J. Jance - Cruel Intent

Mindy turned to Bev. “These girls are seven,” she said quietly. “It doesn’t matter what people think. Let them come back to school, Mrs. Forester. Their whole lives have been disrupted. Going to school will give their days some structure. It will also give them something familiar to think about besides what’s happened to them.”

“But-” Bev began.

“Please, Grandma,” Lindsey interrupted. “Please let us.”

“She’s right,” Harold told his wife from the doorway. “They’ll be better off at school than stuck here with us all day long, worrying or else watching CNN.”

“What’s a funeral?”

At first Ali thought Lindsey was the one who had asked the question, but then she saw Lindsey turn toward her sister in drop-jawed amazement.

“What?” Lindsey said.

“What’s a funeral?” Lacy repeated.

Lacy’s unprecedented excursion into the verbal world may not have surprised her sister, but it had left all the adults in the room dumbstruck. Mindy Farber was the first to recover.

“A funeral is like a church service,” she explained. “Funerals are held when people die. They give the people who are left behind a chance to say goodbye. This one will be for your mother.”

“But I don’t want to say goodbye,” Lacy said. With that, she rolled away from them and covered her head with her pillow, signaling with some finality that her brief conversation was over.

Lindsey was determined. She turned back to her grandmother. “So can we go to school or not?” she asked.

“We’ll see,” Bev said, but Ali could tell the woman was wavering. So could Mindy.

“Tomorrow, then,” Mindy said, patting Lindsey’s shoulder as she stood to leave. “See you there.”

When Mindy and Ali exited the room a few minutes later, Bev Forester followed. “You had no right to say that,” she sputtered. “You had no right to tell the girls that you’d see them tomorrow.”

“Did you happen to notice a miracle just happened?” Mindy demanded in return, rounding on the older woman. “Your granddaughter, who has never spoken a single word in my hearing, suddenly said something-something important. She’s not ready to say goodbye, and not just to her mother, either. She’s not ready to say goodbye to life as she knew it. Please let the girls come to school tomorrow.”

“But what if some of the other kids say something to them?” Bev objected. “What if they tease the girls or make fun of them?”

“No doubt the kids will say something,” Mindy agreed. “Ours is a small school, and what happened on Monday was and is very big news. By tomorrow people will probably know that the girls’ father is in custody. But Lacy and Lindsey will be better off if they start dealing with comments-kind or unkind-earlier rather than later. That’s also part of saying goodbye.”

“I’ll take them,” Harold said, cutting short the discussion. “What time does school start?”

“Eight-thirty.”

“All right, then,” he said. “The girls will be there. I’ll drive them there myself.” He turned to his wife. “Now, you go on to bed, Bev. The manager’s going to bring down a roll-away bed. I’ll be here with the girls in case they wake up.”

Shaking her head, Bev disappeared into the other room while Ali and Mindy headed for Ali’s Cayenne.

“You were really good with the girls,” Ali said. “With both of them.”

“Thank you,” Mindy said. “But what’s going to happen after tonight? If their father ends up going to prison, what will happen to the girls? The grandfather’s probably okay, but the grandmother? Yikes!”

“From what Bryan Forester said to me, I doubt his mother is very good with little kids under the best of circumstances, which these definitely are not,” Ali said. “Bev’s daughter-in-law has been murdered, and her son has been placed under arrest. We should both try to cut the woman some slack.”

“And I’ll do what I can for the girls when they come to school tomorrow,” Mindy added.

“Exactly,” Ali said.

When she pulled up in front of Mindy and Athena’s apartment, there were no lights on inside, but Chris’s Prius was parked on the street out front. “It looks like the lovers got over their little spat,” Mindy said with a laugh as she opened the door to step out of the vehicle. “Thanks for the ride.”

“And thanks for all the help,” Ali said. “I don’t know how Bev and Harold Forester would have managed if you hadn’t been there.”

Once Mindy had gotten out, as Ali drove on, she found herself thinking about her mother. Ali had always admired and envied Edie’s ability to do the right thing in the face of almost any crisis. Well, almost any crisis. The uproar over the engagement party counted as a major exception to her mother’s otherwise unblemished record.

Ali had been operating on pure instinct when she’d invited Mindy Farber into the fray to help deal with Lindsey and Lacy Forester. It had turned out to be the right thing to do. Maybe I’m my mother’s daughter after all, she thought.

It wasn’t until she was back at the house that she remembered the thumb drives. But having just had a serious lesson in computer security, she was no longer willing to insert either one of them into the backup computer B. had lent her. If the virus on her computer had come from Singleatheart, wasn’t there a good chance that Morgan Forester’s files had also been infected? Before doing something potentially damaging to B.’s computer, she would have to bring him into the picture.

She was in bed and ready to turn off the lights when Chris came home a little after one. He tapped on her door and then entered the bedroom, where he perched on the edge of Ali’s bed. “I went to see Athena,” Chris said.

Ali nodded without saying that she knew as much.

“We talked,” Chris added. “And I think we got some things straightened out; we came to an understanding.”

“That’s good,” Ali said.

“I’m glad you told Athena about you and my father running away to Vegas to get married. She liked that.”

“Your grandmother didn’t like it,” Ali replied. “She still doesn’t.”

“That’s all right,” Chris said. “Just knowing about it made Athena feel better, and that made me feel better. So thanks for the good advice, Mom.”

“You’re welcome.”

He glanced at his watch and made a face. “Now I’d better get to bed,” he said. “First period is going to come very early.”

Ali lay awake for a long time after Chris closed her bedroom door. Athena had told him that she and Ali had discussed the situation with Bob and Edie, but Ali was well aware that in telling the story to Athena, she had neglected to finish mentioning what had gone on with Chris’s other grandparents-with Angus and Jeanette Reynolds of Boston, Massachusetts.

For years Ali had managed to keep any remembrance of them locked away. She had never forgiven them for turning their backs on their only son. Even now she couldn’t imagine how they could have done such a thing. Angus was an attorney with some big law firm, and he had been offended when Dean had spurned the idea of his going to law school in favor of getting a Ph.D. in oceanography, of all things! That, combined with Dean’s decision to marry Ali, had been enough for them to walk away. For good.

Once Dean had been diagnosed with glioblastoma, Ali had tried to get him to contact them, but he’d proved to be his father’s son. He had adamantly refused to take the first step on trying to effect a reconciliation. And after that one abortive phone call, Ali hadn’t tried again either.

There were several times while Chris was growing up when he had asked about his “other” grandparents. Ali had told him he didn’t have any, and that was the truth. He didn’t. But tonight, pondering Athena’s complicated family situation, Ali couldn’t help thinking about her own. Whatever had become of Dean’s parents? Are they dead or alive? Ali wondered.