The Final Victim (38 page)

    It's near dawn here, but only past one on the West Coast. Brian will be up watching Conan or Baseball Tonight or whatever it is he stays up late to watch. She wouldn't know.
Wouldn't care, either.

    What matters is that she doesn't have to wait until noon tomorrow to call and tell him about the decision she's made.

    In the kitchen, she pauses, clutching her cell phone and the flashlight she retrieved from the utility drawer. Then she peeks through the window and realizes that a steady rain is falling.

    Okay, so she won't make the call from outside.

    But she can't do it right here in the kitchen. Who knows what time Nydia begins to stir, considering the ungodly hour she goes to bed, and the even more ungodly hour she's been serving breakfast all these years.

    Nor should she go back to her room; the dividing wall between her room and
Lianna's
is one of the few that isn't made of plaster, and the last thing she wants is to be overheard.

    No, she's better off going to the far parlor, where she'll be ensured of a private conversation behind closed doors.

    It's not one she's looking forward to, but now that she knows what she has to do, she owes it to Brian to tell him right away. Doesn't she?

    It wouldn't be fair to wait until
she
gets back tomorrow night No, her flight gets in late, and by the time she gets home from the airport and looks in on Wills…

    Face it,
Phyllida
. You want to break it to him over the phone right now so you won't have to wait and do it in person. That way, you won't have to see his face when you tell him.

    All right, that's true.

    But what's wrong with that? This is easier, on both of them. She'll just deliver the news gently.

    
Yeah, sure
.

    How do you gently drop a bombshell on your husband that you're planning to leave him, sell the house and cars and every material possession you own, and then take your young son and move to the opposite end of the country?

    I have to do it. That's all there is to it, she assures herself yet again
.

    It's the only possible solution to her predicament.

    This way, she can leave behind the mess in California, abandoning once and for all her dreams that weren't meant to come true. She'll start a new life in Rhode Island; her mother can help her with Wills while she goes to school, or gets a job, or does whatever it takes to get back on her feet.

    As she tossed and turned in her bed, thinking things through, she briefly entertained the thought of asking Brian to come back East with them. But there's no way he'd agree to that. He's a native Californian; he hates the very notion of cold winters as much as he hates summer humidity. Not to mention the fact that he also hates her mother.

    He's bound to make a fuss when she first tells him her plan, but she has a feeling he'll get over it pretty quickly in the end. He'll come to realize what she already has: that he'll be free to golf whenever he wants, and lounge around watching television, and spend his money on expensive clothes and toys. He'll see that she and Wills will be better off without him-and that he'll be happier without the burden of a wife and child.

    Eager to make her call now that her mind is made up,
Phyllida
leaves the kitchen.

    Back in the shadowy hall, she realizes she's still clutching the flashlight. Rather than putting it back, she flicks it on and uses its beam to guide her through rooms that open onto each other from the center hall. That way, she won't have to leave a trail of lamplight that Nydia might follow if she awakens.

    The floor plan is fairly familiar; the cluttered furniture layout, not as much. She moves slowly, taking stealth care to shine the light on every table and chair in her path. Outside, she can hear the patter of raindrops and the rushing sound as it pours from the downspouts along the portico. A cool gust stirs the lace curtains at the open windows in the first parlor as she moves past.

    It's a good night for sleeping. Maybe, after she's made her call, she'll actually be able to do just that.

    Yawning,
Phyllida
reaches the closed French doors to the second parlor.

    She opens one and slips noiselessly into the room.

    There,
Phyllida
Remington Harper is jolted, in one stunning, fleeting, yet unmistakable glimpse, by the biggest shock of her life.

    Sunday morning, the sun rises brightly on a world scrubbed clean in yesterday's downpour. Charlotte is glad she decided to set the alarm for an early hour. It's a beautiful day to get up and moving.

    If she could just seem to
get
moving, that is.

    Rather than refreshing her and scrubbing the exhaustion from her soul, a shower seems to leave her only more tempted to crawl back into bed. Of course, if she had made it bracing and quick-rather than long, languid, and hot-she might be more capable of springing into action.

    She yawns repeatedly as she dresses, putting on a conservative navy dress with white piping, a matching broad-brimmed hat, and spectator pumps with a coordinating handbag. Around her neck, she fastens a simple gold-cross necklace her
Grandaddy
gave her for her sixteenth birthday.

    
It's
time she went back to the little white Baptist church overlooking the sea, across the highway from Tidewater Meadow. She used to go every Sunday with
Grandaddy
-and sometimes Royce, and
Lianna
when she was forced-but Charlotte hasn't been there at all in the weeks since he passed away.

    Reverend
Snowdon
visited the hospital in Savannah this week to pray with her and Royce, thanking God for sparing his life. When he left, she promised she'd see him at Sunday services.

    "Stay for our coffee hour after," he invited. "You'll see lots of familiar faces, and they'll certainly want to see you. Everyone has been praying for y'all."

    She promised to try, but she knows that she won't linger.

    It would be pure torture to face all those people wanting to know how Royce is, and wondering how
Gib
could have done such a thing, and telling her that her poor dead
Grandaddy
would have been simply devastated by this turn of events and the shame brought to the family name.

    No, she doesn't need that at all.

    And anyway, she has other things to do on the south end before hurrying back up here to Royce. She wants to finally stop at the supermarket to get the ingredients for that seafood dish she's making. The prospect of all that work and the busy day ahead is daunting now, but of course she'll be fine once she's on a roll.

    Oh, and she needs to take that radio to Mr. Goldberg to be fixed. She'd have gone yesterday, but she called ahead in the morning and learned that his little shop was closed for the Jewish Sabbath.

    
Which worked out better in the end, because she felt just as tired and lazy yesterday.
Plus the rain persisted well into the afternoon, and it was a good day to stay in and cuddle with Royce on his first day home.

    He's still grumbling about the hospital bed, which was delivered late Friday night and set up in the parlor.

    But he refused to agree to let Charlotte sleep down there with him, on the couch. She hated to leave him alone, feeling the almost compulsive need to keep watch over him, lest something terrible happen again.

    This anxiety is probably perfectly normal. All the bereavement counseling she endured told her that. But shouldn't it be lessening with time and distance from the trauma, rather than growing in intensity?

    She can't quite convince herself that Royce isn't in danger, even now that he's home and
Gib
is in custody.

    But she didn't tell her husband of her uneasiness- just that she knew he might not be able to get around unassisted if he needed something in the middle of the night.

    "I won't need anything, believe me," he said, yawning profusely before turning in. "But if I do, I'll holler."

    As she and Aimee made their way to the kitchen with the dishes and cups from the tea-sweet for her, hot for Royce and Aimee-and honey toast they shared earlier, Charlotte commented in a low voice, 'The thing is, I'm so tired I'm afraid I wouldn't hear him if he did holler."

    "Don't worry," Aimee said. "I'm not that tired. I'll definitely hear. Anyway, trust me-with those painkillers he's on, he's not going to budge. I just gave him a slightly bigger dose so he'll be out like a light all night."

    "Is that a good idea?" Charlotte asked, concerned.

    Aimee laughed. "Oh, don't worry. I didn't give him that much, although it was tempting, what with the way he was going on and on about you and me trying to baby him too much, and then he turns right around and calls me 'Baby Girl.' But that's Daddy. He's always liked to be the manly man. He thinks medicine is for wimps, you know?"

    "Do
I
ever." Charlotte laughed,
then
fought another enormous yawn, overcome by the need for sleep. "I'm so wiped out I feel like I've been drugged myself. But I'll try and check on him a few times in the night."

    "I'm sure he'll sleep through, with no pain. That's why I upped the dose a little. He probably wouldn't stir if a train went through there."

    As far as Charlotte knows, he didn't stir-not Friday night, or last night, either. After the first good night's sleep, he wanted to try the stairs last night, but she and Aimee have convinced him to give it a few more days.

    Whenever he's alone with Charlotte, he likes to take her in his arms to tell her-and show her-exactly why he's so anxious to get back up to their bedroom with her soon.

    She feels the same way, and not just for romantic reasons.

    Even with her night-light, she isn't comfortable being alone in that room all night.

    Then again, it's not as though she's been lying awake worrying. Her own exhaustion is catching up with hen these last two
nights,
she's slept better than she has in weeks.

    
Which would be great if she didn't feel like she could have gone on sleeping for hours after the alarm went off.

    "Good morning, Mrs. Maitland," Nydia says from the sink as Charlotte steps into the kitchen, now fragrant with fresh coffee and bacon grease.

    "Good morning, Nydia." She pats a yawn from her lips. "You haven't seen my cousin
Phyllida
since yesterday, have you?"

    The woman turns back to her sudsy water, but not before Charlotte glimpses a decidedly disagreeable expression on her face. "No."

    
Just
no
?

    Irritated by the curt reply, Charlotte presses, "She hasn't been down for breakfast at all? Not yesterday, not today?" '’When does she ever come down for breakfast? She's lucky if she's up in time for lunch."

    
All right.
It's no surprise that Nydia is less than fond of the resident prima donna. Still, she might be a little more pleasant about it.

    Charlotte takes a travel mug from the cabinet, deciding a dose of caffeine is in order if she's going to come fully awake for the drive down south.

    As she pours it, Nydia comments, "Anyway… I thought she was leaving before the big storm."

    "No, she wasn't supposed to until last night."

    "Not yesterday's storm. There's a big one coming in a day or two, Tropical Storm Douglas. She wanted to get out before that. Did she go last night, then?"

    "I don't know. I didn't see her all day. I was going to make sure she had arranged for a ride to the airport, but I… didn't want to bother her in her room."

    The truth was, Charlotte was too busy lying around watching television with Royce to give her cousin much thought until they saw a story on the evening news about residual delays at the airport because of the weather.

    "I just wondered if her flight was canceled in advance and she didn't bother to go," Charlotte says now, as she stirs more sugar than usual into her coffee. "I figured she might not have left the house if she knew about the delays, or that maybe she would have come back if she couldn't get out."

    Nydia shrugs. "Haven't seen her," she reiterates, "but if she's gone, I'll go make up her room again before I leave."

    "Leave?"

    "It's Sunday, my day off."

    Oh, that's right. Nydia always leaves
Oakgate
after breakfast and doesn't return until Monday morning. Where she goes, Charlotte has no idea-not that she's ever given the topic much thought. She supposes the housekeeper must have an apartment somewhere, or maybe a friend she stays with.

    She has to have some kind of life beyond
Oakgate
. Charlotte certainly hopes she does.

    That way, it'll be easier for her to move on after the place is sold.

    "Well, then," she tells Nydia, as she opens the wooden file box where she keeps the seafood recipe, "you should just go ahead, and don't worry about the guest room now. There's no rush."