Grave Secret - Charlaine Harris [27]
“Okay,” she said, nodding as if we had a bargain. “So we’ll call you if he shows up again.”
What were we supposed to do? I opened my mouth to protest, but Tolliver said, “All right. We’ll talk to you again tomorrow, anyway.”
“I’m going to talk to the school principal,” Iona said. “I hate for them to talk about us, but at least the girls’ teachers need to know that Matthew’s around.”
That was a relief. I noticed that my aunt was sitting as though she were exhausted, and that Hank was looking worried. I remembered she was pregnant. Hank caught my eye and jerked his head toward the door. I tried not to be exasperated that he thought we didn’t have enough intelligence to leave when we needed to.
Tolliver said, “Talk to you tomorrow, then. ’Bye, girls!” he called down the hall. After a second, I saw the girls peeking out of Mariella’s room, and I waved at them. They waved back, a little hesitantly. They were not smiling.
We got into our car in silence. I didn’t know what to say.
“We’ve got to stay a little while, to make sure he’s not bothering them,” Tolliver said after we’d gone a block.
“So what’s to stop him from waiting a couple of days after we leave and then showing up again?”
Tolliver shook his head as if a bee was buzzing around it. “Nothing will keep him away if he wants to follow them around. I don’t know what to do.”
“He can outwait us, and he will. Besides, what are we, a private army? Why are we suddenly so much protection?”
“I guess they see us as—worldly and much tougher than they are,” Tolliver said, after some thought.
“Well, they’re right about that. But that’s not saying a whole hell of a lot, huh?”
“He’s my dad. I feel like I have to do something.”
“I can see that you feel that way,” I said, which was as tactfully as I could put it. “And I can see you want to stay a couple more days, and that’s fine with me. But we can’t stay here forever, camping outside their house, waiting for your dad to approach the girls again. Unless he gets arrested again—and let’s face it, he probably will be, because he’ll start using again—there’s nothing to do about him trying to see them, unless Iona and Hank will go to the police. Even then, the police can’t watch the girls all the time.”
“I know.”
Tolliver’s tone was abrupt. I snapped my mouth shut on any more words I might have uttered. Neither of us said anything else, all the way back to our motel.
If there’s anything that makes me nervous and scattered, it’s dissension with my brother. I reminded myself again to stop thinking of Tolliver as my brother, because that was just creepy, but it was a hard habit to break.
When we were in the room, I couldn’t settle on an occupation. I didn’t want to read, and television is a wasteland on Sunday evening unless you like sports. I couldn’t focus on my crossword puzzle. I gathered up our laundry bags. “I’m going to find a Laundromat,” I said and left the room. If Tolliver said anything, I was out of there too fast to hear it. We needed a break from each other.
I inquired at the motel desk, and the clerk gave me really good directions to a large and clean place about a mile away. We always keep a stock of quarters, and we carry detergent and dryer sheets in the trunk. I was good to go.
There was an attendant in the Laundromat, an older woman with crisp white hair and a comfortable body. She was sitting at a little table, reading, and she glanced up when I came in to give me a nod of acknowledgment. Since it was the weekend, the place was busy, but after a little searching I spotted two empty machines side by side. I found a plastic chair and dragged it over, and after I’d loaded the machines and gotten them started, I sat down and pulled my book out of my purse.
I could read, now that I was away from Tolliver’s brooding presence. I don’t know why that was so. But it was kind of nice to have bustle and people around me, and it was reassuring to have the achievement of clean clothes.
I was at peace. There weren’t