I took his phone and nodded, stepping back and bending to it to find Polly in his contacts.
So I didn’t miss it when he addressed Bobby.
“Now this seems to be the thing, Bobby,” he began. “If she was at Berkeley, then it might be, he went there to get her. Which means he took her over state lines. Which means this is no longer Dern’s case. This is now under the jurisdiction of the FBI.”
The woman made another noise, a kind I’d never heard, was unlikely to hear again and wished I hadn’t heard it at all.
Extreme relief and immeasurable sorrow.
For Bobby, his breath burst out of him like a bullet.
I found Polly’s contact, retreated to the kitchen and hit go.
Thirty-Four
A Wife
Once I’d surfaced from my call to Polly—who had gone from misguidedly taking responsibility, to being livid, which of course meant she indulged in a mini-rant with me, and this made me feel better, at least for her, because she held no responsibility, and she should be angry—I had a decision to make.
Bohannan was in the foyer, murmuring on the phone.
Bobby was on the couch, bent with head in hands, elbows to his knees.
And the woman had stepped outside on the deck.
She was smoking a cigarette and staring fixedly at the pier decorated in yellow police tape.
So, I guessed not a choice because what I had to do next was obvious.
I went out on the deck.
The day was cold.
The mist was thick.
And she had her forearm crossed at her ribs, her elbow resting on her hand, the cigarette held up into the air.
A defensive posture.
And a rebellious one.
I stopped at her side.
“Why don’t you come back inside?” I suggested gently.
“He’d do it, you know,” she said, bent her wrist, took a drag, lifted her hand and exhaled a precise plume of smoke from pursed lips, not taking her gaze from the pier.
“Who would do what?” I asked hesitantly.
“Fuck Dern up the ass. It’d be an intriguing twist for him. He likes it up the ass. That’s what Audrey gave him that I didn’t.”
Oh boy.
I’d heard the name Bobby before.
He was Bobby of Bobby and Lana, the first couple Audrey tried to break up.
Therefore, this must be Lana.
“To get him back, I learned how to do that.” Another plume. “I even learned that I like it.” She looked at me and everything about her was a dare. “I don’t have to bother with him anymore. I haven’t let him touch me in years. So I do it to my new guy. The minute I suggested it, he rolled over. Men love it. I don’t even have to touch his dick. Hold him down, fuck his ass, he comes into the sheets.”
She was lashing out.
And she was a sister.
So although I didn’t want to hear this (at all).
I stood there for her.
“We have a club.” She told me. “Me and Annie and Wendy and Sarah. Audrey did it all. She was a full-service whore. Jay, she dressed up as his secretary and he spanked her, or she dressed up as his teacher, and she spanked him. Dwayne, he likes pain.” Her lips peeled back from her teeth in a vicious grin. “Dale is like Bobby. He’s all about ass. He comes over now, and he’s Pavlov’s dog. He walks in Sarah’s back door, undoes his pants and drops to his hands and knees. He lets her shove whatever she wants up there. I’ve given her toys the size of which you wouldn’t believe. She knows he’s punishing himself. He cries half the time, even as he begs for more and covers her floor in spunk. But she’s there for it.” Another plume. “She’s totally there for it.”
She turned her gaze to the pier.
And kept talking.
“That’s all we have. And I know how spiteful it sounds. It sounds sick. Like we’re the ones who are sick. When what did we do but fall in love? Fall in love and get married and make babies and think life would happen the way it was supposed to. There’d be bumpy times, and hard times, but we had him. We made a family. We’d be okay. He’d be there. But we were so wrong. We didn’t realize we’re the untouchables.”
She huffed out a husky laugh, swung her cigarette in, another plume of smoke, she swung it out and kept going.
“Like, how hard is it to say, ‘Hey, let’s do something different. Let’s play.’ That’s not hard. I said it to Dean, my current fuck, and he was all in. We both get off on it. We love it. But no. We’re the wife. You never stop being the right type of girl. The marrying type. The wifely type. The motherly type. The other type stretches over your thighs with her ass bare or uses some apparatus that hangs off your balls. Not your wife. Incidentally, I love it when Dean spanks me. I fuck him until he comes into the sheets, he spanks me, and I come in his lap.”