Page 95 of Cul-de-sac

“Yes.”

“And you forgot to open the garage door…”

“Yes.”

“This was really an accident?”

“Of course.”

“You got dizzy and banged your head on the steering wheel…”

“Yes!” Dani says.No!she shouts silently.Nick did this to me!He did this!She pushes herself to her feet. “Look. I’m real sorry about all this. I feel like a plumb fool. But I’m fine now and you don’t have to fuss about me any longer. Don’t you have to be at work?”

“Not till ten. Why don’t you come inside and let me make you a cup of coffee? We can talk….”

“No. I appreciate the offer. I really do. But I don’t have time.” She checks her watch. “I have an office full of patients waitin’….” She walks cautiously toward her garage, Maggie still hovering.

“I’m not sure you should be driving.”

“I’m fine. Really. All I needed was a little fresh air. I’m perfectly fine now. I promise. Don’t you worry your pretty little blond head about me.” She pushes through the lingering miasma and climbs into the front seat of her car. “And thank you,” she calls as she backs the Mercedes into the driveway and onto the street, using her remote to close the garage door. “You may have just saved my life.”

—

She doesn’t go to work.

Instead she calls her office and tells the receptionist she isn’t feeling well and to reschedule her appointments.

What in God’s name had she been thinking?

Had she really been giving serious thought to ending her life? To leaving her boys?

She pictures Maggie standing in her driveway, staring after her car as she pulled onto the street, and doubts her neighbor was fooled.

She’s seen your earlier bruises.

She suspected then.

Sheknowsnow.

“What’s really going on here?”she’d asked.

Why didn’t you tell her?

Dani turns onto the ramp for I-95 and presses down hard on the accelerator, transferring to the passing lane and quickly edging the speedometer toward eighty miles an hour.

She has no idea where she’s going until she sees the sign for the Forty-fifth Street exit, and she has to cut across several lanes of traffic in order to get into the proper lane on time. A barrage of angry horns follows her off the exit and into the eastbound lane. Less than ten minutes later, she reaches Dixie Highway. Two minutes after that, she’s pulling into the parking lot of Straight Shooters of West Palm Beach.

“Okay,”she hears Nick say.“Everybody out.”

She follows his silent directive, marching purposefully toward the gun shop’s front door. TheNo loaded firearms pleasesign still manages to elicit a wry smile as she pushes open the door. “Well, howdy, partner,” she whispers to the giant stuffed grizzly bear that serves as a greeter, then gives a subtle wave to the other dead animals watching through glass eyes as she approaches the counter in the middle of the large room.

Barely nine o’clock in the morning and three of the ten stalls are already occupied, two of the shooters women. “Hi, there,” she says to the middle-aged man in the orange vest behind the counter. His brush cut is a tad longer than the last time she saw him, the tiny diamond stud still embedded in his left ear. “Good mornin’, Wes.”

Wes’s brown eyes narrow as his head tilts to one side. “The doc’s wife, right?”

“Dani. Right.”

“Well, how you doin’?”

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