Virtue Falls (28 page)

“Do you think I’m a fool, Mr. Banner? I’ve met men like you, lecherous old bastards who prey on young women like Misty and rob them of their youth and careers—”

“Mother!” Misty said.

“—and then toss them aside—”

“Mother!” Misty said again. “I don’t want to act!”

At the same time, Charles said, “Misty says she’s not a good actress.”

Frankie slapped her hand on the table.

Plates rattled.

“Yes, you do want to act,” she said to Misty. And to him, she said, “Misty’s a wonderful actress. If not for you, she could be in contention for an Academy Award. Did you know she turned down the lead for
Cape Fear
?”

“What’s
Cape Fear
?” he asked.

Frankie’s expression made it clear he had committed the ultimate faux pas. “It’s only the movie cited as most likely to win the Academy Award, with the meatiest female lead ever!”

“The lead was never actually offered to me, Mother,” Misty said.

“If you had offered that producer the slightest encouragement—”

“He wouldn’t have liked sleeping with me.” Misty’s dramatic pause proved she
did
know how to hold center stage. “I’m pregnant.”

Misty’s announcement slammed into the conversation, silencing Frankie at last. Silencing everyone, until Sandy laughed, a short burst of nasty amusement, then said hastily, “Congratulations, darling!”

Only the whiny two-year-old was oblivious to the upcoming grandmotherly explosion.

But Frankie did not explode—and that was worse. “A child? With your figure, dear? Your hips would expand, you’d lose your waist, and you’d be fit for nothing more than parts as the fat friend.”

“Misty won’t lose her figure,” Sandy said. “She’ll be beautiful.”

“Like you,” Bill said.

“Yes, Sandy, she’ll look like you—a huge bloated whale with swollen ankles. Three children, and you have to work.” Frankie took a long swig of wine. “Bill, with your lousy salary, you’d think you could keep it in your pants.”

“Mother, Sandy is happy!” Misty said.

“She didn’t even get around to putting on mascara.” That, apparently, was Frankie’s ultimate condemnation.

Sandy’s hand flew to her lashes.

Frankie leaned toward Misty, stared into her eyes, said, “I know a good doctor. Safe. Sanitary. We’ll take care of the problem. No one ever needs to know.”

For the longest time, Charles didn’t understand. Then he did.

An abortion. She wanted Misty to have an abortion.

That
bitch.
How dare she? In a level voice, he said, “Misty and I are married. We’re having a baby. I hope you’ll take this moment to congratulate us, but if you don’t, nothing will have changed. We
are
still married. And we
are
still having a baby.”

Beside him, he heard Misty take her first unrestricted breath.

Frankie shoved her chair back. In the tight confines of the dining room, it bounced against the wall, denting the Sheetrock, then slammed back under her, knocking her back onto her butt.

Bill grinned.

Frankie was unfazed. Tapping her index finger on the table, she leaned toward Charles. “Who are you, really? Who do you think you are to try to come between me and my daughter? I raised her. I sacrificed everything for her. She has what it takes to be a star, and if I have anything to say about it, she’s going to
be
a star. There’s nothing a skinny, old, balding scientist can do about it. You’re
nobody.
No one even cares who you are.”

Her eyes glittered with malice. She expected him to shrivel. She expected to him to stammer in his own defense. She thought she could make him run away. She didn’t understand him—or Misty—at all.

Charles had never in his life thought he could use his scientific knowledge to take out a competitor. But he had never before in his life had Misty to defend. “I understand what you’re trying to say, Frankie, and I completely agree. Misty is your daughter, the light of your life, and I came along and without acknowledging your role in her life, swept her off her feet and into a wedding chapel. I should have applied for your permission to marry her, but since I did not, let me assure you of my capability to love and support your daughter. You mentioned my age—yes, I am substantially older than Misty, but I’ve never been married before so you can clear your mind of any fears that I am a serial sexual predator. Misty is my first love, my first wife, and my only wife. Ever.”

Frankie tried to interrupt.

Charles spoke right over the top of her. “I’m mature enough to handle this relationship, and I also am a well-respected scientist in the field of geology. In fact, I might immodestly call myself the foremost scientist in the field of geology concerning the Pacific Ring of Fire and specifically the West Coast.”

“Geology.” Frankie made the word sound like an obscenity. “What does that even mean?”

“I’m so glad you asked.” Utilizing that same on-camera smile he’d seen Misty use to deal with unfortunate situations, he segued into a description of his work. Twenty years of his work. Hours and days and weeks and years of field work. Degrees in chemistry, biology, and geology. Evenings in a chemistry lab, nights in the library. He delved into college lectures. About geologic theories.

Misty propped her chin in her hand and stared adoringly.

Whenever he drew a breath, Sandy brightly asked a question.

Whenever Frankie tried to speak, Bill harrumphed and said, “How fascinating!” in a tone that clearly conveyed his absolute and total ignorance.

Charles took the stage as the villain, and came away the hero, and by the time he finished talking, Frankie stood outside, smoking a cigarette like Bette Davis on speed.

The silence that fell on the kitchen was pure unadulterated relief.

Bill picked up the drooping five-year-old. “I’ve got to put this little girl to bed, but good to meet you, Charles. You did something I thought no man could—you took out Frankie Winston.”

Sandy hugged her sister and laughed softly. “That’ll teach Mother to complain about my lasagna.”

Misty hugged her back, then put her head on Charles’s shoulder. “Charles has a grant to excavate a canyon in Washington State. As soon as the school year is over, we’re moving. I’m sorry to leave her with you, but I have to get out.”

“Don’t worry about it.” Sandy glanced out the window at the glowing tip of Frankie’s cigarette. “Without you, she won’t come around much. As far as she’s concerned, I’m a lost cause. Always have been.” She stroked her hand across her belly. “I really don’t care, but when she visits, I have to remind myself of that.”

“Why would what she thinks matter to you?” Charles asked. It was an honest question. “What is her influence on you?”

Neither woman spoke for a long moment.

Then Misty took a deep breath. “She’s our mother. But more than that, she’s … I know you couldn’t tell tonight, but when we were younger, she could be charming. Exciting! Fun! She played games with us and our friends. She took us places. She wrote plays and gave us parts and we acted them out. She put us in ballet, then did parodies of
The Nutcracker
. She was pretty and she talked to us like we were adults. All of our friends envied us our mother. We—Sandy and I—always knew that pleasant charm was a façade, and it would shatter at the slightest provocation, for no reason, sometimes in public, which was so embarrassing, and sometimes in private, and she…” Misty turned her face away.

Now he wanted to go out and choke Frankie.
No one
should make Misty writhe as if she was in pain.
No one.
But he kept his voice gentle. “Did she hurt you?”

“No. Not usually. Not physically. But if we weren’t smarter than everyone else in school, if we didn’t dance better and sing better and make her proud…” Misty’s voice grew hoarse with pain. “Then she told us we were nothing without her. I guess I’ve always been afraid … it was true.”

*   *   *

Charles scrubbed his hand across his face. “Misty and I never saw Frankie again,” he told Elizabeth and Garik. “The day that I was done teaching, we went to visit my parents in Ohio. They were older—I was an afterthought—and dismayed when they saw how young Misty was. But she won them over. Of course. When they found out they were going to be grandparents, there wasn’t anything they wouldn’t do for her. The next year, my mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. The year after, my father died of a heart attack. At the time I thought all that was tragedy, but now … thank God, Dad never saw me go to prison, and Mom never knew what happened to me.”

Elizabeth hadn’t realized the emotional traumas of her mother’s life, nor Aunt Sandy’s, when it came to that. She had a picture of her paternal grandparents in her album, sitting together on a flowered couch, dressed up and smiling, but she hadn’t known that Charles’s mother had also succumbed to the disease that now preyed on his mind, or thought about the fact she had barely missed meeting her father’s father. She could almost hear the wailing of the Fates as they wove the destiny of these lives …

She turned the page of her album and pointed to the photo of Misty, with a baby bump, standing in front of a small, neat, white painted house. The wind was blowing her blond hair, and she beamed at the camera as if she’d won the lottery. Elizabeth couldn’t help smiling at that Misty. “Then you moved to Virtue Falls.”

“Yes,” Charles said softly. “That’s Misty. That’s our place.”

Garik leaned closer. “Nice!”

“This is one of my favorite pictures.” Elizabeth stroked the edges of the photo. “Look how happy she is.”

“Did you take the photo, sir?” Garik asked. “Charles? Mr. Banner?”

Charles didn’t answer. He didn’t answer, didn’t move, didn’t even seem to breathe.

Elizabeth put her hand on his shoulder. “Father?”

He started as if she woke him. He looked at her, at Garik, and in wondering voice, he asked, “Who are you?”

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

Rainbow stood in front of the Oceanview Café and smoked a cigarette.

As a general rule, she didn’t smoke tobacco, but the last week had made her think of the Lloyd Bridges character in
Airplane
—“I picked a bad day to quit sniffing glue.”

She was tense. She was tired. Waitressing at the Oceanview now took Herculean effort. She wanted the aftershocks to go away, wanted everyone to stop looking scared, wanted the news helicopters to stop flying over the top of them on their way to cover the destruction in Forks, wanted her pretty little town back. Most of all, she wanted electricity flowing through the lights and stoves and water heaters. According to the rumors floating around, that wasn’t happening soon. So she smoked, and watched Old Man Namkung’s battered, rusty, out-of-alignment Ford F-350 farm truck weave down the street toward her.

Old Man Namkung was the best organic gardener west of the Olympic Mountains, and she hoped to hell he was headed her way because the town vegans were getting surly at being told all they had to eat was corn tortillas and stale peanuts out of a broken courthouse vending machine. If someone didn’t fling some kale at them pretty soon, they were going to lift their feeble little arms and pound their puny fists on the big, mean omnivores, and Rainbow would hate to see the slaughter that would ensue.

The truck slowed down and stopped against the curb.

She crushed the cigarette out against the building and got ready to rush forward and grab a crate of cantaloupes.

Andrew Marrero got out of the passenger side and slammed the door.

Hot damn. He looked mad.

His apostles, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and Joe, climbed out of the back.

No, wait. It was Benjamin, Luke, and Joe. But they were still nothing but sycophants hoping to make their ways up the geology chain of command by sucking up to Andrew Marrero.

From the looks on their faces, lately they hadn’t done too well.

Goodie. That made it a fine time to stroll over and have a chat.

She strolled, and when she got close she called, “Hey, Marrero, that’s not your usual mode of transportation. Something happen to your car?”

Marrero finished paying Old Man Namkung, put his wallet in his pocket, and smiled coldly. He was not happy to see her.

In the kind of precise English a guy would use when he was making sure he didn’t drop into colloquial Spanish, he said, “My car is a wreck.”

“Where? How?”

“It’s off the road halfway between here and Portland up by Willoughby Goddamn Creek with a crumpled fender, a punctured oil pan, and God knows what other damage”—Andrew’s voice swelled—“because these guys thought we could get back to Virtue Falls in my Jaguar!”

“What were you doing up by Willoughby Goddamn Creek?” she asked.

A pause.

Joe said, “We got lost.”

“Wow. Marrero’s beautiful Jaguar is in a ditch?” She liked repeating that.

“It is,” Andrew said.

“You tried to drive your Jaguar home after that earthquake?” She guffawed, and actually saw the blood vessels burst like fireworks in Andrew’s eyes. “That’s bad. No use blaming your sycophants, though. You’re a big boy, Andrew, and you’re in charge. It had to be your decision to leave Portland.”

Andrew stalked toward her like a guy who expected this feeble little woman to back up in the face of his displeasure.

She didn’t back up.

He stopped short.

Jesus. You’d think he would remember sleeping with her. But no. He was the kind of guy who forgot who he’d fucked as fast as he could, especially when it was someone like the town waitress. Now, if she’d been the state governor, she’d bet he would remember …