J. Jance - Cruel Intent

Nelda Harris saw the kiss, too. She caught Ali’s eye and gave a slight nod.

She’s thinking the same thing I am, Ali thought. Only time will tell, but I’m betting that kiss seals the deal.

As for Dean’s parents-the other grandparents, as everyone called them-Ali was relieved when they decided not to come for Thanksgiving. Instead, they flew into Phoenix on Friday night and drove up to Sedona on Saturday morning.

You’re a grown-up, Ali told herself that morning as she put the finishing touches on a face that still showed traces of bruising. You can be civil. You don’t have to be their friend.

And that became her watchwords for the day: Be civil.

The simple outdoor ceremony went off without any complications. It was ably conducted by Judge Ruben Dreyfuss, justice of the peace, who also happened to play in the same community-league basketball team as Chris and Athena. Chris wore a tux, and Athena wore a simple winter-white silk brocade pantsuit. Athena, looking absolutely radiant, walked down the aisle on her own. She didn’t need anyone to give her away.

Now, with the reception getting under way and the DJ tuning up the sound system, Ali wandered outside only to run smack into Angus Reynolds. He was standing beside the construction-crew break-room picnic table, taking in the view and smoking an enormous cigar.

“Nice place you have here,” he observed. “Hope you don’t mind. Jeannie won’t allow me to smoke these in the house.”

For good reason, Ali thought.

“Chris is a fine young man,” Angus went on. “You must be very proud of him.”

It was odd to be having a conversation with this stranger, a man who had once been her father-in-law but whom she hadn’t actually met until only a few hours earlier. In a way, he seemed to be talking to her, but he also seemed to be talking to himself.

“Yes, I am proud,” she said.

“If he had lived to see it, Dean would have been proud, too,” Angus said quietly.

Ali felt her eyes filling with tears. She willed them to stop. When they didn’t, she turned away and looked off in the other direction.

“Is the smoke bothering you?” Angus asked.

“No,” she said. “It’s fine.”

“I was wrong, you know,” Angus continued. “I wanted Dean to be a lawyer. I told him that if he insisted on getting a doctorate in oceanography, he’d never amount to anything and he’d never be able to do anything but teach. I didn’t mean it as a compliment, either.”

Ali remembered that conversation, not because she’d heard it but because Dean had told her about it in excruciating detail.

“And do you know what he told me?” Angus asked. “That no matter how little money he made, he’d rather be a dirt-poor teacher any day instead of being a rich lawyer and selling his soul to the devil.”

Dean never mentioned that part, Ali thought. He seemed to have left that out.

Angus blew another puff of foul-smelling smoke into the air before he continued. “So I told him that if he was going to be that pigheaded, he was no son of mine, and I was writing him out of my life. If he wanted to go off and screw up his life and be poor until his dying day, he was on his own. And that’s what I did, too. I wrote him out of our lives, and I wrote you and your wonderful son out of our lives, too. Pretty stupid, wouldn’t you say?”

Again Ali said nothing.

“And now Chris is a teacher,” Angus said thoughtfully. “Where do you suppose that shows up on the DNA, the propensity for being a teacher instead of being a lawyer?”

“It may have more to do with being stubborn than it does with DNA,” Ali said. “Chris’s stepfather was adamantly opposed to his being a teacher, too.”

“I see,” Angus said. “But thank you for letting us come, Alison. Considering how we treated you and Chris, it’s far more than we deserve, and it means more to my Jeannie than you can possibly know.”

“You’re welcome,” Ali said. “I’m glad you’re here.” And when she said that, she really meant it; she wasn’t just being civil.

Edie Larson stuck her head out the door to the tent. “There you are,” she said. “Everybody’s looking for you, Ali. They’re getting ready to cut the cake.”

Without a word, Angus Reynolds crushed the end of his cigar out in the ashtray on the table. Then he offered Ali his arm.

“Shall we?” he asked.

“Yes,” Ali said quietly. “Let’s.”

J.A. Jance is the Top 10 New York Times best-selling author of the Joanna Brady series, the J. P. Beaumont series, three interrelated thrillers featuring the Walker family, and the Ali Reynolds series: Hand of Evil, and Edge of Evil. Born in South Dakota and brought up in Bisbee, Arizona, Jance lives with her husband in Seattle, Washington, and Tucson, Arizona.