Лорен Кейт - The Betrayal of Natalie Hargrove

“Well,” Mike said, giving me a small smile and pulling me onto his lap, “I know I need my Princess.”

It felt like centuries since we’d been this close. I couldn’t help it; I gave in to his lips and, for the first time all week, I relaxed.

“Something’s poking me and it’s not, um, me,” Mike said, adjusting himself over me on the marble slab. He pointed toward my hip. When I realized where he was going, I grabbed his hand.

“Don’t,” I said.

He wrestled free and went for the side pocket of my raincoat.

“What do you have in there?” he asked quickly.

When he pulled out J.B.’s pill bottle, his face screwed up like he’d eaten something bad. “What are you still doing with these?”

“I don’t know,” I stammered. Why couldn’t I just tell Mike the truth? Oh yeah, because it sounded crazy.

“Me neither,” he said, incredulous. “I thought we agreed you would lose them.” He stood up and ran his fingers through his hair. “You act like you have this all figured out, and then you can’t hide the most obvious piece of evidence? What if someone catches you with this?”

“It’s not like I can just throw it out at home,” I said. Mike was well aware that ever since Mom started screwing the Dick and got all into composting his gardens, she had the maid pick through our trash like a hobo. I reached for the pills in his hand. “I’m just waiting for the right place to get rid of them. I’ll take care of it, I promise.”

“If we screw this up—”

I leaned forward to put a hand over his mouth.

“Do you love me?” I asked.

“Come on,” he sighed, sitting back down.

“Do you love me?” I said again, holding my breath.

Mike looked up with his is-the-South-swampy smile and said, “I just tackled you in my grandfather’s mausoleum when we have a homicide to cover up,” he said, kissing the top of my head. “I might be, literally, crazy about you.”

Relief washed over me. “Then we can’t screw up,” I said. “We just have to stay strong, together.” I sat back down on his lap, putting my arms around his neck. “I’ll talk to Tracy Monday morning. And — I’ll get rid of the pills. You get the scoop on Baxter’s DVD from the guys.”

Before Mike had a chance to look nervous again, I straddled him, hiking up my black dress around my waist. I wrapped my legs around his torso, taking care that the pill bottle didn’t come between us again, and I leaned in to whisper in his ear.

“You have to want this as much as you want me.”

Mike sighed into my hair. The warmth of his breath on my neck felt so comforting.

“Okay, Nat,” he moaned softly. “We’ll nail Baxter.”

O n Sunday morning, I lay in my canopy bed surrounded by the remnants of one of Mom’s white frilly pillow projects — and the ghosts of my testosterone-filled past. I had J.B.’s seizure meds in one hand and my cell phone opened to my dad’s third unanswered text in the other hand. Two men I thought I’d rid myself of, two signs that I’d been very wrong indeed. I looked back and forth from one hand to the other, feeling utterly trapped between them.

If I was as strong as I dared Mike to be, I could not give these men a free pass to unhinge me. No. I had to unhinge them.

Reminding myself that I was merely revising — not actually breaking — the vow of silence I took against my dad back when he skipped town, I hit the compose button on my phone. I needed to send the kind of message I wouldn’t have had the courage to send back then, when the vow of silence was as far as I could go.

Save the ‘Daddy’s home’ charade and just spit out what you want.

I tried to imagine his reaction, the way the wrinkles around his silverfish eyes would fall slack — but the point was not to think of him. The point was to think of myself.

Send.

It took a moment to realize that my heart wasn’t racing. I was calm and collected. Okay. One talisman down, one to go.

My father had been haunting me because I let him. Now, with J.B.’s coffin still fresh in the ground, I only hoped I could put him to rest as well.

I’d spent the past week fumbling with the prescription bottle, and I guess my palms had been sweatier than usual because the label was starting to peel off. I tugged at the sticker, and before I knew it, the whole label came off in my hand.

Oh crap. Had I just multiplied the evidence? Or — had I made it easier to dispose of? Mom had a paper shredder downstairs (a divorcee’s best friend, she liked to say) — but I couldn’t risk a run-in with her. Better to be my own paper shredder.

I dashed to the bathroom and hunched over the salmon-colored toilet bowl, snipping the label into flushable-size pieces. They fell into the bowl like feathers, and soon I couldn’t make out the word anti-seizure at all.

All week, I’d been wondering whether someone at Palmetto would leak the details about J.B.’s condition, but the actual cause of his death seemed to still be a public mystery. I guess it didn’t surprise me. As interested as they were in the classic southern facade of perfection, J.B.’s family would be exactly the type to want to keep his seizures on the down low. Maybe when I flushed the toilet, I would just be following their lead.

Now about the actual pills. All I had to do was flush them, too. As soon as the tank filled up, I’d just hold them upside down over the bowl and free myself of them.

My wrist hovered over the toilet. I was trembling. . okay, now full-on quaking.

I couldn’t do it.

I sunk down over the bowl and laid my head in my hands. I’d tried to seem so unruffled yesterday in front of Mike, but alone, I guess I still couldn’t accept what I’d done. These pills were all I had left of J.B., and maybe I needed to let them go in a more ceremonial way. In some sort of tribute instead of in a toilet. Like the therapist Mom made me see when Dad left used to say: It was all about finding your own kind of closure. What form exactly that kind of closure would take, I still had no idea.

“Natalie.”

Shit. My mom’s head was poking through my bedroom door. In seconds, she’d be close enough to see what I was holding. I stuffed my hands and the bottle in the pocket of my Palmetto sweatshirt and turned around.

“The Dukes are here. Get your coat; we’re leaving,” she said, straightening her cropped bright-pink top over her pink-and-yellow-checkered pedal pushers.

I groaned to remember. This week’s “family fun day” with the Dukes was going to be a whopper. The other day, the Dick declared that he was in the market for some new real estate in the Cove — the way other people declare they’re in the market for a new spring hat — and now we all had to go house hunting.

For Mom, today was about playing her cards right in hopes of squeezing something sizable out of him — which, from what I gathered about the Dick, probably didn’t happen often in the bedroom. For me, today meant suffering in silence.

But before Mom could steer me out of my room, there was a timid knock on the door. Darla stuck her mouse head through the frame.

“Um, Nat,” she said, looking nervous, “would it be okay if I… I spilled some yogurt on my shirt.” She held her pale-blue baby tee out from her torso to prove that the yogurt spill was indeed true. “My dad thought, maybe. .”

“Of course, Natalie has something you can borrow,” Mom butted in, putting her hand on Darla’s shoulder, as if this were a happy bonding moment for everyone. “Right, Nat?”

Darla’s mouth was set in a perpetual gape, making her look like one of the fish piled up on the Cawdor wharf. Not exactly the type I wanted modeling my wardrobe as we drove all around the Coveted in broad daylight. Something scrubbier would be more her style, anyway.