The Art of Saying Goodbye - Ellyn Bache [20]
It occurred to her, in the spooky hour between two and three A.M., with only the ghostly light from the computer screen illuminating the room, that Paisley has always been too beautiful, and too flirty, for her own good. She’s done some things she shouldn’t have. Many people probably wish her harm. Iona googled “poisons.” She was vaguely aware that she was going in the direction of murder not for Paisley’s sake but for her own, hoping she could make sense of it in a way she had never been able to make sense of what happened to Richard. But “poisons” gave her no help. Almost anything can be a poison. Solvents. Antacids. Furniture polish. Tylenol, for God’s sake. As to symptoms, anything goes. She googled “damage to pancreas and liver.” She didn’t learn much.
Still, she persisted. Who’s around Paisley enough to make her eat or inhale or absorb sufficient quantities of something to kill her? Her kids. Her mom? No. It has to be Mason. He’s always reminded Iona of Clark Kent, the mild-mannered newspaperman who turns into Superman every time he passes a phone booth. Once, at the swimming pool, he took off his glasses and was instantly transformed from writer nebbish to Handsome Dan, revealing a fine profile and strong jaw along with his unusual, deeply cleft chin. Gym-honed biceps, too, which Iona never noticed while the glasses were in place, and a six-pack she didn’t expect. A man like that could be dangerous. Even his editorials sometimes had a surprising kick. Who’s to say he’s not more diabolical than anyone thinks?
She went to bed satisfied and slept for a few hours on the strength of her theory, only to awaken slick with what felt like sweat but was actually a fine sheen of shame. Mason, a murderer? No. Making Paisley’s illness into a homicide will not put reason to what happened to Richard, or ease, even one iota, the bitterness that sits eternally on her tongue.
If she’s not careful, she thinks as she passes the ribbon-bedecked trees on her own block, these bows and streamers will cease to be just about Paisley and become a reminder of Richard and all the gruesome details she has promised herself to put behind her. Pulling into her garage, she takes the interior door into the house, not wanting to risk another glimpse of white ribbon. Leave it alone, she tells herself. Let it be. But she’s already back in the summer of twelve years ago, too far gone to push it away, and already sickened by the memory.
It was a Saturday morning, the end of an interminable three-day rain from a tropical storm that had blown inland and up the coast. She and Richard hadn’t exactly fought, just been antsy and irritable. Jeff, too, was in one of his weather-induced snits, although for Jeff that wasn’t unusual. When the sun finally peeked out around noon, Jeff disappeared in his car, Iona fled to the grocery store, and Richard took Chance to the park for a walk. None of them said goodbye to each other. They were too glad to escape one another’s company, after so much enforced togetherness. Imagine that now.
The park where Richard took the dog had a mile-long walking path, bordered in part by a U-shaped water-retention area with a culvert at the far end to carry storm water beneath the road and down to the creek. Usually it emptied quickly and stayed dry, but that afternoon, so soon after the flooding rains, it was nearly three feet deep with water rushing toward the culvert and its two-foot-wide drainpipe with a current fast as a river.
As might be expected, Chance went to investigate. A good-natured dog, part golden retriever but smaller, he loved water almost as much as he loved Richard. He sniffed around and then, straining at his leash, waded into the pool, liking nothing better than a summer swim. Almost at once the current grabbed him,