Better Left Buried Read online

  Lance was cast as a villain long before Adam knew she had slept with him.

  She waited another five minutes before dialing Adam’s cell.

  Lance dabbled in fixing things.

  Adam made a career out of it.

  He picked up the phone on the second ring. “Are you ready?” Like nothing was wrong, like he’d been expecting her.

  “Whenever you are.”

  She locked the front door. It had been a treasure hunt to find a key, but she had what might be the only one.

  Adam arrived in under ten minutes and hurried to open the truck door for her. His black hair was tucked under a grease-stained baseball cap with lettering the same color blue as his eyes. A pair of coveralls sat wadded up behind the passenger’s seat and all she could smell was oil.

  “I missed you last night.” Adam kissed her.

  “Yeah, me, too.”

  “You okay? How’d your clean-up go?” He seemed markedly happier than the last time she saw him.

  “Great. You won’t believe how good it looks in there. Mom’s going to love it, I think.”

  He glanced at the mountains of trash bags and smirked. “I sure hope so because the garbage man isn’t going to be happy.” He joked and smiled as if, in the last twenty-four hours, he had been reinvented.

  She liked this easier, agreeable version. He was more the man she fell for. She moved across the seat to be closer to him, wondering how long things could stay as they were, and gasped when she saw Lance’s Grand Prix pull onto the access road they were exiting from.

  Pinewood Estates had one road in and out, with a maze of connecting streets crowded with a mixed bag of trailers ranging from landscaped to ruined. The older folks who had committed their lives to the place are what made it livable.

  Lance looked right at her and she grabbed Adam’s hand to distract him, but it was too late.

  “I can’t believe he’s still here.”

  The car was a dead giveaway, legendary in its inability to ever be finished.

  “Yeah, so Mom gets out at 11:00.” Avoidance seemed the best option. “Hopefully they won’t hold us up going over the discharge instructions, but seriously, sometimes that takes like an hour. I have to get some groceries at some point, but I want to make sure Mom gets settled in first. We have that appointment with Bennett in two days.” She was talking too much, but didn’t care.

  “Then I suggest you keep an eye on that one.” Adam hitched his thumb over his shoulder. “Last thing you need is her getting more out of her mind than she already is.”

  She wanted to tell him that Lance sold pot, nothing else, and that he’d promised not to even sell her mother that after her attempted overdose, but she smiled and said, “I don’t plan on letting her out of my sight.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  Harmony stepped into the crowded elevator, pressed the button for the fifth floor, and reached for Adam’s hand.

  “You all right?” he said.

  She nodded, but she was definitely not okay. Her stint at Spring View had started with a transfer from the very unit she was about to voluntarily return to. Having been on the other side of that locked door, she couldn’t help feeling they wouldn’t let her back out.

  The Behavioral Health Unit was at the far end of a long hallway, separated from the rest of the hospital by a security device that required a special tag to open. Signs warned of an “Elopement risk”, an odd term that really meant “Caution: beware of escape mental patients”.

  Harmony pressed the visitor’s doorbell and held her breath.

  A middle-aged nurse wearing a nametag that read “Norma” answered. She was tall, five-ten at least. Her broad shoulders stretched the fabric of her blue scrubs and there was a hardness about her that warned she wasn’t to be messed with.

  “Can I help you?”

  “I’m here for my mother, Charity Wolcott.” Harmony’s voice cracked when she said it.

  “She’ll be right out.” Norma led them into a small room where Harmony chewed her fingernails while she waited.

  “It’s going to be fine.” Adam pulled her hand away from her mouth. “Relax.”

  Harmony clasped her hands, but immediately returned to chewing. All she wanted was to feel the fall breeze on her face and smell the fresh air.

  The door opened and Norma returned with her mother and the familiar clipboard. A plastic bag of pill bottles hung from Norma’s left hand and there was a pen tucked behind her ear.

  Charity looked rested, but distant, as if she were staring past or through all of them. Her neatly combed hair had been tied back, most likely by one of the nurses, and even though the change was slight, her face seemed fuller. She’d been eating, sleeping, and looked better than Harmony had seen her in a long time.

  “Mom.” Harmony hugged her, but the embrace was one-sided. Charity put one arm loosely around her and then let it fall at her side. Harmony didn’t blame her. She knew the feeling of medicated emptiness all too well.

  “Are we ready?” Norma said.

  Charity shuffled across the floor and sat down in a chair off by itself. They’d put her in donated clothes: a baggy sweatshirt and a pair of loose jeans that looked like they might have been men’s.

  Harmony sat next to Adam on the couch across from Norma, listening as she listed all of the medications, dosages, warning signs, and precautions that needed to be taken.

  Harmony nodded in agreement with each of them.

  “Do you have any questions?” Norma said.

  Harmony shook her head. “No, nothing. We’re ready to get her home.”

  Norma handed Charity the clipboard to sign and Harmony the bag of pills. “There should be a week’s supply in there to get her started. We’ve applied for Medicaid for her, but the outpatient clinic will have samples until she gets coverage. A patient advocate will call tomorrow to let you know that everything has been approved and to schedule her next appointment.”

  Charity let her Medicaid lapse every year, only renewing it when the hospital did the work.

  “Thank you,” Harmony said and waited through a long silence for her mother to hand back the clipboard. Her signature looked like interpretive art, a side-effect, no doubt, of being drugged.

  “That’s it?” Adam asked.

  Norma tucked the clipboard under her thick arm. “That’s it.” She set her hand on Charity’s shoulder. “You take care of yourself, now. You hear?”

  Charity nodded as Adam helped her out of the chair.

  Norma held the door while Harmony exchanged places with Adam. “Why don’t you pull the car around front? We’ll meet you.” As slow as her mother was moving, she considered grabbing a wheelchair.

  Adam kissed Harmony on the cheek and hurried down the hall, taking the stairs while they waited for the elevator. Not a single word was exchanged in the long silence after Harmony pressed the call button. Charity barely blinked. She hadn’t succeeded in killing herself, but something inside her was clearly dead.

  “Wait until you see the house,” Harmony said. “It’s fixed up so nice.”

  Charity sighed.

  The elevator doors opened and Harmony had to all but shove her inside.

  “It’s all right,” Harmony said. “It’ll be quick.” There was no way to get her mother safely down several flights of stairs.

  An elderly couple, the only other people in the car, moved into the corner, exchanging wide-eyed glances and a look that might have been the wife’s way of saying, “How about we get off?”

  Harmony held her mother’s hand, praying for a direct trip to the ground floor.

  “I only wanted to keep you safe,” Charity whispered.

  “I know you did, Mom.”

  It had taken some digging to put everything together—but between the bruises, the accident, and her father going missing—Harmony knew what her mother meant and guessed what she might have done to protect her.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  Very little embarrassed Harmony, a
fact she’d become proud of after years of being made fun of. She prided herself on self-sufficiency, a façade considering her means, but the thought of anyone giving her anything made her cringe. It picked away at the flaw in her tough exterior and contradicted the image that she could conquer anything. Pulling up to the trailer, the first things she noticed were four sacks of groceries she immediately knew were from Lance.

  “Looks like someone’s been paid a visit by the grocery fairy.” Adam shifted the truck into park.

  Harmony, who had been sitting in the middle, reached across her mother to open the passenger’s side door. “It had to be Sylvie. You know how she is.” She held her mother’s arm until she was steady and stepped around her. “Let’s get you inside. I can’t wait for you to see what I did.” She produced the key and rushed to open the door.

  “When did the lock get fixed?” Adam asked. For months before she agreed to move in with him, he’d been after her to let him repair it. She’d refused every time saying it’d only get the door broken in, again, which, even now, she considered likely.

  “Last night.” She helped her mother inside. “What do you think?” She had hoped focusing on her mother’s reaction would keep her from having to answer to Adam, but the plan was short-lived. Harmony didn’t expect a flood of gratitude or anything, but when her mother walked down the hall to her bedroom and slammed the door behind her, her spirit temporarily deflated. “That was time and energy well spent.” She carried the grocery bags in two at a time, refusing to let Adam help.

  “Looks like the door wasn’t the only thing fixed.” His tone was exactly what she had expected: angry and suspicious. The small room smelled of paint and cleaner, the odor having concentrated from being closed up. She opened one of the windows and set to silently unpacking the groceries. “Harmony, what’s going on? How did this happen?”

  This.

  He said it as though it were something bad.

  “Lower your voice, please. The last thing she needs is to hear us arguing.”

  “I mean it, Harmony. Who was here? Because I know you didn’t do this alone.”

  “Why? Why couldn’t I have done all this?” She unloaded the groceries: mostly dry and canned foods, some juice, things that didn’t need refrigeration, and sorted them by where they went. “I’m as capable as you are and you’d know that if you ever let me do a thing for myself.”

  Adam reached across the narrow counter and grabbed her arm. He clenched his jaw and narrowed his eyes to two ice-blue slits. “Who was here?”

  “No one, all right? Let me go.” Harmony swung a large can of soup as hard as she could into the right side of Adam’s head, splitting his eyebrow. He let go of her arm, but she could already feel the bruises. “Get out.” Her small voice caught in her throat.

  He reached up to the lump forming on his face and examined his bloody fingers. “You bitch. You thankless, heartless bitch.” He was a ball of fiery rage.

  Harmony backed away toward the silverware drawer, her hands shaking. “I mean it, Adam. You get out of here.”

  “It was Lance, wasn’t it? I don’t even want to ask how you repaid him.”

  The words stung, more so because on some level they were true. Whether the payment came before or after, she’d done exactly what Adam was accusing her of.

  “What if it was? What if I’m tired of us? I never said this was forever, Adam. You don’t own me. I’m sick of you telling me where to be and what to say and how to act. Maybe I did sleep with him again. So what?” She braced for the open-handed slap that came in perceived slow motion. Her ear rang and her vision went momentarily blurry. She fell to the floor, holding her cheek, which was hot and almost instantly swollen.

  The hit stunned him almost as much as it did her. He stood over her, his mouth bent into a frown, and his eyes welled up with tears.

  “Oh my God. I’m so sorry. Harmony, I didn’t mean—”

  “Shut up. Just shut up and go.”

  “Please, listen to me.” Adam held out his hand to help her up and she slapped it away. It wasn’t her first time being hit by a man, and certainly not the worst.

  “Get out of here. I mean it.” Harmony pulled herself up using the edge of the countertop and her eyes locked on her mother’s.

  Charity’s stare was cold, calculating, and lifeless as she held a long flathead screwdriver to Adam’s right side. “It’s time to go,” she said, advancing the tip.

  Neither of them had heard her coming.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  The past twenty-four hours since patching things up with Jaxon had Brea feeling like she was living in a parallel dimension. She’d ascended from victim to rising starlet, with Rachael and Amanda conveniently tucked away. For the first time in twelve years, she was somebody at school. What happened in the locker room had stayed there, for the most part, and what little information had leaked was so far blown out of proportion that it had become urban legend with Harmony cast as a knife-wielding maniac.

  It wasn’t entirely true, but it wasn’t exactly false, either.

  She let people think what they wanted to, mostly because the circulating stories cast her as untouchable and she was about to face the true test. Walking toward the ‘popular’ group, holding Jaxon’s hand, every muscle tightened.

  “Relax. Everything’s going to be fine.”

  Seeing Becky Clark, the only brunette in the Rachael-Amanda-Becky trio, sitting across from Pete, Brea wasn’t so sure. She shook her long layered bangs out of her eyes and drew a deep breath.

  “What if Becky blames me for what happened to Rachael and Amanda? Even if no one else knows what happened, she does. I’m sure they told her.”

  “Brea, it’s fine. If you sit down across from her freaking out like this, she’ll react. No one’s worried about where Rachael and Amanda are. They know, even if they don’t know why.”

  In-school suspension had its own walk of shame. Brea caught a glimpse of the pajama-clad, unwashed version of Amanda being escorted off the bus by Principal Anderson earlier that morning.

  Rachael was nowhere to be found.

  “What if Rachael shows up? I mean, she was really pissed.”

  “Then I’ll deal with her, okay? The monitors will have her out of here as fast as she comes in. If I know her, she thought about what she did, is mortified, and begged her mother to let her stay home instead of joining the usual suspects. Besides, I’m guessing Harmony put enough of a scare into her to keep her at a distance. It’s fine. Really.”

  Jaxon sat near the head of the table, instantly striking up a conversation with Pete. Brea took the seat next to him, holding the key necklace that had become her talisman—her rabbit’s foot with the in-crowd—and waiting for the first negative reaction.

  A couple of looks were exchanged, but that was it.

  Pete snatched a piece of chocolate off the table in front of Becky, who tried to get it back before he scarfed it down.

  “Dammit, Pete. I was saving that.”

  Pete smiled and started blabbering something about a playbook.

  Becky struck up a loosely related conversation. “Did someone really nominate Laura Rosenstein as homecoming queen?” She looked right at Brea when she said it. Jaxon kept his hand on her leg and talked to Pete about plays for the game. “I mean, who is really going to vote for that girl? She’s a freak.” Becky kept on as if she and Brea were old friends.

  Brea looked left, then right, and pointed at herself. “Are you talking to me?”

  Becky snorted out something that might have been an attempt at a laugh. “Who the hell else would I be talking to? You think he cares who makes homecoming court?” She pointed at Jaxon and shrugged. “Well, maybe he cares. I mean, he’s probably the homecoming king and I really don’t think he wants red-faced Rosenstein on stage with him.” Laura, who was a nice enough girl, earned the nickname from her particularly nasty skin condition. “But yes, I’m talking to you. I mean, who’s going to vote for her? This has to be the all tim
e low.”

  Brea nodded. Of course Laura being nominated was a joke. Every year, one of the popular girls nominated the least likely to be crowned homecoming king or queen and stirred up a buzz to make whoever the unlucky soul was think they were a shoe-in for the spot. It was cruel in the deepest sense of the word, and two years before had one girl so upset that her parents enrolled her in private school the week after. The group seemed to know who was the most fragile and had no qualms whatsoever going after them.

  “It’s a mean trick,” Brea finally answered, surprised it had never been played on her.

  “It is,” Jaxon agreed, “and it’s tired. You throw her name in there?” He accused Becky outright and she smirked. “And they say Rachael’s the mean one.” Brea bristled that he’d defend her and he immediately recanted with an apologetic look. “She’s no angel, we know that—”

  “Easy, there. I get it.” The backpedaling embarrassed her. “Anyway, I’m sure she knows better.”

  Laura and Brea went to summer camp together for the three years during middle school and though Brea didn’t know her well, she knew her to be self-aware. Her hair was always tangled, her complexion spotty at best, but she knew she didn’t matter, not in the sense that popular girls did. There was no way she’d believe the nomination in a million years, though Becky had no way of knowing that. Of all the girls they could have picked, she’d be the least likely to dance the way they wanted her to.

  “What about you, dark horse?” Becky’s dark eyes and pencil-thin grin were hard to read.

  Brea shook her head. “I’m not the homecoming queen type.”

  Jaxon planted a kiss on the corner of her mouth. “Never say never. I think we’d look good up there.”