The Girl Who Stopped Swimming - By Joshilyn Jackson Page 0,53
What’s that he calls her? Rabbit?”
“Bunny,” Laurel said.
“There you go. And she drinks like a Trojan soldier.”
“Lord, she does drink,” Laurel admitted. “I was always careful to be the one to drive the girls. Even in the daytime. Just to be sure. But I can’t imagine they had anything to do with this.”
“Then you need to work on ruling them out while I dry-hump Stanley in the road and see if anything rises—”
“Thalia!”
“Just calling a duck a duck, Jesus Bug. I bet you have funeral casseroles in the freezer, don’t you? Good to go?” Thalia turned her face like a bird would, to look at Laurel out of one fierce eye, and when Laurel didn’t answer, she laughed and said, “It was a sucker bet. Pull one out to thaw. We need to talk to Bunny, at the very least. Unless you’re up to cat-burglaring through the Dufresnes’ window in the dead of night with our eyes blacked out like quarterbacks and searching Molly’s room for her Mommy-hits-me diary?”
“No. Absolutely not. Never.”
Thalia had said it like she was mostly kidding, but with her sister, it was better to be clear. For that matter, Thalia hadn’t definitively stated that she wasn’t going to ravish Stan Webelow in the basement. Laurel made a mental note to deadbolt the door after Thalia left, just in case.
“I thought not, you pansy. That means we have to get invited in like blood-fat, darling flies, so who is Miss Spider? Who feels every little twitch in the neighborhood web?”
Laurel thought for a moment. “Trish Deerbold. But we’re not friends.”
“Bah, no. I don’t mean which rich bitch has the gossip. I mean who’s down in the trenches? Who runs bunko and calls around to coordinate the dinners whenever one of these cows drops a calf?”
“Oh,” Laurel said. “Thalia, that’s me.”
Thalia looked at her, nonplussed, and then dropped her face into her hands. “Some days I wonder how you don’t drive hard into a wall, just to make your life stop,” she muttered into her palms.
Laurel, who sometimes wondered the same thing about her sister, had to bite her bottom lip hard to keep from saying so.
Thalia put her head up again and said, “Okay, if you’re Kirk, who is your Spock?”
“Spiders, cows, Star Trek. You’re exhausting me. Can’t you ask plain?”
Thalia shook her head. “Sorry, Bug, but plotting requires figurative language.”
“Something is bad wrong here, Thalia,” Laurel said. “This isn’t a game.”
Thalia stilled. She kept her eyes on the road, watching for Stan Webelow, but when she spoke, her voice had gone toneless, cool as dead water. “I’m not playing. A child is going in the ground soon, and Shelby loved her. Shelby’s not herself. I see it. It’s like a light’s gone out. If any righteous bastard helped that happen, we will find him out, and we will make him sorry.”
They knelt side by side, quiet together, and Laurel believed her. She wished David would appear right at that moment. She would point to Thalia, who was watching the street as dead-eyed as a veteran sniper, and say to David, “This is why I lied to you. This is what I went to get.”
Then Thalia said in her regular voice, “But we’re going to treat this part like a game. We have to, or I’ll get sick with mad, and you’ll cry, and we’ll be worthless. Don’t think about the whole thing. We do this one small piece at a time, and we pretend each piece is the whole of it. Today? I’m playing snuggles with Stan Webelow, and I’m going to win. You’re on the Dufresnes. So. Name your Spock.”
“Mindy Coe,” Laurel said. “Next door.”
“Call her and find out when the funeral is. I bet you anything it’s set, if the police have released th—” She stopped speaking abruptly, and in the quiet, Laurel heard footsteps.
Shelby and Bet Clemmens came shuffling into the foyer. Shelby carried a long, thin game box. Bet loomed behind her. “Can me and Bet—” Shelby began, but then she stopped and asked, “What are you doing on the floor?”
“Stretching,” said Thalia. “I’m going running. What do you need, Shel?”
“We’re bored,” Shelby said. “Can we play this game?”
“Sure,” Laurel said. “Take it up to the rec room.”
“I was talking to Aunt Thalia,” Shelby said. “It’s hers. We found it in her suitcase.”
“Don’t lose any of the pieces,” Thalia said. She’d turned back around to watch the road again.
Laurel looked at the game box in Shelby’s hands, then really looked at it.