Leann Sweeney - Pick Your Poison

“I think the husbands ended up rich by marrying her,” I said. “By the way, I ran into her this morning. She told me a boyfriend blackmailed her over letters she wrote to him while she was still married to Number Two. The one with the odd first name. Remember him?” I pretended to sip my drink.

“Marion something. Hand me a bunch of those checks and I’ll help you.”

“Be my guest.” I handed her a stack.

“She told you about these letters willingly?” asked Kate, removing the rubber band. “Had she been sipping brandy at Willis’s office?”

“I confronted her about searching the attic and she confessed.”

“She actually admitted she made that mess?”

“She says she went up there, but emphatically denies disturbing anything, which has to be a lie, of course.” I continued scanning checks, pulling a few current ones that didn’t help with the safe-deposit box situation, but matched the two already in my shorts pocket.

“What about this one?” Kate said. “Community Savings and Loan. Thirty dollars. Dated last fall.” She passed me the check with a satisfied grin.

“I’ve spent endless hours searching; then you bop in and bingo! Does that tell you who inherited the strand of DNA with the luck genes? You should go out and buy a lottery ticket.”

I picked up the glass of herbal whatever, making her think I might be interested in actually consuming this iced horror. “We can visit the bank tomorrow, but now that you’ve released me from this thankless task, I can run an errand.”

“Pretty late for errands,” she said.

“I need to pay someone a visit.” I headed for the hallway, carrying the glass with me.

Kate called after me, “You don’t have to drink it, Abby. It won’t hurt my feelings.”

I smiled and poured the contents in the sink before leaving.

Nights on Houston’s freeways bear great resemblance to the days. Nothing keeps people out of their cars in this city. I joined the stream of traffic on the Southwest Freeway and followed a thousand taillights past the glossy office buildings populating this side of town. It could take as much as an hour to navigate the sprawl of Houston, depending on where you came from and where you were going, but I arrived at the Greenleaf Apartments in thirty minutes.

“This is a surprise,” said Steven when he opened his door.

“I had a surprise myself this afternoon.” I dropped my purse on the table by the door and walked past him into the living area.

“How’s that?”

He’d redecorated since the last time I’d visited—or someone had redecorated for him. Steven never had much sense of color. The expected grays and tans had been transformed into a salute to the Southwest, with pale green, blue, and mauve fabrics on the couch and love seat, and various desert scenes hanging on the walls.

“This is sure different,” I commented.

“A friend told me a change of everyday scenery might help me readjust to being single.”

“Did your friend help you with this or did you hire someone?” I asked, sitting on the sofa.

“She helped. Can I get you a drink?”

“If you swear on the Bible no herbs are involved.”

“Another reason you should take me back, if only to serve as a buffer between you and Kate the holistic. How about a Dr Pepper?”

“On second thought, I’ll pass. This won’t take long.” I took the canceled checks from my pocket and held them out. “Can you explain these?”

He looked at them briefly, then shoved them back. “Yeah. But I’m not sure I will.”

“I thought we were friends,” I said softly. “You borrowed money from Daddy behind my back, didn’t you?”

“I needed help, okay? And Charlie offered.” Steven’s face tightened with tension, and his green eyes darkened.

I was sorry then, sorry I’d come here without thinking through how to confront him more tactfully.

“Must have been hard asking him for money,” I said.

“I had debts after my rehab, and I didn’t think you’d help me out. Charlie agreed to tide me over.”

Oddly enough, I felt a certain relief at hearing this information. “Daddy would help you with something like that. He really tried to like you. Still, I’m surprised you didn’t do a wide dance past him and ask me for the money.”

“You stopped hanging your wash on my line the day that paper made us officially divorced. I wasn’t about to ask you for anything.”

“No, especially since you left right after I stopped financing your self-destruction,” I said.

Though Steven’s expression indicated he didn’t like what I had to say, he didn’t shoot back with something sarcastic. Instead an uncomfortable silence followed, and when he finally spoke, his voice was calm. “That’s the fairy story you like to tell yourself about why I left. In truth, I had to get my head together. And yeah, it took me longer than I thought. And yeah, I’ve regretted losing you every day since I got sober.”

This was a new wrinkle in an old shirt. Might even pass for insight. “I’m sorry, Steven. I made a mistake. This is really none of my business.” I rose and circled around him to retrieve my purse.

But he reached out and grabbed my arm.

“Hold on.” He pulled me to him, his lean body fitting into mine the perfect way it always had. Though my brain screamed for me to break away, I couldn’t pile rejection onto distrust. His sobriety might be too tenuous.

He lifted my chin. “I think that’s a first. You said four words I never thought I’d hear from you.”

“Four words?”

“ ‘I made a mistake.’ ”

He kissed me then, with all the passion I remembered, and it was the best thing that could have happened.

There were no lights, no sirens, no stomach flip-flops. None of the things I had dreaded for months happened. Could this be the beginning of the real end to my wanting him? I drew back and rubbed my knuckles against the stubble on his cheek. “We can be friends, Steven. I know we can. That’s all I can handle.”

He released his grip on my arms and stepped back. “Whatever you say, Abby. But I’ve changed. Changed because... Never mind.”

I turned to leave.

But as I walked to the door, I noticed a pair of shoes tucked under the coffee table, a name brand I recognized, Pappagallo. I could never wear a pair of those shoes in a million years. They were designed for tall, skinny women with matching long, thin feet. One shoe had a pair of black panty hose stuffed in the toe.

I didn’t say anything. If a woman had left her entire wardrobe at his apartment, it meant nothing to me, because I no longer felt the presence of that maddeningly ambivalent voice saying, I want you, Steven; I hate you, Steven.

Tonight I neither wanted him nor hated him. And maybe, just maybe, I could simply accept him for the flawed, overgrown boy I had lusted for but never truly loved.

Back home half an hour later, I found Diva sitting on the counter awaiting my arrival, her amber eyes matching the light on the answering machine as it flashed eerily in the darkness of the kitchen.

Kate had left me a message on the two-way memo telling me Terry had called with information about Feldman.

My hand hovered over the phone; then I glanced at my watch. Past midnight. “Come on, Diva; let’s go to bed. It’s too late for phone calls.”

The next day, Terry wouldn’t reveal what he’d learned over the phone, but rather asked me to meet him at his office. As I sat by his desk around nine A.M., I recalled how I had keyed on his computer right after Ben’s death, determined to discover the truth—something that had proved far easier said than done. But Daddy always said that lick by lick, any old cow can polish off a grindstone.