Something Buried, Something Blue Page 30

  Hearing Levi’s startled outcry behind her, she doesn’t bother to turn and see what’s happened. She swiftly grabs for the andiron.

  “Duck!” she screams to Calla as her fingers close around it. She lifts, whirls, and swings the heavy object toward its target.

  Calla ducks. The andiron makes contact with human flesh, slamming Levi in the gut. He doubles over and crumples to the ground. Beside him, Bella spots a wriggly pile of blue fur.

  “He tripped him!” Calla says breathlessly, bending to pick it up, and Bella realizes she’s talking about the kitten.

  The kitten tripped Levi. Rather, Levi tripped over the kitten.

  It isn’t unusual. It’s happened to Bella countless times. Kittens are dangerous underfoot. But this one might have saved her life. The momentary blip provided the opportunity to take him down.

  “Get my phone!” she tells Calla. “And call the police! Hurry!”

  Clutching Li’l Chap, Calla rushes for the stairs. Bella drops the andiron with a thud onto the snowy porch. She bolts back into the house, leaping over Levi, out cold on the floor.

  His pistol flew out of his hands when he fell and landed a few feet away. She needs to get it.

  No, first, she needs to close the door and lock it.

  She starts to pull it closed, but he’s in the way. She bends to push him aside.

  He’s dead weight. With a grunt, she pushes harder and manages to move him only a few inches.

  Just a few more, and she can close the door and grab the gun in case Brooke tries to get in. But why would she? She’d have to be insane not to make a fast getaway. There’s no way she—

  “Isabella? Is that you?”

  The familiar voice stops her in her tracks. She looks up to see Millicent out on the lawn, dressed in her traveling clothes. And the car—

  The car is still parked at the curb. Only now the door is open, and Brooke is climbing out.

  “I just wanted to say goodbye. My driver will be here in fifteen minutes.”

  Bella just stares at her.

  “Good morning,” Brooke calls to Millicent, her voice colder than the wintry air.

  Millicent glances over her shoulder. “Good morning,” she says politely, then looks back at Bella.

  For one wildly illogical moment, Bella tells herself that Brooke is going to pretend nothing happened. She’ll greet Millicent and then she’ll get back in the car and drive away.

  Yeah, sure she will. Because she’s not insane?

  The moment passes.

  Bella sees that Brooke is holding something, and it isn’t her keys. The badge Bella found might have been fake, but she’s certain the gun was real, and now it’s trained on Millicent’s back.

  Brooke calmly addresses Bella through a curtain of falling snow. “Can you please come over here?”

  Not daring to move her head, Bella lowers her eyes desperately at the pistol on the hardwood floor. All she’d have to do is bend slightly and reach. Just like she did with the andiron. Just reach down, and in a split second’s time, the gun would be in her hand.

  But the moment she allows a hand to even twitch in that direction, Brooke is going to pull that trigger.

  “You know I will,” she calls.

  So she, too, is a mind reader.

  So close and yet so far. Bella rolls her gaze away from Levi’s pistol just as Millicent, perhaps hearing the strain in Brooke’s voice or bewildered by the cryptic conversation, turns around to look at her. Spotting the weapon in Brooke’s hand aimed squarely at her chest, she cries out.

  “Please be quiet and get into the back seat.”

  Millicent is frozen in place.

  Her back is to Bella, but it’s not hard to imagine an appalled and frightened expression on her face.

  Brooke motions with the gun. “I said, get into the back seat!”

  Millicent walks toward the car in silence. Her black pumps wobble a bit on the snowy, uneven ground, but her posture is straight, head held high.

  Bella watches her open the door and get into the car.

  Oh, Sam. I’m so sorry.

  “Good. Thank you.” Brooke’s tone oozes saccharine. She keeps the gun leveled at Millicent, but her gaze flicks back and forth between the car and Bella.

  “Come on out here.”

  Bella stays rooted to the threshold.

  “Now. Or I kill her.”

  Bella steps out onto the porch.

  Surely Calla has called 9-1-1 by now. Surely help is on the way.

  But even in the best road conditions, it would take at least a couple of minutes to get here. It did last night, as Johneen lay convulsing on the grass. Today, the roads are treacherous.

  Millicent said she has a driver on the way. But fifteen minutes—fifteen minutes is forever when there’s a loaded gun involved.

  “Come on over here, Isabella.”

  Bella slowly crosses the porch and descends the steps. She has a clear view of Millicent, huddled in the back seat in her tweed suit.

  “Come on, hurry up,” Brooke tells her. “It’s freezin’ out here!”

  Bella continues walking, but she doesn’t hurry up. Her pace is steady, her mind flying through the possibilities, though there are few. All right, there are only two. One, if you consider that they have the same outcome.

  If I don’t do something, she’s going to kill us both.

  If I do something, she’s going to kill us both.

  Either way, Max won’t just be an orphan. He’ll be left all alone, without any family in the world.

  Maybe that isn’t entirely true. He’ll still have Odelia, and Drew, and Luther, and Jiffy . . .

  They’re like family, and they adore Max.

  But they only know now. This life. Lily Dale.

  They don’t know the past. They don’t know about Bedford, or New York, or Chicago. They don’t know about Bella Blue, or Christmas-cookie wreaths, or breakfast for dinner. They don’t know about reading Charlotte’s Web in bed.

  They don’t know Sam.

  A few months ago, when she was fighting Leona’s killer for her own life, Bella was desperate to keep her son out of his grandmother’s clutches. Max having to go live with Millicent was the worst thing she could imagine.

  Now . . .

  If only Millicent weren’t here. Here in Lily Dale, here in the back seat of that damned car.

  If only she were safely at home in Chicago. Then if something happened to Bella, Max would be certain to grow up in the care of a woman who knows how to raise a good man.

  But that’s not going to happen, unless . . .

  Bella abruptly stops walking.

  “What are you doing?”

  She just looks at Brooke.

  Slowly, she swivels the gun toward Bella.

  “What are you doing?” she repeats, and there’s a warble, ever so slight, in her voice.

  Behind Brooke, out of the corner of her eye, Bella notes movement in the car. She doesn’t dare allow her gaze to shift even a fraction.

  Keeping it focused on Brooke, she clears her throat. “I’m thinking.”

  “You’re thinking?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Well, if you were thinking, you wouldn’t be thinking,” Brooke drawls. “You’d be moving.”

  Bella stands her ground.

  Brooke’s blue eyes flash with warning.

  “Don’t you want to know what I’m thinking?” Bella asks her.

  “No.”

  “Are you sure?”

  Brooke says nothing, but Bella doesn’t miss the bolt of curiosity on her face.

  She does want to know what Bella is thinking.

  That makes two of us.

  But I’d better come up with something, because right now, I’ve got her.

  “You made it up, didn’t you?” she asks. “There was never a jealous jilted ex who was stalking Johneen. He didn’t exist.”

  Even as she says it, she knows that can’t be right. Calla, too, had mentioned him
.

  “Wrong!” Brooke shakes her head. “For someone who seems so smart, you’re pretty stupid.”

  Fine, Bella thinks. Let her think I’m stupid. Let her tell me exactly what they did, and why. We can stand here talking all day, as far as I’m concerned.

  “So there really was a guy?”

  “Of course there was a guy. Some big shot she dated a while back, from New York.” She waves a hand as if to indicate that she knows very little about the relationship, and it doesn’t matter.

  “And Johneen broke up with him, and maybe he didn’t take it well—the breakup,” Bella goes on, not daring to look toward the car again. “Is that right?”

  “Who takes a breakup well?” She shakes her head at Bella’s ignorance.

  “But you two made Johneen think it was more than that, didn’t you? To throw suspicion away from yourselves. You figured that she’d start to get paranoid and tell people she was being stalked by an old lover after she got engaged. You thought that when something happened to her, even if anyone suspected that it was murder, no one would look at the two of you. Right? A jealous ex . . . it happens every day.”

  Brooke says nothing.

  “The ring . . . if there ever was a ring—you stole it yourself, or he pretended it had been stolen. And my phone—you took that, too.”

  Brooke shrugs, and Bella sees the bored look in her eyes. She’s losing interest, running out of patience. This is all old news to her.

  “How did you get in and out of my room, though? Did you use the tunnels?”

  “Is that what you thought?” Brooke looks pleased.

  It’s what she wanted me to think.

  “Or did you get ahold of my keys and copy them?” Bella asks. “Was that you, sneaking out of the house early yesterday morning?”

  “Does it really matter?”

  “Yes. I want to know.”

  “No, you don’t.”

  “I want to know that, and I want to know if you planted your purse in my room after I found your gun, so that I’d see your phony badge and not suspect you. You did, right? You knew I’d think the cat had done it.”

  “You’re answering all your own questions. You don’t need me.”

  “But am I right?”

  “You’re stalling. And I’m done playing games. Let’s go.”

  Bella has to come up with something else. Right now. Or—

  “You wanted to know what I’m thinking,” she hears herself say.

  “Yeah, well, I changed my mind, so—”

  “I’m thinking about love.”

  Brooke blinks. “Love?”

  Gotcha.

  “Yes. I’m thinking about the things we’re willing to do because we love someone.”

  “Good grief. Shut up and get in the car.”

  “See, that . . .” Bella shakes her head. “That’s something I’m willing to do because I love someone. Not you. I don’t love you.”

  To her surprise, and maybe to Brooke’s own surprise, Brooke snickers at that.

  Bella pries a smile from her own mouth. “I do love my family, though. My son, and . . . my mother-in-law. How about you?”

  “I don’t love your son or your mother-in-law.” Brooke snickers again, this time at her own cleverness.

  “Aha! Well-played,” Bella says, wearing an admiring expression.

  Millicent is moving, inch by painstaking inch.

  “But you loved Levi, didn’t you?”

  Brooke’s eyes narrow. “Who?” she asks, not very convincingly.

  “Levi. Your husband. The guy you’ve been calling Parker.”

  “His name is Parker.”

  “Yeah. Sure it is.” She hesitates, and adds a deliberate, “Was.”

  “What?”

  “Then again,” Bella muses on, struggling to keep her voice level, “maybe you don’t love him. If you loved him, you wouldn’t have been willing to just take off and leave him there.”

  “I didn’t leave him. That’s why I didn’t go. I was coming back for him.”

  “Really? It’s too bad you were too late.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “It looks like you and I have one more thing in common. We’re both widows.” She pauses to let the ugly word sink in.

  Brooke pales. “What?”

  Bella chooses an even uglier one. “He’s dead.”

  “He is not!”

  Bella is reasonably sure Brooke is right. Any second now, he could regain consciousness, grab his gun, and burst out of the house shooting.

  Brooke glares. Then she steadies the gun, aiming at Bella.

  Before she can pull the trigger, two things happen in such rapid succession that Bella isn’t even sure which comes first. Maybe they’re simultaneous; maybe they’re cause and effect.

  The barely audible sound of a siren reaches her ears. In that split second, or perhaps the next, Millicent leaps from the car and tackles Brooke to the ground.

  She’s tiny, but she’s a force to be reckoned with. “Get the gun!” she shrieks as Bella leaps into action. “Get the gun!”

  Brooke, pinned on her stomach beneath Millicent, is still clutching the weapon. Bella struggles to pry it from her hand. Two on one. It shouldn’t be difficult.

  But the angle is awkward, and Brooke is armed, and she’s strong.

  She manages to turn the gun so that it’s aiming directly at Millicent’s head. Seeing her finger bracing to shoot, Bella screeches, “Noooooo!”

  She makes a frantic, wrenching move, hurtling herself forward.

  The gun goes off with such violent, deafening force that for a terrible moment, Bella is certain she’s been shot, or that Millicent has.

  But Millicent is still breathing.

  Brooke, too, is breathing, panting beneath their weight. But blood is pooling beneath her left forearm.

  “Bella!” Millicent screeches, seeing the blood. “Bella, no!”

  “It’s okay! I’m okay! It’s her. It’s not me.”

  Bella extracts the gun from Brooke’s limp right hand. Holding it gingerly, she gets to her feet, then extends her other arm to help Millicent up.

  “Owwww.” Brooke moans. “It hurts.” After a moment, her eyes close.

  “Is she . . . ?”

  Bella bends over and presses her fingers against Brooke’s neck. “No. She’s alive.”

  She and Millicent stand listening to the approaching sirens, the sound of their own breathing, and the wet snow sifting through the foliage-laden trees.

  Then Bella says, “Bella.”

  “No. You’re Bella. I’m Millicent. It’s all right. It’s just the shock. You’re in shock.”

  “No . . .” She manages a laugh. “I mean, you called me Bella.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Just now—when the gun went off. You called me Bella.”

  “It’s your name.”

  “You’ve always called me Isabella.”

  “And you’ve always called me Maleficent.”

  Her jaw drops. “No. I—”

  “Yes. Of course you have. And I don’t blame you.”

  Bella digests that. The sirens are coming closer.

  “I do. I blame me. It was wrong.”

  “I deserved it.”

  “No. You’re Sam’s mother.”

  “And you’re his wife.”

  Why, Bella wonders, are they talking about him in present tense? As if dead isn’t dead?

  Police cars are wailing into the Dale, their rotating, red lights tinting the falling snow at the end of the lane.

  “He loved us both, Millicent. And so does Max.”

  “Oh, I don’t know about that. Max barely knows me.”

  “We can change that. But he does love you.”

  “Max loves a lot of people. He told me about all of them yesterday at lunch. And a lot of people love him. You were right.”

  “I can’t believe you’re standing here saying that now. After . . . this.” Bella gestures at the unconsci
ous woman on the ground at their feet. “I mean, this is crazy. It’s dangerous.”

  “But I have to say it, in case—if anything happens to me, I need you to know. I was wrong about Odelia, and this place, and everyone who lives here. I was wrong about what they do and what they are. They’re Max’s family. Lily Dale is his home.”

  “You’re his family, too. You share his name, and his blood, and . . . you’re a part of Sam. You’re the only one in the world who can tell Max what his daddy was like when he was Max’s age.”

  Millicent smiles a faint, faraway smile. “I can do that—if you can do something for me.”

  Bella holds her breath, knowing it’s going to be the one thing she can’t do. Not even now. Not even after all that’s happened.

  I can’t call you Mom. I just can’t.

  “Can you forgive me?” Millicent asks. “Please? I know I haven’t been very kind to you. I suppose I’ve resented you, coming along and stealing my boy’s heart.”

  Bella allows her eyes to close just for a moment.

  She can’t predict the future, but she’s pretty certain that someday, a woman is going to come along and steal her boy’s heart, too. When it happens, she’s going to feel wistful, wishing it were just the two of them again. Wishing he were here with her, needing her . . .

  Missing him.

  She opens her eyes and looks at the woman standing in front of her, seeing not the monstrous, meddling Maleficent, but just a mom. A mom who wishes time had stood still, so that she could keep her little boy with her forever.

  “I do,” she tells Millicent. “I forgive you.”

  “Oh, and one more thing . . .”

  Here we go. Here comes the impossible request.

  “Can I read Charlotte’s Web to Max?”

  “Absolutely,” Bella says, “as long as I get to listen.”

  Epilogue

  It’s been a little over two weeks since Brooke Marshall and Levi Joe Hicks were arrested. To Bella, it seems as if entire seasons have passed.

  Maybe because here in the Dale, they have.

  The wedding weekend snowstorm wasn’t the first this month, though it was by far the worst. The ground was white for a solid week, after which there was a rainy spell complete with a tornado that tore through a neighboring town.

  Now it’s Indian summer again.

  Holding the phone holding against her ear with her shoulder as she finishes washing two dinner plates, Bella tells Millicent, “The sun is shining and it’s supposed to get close to eighty tomorrow.”