Carlotta sighed and turned to face the life she was destined for. She walked out of her bedroom and looked across the hall at Wesley’s closed bedroom door and farther, at the end of the hall, to the closed door of her parents’ room, left largely untouched except for the times she’d gone in to dust or to adjust the heating and air-conditioning vents. Daylight shining over the gray carpet in the hallway revealed large shoe prints, evidence of where the police had entered their home and confiscated Wesley’s computer and phone equipment. A sense of violation permeated her skin—the cramped living space she’d tried to make a home for Wesley, compromised.
Using the toe of her shoe, she wiped out the footprints, wondering if they belonged to Detective Jack Terry. The mere thought of the man made a frown settle on her face and the knowledge that he’d been in her home made her feel naked, as if he knew intimate things about her. Had he peeked into her bedroom, sneered at the girlish white furniture, the pink Lilly Pulitzer linens and the fuzzy yellow chenille robe she always left draped across the foot of the bed? A flush climbed her neck when she remembered the way he’d looked at her when she’d told him that her father was Randolph Wren. He’d decided that she and Wesley were from bad stock. Your father’s name is like a bad smell.
The friendly warning he’d given her about the D.A. notwithstanding, she had a feeling that Detective Terry was going to stir up more trouble before he exited their lives.
As she walked through the living room and into the kitchen, her thoughts turned to Liz Fischer. She didn’t like the fact that Wesley had called the woman. She didn’t trust Liz. After her parents had skipped town, Liz had tried to convince her that she was too young and ill equipped to raise Wesley, that his needs would be better served with a foster family until her parents returned.
This from the woman who’d had an affair with her father.
Carlotta had hated the woman for trying to fracture her family further, and it was Liz Fischer’s insufferable words that had given her strength in the early years when she’d thought she would collapse under the stress of raising Wesley.
She knew what the woman was thinking now—that Carlotta had done a crummy job of parenting and that Wesley would have been better off with strangers.
And considering that he was head over heels in debt and now facing jail time, Carlotta couldn’t exactly disagree. Maybe Wesley would have been better off with two authority figures who weren’t bogged down with their own emotional baggage, who weren’t struggling to make ends meet, who weren’t, deep down, yearning for a life of their own.
Carlotta walked into the kitchen, massaging her temples and craving a Starbucks latte. But since they were facing unknown expenses, she poured water into the automatic coffeepot and waited for the homemade brew to trickle out. She walked around and straightened things that might have been moved by the police, or perhaps she was just being paranoid. What was it that Detective Terry had said?
Don’t worry—we didn’t trash your place. That only happens on TV.
Pushing the unpleasant thought—and the unpleasant man—from her mind, she glanced around the red-themed kitchen and contemplated repainting. All the rooms decorated under her mother’s heavy hand were looking a little dated. In fact, she’d love to sell the town house outright and find another place for them to live, someplace with only two bedrooms and a larger living area, rather than having to walk by their parents’ empty bedroom every day. But Wesley wouldn’t hear of moving. He was afraid they would miss a postcard or a phone call…or the reappearance of their prodigal parents.
Heaving a sigh, Carlotta filled an insulated mug with coffee and cream to drink during the drive to work. Then she grabbed her purse and walked through the living room to the front door.
In the corner of the living room, the small aluminum fringe Christmas tree that had occupied the same spot for the ten years that her parents had been gone stirred anger in her stomach. Her mother had put up the tacky little tree the day after Thanksgiving and put a few presents under it, then had skipped town with their father two weeks later. Carlotta often wondered if her mother had felt guilty about abandoning her children just before Christmas, if Valerie had considered the tears that Wesley had shed Christmas morning when she and their father had failed to return, dashing his hopes for a Christmas surprise.
Carlotta loathed the raggedy little tree that had lost most of its luster, but Wesley had insisted that they leave the tree up and the presents underneath so they could celebrate when their parents came home. She had been eager to comfort her little brother in those first few weeks and months after her parents had left, but eventually she had begun to resent the tree’s lopsided shape and the pathetic little pile of presents underneath. She’d long forgotten what she’d wrapped to give to her mother and father, and no longer cared what they had given to her. Several times over the years she had broached the subject of taking down the tree or, when money had been tight, of opening the gifts in the event that they contained cash, only to be met with Wesley’s curt refusal. He was obsessed with the tree, as if somehow by taking it down, they would be giving up on their parents ever coming home. That ship had sailed for her years ago, but she couldn’t bring herself to hurt Wesley yet again by taking it down. Turmoil rolled in her empty stomach. She was never sure how to handle her sensitive, quirky brother, so she usually erred on the soft side.
Too soft, apparently.
She opened the door, stepped out onto the stoop and bent to retrieve the newspaper. Around her, the neighborhood was peaceful, if a little shabby. Downsizing from their lavish home in a tony neighborhood to a town house in a “transitional” area had been a blow to her mother, who had chirped that it was only temporary and then taken another drinkie-poo.
“Carlotta!”
Carlotta winced, then turned to face her busybody neighbor. “Good morning, Mrs. Winningham. How are you today?”
The woman stood on the stoop next door with her head jutted forward, her eyes narrowed. “Why were the police at your place yesterday?”
Carlotta gave a hoarse little laugh. “Oh, that? It was a mistake. They were at the wrong address.”
Mrs. Winningham frowned. “I saw them carry a bunch of computers out of there.”
“Everything is fine, Mrs. Winningham. I have to run—I’m late.” Carlotta jogged down the steps and toward the garage while holding down the button on the remote control for the garage door. The noise of the door going up drowned out the woman’s words, and Carlotta waved cheerfully as she swung into her dark blue Monte Carlo. She muttered a curse under her breath at the woman’s snooping, then started her car.
The Monte Carlo was another sore spot—she loathed the car. Her beloved ten-year-old white Miata convertible sat like a sick and neglected pet next to her new car. Just before last Christmas, her Miata had died and she couldn’t afford to have it fixed. So she’d taken advantage of a dealer’s offer to test-drive a vehicle for twenty-four hours before buying it. Except the night she had taken the vehicle out for a test-drive was the night that she and her friends had crashed the party where a man had been murdered. She’d been taken to the police station for questioning and the car impounded. When she’d been released and had finally tracked down the car, the twenty-four-hour return period had expired and she owned the car by default.
The money that her friend Jolie had given her had kept Carlotta from having to sell her beloved, crippled Miata convertible to satisfy Wesley’s debt. She still held out hope to have it back in working condition someday so she could get rid of the Monte Carlo—although what the Monte Carlo was worth amounted to less than what she owed on it.
Her life was a catastrophe.
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