Page 89 of Truth, Lies, and Second Dates
“Took refuge in inappropriate humor?”
“Gosh, however did you guess? Anyway, the guy actually comes around, we give him oxygen, he’s coherent enough to give his kid a thumbs-up, I talk to her for a couple more minutes and explained that we had the best medical care all lined up for him and he’d be whisked to the hospital—in Daytona, but you know what they say about beggars and choosers—and then I went back to the cockpit to give Vang a sitrep and we landed and the guy turned out fine. And his kid, this adorable little strawberry blonde, just gloms onto me when we’re all finally on the tarmac and starts asking what classes you have to take to be a pilot, and I eventually peeled her off me and helped her and her mom into the car the airline provided for them, and away they went.”
“Remarkable.”
“It was a busy morning,” she agreed. “And I guess we’d better get back to ours.”
They got out of Tom’s van and headed into the funeral home, their idea to kill time while setting up the Becka intervention (“We think you might be in league with a killer, and it’s affected our lives in the following ways…”). They might not get any closer to finding Dennis, but it was better than waiting around for the next awful thing to be set in motion.
“Hello again, Ava.”
Blinking in the sudden gloom—damn,it was sunny outside—Ava didn’t immediately place him until he came closer.
“Hi, Pete. This—” She started to introduce Tom, who wasinexplicably facedown on the carpet before she could finish with “… is my lover, or he will be when I devirginize him.”
Taser,she thought, staring. Pete was holding a dull black electroshock weapon little bigger than his hand, from which he’d fired two electrodes and their conductors. Both were now trapped beneath Tom, who had gone over like he’d fallen off a cliff.He was waiting for me. But he didn’t count on Tom.And, out loud: “Oh, shit.”
“Well put,” Pete agreed.
Forty-Five
“Wh-wh-why-what-wh-”
“Articulate as ever,” Pete said with a thin smile. “Just like when we were in high school.”
“We weren’t in school together, you cock!”
“Yes, we were!” This in a high-pitched scream that was almost as shocking as watching Tom succumb to fifty thousand volts. She didn’t dare look down at him; she needed to keep her focus to fill the time.
Meanwhile, Pete had visibly calmed himself. “We were. For two years. I graduated at the end of your sophomore year. You didn’t remember me then, just like you didn’t remember me at the nursing home or last week or probably next week, if you were still alive next week.”
Past tense. Aw, c’mon, spoiler alert!“So it’s my fault you’re…”Boring? Forgettable? Uninteresting? Inconsequential? The human equivalent of dryer lint?“… introverted?”
“Ah, yes, the new feel-good term for shy people. Sure. Introverted.”
“Pete—why?”
His narrow face twisted, and she could see he wanted to shout at her again. When he spoke, his voice was noticeably strained. “Don’t do that. You know. Don’t pretend otherwise.”
“Pete: I promise; I’m clueless. Ask anyone. You and I weren’t close and you barely knew Danielle. You haven’t even seen me for a decade. Besides, you were so calm at the memorial. Remember? There’s—there was nothing there.”
“Wrong,” he said coldly, and she had a flashback to the word written in Danielle’s ashes.
“Jesus, you trashed the funeral home, too,” she realized. “But why?”
“No, I just finished trashing it.”
“Wait, what?”
“It wasn’t supposed to be Dani,” he muttered, and she made a note to get her hearing checked, because she was having trouble following him.It’s probably not your ears,her inner self soothed.It’s him, because he’s crazy.
“What are you saying?”
“It was supposed to be you!”
For the first time, she noticed how wretched he looked. The dapper guy in the pricey clothes who lived a nice life abroad was gone. Now he was in faded jeans and an old T-shirt, sneakers, no socks. Ironically, seeing him slouching around in what had essentially been his high school uniform helped a memory click home.
“Is this because of the nursing home?”
