Perfect Timing (11 page)

“What did you tell him, Isabel?”

Her mouth closed; her head bowing dejectedly. “I told him, ‘Yeah, sure, you guessed it. It was something like that.’”

“Once more, please, a little louder.”

Her head jerked up. “It doesn’t matter what I said to the clerk! It wasn’t true! I just wanted to get back to Aidan—” It was too late. The officer’s doughy face had risen to a smug look of triumph. Short of picking Aidan out of a lineup, Isabel had slam-dunked their case. She shook her head, attempting speech-like words: “Officer Denton, you’ve got to listen to me. I came home and Stanton was there, sprawled out on the sofa. He’s the one who came on to me! It . . . it wasn’t the first time!”

“Do you have proof of that? Have you ever confided a specific incident to anyone?”

“Specific?” she said, thinking about what she implied to Carrie. “No, not exactly specific.”

“I didn’t think so. Isabel, Rick Stanton is a respected member of this community. That’s a fact. People will not take kindly to slanderous remarks. Something else you might want to consider is Aidan Roycroft’s reputation with girls . . . women, a fact for which we can get plenty of testimony.”

For the first time since she’d known Aidan, Isabel didn’t know what to do. “I want . . . I want to see him,” she said, hoping he might. “I
need
to see Aidan.”

Officer Denton rose and crossed to Isabel’s side of the table. A hand gripped her shoulder. While the gesture was empathetic, she jerked away. “You can’t. Aidan’s waiting to be arraigned. We’d really like to get the rest of these charges straightened out. You don’t have to lie for him, Isabel. What he tried to do wasn’t your fault. When you’re ready, we have someone you can talk to, a counselor trained to deal with the emotions of assault victims.” Isabel cringed. It wasn’t worth explaining again. Apparently, Rick Stanton’s word was law. Didn’t he tell her as much just hours ago? “Think about it,” she said. “But we won’t need your cooperation for the aggravated assault or the robbery.”

“What robbery?” Isabel looked at the officer, guessing she was about to accuse Aidan of knocking over the convenience store.

“At the farmhouse, after Sheriff Sanders arrested Aidan, they found Rick Stanton’s Rolex, his money clip.” Isabel’s hand flew to her mouth. “That’s right, Isabel. It wasn’t enough that the young man shot Mr. Stanton, beat him senseless, but he had to steal from him as well.”

“I took the money and the watch!”

“What for? What possible reason could you have to take his money and watch?”

She’d never felt such a panic, not even at Rick Stanton’s mercy. And for this reason, Isabel’s confession continued on a blind ramble, “I sent Aidan to the truck, ahead of me. Then I checked Rick’s breathing to see if it was steady. It was. I dialed 911. Then, I don’t know, I freaked . . . thought about how it all looked.”

“That’s the first rational thing I’ve heard you say.”

Her neck wrenched back, realizing she was only digging a deeper hole. “I never imagined anything as horrible as this. How could I? Taking the money and the watch,” she insisted, “it was a lame attempt to make the whole thing look like a robbery.”

“I see. Maybe we’ll have to revisit the robbery charge.” Then she offered a pitiable look. “It only bolsters our position, you staging a robbery to try to cover up the despicable things Aidan did, dialing 911 in an attempt to save him from a murder charge.”

“Wait . . . what? That’s not what I’m saying at all.” Then Isabel shut up, invoking her right to remain silent. So far, all she’d managed to do was admit to confessing to a convenience store clerk that Aidan tore her dress and hit her. That, in fact, Aidan did fire the gun. Now there was the robbery she’d staged to deflect suspicion from the guy she was hopelessly in love with. The one for whom she’d, apparently, go to any length. If she kept this up, Aidan would get the death penalty. She needed a different plan. Isabel shifted her tone. “I’m sorry, Officer Denton. Can I . . . Is there any chance I can go home? Maybe things will be clearer there. I need time to think.”

After a last warning to reconsider, the door was unlocked. The Catswallow Sheriff’s Department was willing to release Isabel. Before she could leave they photographed the bruises on her wrists, the tear in her dress. Passing back through the booking area, she did pick up a helpful piece of information. A judge was being dragged out of bed to preside over Aidan’s arraignment. In the exchange she heard something about him being an old hunting buddy of Stanton’s.
Super.
Isabel looked around for Aidan, who was nowhere in sight. But a familiar face did rush toward her as Carrie Lang came through the jailhouse door.

CHAPTER NINE

Catswallow, Alabama

O
N
THE
RIDE
HOME
,
CAREFULLY
,
BUT
WITH
MORE
EMOTION
THAN SHE’D USED
in the holding room, Isabel recounted what happened. Carrie said nothing, concentrating on the road. As they turned into Fountainhead, Isabel asked if this was different from the story she’d heard. “Very,” she replied. Isabel waited for realization to dawn. There was only the fumbling of keys and a shaking of hands as they made their way inside. Carrie surveyed the room full of broken furniture, one long stuttering breath pulsing from her. Isabel looked on, thinking how many years it took for her mother to acquire the garage sale possessions. She’d worked so hard for everything to amount to this. Picking up a toppled bar stool, she asked, “Who do you believe?” Carrie didn’t answer, staring at pieces of their coffee table, which was now kindling. Isabel was quiet, letting her process the facts: Prince Charming, as it turned out, was nothing more than a sleazy car salesman.

Isabel excused herself to the bathroom. Her gaze panned the dingy space that they’d tried to brighten with sun-colored paint and frilly throw rugs from Target. The crinkle of fabric amplified in the tiny bathroom, morphing from a shimmering rustle to a crackle of doom. She couldn’t get the damn thing off fast enough, flinging it into the tub, grabbing a pair of dirty jeans. Angrily, she yanked on a bra and a T-shirt that hung from the back of the door. Slumping onto the floor, Isabel racked her brain for words that would convince her mother. Given her already poor opinion of Aidan, a positive outcome seemed grim. Isabel’s head pounded. Big surprise. She opened the door to the vanity with her big toe. Inside there was a plastic crate. She picked through, still with her toes, rooting around for something stronger than Tylenol, a smidge less lethal than cyanide. Tylenol PM, generic Tylenol. She bent forward on her knees, weeding through with her hands . . . expired Tylenol.
Geez, do we not own anything outside the acetaminophen family?
Then, past the crate, far toward the back, she saw a box. Retrieving it, Isabel sat hard on her behind. Where was a vat of cyanide when you needed one? It was a home pregnancy test—a
used
home pregnancy test. Inside the box were the contents. It didn’t require any detective skills, much less a high school education to interpret the results: bright blue and positive.

While different scenarios raced through her mind, Isabel decided to go straight to the source. Only two people lived there. She hurried out of the bathroom, box in hand. “Would you mind explaining this to me?”

Carrie Lang sat on the edge of her bed, shoulders slumped, her exhausted appearance gripped with new meaning. She looked up, eyes as round—well, as round as a baby’s bottom. “Isabel, where did you get . . . You weren’t supposed to find that!”

“Clearly! You . . . you’re pregnant, now, today?” she demanded as if this were an event she’d merely overlooked. Her mother nodded. “You’re pregnant and Rick Stanton is the father?” She nodded again and Isabel’s stare bore down, incredulous and distraught.
Tell me this isn’t the complete reversal of every mother-daughter confrontation on the topic.

“I was going to tell you tomorrow, after all the gala business calmed down. I wasn’t sure how you’d feel about it.” She laughed, swiping at a tear. “Of course, the gist of that conversation, my announcement, has changed a bit.”

“Announcement, like you were thrilled to tell me?”

“I was hoping . . .” She rose from the bed and moved toward her daughter. “Like I said, I was going to tell you after this weekend. Rick and I—”

“Rick and you what?” She took a giant step back. “Does he know?”

“Of course he knows. Rick has asked me to marry him. Like I said, Isabel, he’s an honorable man. That dinner with Strobe and Trey, he wanted to tell everyone then. I convinced him to wait. I wanted to tell you privately, being as the news . . . well, being as the news included something more than an engagement announcement.”

“And you’re happy about this? I mean, before tonight, this is what you wanted?”

“I can’t say I’d given much thought to having another child. But it is Rick’s and I . . . I do love him, Isabel.

So she’s said

“And . . .”

“And what? Accidents happen?”

“Even at thirty-nine,” she said, chagrined. “Rick was so excited when I told him. You should have seen him. Happy, talking about our future . . . together.” Isabel turned away. “Anyway . . . I won’t say it didn’t speed up a proposal, but we’ve already set a date. Next month, September. Everything was going to work out just fine until a few hours ago.”

“You mean until Rick attempted to . . . until you found out what he tried to do.” Isabel’s eyes moved from her mother to the mirror where Carrie reflected on herself. Fingertips slid from her cheek to her jaw, following the line of a face that was drawn, burdened. “Mom, you do believe me? You know that Aidan and I are telling the truth, right?”

Carrie never deviated from her reflection. It was trancelike and frightening. “Isabel, there are so many things to consider. This baby in particular.” But her voice was lost, her stare fixed on her midsection. “These last years have been difficult, harder than I might have imagined when we came here. My, um, job for one. It never panned out like I expected. I don’t have to tell you that.” Her gaze stuttered onto Isabel. “I don’t want to have this baby without Rick. By myself.”

“You’d have me.”

A weak smile crept across her face. “And you’ll what? Give up college, take a job at the Jiffy Mart to help support me and the baby? I’ve made some precarious choices, but absolutely not, Isabel. Absolutely not,” she said, shaking her head. “That much I’m sure about. But I can’t go it alone either. I don’t want to. I’m better at being married. When I left your father, or he left me, I thought I’d prove myself to the world. That’s what I set out to do. That was my intention, to make a better life for us. But I’m not like you, independent and full of fire. If it makes me a horrible person to say I want a life that doesn’t rest on cinder blocks and rely on twelve-hour shifts, well, I suppose I am. I’ve done alone. It was challenging enough with a teenager. I’ve zero desire to try it with an infant.”

The fear on her face was even plainer than her words. She clung to the bedpost as if it possessed human comfort. Isabel understood that much, piecing together the aftermath of Eric Lang and her mother’s fears. None of it was without merit. The two of them, they’d barely scraped by, the hospital making cutbacks instead of expanding. It had tempted Carrie with the world, and she’d uprooted them for the promise of a future. In the end, she was lucky to hang on to her job. A baby with no Rick would be tantamount to disaster. Maybe it would be worse than what happened to Isabel that night. It was one thing for Carrie to cope with a teenager in a
modular home community.
She couldn’t imagine a place like Fountainhead being all she knew. Damn them both: her father for leaving them and Rick Stanton for showing up. Her mother’s body trembled, though Isabel couldn’t bring herself to be human comfort. She was as distraught as the night they’d arrived home to their house in New Jersey. The same night Carrie Lang found her husband with a man.

She and Isabel had returned, unexpectedly, from a Girl Scout camping trip. Isabel threw up first, after the hot dogs, before the s’mores. Then Carrie threw up after finding Eric with Patrick Bourne. Isabel had crawled onto the sofa. Her mother went upstairs. There was a scream, awful and eye-opening, she supposed. Absorbing Carrie’s lost expression, a well-worn flash of anger pulsed through Isabel. Her father was still with Patrick, and they were in this mess. “You’re choosing not to believe me,” Isabel said, pushing her father away, feeling anger shift.

“Oh, Isabel, if only it were that simple. If what I thought made any difference. You know what the sheriff thinks. You see how it looks. All of Catswallow will side with Rick. It’s clear enough that Aidan beat him to a pulp, and whether it’s intentional or accidental, Aidan will take the blame for the shooting. If he’s smart, that’s what he’ll say, that it was an accident.”

“And you’re okay with that, knowing he’ll go to prison, that his life will be ruined.”

“Better his life than yours.” Isabel’s head inched forward, eyes widening. “You know my feelings about Aidan. It’s only a matter of time until he devastates you. If it takes something this drastic to get him out of your life . . . so be it.”

“Do you hate him that much?”

“It has nothing to do with hate. It’s not black-and-white. Whether you admit it or not, I see how lost you are to Aidan, willing to do anything. I don’t want this,” she said, arms swinging wide, “to happen to you. I don’t want you to wake up a dozen years from now and find yourself living in Stella Roycroft’s trailer while Aidan is out with whoever . . . well, whoever does it for him. Hear me, Isabel. Aidan Roycroft will do that to you.”

Isabel paused, calculating just how alone she and Aidan were. Lips pursed, she tried to follow her mother’s skewed logic. “And what about Rick? Is it your plan to stand by your man—no matter what?”

“There’s another interesting complication.” With renewed energy, Carrie rose from the bed and tugged on a sweater. “Who knows what Rick’s future will be. Or did you forget that he has a bullet in him?” She moved toward the living room as Isabel followed.

“Where are you going?”

“Back to the hospital. I was there when they brought him in. I saw the films. I’ve seen my share of bullet wounds. When Rick comes out of surgery, I don’t think it’s going to be good news. I want to be there when they tell him.” Her eyes filled with tears as she moved toward her daughter, hands reaching. Isabel couldn’t back away fast enough. “Think about what I’ve said. Tonight has altered four lives. Yours, mine, Rick’s,” she said, placing a hand over her abdomen, “and this baby’s. It’s my job to protect both of you. I know it doesn’t seem like it, not right now. But I really am doing what’s best for all of us.”

As she left, Isabel whispered, “Five lives, Mom. What about Aidan’s?”

Gravel spun, then the roar of a bad muffler faded. One worry disappeared with her. In a strategic move to bolster, or buy, her confidence Isabel guessed that Rick would have her in a new vehicle by week’s end. Something safe and reliable for her and the baby. Falling onto the sofa, she considered her mother’s situation and Aidan’s. Both were unnervingly real, though an adamant allegiance no longer felt as firm. Carrie’s choice had seen to it. While Isabel’s decision was not painless, it was also not difficult. Rising to her feet, she followed her mother’s cue. She slid on a pair of flip-flops, slinging a macramé purse over her shoulder. With a short backward glance and sides chosen, Isabel took Rick’s keys from the bar and headed toward the Caddy Escalade.