J. Jance - Cruel Intent

When Ali returned to the living room, Chris reappeared long enough to say he was leaving. Like his grandfather, Chris had warned her of the dangers of computer worms and viruses. Right that moment didn’t seem like the time to tell him that her computer might have been compromised by an identity thief.

“Where to?” she asked.

“Just out for a burger with the guys.” His response seemed a trifle too casual.

“Not with Athena?” Ali asked.

Chris shook his head. “She has papers to grade.”

The answer was so quick that Ali wondered if it was true. Was the fact that Chris was on his own for the evening some kind of carryover from the previous night’s engagement-party fiasco?

“Want me to bring you something?” Chris added. “I think Mr. Brooks pretty much emptied all the leftovers out of the fridge.”

“And probably saved us both from dying of food poisoning,” Ali said with a laugh. “Don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine.”

And she was. She turned on her music and fixed herself a container of microwave soup. As she cleared the kitchen, she was careful to dispose of the plastic container in a fashion that would be invisible to her mother, if not to Leland Brooks. As far as Edie Larson was concerned, soup that came in plastic containers wasn’t fit to eat.

Ali had just started the dishwasher when the doorbell rang. She went to answer it, expecting to find B. Simpson outside, bringing her a substitute computer. Instead, Athena stood waiting on her doorstep.

“Chris isn’t here,” Ali said, letting her visitor inside.

“I know,” Athena said. “I came to talk to you.”

“About last night, I assume,” Ali said without enthusiasm.

“Yes,” Athena agreed. “It is about last night.”

By the time Athena made her way to the couch, Sam was there waiting. As soon as Athena settled down, Sam snuggled up beside her. There was something touching in the way the normally unsociable cat had taken to Athena-as though there was some special connection between these two disfigured beings.

“Look,” Ali said. “I’m really sorry about what happened at the party. My mother adores Chris, and she thinks you’re terrific. I’m sure she let her natural enthusiasm get a little out of hand, but-”

“I know Chris already bitched Edie out about that,” Athena interrupted. “The last thing I want to do is to cause hard feelings between Chris and his grandparents. As far as I was concerned, it wasn’t that big a deal-well, maybe it was a little bit of a big deal, but I didn’t want him to go to Bob and Edie and make it that much worse.”

Time to fess up, Ali thought. “He spoke to my mother at my suggestion,” she said. “He told me you were upset, and I thought he needed to get my parents to back off. He may have been less diplomatic than he could have been, but I had said that the two of you should get to do things your way, with nobody else interfering. That goes double for me.”

Suddenly, with no warning, Athena burst into tears. “You don’t understand,” she managed. “Nobody does, not even Chris.”

In order to sit next down next to Athena, Ali had to pry Sam loose and shoo her out of the way. “What is it?” Ali asked, wrapping a comforting arm around the young woman’s heaving shoulder. “What’s wrong?”

“How can I explain it to you when I don’t really understand it myself?”

“Try me,” Ali said.

“You know about Kenny?”

Ali knew a little about Kenneth Carlson, the man who had been Athena’s husband. He was also the jerk who had dumped her, filing for a divorce while she had been recuperating from her injuries.

“Some,” Ali said, keeping her voice noncommital.

“We started dating in high school,” Athena said. “From our sophomore year on. Our senior year, we were voted most likely to become Ken and Barbie. My folks loved him and still do. As far as they were concerned, Ken was the son they’d never had. His folks loved me the same way, like a daughter. But as we got older, things changed. Or maybe I changed. Ken’s a farmer, like his dad. I wanted more than that. I was interested in other stuff, but by then things were already in motion. Both our families-both sides-got all caught up in planning this huge wedding. It was like a moving freight train-the dress, the invitations, the flowers, the whole bit. I knew I was getting cold feet. I wanted to get off the train, to stop it somehow, but I didn’t have the nerve. So I went through with the wedding, even though I knew it was wrong. Even though I knew, walking down the aisle, that I didn’t really love him the same way he loved me.”

Athena paused. Ali, sitting beside her, said nothing. This story was one she recognized all too well. She had allowed herself to be talked into marrying Paul Grayson in much the same way-allowed herself to be persuaded, even though she’d known at the time she was settling for something less than what she’d had with her first husband. Paul had money, position, looks, everything she should have wanted, except for one critical deficit-Paul Grayson wasn’t Dean Reynolds. Ali worried that Athena was feeling the same kind of reluctance about her engagement to Chris.

“So I can’t really blame Kenny for dumping me,” Athena continued finally. “The timing sucked. But he found someone who worships him, someone who’s thrilled to be living the farm life the way her mother and grandmother did. I heard a couple of weeks ago that they’re expecting a baby. The real problem is, my parents still blame me for everything that happened, including the divorce. They were both dead set against my joining the National Guard, even though that’s what paid most of my way through school. My father’s old-fashioned. He doesn’t think girls should go to war. As far as he’s concerned, what happened to me in Iraq is all my own fault. Mom and Dad are both convinced that if I hadn’t lost my arm and my leg, Kenny never would have left me for a ‘whole woman.’”

“None of us has a problem seeing you as a whole woman,” Ali said quietly.

Athena nodded. “I know. Thank you.”

“So the only member of your family who’s still in your corner is your grandmother?” Ali asked. “The one who flew to D.C. to visit you when you were in the hospital?”

Athena nodded again and wiped her eyes. “Grandma Betsy is my dad’s mother, and she’s a hoot. You’d really like her.”

“What about last night?” Ali prodded gently.

Athena sighed. “That’s the thing. I felt like I was back on that same train, the speeding wedding train. Like they say in that old joke, ‘Déjà vu all over again.’ Chris is great. Your folks are great. So are you, for that matter, but when I saw the food, all I could think about was that huge wedding. My parents were so excited to do it, and they spent money they couldn’t afford, because they wanted to do it right. And that’s why I wanted the party to be small-why I needed it to be small.”

“In case you needed to pull the emergency brake and stop the train, you could,” Ali said.

Athena sniffed, blew her nose, and nodded again. “But I didn’t mean to make it Chris’s problem, and I certainly didn’t mean for him to have a big falling-out with his grandparents over it. I mean, the party was more than I wanted, but I know Bob and Edie were only trying to help.”

“Don’t worry about them,” Ali said, patting the back of Athena’s hand. “They’ve had some dealings with temperamental brides in their time. When Chris’s father and I were getting married, I was a lot like you. The last thing I wanted was a big wedding. At the time, my mother was determined to ‘do the whole thing up brown,’ as my father would say. Dean and I responded to all the parental pressure by eloping to Vegas. It wasn’t one of those drive-through ceremonies, but close.