“I’m sorry, what did you just say?” she asked him.
He turned into her driveway, killed the headlights, and shut off the ignition.
“I said,” he turned to her, took her hand, and raised it to his face. “Will you marry me? It’s not exactly how I wanted to ask you, but every time I start to ask you by reciting this long, drawn-out speech, something happens, so I’m not wasting any more time. I want to know if you’ll marry me?”
When silence took the place of the “yes” he had hoped for, and the imagined hug, and the tears she would shed, he opened his hand, letting her hand drop.
She sat there, dumbstruck. He could tell that she wasn’t expecting this at all.
She raised her eyes to meet his and looked at him as if she was trying to grasp what had just happened.
“I guess not,” he said turning his eyes from her. He reached into his pocket and after a bit of maneuvering he was able to take out the small blue velvet jewelry box. He placed it on the console.
He pushed down on the chrome door handle and opened the driver’s side door. “The jeweler said there was a fourteen day return policy. I almost didn’t make it.”
“You’ve had that for two weeks?” She glanced down at the closed box. “I… Marty… I…”
She didn’t know what to say. Her heart was beating so hard she was afraid he could hear it.
“Yeah, Diane helped me pick it out.”
“Diane knew?” She looked bewildered that her friend had kept mum for two weeks. It wasn’t like Diane to keep a secret. Hope was going to kill her.
Now, it was Marty who was surprised. Hope was never this short with her words. He sometimes would tease her unmercifully about how she had a tendency to chatter away like a cockatiel on speed.
“Come on,” he said. He felt his keys dig into the palm of his hand. Enough time had passed that it made an indentation before he felt the pain and relaxed his fist.
He started to get out of the car, taking great effort to keep her from seeing his face. He knew he didn’t have a poker face, and was trying not to let her see how embarrassed he was feeling.
Hope
grabbed hold of his shirtsleeve.
“Marty, wait,” she said to him.
“Look, Hope, I understand. Forget it, it’s okay. We can pretend this never even happened.” He turned back to her, trying to hide his embarrassment.
“I just don’t understand,” she faltered. “You never mentioned getting married before. Why have you changed your mind?” Her top teeth bit down on her bottom lip.
He raised his eyebrows. He looked at her, astonished, as if she was thinking that his proposal had come out of nowhere.
“Changed my mind? I never changed my mind Hope. I always wanted to marry you. I love you so much it hurts sometimes. I want to spend the rest of my life with you. I want to have little Hopes and little Martys running around with dirty diapers needing to be changed and keeping us up nights driving us crazy. I’ve wanted to start a family with you since the first day I laid eyes on you, Hope. It’s not as if we have plenty of time to do that.
“I haven’t changed my mind, Hope. I was just always so afraid to bring up the subject, because I knew in my gut that this would be the answer I would get.” He knew he sounded annoyed and angry. He didn’t care.
Now she was getting angry at his assumption that he knew how she would react.
“First of all I haven’t given you an answer, so don’t get all smug and testy with me.” She lifted the small box, her finger rubbing gently on the velvet cover. She closed her eyes and willed herself to open it.
The moment it came into her view, she let out a loud gasp. The beauty of it struck her, and she knew that he had put a lot of thought into what she would want. A two-karat princess diamond set in white gold stared back at her. On either side of the diamond sat a stone in a rich, deep ruby color. Her birthstone.
She turned and looked back at him. He was watching her now, unsure of what was going on. He couldn’t tell what she was thinking.
“Marty…” she stopped as the headlights of a neighbor’s car passed by and lit up the inside of their car. She suddenly noticed a five o’clock shadow on his face. She softly passed the back of her hand across his cheek and felt the rough stubble.
“Marty, it’s beautiful.” Her eyes started to well up with tears.
“A lot of good that does me,” he grumbled.
“Marty, you know I love you. There is nobody in this world that I love more than you.” She paused for a second. “Well, maybe the Captain takes a close second.” She smiled, trying to get him to loosen up.
“I hear a ‘but’ in there,” he responded, voice turning slightly bitter.
“There is no ‘but,’ Marty, I’m just being practical. It’s just a very big step. I mean, where would we live? Do you move in with me? Are you really ready to fully move out of your father’s house? Especially now?” Her eyes were brimming with tears now, and she was afraid to move. If she turned in the slightest, she knew a dam would break and she wouldn’t be able to control the tears that would fall.
Marty flashed back on the episode in his father’s house in earlier in the day. He was half in and half out of the car. His fingers tapped nervously on the steering wheel.
“I was hoping that you weren’t worried about that. Tell me you aren’t worried about that.” Suddenly, he was no longer concerned about her answer about getting married. He had been trying all day to put his concerns about the Captain in the back of his mind. He wondered now if subconsciously that was the reason he blurted out his proposal.
Hope
closed the jewelry box and palmed it.
“Come on, let’s go inside.” She leaned over and gave him a soft kiss on his lips. “Let’s continue this conversation inside, Marty.” She wiped her eyes with cuff of her sleeve. She had managed to keep the tears where they belonged.
He tossed the keys up in the air and grabbed them mid-air as they made their way down. He didn’t say another word, just followed her into the house and secretly wished he could have a do-over of the entire day.
Chapter Fourteen
Sunday evenin
g
I thought I had it all figured out in my mind. I knew exactly what I was going to say and do when I got home. I had rehearsed my words over and over again on the way to my house.
The minute I pulled into the driveway and parked the car, my well thought out and organized thoughts turned to mush.
I could see into the living room through the front window, and was able to make out the shadow of Glenn, sitting in his favorite chair. The old plush leather lounge chair was a hand-me-down from his father. I had begged Glenn to get rid of it, or at least have it reupholstered, but he refused to even consider it and was adamant that the chair would remain untouched. Because he was so attached to it, I let it go and no longer made an issue of it. I did insist that we cover it with a small blanket that had a design that blended nicely into the decor of the rest of the room. For some reason, the moment my eyes fell upon that piece of furniture. I became overwhelmed with resentment about it.
In my head, I could hear the voice of my psychiatrist friend, Hope, telling me that I was transferring my anger at my husband to the chair. I didn’t care, I was so irate!
I knew he heard my car pull up. My temper soared even further at the fact that he hadn’t made a move. I slammed the car door and stomped into the house through the garage like a bull in a rodeo arena.
I slammed the door behind me so hard that it caused Roxy to back up instead of giving me her usual enthusiastic welcome. The dog whined and looked at me, her big brown eyes trying to get a feel of whether or not she had done something wrong. I imagined a thought bubble over her furry head as she tried to remember if she had dug a hole or got into the paper towels and shredded them. I immediately felt remorseful and rubbed the back of her ears, apologizing to my best—and maybe only— friend residing in this house.
Glenn
knew what was coming, so he just sat there, waiting for me to make the first move. We very rarely argued, but we had developed a pattern, and I knew exactly how he was going to handle my outburst. He was going to let me rant and rave for however long it took.
“What the hell were you thinking?” I yelled at him, knowing he would remain silent.
I was totally blown away when he yelled back at me without raising his voice.
“Keep your voice down. I finally got your daughter to stop crying and go to sleep.” He stood up and threw down the remote control that he had been holding in his hand.
“Well, she needs to come down here and explain a few things to me. Do you realize the consequences of what she has done? Glenn? Do you even have a clue?”
“Yes, Jean, I have a clue. I know that your daughter is an emotional wreck. I know that she has been crying out for her mother’s attention for months now, but you have been so busy being a cop and whining over Joe’s behavior that you have been oblivious to your own daughter’s needs.”
I looked at him, stunned. I couldn’t understand where this was coming from.
I shook my head.
“I don’t believe this. Have you and I been living in the same house? Crap, the hell with that—have you and I been living on the same planet? How many times have I told you that, no matter what I do or say, she takes offense to it? Do you know what your answer always is? Do you?” He stood there, saying nothing.
“Well let me remind you, Glenn: your answer is, ‘She’s a teenager.’ Does that ring a bell? That she’s acting like a perfectly normal teenager, that I shouldn’t take it so personally, that it’s just my hormones overreacting. You have let her get away with murder.”
The last word came way too close to the truth, and it came out in a choke. I prayed to God that I wasn’t even remotely close to being correct and that I was speaking figuratively, not literally, when I spoke the word murder out loud.
“Do you not care that your fourteen-year-old daughter spent the night out with a seventeen-year-old murder suspect? Do you not care that she deceived us? Does it not bother you that our daughter knew that a young girl was lying on the cold ground, dead, and her beautiful face was so callously mutilated, and didn’t bother to inform us so that she could protect some teenage Romeo?” I was shaking so hard that Roxie came up to me and rubbed her muzzle against my thigh in an effort, I suppose, to calm me down.
He sat back in his chair. His hands cupped his head.
“Of course I care, Jean, but I don’t know how to make it better for her, or you. Our daughter has been walking a tightrope for way too long. I don’t think either of us realizes just how fragile she is. We missed the signs, Jean, both of us missed the signs.”
I sat down on the floor at the foot of his chair. Roxy lied down and put her chin on my lap. We both sat there in silence for a few moments. All we could hear were the soft sounds coming from Roxy’s snout as she lay there breathing.
“Why did she do this, Glenn? What possessed her to keep silent? That’s not how she was raised. That’s not who she is.” I was beginning to calm down, but I was still wary of how this was going.
“She thought she was helping a friend, Jean,” he told me. “She said that Dylan was distraught and scared and that she was going to tell you, but he needed her help. Bethany believes in him, Jean. I need to trust her instincts. I don’t think she was trying to deceive you as much as she was trying to protect and help a friend. She made a mistake.”
I shook my head.
“No, Glenn, she didn’t make a mistake, it’s not that simple. She broke the law. She aided and abetted a suspect in a homicide investigation. She interfered with on ongoing criminal investigation. That is a crime, Glenn. Our daughter could be charged with obstruction of justice as an accessory to murder!” I was actually admitting it to myself for the first time as I was saying it to him.
And then it hit me.
“That’s why you hired Alexis Marciano. You didn’t really do it for Dylan, you hired her for Bethany.” I suddenly had a flashback of my daughter as a toddler. A little girl with a skinned knee and drool running down her chin, her daddy blowing raspberries on her belly. If I had the slightest hint that my little girl would be convicted of a crime, my first instinct would have been to take her and run. My husband, the practical one, hired an attorney.
I folded my legs, Roxy’s head dropped to the floor. I put my two knees together, and wrapped my arms around them, clasping my hands together and rocked back and forth.
My cell phone buzzed and Glenn gave me a look that said, “Are you really going to answer that now?”
I pulled it out of my purse and recognized the number immediately. It was from the Chief. I looked up at Glenn and apologized to him without saying a word.
I sat silently and just listened to my superior on the other end as he relayed the information I needed to hear. It was short and sweet. I turned to my husband.
“Kimberly Weston just died.” I told him as I stood up and started walking in the direction of my daughter’s room.
“Maybe you need to come with me, Glenn. I don’t want to do this alone. We need to find out exactly what she knows, and why she didn’t tell us.”
He didn’t say anything, but he did stand up and followed me up the staircase. I reached behind me and opened my palm to take his hand. He accepted it by entwining his fingers with mine.
***
Marty and Hope had barely walked in the front door when his cell phone buzzed.
He didn’t want to answer it, afraid that it would mean he would once again have to go out on a call. It was late, and he was tired, and although he was wary about continuing the conversation he and Hope had started in the car, he wanted to get it over with.
He recognized the number displayed on the screen. The call was coming from his friend Justin. He looked at the time and realized that Justin was probably just starting his shift for the evening.
“Yeah, what’s up Justin?” He tried to sound cheerful, so as not to let his friend get an inkling of his mood.
Justin
was anxious to hear if Marty finally asked Hope to marry him. He was looking forward to having Marty join the ranks of the indentured like himself. But he immediately let him know that the phone call was work-related.
“Marty, we just got word that the Weston girl died. I thought you would want to know,” he said.
Marty held the phone away from his ear for a moment and then thanked Justin for informing him.
Justin
started to get into the personal matter of proposals, but Marty cut him off and promised to give him a call the following morning. He disconnected his call and turned to Hope who was standing in the kitchen, waiting patiently.
“Do you have to go back to work?”
“No, that was Justin. Kimberly Weston didn’t make it. Now we have a double homicide. Maybe Paul Knox wasn’t that far off base. This is starting to smell like a serial killer. I wonder if Jean is going to want to bring in the state police or feds.”
He took off his jacket and removed his side holster, taking out his weapon and carefully laying the gun on the kitchen table. He gently began to tap his fingers on the slide of the Glock like he was playing a piano.
Hope
pulled out one of the kitchen chairs and sat down.
“Those poor families,” she said. “It’s bad enough to lose a child, some people never recover from that type of loss. But to lose them in such a senseless and horrible way, I can’t even begin to imagine.”
She looked at him, trying to get an idea of what he was thinking. That was the one thing that she really loved about the man.—you didn’t have to ponder or guess with Marty. She never had to ask him if he liked what she was wearing or what she had cooked. Marty wore his emotions on his sleeve. It was all there, right out in the open.
“What is it?” she asked. “Something have you baffled?”
There were times that he was grateful that Hope was a psychiatrist, and this was one of them. He had a question that would easily be answered by an expert in her field, and here was one sitting right in front of him.
“You know, I was leaning toward the mayor’s daughter on this, Hope. She seems so… what’s the word, when someone is so into themselves and doesn’t care about anyone else?”
“Narcissistic?”
“Yeah. Katie Hepburn, the mayor’s stepdaughter, seems so disconnected from it all. I mean, she finds her friend’s body in that condition and it was like, ‘Oh well. No big deal’.”
He got up and grabbed the jug of milk from the refrigerator. He lifted it to his mouth and chugged a good deal of the white liquid down in one gulp. He gave her a sheepish grin, his left dimple making a brief appearance, after noticing her disapproval of his unsanitary habit, and then continued to speak.
“You know, she is a beautiful… no, she’s past beautiful, the girl is stunning. You would think that she would be scared to death that she would be next. This whole thing doesn’t seem to faze her.”
“I don’t understand, Marty. Are you not considering her as a suspect anymore?”