The truth was worse, the damage self-inflicted. There were no huge transfers to Liberia, only the last payments to Sandy Hollow, an advance to the Concrete Guy, and also the corresponding retainer to an attorney specializing in construction. (Simeon would be up for a fight over all those cracks, even if Hailey wasn’t.) There were debits for groceries and Hailey’s gym membership (neglected as of late) and the goddamn Christmas dresses and the Shoreby fees. And those charges were just the infantry: January would bring the heavy artillery, the next round of Sandy Hollow and the spring school fees, and lord knew what expenses for the stripped floors and the cracked walls...
The irony was not lost on Hailey; without Sunshine Enterprises, they’d have hit this low a lot sooner.
It was almost a blessing when her parents were not at home. The rain turned to snow as Hailey made her way back toward Cleveland, and this time she did have to concentrate on the road. Mack would be picking up the girls now, and whether it was that Hailey didn’t want to be alone in the house or she didn’t wantthemto be, the dread in the pit of her stomach had been replaced with something more urgent by the time she reached Bratenahl. It was just getting dark, and some of the Christmas lights had already come on; the fact that they had none of their own—no lights, no wreath, no tree yet—was barely a blip on Hailey’s radar. Betsy had a wreath, of course; Hailey hadn’t noticed before, but as she got closer to home, she could just about make out dried orange slices and cinnamon sticks; a rich velvet bow in sage green. It looked perfect, and expensive, and almost identical to the Sinclairs’ across the street.
As she turned the wheel, Hailey glanced at her own naked front door and found it—open.
Wide open.
Mack.How could he be so careless, especially now? That thought lasted less than a second, before she saw that the study window was open too, with the sash pushed as high as it would go. The downstairs powder room window too, and the one in the dining room and—
Hailey stepped out of the car, leaving the door ajar.
“Oh my God,” she half yelled into the empty street. And then, “Mack?
“Mack?!”
Keeping well back from the house, she circled the yard. The back patio doors were open, and the upstairs windows. She could hardly make contact with the buttons on her phone; it took her three tries to call Mack, and his “Hey” when they connected sounded like a voice from another world.
“The house is open!” she said to him. “All the windows! Someone’s been here!”
“Huh? Hold on, I’m just up the street.” He hung up on her, and not a minute later he was there, and she was screaming at him not to let the girls get out of the car.
“What the—”
“I came home, and everything was open like this! What the hell? This is insane! Someone could still be in there.”
Mack opened the garage door—the sound was like thunder in the quiet street—and came out with a golf club.
“You can’t go in,” Hailey told him as he advanced toward the front door. “We have to call the police.”
But he didn’t listen, only shook his head. Then he disappeared inside the gloomy front hall, and Hailey held her breath as lights flicked on all over the house, and windows began to slam shut.
“Don’t touch them!” she shouted. “Fingerprints!”
“Gulliver!” she heard Mack call, and then his face appeared in Mabel’s window. “Is he out there?”
“No!” Hailey held nothing back now. “Gulliver!” she screamed. “Gulliver!” She scanned the bushes but was too afraid to leave the girls and check the backyard.
The slamming of windows and the shouting of the dog’s name from inside the house continued, echoing through the cold air. For the first time, Hailey missed Lakewood—if this had happened at their old place, half the street would have been out within ten seconds, surrounding them, fussing over the girls, backing Mack up. Here in Bratenahl there was no one; the half dozen houses in the cul-de-sac were dark, except for the perfect white lines of the early Christmas lights.
It grew eerily quiet; maybe Mack was checking closets, or the basement. Or maybe he was lying dead in a pool of blood, and a murderer was about to charge out at them. Maybe only Hailey was left to protect her children.
She did what instinct told her to. Even though she knew the shit it might rain down on them, Hailey called the police.
36.
Afew years before his demise, my father married for the second time on the deck of theChasing Sunshine, and so the other thing he left behind for me when he died was his widow. Given the circumstances of his death, I was keen to settle his affairs quickly and get the hell out of Dodge, but during this time his wife was as indecisive and irritating as my own mother had been a decade earlier: Where should she go? What should she do? Where was all his money?
I was dealing with a question of my own: What to do with this albatross around my neck? I suppose I could have simply taken off and left her in the dust, but who knew what confidences this woman had been privy to, what details she could offer investigators? My warnings to back off went unheeded—hell hath no fury like a trophy wife denied her payout—and so when she started cozying up with the detectives looking into my father’s financials, something had to be done.
They say that violence is never the answer, but there are exceptions to every rule. I know my father would have agreed with me on this. (His wives, maybe not so much, God rest their souls...)
37.
Mack
The older policeman was as irritated with Hailey as Mack was. Mack had just checked the last viable closet that could hide an intruder, had just about recovered from the biggest jolt of adrenaline he’d ever experienced, when he heard the sirens. He knew immediately that Hailey had done exactly what he’d told her not to; now the question was how much she was going to tell them.
