Violet Eyes (10 page)

Susan hadn’t gone home after dropping Rachel off. Instead, she’d headed over to the Windsor Retirement Home. Some people went out on dates and hit the bars on a Friday night.

Susan read to the elderly.

It wasn’t something she talked about, it was just what she did. When her dad had moved there with Alzheimer’s when she was just seventeen, Susan had made it a habit to go to the home every weekend. Every Friday after school she stopped at the Krystal’s on the corner of
Third and Main and got Dad his favorite sliders and onion rings and then snuck them into the home in her school backpack. She wasn’t supposed to bring in outside food—the staff liked to keep all the seniors on the same bland diet, so they didn’t run into any gastric problems.

But Dad had always loved his grease. He frequently didn’t remember who
she
was when she walked in, but his face always lit up at the sight of the Krystal’s bag when she closed his door and pulled it out of her backpack.

After they fought over the last onion ring, she’d pull out the latest John Saul or Tess Gerritsen book and read him a chapter. It really didn’t matter what she read since he didn’t remember much of anything week to week. So at the beginning, Susan just read whatever novel she was in the middle of herself. It was a win-win for both of them. She got some reading done, and it calmed Dad. The wrinkles in his forehead—probably from trying to remember who the hell she was—always softened as she read. And sometimes by the time she was done, he was fast asleep. She’d adjust the pillows around his head and pull a blanket over his skeletal frame to keep him warm until he woke again. Then she’d slip from the room to head home to Mom and her brothers. They didn’t visit Dad like she did. Mom had divorced him a few years before, and the boys had never really gotten to know him before he got sick.

But Susan had always been daddy’s little girl. He’d always had a peppermint candy in his pocket for her when she was a girl. When she’d started visiting him in the home, in a way, she was trying to pay him back. To ease his way away.

By the time her father passed, a half a dozen seniors were joining their Friday night Krystal’s and Spooky Stories parties. She brought in two or three sacks of burgers every week, and had to smuggle the garbage back out, after getting repeated lectures and the evil eye from the head nurse.

After her dad’s bed was empty, she still kept going to Windsor every Friday. At first, she wasn’t sure what to do. But after she stopped at the home a couple weeks after her dad’s death just to say hi, she realized that Mr. Hartnell and Mr. Myers depended on her. Even old Mrs. Moskowicz had joined their reading circle. Early on, Susan had always offered food to the old woman, who always shook her head in distaste. “Not good for ya,” she’d say. But sometimes the old woman still snuck a greasy fry when she thought nobody was looking. Susan always did her best not to let Mrs. Moskowicz see that she saw. But she always made sure a bag of Krystal’s ended up within the woman’s reach.

Over the past couple years the people had changed. Old-timers dropped off, new ones took their place.

Instead of just reading whatever she happened to be reading, Susan now saved a book especially for the Krystal’s gang, because not all of them had memory problems. So she couldn’t just read
whatever
each week.

Tonight, they had worked on
The Hunger Games
. The old German guy, Mr. Schmitt, had requested it a month ago. “What’s all this fuss about?” he had asked. “Why don’t you show us?”

“I haven’t been able to stop thinking about Katniss all week,” Mrs. Moskowicz said when she’d walked in the communal lounge. With most people, that’d sound like an endorsement, but with Mrs. M., it was more like a complaint (How dare she invade my brain!) The old woman didn’t even attempt to hide it when she’d reached a shaking hand into the Krystal’s bag and pulled out a burger. Things had changed a lot over the months and years. The head nurse looked the other way now about the Krystal’s, which was good, since their reading group had outgrown anyone’s bedroom and had to be held in the common area.

“So you all want to keep going with this one?” Susan had asked, sitting down in the easy chair and pulling her legs up Indian style. The burger bags quickly passed around the room as everyone cried out, “Yes!” Mr. Schmitt didn’t say anything, but she saw the eagerness in his nod—and it wasn’t just the Parkinson’s.

Susan had grinned, and begun to read. This really was her favorite part of the week. When she began to read, the crumples of the hamburger wrappers quickly stilled, along with all the mumbles and side conversations. Mr. Schmitt and Mr. Everett slapped at pesky flies that were circling the room a few times, but otherwise, nothing broke the quiet besides Susan’s voice.

An hour later, despite entreaties to read more, she packed up her things and sent them back to their rooms.

“Next week,” she promised. “My voice is tired, and so are you all. I can see it.”

She ignored the protests, but accepted more than a few old man hugs. Some lingered more than perhaps was seemly, which always made Susan smile.

“Next week.”

Chapter Fourteen

Saturday, May 11. 10:49 a.m.

Rachel held the leash, and let it out slowly, like a fishing line. Feral moved quickly across her neighbor’s parkway, struggling to put as much distance between him and her house as he could. He wanted to be out, chasing squirrels and mice until his jaws closed on their soft, juicy flesh. He didn’t want to sit on the kitchen floor of a house where the sun never shone and there were no animals to chase. Because it
was
all about the chase. Once he got the beasts, he honestly didn’t care. Catching, was the hard part. The part that felt instinctively good. Truth be told, he’d rather toy with the tiny beasts he caught than eat them, though instinctually he knew that he was supposed to devour his catch. But they were more like really fun toys than dinner to him, after having been trained to eat kibble from the bowl.

That didn’t stop him from wanting to run after them, however. Not at all.

As Feral ran and sniffed every plant and bush on the parkway, Rachel herself leaned against a palm that someone had imported and planted deep into the earth, hoping to turn their heavily humid neighborhood into a tropical paradise.

It was the presence of palms that really made Florida feel like it was an exotic place and not just a stiflingly hot steam bath situated somewhere in Indiana.

Eric was still asleep as the sun peeked over the distant green of the Everglades, and Rachel had let Feral pull her out and down the sidewalk of their house before she grabbed on to the palm tree for anchor support. Her ankle still was killing her, but it was a bit better, and she knew nothing was broken…so that made it easier to push herself. She kept her makeshift walking stick close at hand, and wrapped the leash twice around the tree and waited as the dog darted from one clump of plants to the next, sniffing like a cocaine addict.

As Feral followed scents around from plant to plant, pulling at the end of the leash, Rachel thought about Anders’s threats on the phone. Would he be turning up at her doorstep tonight? Next Friday? And what would she do if her doorbell rang, and it was him? He was Eric’s father, after all. If her son was nearby, she couldn’t very easily slam the door in his face, though that’s certainly what she’d like to do.

“Morning, neighbor,” a familiar voice said.

It was Billy. The guy whose presence had allowed her to date a human last night, instead of a Neanderthal.

“Hey,” Rachel smiled. “Thanks again for watching Eric last night. I really appreciate it. He’s a great kid, but sometimes you really do just need to get out on your own, you know?”

Billy nodded, the curls of his sun-bleached hair shaking in the early morning sun. “I had a good time with him,” he said. “I never had a little brother, so, hanging out with him is kind of like I did. Happy to come over any…time.”

As he said “any”, Billy’s eyebrow twitched, and for just a second, his face seemed to freeze. Rachel noticed it, and wondered if he had a condition she should be aware of. Her mother instinct kicked in and suddenly her whole “feel good about the babysitter” vibe tasted a little sour. Then he was back to normal, and that frat boy smile firmly in place. “I’m kinda between jobs right now,” he added.

“I saw that in some of those interviews with you on TV,” Rachel admitted. “How are you holding up?”

Billy shrugged. “’Bout as good as could be expected, I suppose. After you see your girlfriend’s face eaten away by spiders, you kinda don’t have much farther down you can go, I think. Only way is up.”

Feral barked three times at a clump of something. Rachel wasn’t sure what the plant was exactly, except that its leaves were long and thick and spiky. Landscapers kept finding new varieties of domesticated weeds to insert into lawns. She whistled and then called, “Feral!”

The dog didn’t move, but its tail went straight back in the air. Full alert.

“I’ll get him,” Billy said, and ran to the neighbor’s lawn to shoo the dog.

When he came back, Feral yipping in irritation but drawn by the leash, Billy grinned. “I babysit, catch dogs, and really, whatever else you need.”

“Can you rub-out asshole husbands?” Rachel asked.

“I am all-purpose,” he said. “Do you have an asshole husband?”

“Did,” Rachel said. “Now he’s an asshole ex. And he’s on his way here, from what I can tell.”

Billy frowned. “Do you seriously need some help with that?”

Rachel’s stomach chilled to talk about it. “Might,” she said. “If you see a cop car in the driveway, you’ll know why.”

“Call me first,” Billy said. “I’m closer. And I know people.” He raised an eyebrow. “You shouldn’t have to worry about stuff like that.”

“Everyone’s got their shit to deal with,” she said. “Hopefully mine won’t make the news, like yours did.”

He closed his eyes a second, and looked away, nodding. “Yeah, you don’t need that. Nobody needs that.”

“How did you end up out on that particular island anyway?” she asked.

He smiled, a little sadly. “I mentioned I
know
people, right?”

She nodded, and pulled the leash back as Feral struggled to roam back to the neighbor’s lawn.

“Well, I used to have a nice little business running, um, deliveries across the border. I was just a kid tooling around with a small boat, right? Nobody ever bothered me. I picked up stuff off the coast and ferried it in to Sheila Key. There was a little drop-off point there. Otherwise, the place was abandoned.”

“Drugs?” Rachel asked.

He nodded. “Mainly grass. It was good money for a while, until one day they didn’t believe the innocent college kid act. I did a little bit of time, and when I got out this year, I promised myself I’d never get involved in anything like that again. I’ll tell you what—I still don’t think there’s anything wrong with smoking, so I never had a problem helping people to get it. I think it’s ridiculous that people can smoke cigarettes and drink alcohol but can’t smoke weed. But I’m not going to jail for it again.”

Rachel nodded. “I fought the law, and the law won?”

He cracked a smile. “Exactly.” He pointed across the street at the small frame house. “My dad died last year, and I inherited the house. I’m not going to put that in jeopardy. It’s not much, but it’s home, right?”

He met her eyes and she could see the sadness there as he said, “I’ve lost everything else in my life, I figure I should hang on to something.”

Rachel knew from the news that his girlfriend was one of the people who had died on Sheila Key. “Were you with your girlfriend a long time?”

Billy shook his head. “No, just since I went back to college this term. But she was pretty amazing. And it’s my fault she’s gone. I took her to that island because I knew it from the drug runs. I thought it was completely empty and safe. Turns out, there was some kind of scientific outpost there and a ton of killer bugs. My past hurt me again.”

“You can’t blame yourself for that. You didn’t know.”

He shrugged. “If I’d been a good boy, I’d never have known about the place and wouldn’t have taken them there. Karma’s a bitch.”

Rachel thought of the first time she met Anders, and of their last conversation.

“Yeah,” she agreed. “It really is.”

Chapter Fifteen

Saturday, May 11. 11:22 a.m.

The coffee maker let out its last gasp of gurgling steam. Betty Anne Haidan pushed herself up and off of the crushed cushions of her old green recliner with a couple labored breaths and lumbered to the kitchen. She’d slept late this morning, and her morning coffee was coming just in time for lunch. But that was okay; she had no appointments to keep. She might not change out of her morning robe until dinnertime. It was good to be retired.

She pulled her favorite mug from the sink—it was pink with a border of ivy circling the rim. A black script covered the middle, announcing
I’m sure you have something interesting to say but…please say it to someone else!

Betty Anne picked up the coffeepot and poured a healthy dose of her morning pick-me-up into the mug. Then she reached towards the back of the counter for the bowl of sugar. She liked her coffee thick with flavor…and sweet. Bitter honey, she sometimes called it.

Her fingers had just lifted the top of the sugar bowl lid when she saw it.

Creeping along the lip of the counter, where it met the tile of the wall.

Eight tiny legs. Moving steadily towards her.

The ceramic lid clattered with a ceramic clink back to the bowl as Betty Anne screamed. “George! George get in here.”

Betty Anne pulled the mug back along the counter with her as she stared at the creature. It paused at her outburst, but then began to creep forward again. She watched those short legs move like a locomotive; all in sync. The spider seemed to slip along on air as those horrible legs drove its black hideous back along her counter. It had a strange slash of purple across that back, but Betty Anne didn’t dare look closer to see what shape that color was in. Diamond-shaped was it? Wasn’t that a Black Widow? Or was that a Brown Recluse? No, the Brown Recluse had a fiddle shape, she remembered.