More blinking. “Uh… no, I don’t think so. When I left, my mother was in her room.”
“Alone?”
He flinches. Welcome to my world, Nolan, where some things cannot be unseen or unheard.
“Let’s go.” I stand and grab my bag.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
My name is Scarlet Stone, and I can’t remember ever feeling a connection to normal, well-adjusted people. My reflection has always been in the many faces of dysfunctional souls.
Nellie is alonein her room. The look of relief on Nolan’s face makes me smile.
“Are you announcing your engagement?” she asks, setting her book on the bedside table then swinging her legs off the side of the bed.
“We’re not dating, Mother.”
Nellie frowns. I don’t buy it.
“Can you give us a few minutes, Nolan?” I ask.
“Sure. I’ll be downstairs.” He shuts the door behind him.
“Scarlet, how have you been, dear?”
“Did you shoot Nolan at home or somewhere else?” There it is. I pulled the pin on the grenade. I’mthatsure she’s not going to have an epiphany—a sudden remembrance of her past.
Zero. There is absolutely no shock in her expression. Nellie didn’t forget. She’s not crazy—at least not in the way everyone thinks she is.
“My journal.” She nods. “You read my journal. I wrap the leather tie left to right, but the last time I opened it, the tie was wrapped right to left.”
Not Oscar’s mistake. Mine. He wound it back the same way it was when he found it, afterIwound it the wrong way. That’s why I do best behind a computer. I don’t see the physical details that he does or that my grandfather did.
There’s nothing in her journal that would lead me to think that she shot her son. We both know the journal only proves she’s been acting for years.
“I had a hunch that Harold was cheating on me. Intuition, I suppose. Harold said he was going on a business trip. He had this brown leather briefcase that I bought him after he graduated college. It traveled everywhere with him, especially on businesstrips. I found it in his office a few hours after he left. Of course, I knew I’d be getting a phone call with him all in a panic over leaving it.”
Nellie shakes her head. “The call never came. My mind wandered places a proper southern lady’s mind should never have to go. I made fools out of my parents when I married him. I wasn’t going to let him make a fool out of me. He had a handgun in a wooden box in our closet. I shoved it in my purse and headed to the car. I knew where he was. A day earlier, I wouldn’t have known.”
She laughs. “It’s funny how we already know certain things but our mind won’t let the images into the light until something else triggers it. I sawthem—the subtle looks, the accidental brush of their hands in passing that was anything but accidental. I saw it. I should have known before then. I just didn’t want to see it.”
“And Nolan?”
She focuses on me for the first time, every word until this point had been spoken with her eyes glazed over into the past. “He pulled up as I was getting ready to leave. It was his birthday. I’d forgotten my only child’s birthday. He offered to take me to dinner. I couldn’t say no, so I told him we needed to make a quick stop before going to the restaurant. He asked why we were going there? He knew them. We all knew them. I said I had a luncheon invitation to drop off and it would only take a few minutes, so he stayed in the car like I asked him to do.”
With one blink, Nellie’s tears fall. “I didn’t knock. The door was unlocked, so I opened it. I knew. It’s so hard to explain that slow ascent up the stairs knowing that everything in life is about to change forever. When I eased open the door, Bell shot up out of bed, holding a sheet over her naked body. No one was in bed with her. For a full three seconds I doubted myself. I heard the bathroom door open, and I prepared to explain to her husbandwhy I had let myself uninvited into their house. But it wasn’t her husband… it was mine.”
I haven’t blinked. I’m not sure I’ve taken a breath the whole time.
“I pulled the gun from my purse and aimed it at him.” Nellie pinches her eyes shut for few silent seconds, releasing more tears. “My hands were shaking so much I could barely keep my finger on the trigger.”
Even now, her hands shake folded in her lap.
“I was crying because my world seemed to be ending before my eyes. He was my husband. She was my friend. With each blink, I became more and more blinded by my emotions. Bell’s pleading voice was a mere echo. He… said nothing. I closed my eyes, and pulled the trigger.”
Biting her lips together, her body trembles in silent sobs. “Sh-sh-she jumped in front of him.”
I draw in a shaky breath, blinking back my own emotions.
