Page 47 of In the Bones
Silence. Woody’s mouth gaped, but he couldn’t bring himself to form a single word. Behind the island, Blair’s head pounded with bewilderment and fear. An NHL player was talking to her dad about a dead body. Nothing about the scene felt real except the tremble in Blair’s hands when she splayed them on the model lighthouse, her back pressed hard against the painted wood.
“I don’t …” Her dad popped his jaw once, twice.
“The detectives showed me her picture,” said Mikko. “And after I left, I remembered something. You were with her, Woody. That night, at my house.”
“I—”
“Woody,” said Mikko, shaking his head. “I thought we were friends.”
“We are.”
“I thought so. But I also learned today that your wife has been working for me, and neither of you told me who she was.”
Your wife. The guy was talking about Blair’s mom. She worked in lots of rich people’s houses in the summer months,but Blair had no idea Mikko Helle was one of Nicole’s clients. Blair thought about Saturday night, when her mom hadn’t been around for dinner. The slam of a car door had woken her up around two a.m., and when she’d looked outside, she’d seen Stacy’s Kia in the driveway and her mother stumbling toward the house. That wasn’t like Nicole, not at all.
When Blair looked around the side of the lighthouse again, her dad was pushing a hand through his hair over and over. “I didn’t know about that.”
“You didn’t know your wife was spying on me?”
“Spying!” Blair saw a spray of spittle escape Woody’s lips. Mikko flinched, and his face turned crimson, a red mask of disgust.
When Nash heard about Mikko Helle moving to town, he’d found an interview with the guy and made Blair read it. Her impression had been that Mikko was fun, a geyser of optimism and bringer of good times. That wasn’t what Blair was witnessing now, and the disparity stung like liquor downed too fast.
“Most of her clients come from her friend Stacy.” Woody was talking fast now, his voice frantic. “She sold you your place, right? It’s just a coincidence, that’s all.”
“Partnerships,” Blair heard Mikko say, “are about trust. They can’t exist without it. And you trusted me, Woody. When there were delays, you trusted me to take care of it. The problem is, I don’t know if I can trust you.”
Woody had lowered his head to stare at the path that wound its way around the course toward the exit. He had his back to Blair, but she could see his shoulders heaving.
“Mikko,” he said. “I didn’t fucking kill that girl. Trust me. Trustthat.”
Blair didn’t remember unrooting her feet or retracing her steps to the building, but somehow she was inside again and she couldn’t breathe. Nash was close beside her, whispering something inaudible while she sank to her knees behind the counter, choking back sob after sob.
This couldn’t be real. It wasn’t right. Whatever he thought had happened, whatever he believed Woody had done, MikkoHelle had it wrong. What stuck with Blair, though, was that her dad knew about this body. Thisgirl. He’d met Mikko here, at the course after hours. He’d come willingly.
It was this fact above all others that made Blair heave a ragged breath and collapse against Nash on the stained tile floor.
FORTY-ONE
Tim
The house was quiet when Tim got home. Part of him wanted to flop down on the couch and sleep through until morning, but his desire to see Shana and Darcy won out. He found them upstairs in the bathroom, Darcy splashing happily in the tub.
“Hey you.” Shana tipped back her head to accept a kiss; she smelled like baby shampoo and applesauce, the spoils of Darcy’s dessert. “We’re almost done here and then we can figure out something for dinner. Darcy already ate at your mom’s.”
“Hallo Dada,” said the kid, gazing up at him. “I got pigles.”
“Pigles,” Tim repeated, squeezing one eye shut and giving her an appraising look. Shana had shaped Darcy’s lathered hair into two tiny tails, one on each side of her head. “Pigtails!” he said. “You’ve got pigtails. They look great, sweetie.”
Dabbing at the soapy tufts, Darcy grinned up at him. “Tanks.”
“It’s funny,” Shana said fifteen minutes later, when Darcy had been dried off, read to, and bundled into bed. “All the warnings you hear about the terrible twos and how hard it is to survive the toddler years? That doesn’t scare me half as much as the idea that, one day, she’ll be a woman living in this world.”
Tim sat down on the edge of the bed and slipped an arm around his wife’s waist. “I can’t stop thinking about her either. I keep picturing her bones curled up in that basement. Her mother told me she hated being alone.”
“Jesus.” Shana pressed the heels of her hands, raw and pink from the bathwater, against her eyes, and Tim realized he’d been ignoring an obstinate low-grade headache for hours.
Accepting Angelica’s death felt like a bridge too far. She’d come north for the weekend, just like thousands of touristseach year, and had the shit luck of crossing paths with a stranger who’d snuffed out her life like a flame in a draft. Whatever happened with Woody, however he was involved, the whole family’s lives were about to change in irreparable ways. And here sat Tim and Shana, whose daughter’s future in a country fraught with danger remained unknown. Tim dropped his head to look down at his thighs. His eyes had started to burn.
