He moved away to talk to a waitress and returned to fill glasses from the beer taps. “Is Adam flying in?”
“He’s here and Tristan and his wife Vivian are en route.”
“Tristan got married?”
She understood the surprise in his voice. Nobody could imagine her brother moving on after Zoe. To the rest of the world, her family’s lives had been frozen in that one horrific moment in time. In her case, they weren’t far wrong. “And they’re expecting their first baby.”
“Wow.” The silence following his exclamation spoke volumes. “Is she from here?”
“Edmonton. It’s where they’re living now.”
“Well … good for him. Couldn’t have been easy.”
Clint moved to the other end of the counter with some relief, Lauren imagined. She should have been used to the stilted conversations and awkward eye shifts as people searched for the right thing to say. Problem was, there was no right response when faced with a murderer’s family member. To be fair, Tristan hadn’t been charged with Zoe’s murder, but that didn’t stop anyone from believing he got off only from a lack of evidence. Hell, for a lot of years, she herself had half believed he’d done it.
chapter four
It was going on 9:30 when Lauren left the Duke and got into her car. She’d drunk the first three vodkas quickly and enjoyed the buzz while sipping on a fourth and fifth, chatting up the two men on the barstools next to her. The better-looking one had suggested she return with them to their hotel near the waterfront, and she’d considered it for all of half an hour. Before her cheeseburger arrived and the alcohol started to wear off. She’d lingered over two cups of coffee after they left and then been surprised to find how long she’d spent in the pub. She certainly hadn’t set out to kill the entire afternoon and evening there.
She looked around the darkened street at the layer of pristine white snow glistening on the sidewalks and roadway like spun sugar in the light from the streetlamps. Errant flakes drifted through the air in their lazy tumbles to earth. She’d missed supper and her mother would be pissed off, no doubt, but the thought of facing her family en masse over a meal had been more than she could bear this evening. Adam had called while she was still with her mother to say that Mona was flying in early. She’d be there by now, forming a tight unit with Vivian to make Lauren feel the outsider. Even now, with night firmly in place, she found herself reluctant to go home.
She drove through the nearly empty streets toward the harbour and turned west on King Street, catching glimpses of the lake between buildings, the moon full with the stars pinpoints of light scattered in the blackness above. She drove the route on autopilot, skirting past Kingston General on her right where her father lay dying while driving parallel to the waterfront. At Portsmouth, she turned right and continued on past St. Lawrence College, crossing Bath Road and entering her own hood, the streets and trees as familiar to her as breathing even after all the years away. Instead of turning left and winding her way onto Grenville Crescent, the street where her parents lived, she kept going a few blocks more and turned right on Elmwood with another quick left onto Hillendale.
Zoe’s house was halfway up on the right, a Victory white storey-and-a-half with red shutters and a sloped green roof. The siding looked greyer than she remembered and the shingles were blackened in places, much like on her parents’ house, but not much else had changed. Lauren slowed and drove to the end of the block where she made a U-turn in front of the aging apartment building and doubled back, sidling up next to the curb across from the Delgado house and turning off the engine and headlights. She sat for a moment, staring straight ahead and stilling her breathing.
When she closed her eyes, she was fourteen years younger, walking up the sidewalk to the Delgado front door after school. Zoe was leading the way and swivelled her head to laugh at something Lauren said, her long black hair swishing across her back as she started up the steps. “Matt is helping Dad in the shop so we have the house to ourselves.”
Their last afternoon together. Even though Zoe was dating Tristan, she kept her Fridays open for Lauren. Tristan didn’t like it, but he had no choice. Zoe was Lauren’s best friend long before she started up with him. That last Friday, they’d taken bottles of Coke and a bag of chips up to Zoe’s bedroom and watched a taped episode of Gilmore Girls on Zoe’s little TV before Zoe stretched out on her bed and Lauren leaned against the footboard hugging her knees to her chest.
“I don’t know what you see in my brother,” Lauren said. The words had become a joke between them. A phrase she used to start a conversation and one that Zoe thought she didn’t mean. Zoe laughed as she always did. She couldn’t have known that she and Tristan would break up by Sunday and that she and Lauren would miss the next Friday afternoon get-together for a reason Lauren couldn’t recall now.
That’s how Lauren remembered Zoe, always smiling and laughing. The one to light up a room. The one everyone circled around, wanting to get close to her warmth. She’d been drawn to her and so had Tristan. “We just need to get you a boyfriend,” Zoe had said that Friday afternoon, her dark eyes glittering onyx. “Then we can double date.”
If only.
Lauren had wanted to tell her about the past few months and her unexpected, exhilarating, breathless relationship with Zoe’s brother Matt, but she didn’t want to jinx it. Not yet. She’d known Matt forever as her best friend’s big brother and he’d teased her like a little sister until that day they’d met by chance at the mall and he’d walked Lauren home. That was when he looked at her differently and she’d thought that her crush on him might turn into something more. She couldn’t believe it when he’d found ways to see her alone. Later, she wished she’d told Zoe her secret even though her murder ended any chance she had with Matt. He acted as if he’d never kissed her or held her hand or told her he couldn’t wait to see her the week before his sister’s body was found in the woods less than a mile from Lauren’s house. Not that she could blame him. At the funeral, he’d avoided her and looked away when he caught her staring, and she’d felt ashamed.
As she sat in her Civic in front of Zoe’s house, she watched the front door opening and she ducked lower in the seat. A taller, more muscular Matt than she remembered stepped outside and stood for a moment in the porch light. He held the door for an older, greyer version of his father, Franco Delgado. They both wore red plaid jackets and carried mugs of coffee. They were talking easily to each other and she saw Franco smile as he looked across the top of the black Ford Escape at Matt before they both climbed in. Matt backed the car out of the laneway, glancing at her car to make sure he didn’t hit it, but he didn’t see her scrunched down in the front seat. She watched their red taillights disappear down the street and around the corner with a longing in her heart that made her want to chase after them. Not that she ever would.
Ten minutes later, she started the engine in her cold car and slowly followed their tire tracks down Hillendale on her way home. With any luck, everyone would be in bed and she could put off the big family reunion until the morning.
Lauren awoke earlier than she wanted to, but it was hard to sleep with doors banging and feet thumping up and down the stairs. Should she chance a smoke before getting up to face everyone? She seriously considered it for all of a minute but knew what would happen if her mother smelled smoke in the house. Fuck, she was turning back into a timid teenager, scared to cross her mother and risk the fallout. Fuck, fuck, and double fuck. She sighed heavily and swung her feet onto the floor.
Vivian and Mona were sitting with their heads together, looking at pictures on a cellphone and laughing over a photo when Lauren entered the dining room with a cup of coffee she’d poured in the kitchen. They both raised their heads and the moment of gaiety evaporated with the guilty look that passed between them. Yeah, Lauren thought. Remember why we’re all gathered. This is not the time for levity.
“Hey Mona,” she said and waved a hand at her. “Adam told us you were flying here earlier than you’d planned. Good of you to come.”
“Of