Devious - Lisa Jackson [116]
But the two had shared a look, and Val had overheard an argument once. She’d been hurrying down the hall, almost at the head of the stairs, and her parents’ voices slipped through the bedroom door that hadn’t been quite closed.
“You can’t get behind with the tuition!” Nadine had whispered harshly. Tiny and thin to the point of being bony, she was a strong woman whose convictions were matched only by her faith.
“We’re not. It was a screwup. I took care of it.” A dozen years older, Gene Renard was a foot taller than his wife, his hair in gray tufts around a significant bald spot, the smell of tobacco and smoke forever clinging to him.
At her mother’s words, Val had stopped, her hand on the newel post, her gaze riveted to the crack between the door and the jamb. From her vantage point, she saw her mother’s full-length mirror and the reflection of her father stepping out of his dirty work jumpsuit.
She had nearly turned away but couldn’t. “Look, Gene, I promised Mary, okay? Private school. Catholic. So we can’t mess this up.”
His legs were white but muscular, his jockey shorts black as night. A once-athletic man who had developed a bit of a paunch in his later years, he was about to yank off his shorts. She’d blushed at the sight of him; then, when his gaze caught hers, she’d hurried quickly down the stairs.
Neither of them ever spoke of that moment again. She thought then that it was odd, as many times as she’d been here, she’d never once visited the graves of her biological parents, those two people who were but wispy memories. Where the hell were they buried? The woman who’d been their friend, who had supposedly brought Val and Camille to the orphanage, she might know. Again, the woman’s kind face came into view, but her name . . . Wasn’t it Thea? No . . . but she was married or had been and that guy’s name was . . . Oh, damn. Steve . . . no! Stanley! That was it. Stanley O’Malley!
“Let’s go,” she said, not really knowing why she’d brought Slade here, why she’d felt an urgency to touch the tomb of the parents who had raised her. It seemed they, too, had secrets they’d taken with them to the grave.
“Where to?” They were walking through the oversized glass door and into the bright sunlight of the afternoon. The air was thick, the sky a sharp, brilliant blue as they followed a brick path across a carpet of lawn to the parking lot.
“First I want to go to the library and the local newspaper, check the old files, anything I can’t find on my own over the Internet. I think it’s time to look up that ‘friend’ of the family. I think her name is O’Malley. She’s the woman who supposedly was watching Cammie and me when our biological parents were killed. I’d like to see what she has to say for herself.”
“Okay.”
She’d unlocked the car, and he was sliding into the passenger seat.
“And then I need to go back to Briarstone and look in the attic over the garage,” she said, thinking for the first time of the boxes her sister had stowed up there as she slid into the stifling heat of the Subaru. She started the engine, then quickly rolled down all the windows. “When Camille went into the convent, she left a bunch of her stuff with me. I didn’t want it, as we weren’t on the best of terms, but I finally relented when she said she’d get rid of it as soon as she could, give everything to charity or something, once she’d gone through it.” She pulled out of the lot and nosed her Subaru into the traffic leading to the Pontchartrain Expressway.
“I thought it weird at the time, didn’t know when she’d ever get away from the convent for something so trivial, but she hauled the boxes into the attic, and no one’s touched them since.” She slid a glance his way. “You game?”
“Sure.” He grinned slightly. “It’ll be just like Christmas.”
“Right,” she said without even the trace of a smile. “Just like.”
From two of the most uncomfortable chairs on the planet, Montoya and Bentz listened while the reverend