prove
he wasn’t on the take at all.
Busted that whole thing open about his uncle and OKH
Enterprises—proved and printed what half the country already
suspected. Yeah, that would’ve put me on the map.”

Eric swallowed.

“But I knew it. In my gut, I mean. I couldn’t find
anybody who’d paid him off. I must have interviewed every person in
Chouteau County. I just . . . couldn’t prove a negative.” He
stopped. Began again. “You know, I’m almost sixty. I’ve spent my
whole life trying to do this right, getting bypassed by reporters
who took shots in the dark and became celebrities, but never
suffered the consequences when they got it wrong. I’ve tried to be
honorable about it, barely scraping my paper out of the red each
month, while amateurs went online and blogged all the way around me
without any sense of responsibility.”

Eric sighed. “I’m sorry, Glenn.”

“It’s not just about you, Eric. It’s about the whole
system. The way technology’s changed things. The way society’s
changed. We’re a bunch of bored Romans waiting for the next
gladiator fight at the coliseum.”

It sounded so harsh, but Eric had no retort for
it.

“Don’t think I’m going to quit dogging your heels
because Knox was wrong to murder Parley and
you
are wrong
for covering for him, but . . . ”

“It’s because Vanessa was nice to you,” Eric said
low.

“No,” Glenn said. “All I care about is fact. Truth I
can verify.”

“And it finally paid off.”

“Yes. Because you trusted me enough to come to me
when Afton first approached you. You knew I wouldn’t lie to you
about what I knew versus what I’d printed.”