“That’s what Jay said. He said he was the exception.”
It was a minute before I followed. “You werewitheach of these men?” The question came out more startled than condemning, though, given the circumstances, I felt a touch of the latter. I understood a woman’s sexual desire. Oh boy, did I ever. I understood that the power of it could push her beyond reason. But the thought of being with one man after another after another made my skin crawl.
“Not all,” Grace said. “With one of them, it was only dinner. My son didn’t know that.”
“What did he know? And how? And why would knowing push him to this?”
She pointed from my hand, which had stopped working, to her head. I went back to applying color, while she reclipped the pictures and returned them to her bag. Her hand reemerged with a snapshot. She kept it in her lap for a minute before holding it up for me to see. The man in the photo was as good-looking as the others. The details of his features were different enough, but still, yet, oddly the same.
“My ex-husband,” Grace said.
I gasped. She had mentioned Chris’s father the week before—and Chrishad certainly asked about him—but in all the time I’d known Grace, she had never mentioned having had a husband. Never wanting to mention mine, I hadn’t asked. But this, now, was significant. Had Chris come from a one-nighter or from an ongoing affair with a married man, Grace would understandably avoid the discussion. But a husband?
“He’s obviously Chris’s father,” I said. The resemblance was marked. In the full color of a snapshot, rather than a black-and-white printout, the hair wasn’t just light; it was sandy and had the waves that Chris might have if his hair was tamed.
“The other guys look a little like him, don’t you think?” Grace asked tongue-in-cheek.
Not just a little. “Is that why Chris targeted them?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did you ask?”
“No. It’s a tricky subject.”
I took that to mean she was uncomfortable with it, which bothered the hell out of me, because if not now, when? Her son had committed a crime. Had she even told him how wrong that was?
“Are you in touch with his father at all?” I asked.
She shook her head, slipped the picture back in her bag, and dropped the bag to the floor. “We left when Chris was two, so he doesn’t remember how bad the guy is. I didn’t know he’d seen this picture until I found it in the back of my closet. I mean, like, who keeps real pictures anymore?”Me, I thought, but she went on. “I keep a few old things in a locked box. He jimmied it open.”
If Chris’s father was so bad, I wondered why she kept his picture. I also wondered why she was drawn to men who looked like him. But who was I to wonder that—me, who hadn’t been drawn to a man in five years until tall and dark came to town in the form of Edward Cooper?
“So maybe,” Grace said, “he was curious?”
Chris. About his father. “That’d be normal. Or jealous of men who take your time.”
“Either that,” she looked heartsick, “or he’s as evil as his father.”
I doubted that. I’d never sensed a mean bone in Chris’s body, and while I was furious at him for doing what he had, he was only fifteen. “Not evil. Confused.”
“Dense,”she repeated her earlier word. This time it sounded way more likestupid.
Part of me agreed. But hewasonly fifteen. “Puberty does things, Grace.”
“Yep. Makes boys bad.”
“Maybe shortsighted.”
“Selfish.”
“Self-absorbed. His features have totally changed in the four years I’ve known him. So he looks in the mirror and wonders who he is.”
She seemed disheartened for a minute before conceding a quiet, “Maybe.”
I went back to applying her color. The timing of it wasn’t as critical as it would be if we were doing highlights, but oxidation in the bowl wasn’t ideal.
“Or maybe not,” she suddenly said, her voice shooting up. “How could he do this to me? He knew I liked Devon. People here let me do my own thing. They don’t ask questions, or stare at me or talk behind my back. They trust me. Trustedme. Now? Disaster. My son has an identity crisis and screws the whole thing up? Suddenlyhe’sjudging me?”
