Deserves to Die Part 23

Pescoli said, "I think it's a good idea. Respectful. Dan Grayson was good to all of us."

"Let's go," Jeremy yelled from behind the wheel and fired the engine before slamming his door shut.

"Great," Bianca grumbled but climbed into her brother's rig as Pescoli made her way to her own Jeep.

Santana was waiting for her. "Trouble in paradise?" he asked, hitching his chin toward Jeremy's truck as it wheeled out of the lot.

"Nothing serious." She didn't want to go into it.

Santana picked up on it. "You want to ride to the cemetery together?"

"Yes. Please. That would be great." It felt good to let someone else take charge, if only for a little while. "But there's three of us," she said, indicating Sturgis.

Santana's dark eyes sparkled in the sun. "I'm used to that. Come on." He walked her to the pa.s.senger side. She handed him her keys and slid into the Jeep. Sturgis hopped inside.

They drove to the cemetery in a long procession and Pescoli stared out the window. Once they were through the city with its plowed streets and piles of graying snow, they pa.s.sed by broad fields spangled beneath the bright sun. The cemetery was located on a hill outside the city limits that angled softly upward and offered a view of the valley and the town sprawled below. Tombstones half buried in snow sprouted from the frozen ground and two roads bisected the graves. Ahead was a fresh plot-dark earth turned over in the snow, an oblong hole in the ground surrounded by several floral sprays, a small tent, and fake gra.s.s.

Fewer people had made the trek to the cemetery, though a bevy of vehicles were parked and mourners trudged through six inches of frigid powder to stand at Dan Grayson's final resting spot. The chaplain said a few more words and led another prayer. The Grayson family sat in a sober group near the grave.

Pescoli's stomach knotted at the finality of it all. When the guns were fired in salute, she fought a fresh spate of tears. Sturgis didn't so much as whimper as the rifles blasted and afterward the dog, head down, followed Pescoli obediently to Santana's truck.

It was over.

For everyone.

Sheriff Dan Grayson had been laid to rest.

Jessica woke Sunday morning feeling tired all over, and at work, the diner was a madhouse. While Sat.u.r.day had been a little slow, the crowd had returned for Sunday breakfast, brunch, lunch, and then later for dinner.

Nell was beside herself, delighted that the receipts were keeping the register busy. "This is just what we needed," she said, grinning.

Misty was quick on her feet, and obviously thrilled with the tips. "Maybe I will take that winter vacation to Puerto Vallarta after all. My cousin's got a place down there, ya know. Always asking me to come down, but the airfare's out of my league. However, with a couple more days like this, I can see myself sitting on a beach and sipping a margarita from some hottie in a Speedo."

Armando rolled his eyes and muttered something in Spanish under his breath. He and Denise had worked harder than ever getting the orders cooked and plated at a breakneck pace. Though Denise was handling the extra work effortlessly, Armando was at his rope's end, griping that they were running out of staples and that too many of the orders came in with changes. Jessica, grateful for the fast pace, didn't have time to think about the fact that she'd promised herself to go to the sheriff's office the next morning.

But as the shift wound down and the last customers drifted out of the diner, her stomach once again knotted. Could she go through with it?

It was a little before eleven when Misty said, "You run on home. I'll close."

Jessica nodded. She was dead tired and told herself to get a decent night's sleep, then face the music. When she drove out of the lot, she found the city streets nearly deserted, the town of Grizzly Falls seemingly folded in on itself and closed up for the cold winter's night.

She told herself again that she wasn't being followed, that the headlights she'd seen in her rearview mirror weren't zeroed in on her. As she had before, she considered all of her options. She could wait for the b.a.s.t.a.r.d to find her, stand her ground, and try to blow him away herself, but then she'd end up in a trial and possibly prison or the mental hospital. Again.

No, thank you.

Fleeing or turning herself in to the police were her options.

If she ran again, she was only putting off the inevitable. Buying a little frantic time. Putting more people in danger. Again, she'd pa.s.s.

That left going to the police, telling them her story, and hoping they would believe her, trust her, go against all the evidence.

She turned onto the county road and the streetlights gave way to darkness. No car seemed to be following her and the more distance she put between herself and Grizzly Falls, the more she told herself to relax. She had only one more night on the run, then, come morning, her life would take another turn and change.

Forever.

"So be it," she said, the beams from her headlights cutting through the deep night. A few snowflakes drifted lazily from the night sky to catch in the light. As she left the city behind she should have felt calm, but instead, she was still uneasy. Restless. She fiddled with the radio and heard an old Johnny Cash song on a country station that kept cutting out. She thought of her family and a bitter taste rose in her throat. Would they come to Montana? Would she be sent to Louisiana where she would face them again through iron bars or through thick gla.s.s where they could only speak through phones mounted in the walls? Or would they abandon her?

Did she even care? Those ties had been severed a while back, their frayed ends unable to be st.i.tched back together.

She had, of course, not only betrayed and embarra.s.sed them, she'd renounced them publicly, a sin for which she would never be forgiven. Her mother and father lived by a very stiff and archaic set of standards. A public life that was, to all who looked at it, picture-perfect. No cracks to be seen. But once the doors were closed, their private life was very different and very guarded.

She'd known the rules growing up.

She'd not only broken them, she'd done so in a very public way.

She remembered the day she'd first confronted her mother.

Outside on a lounge chair, her mother was reading a paperback. Wearing a sundress and dark gla.s.ses, she'd positioned herself on the porch in the shade of the overhanging oak tree, leaving only her legs exposed to the sunlight.

Though it was barely nine in the morning, the summer heat was sweltering, the day sultry, almost sticky, a haze in the blue Louisiana sky. An Olympic-sized pool, her father's prized possession, ab.u.t.ted the veranda of her parents' home outside New Orleans. It shimmered as it stretched far into the tended backyard.

"Mom?" Anne-Marie called, gathering her nerves.

Jeanette looked up and set her paperback onto her lap. A gla.s.s of sweet tea was sweating on the small table beside the lounge chair. A smaller gla.s.s of ice and a clear liquid, most likely gin, sat near a pack of long cigarettes by the ashtray and a lighter. Paddle fans, as always, were softly whirling overhead. b.u.t.terflies with orange and black wings flitted through the heavily blossomed bougainvillea flanking the yard.

"This is a surprise." Jeanette smiled, but Anne-Marie knew it was false. Jeanette Favier had never been a warm person.

"I have something to tell you."

"Oh." Nothing more. Just the hint of disappointment from dealing with a daughter who had continually disappointed and bothered her.

"It's about . . . him."

"Again?" Her mother sighed, her smile falling away. "Why you have such a problem with your husband, I'll never understand. Marriage isn't easy, and given your . . . condition, you're lucky he wanted you."

"My condition. You mean because I was a little wild?" Anne-Marie challenged.

Her mother sighed through her nose. "Your brothers were 'a little wild,' but you pushed the boundaries, got yourself in that accident and-" She stopped. "Oh, well."

"Go ahead. Say it. I've never been the same since. Isn't that what you were going to tell me? You blame me for falling off a d.a.m.n horse and hitting my head and think that's the cause of every bad thing that's happened to me since."

"You were in a coma for days, but of course, you don't remember that. When you finally woke up"-Jeanette shook slightly-"you were . . . different."

"With a condition."

"You went from bad to worse. I'd thought . . . no, I'd hoped . . . when you finally decided to get married that you would settle down, make a decent life for yourself. But that's not the way it ever is with you."

"He's not the man I thought he was."

"No one is. We all have girlhood dreams of white knights and thunderous steeds and chivalrous men who pledge their lives to us, but in the end, they are all just men." Jeanette let out a long breath and shook her head. "Have you forgotten the 'for better or worse' part of your vows?"

"He hit me, Mom."

Jeanette looked up sharply. "Oh, Anne-Marie," she said as if she didn't believe her, as if Anne-Marie were spinning another lie.

"I'm serious, Mom," she insisted and witnessed the cords in her mother's neck tightening, the way they always did when Jeanette was forced to deal with her wayward, rule-breaking daughter's problems.

"Okay. So he shoved you," she finally said, finding a way to make the statement more palatable. "Why don't you just, you know, keep quiet about it?" Jeanette Favier's type of motherly advice. "That's what we do, you know." She reached for her cigarettes, then her fingers scrabbled over the gla.s.s top of the table, nearly knocking over her iced tea before she clenched the soft pack.

Anne-Marie stood her ground. "He beat me!" she repeated, her fists clenching at her sides. "That's a.s.sault, Mom."

"Hush!" Her mother sat up quickly, then glanced furtively over her shoulder toward the inside of the huge plantation-style home. "For the love of G.o.d, Anne-Marie, keep your voice down. The cleaning people are here and your father's in his study." She pointed overhead to the area in the general direction of Talbert Favier's private office.

"You don't care that he hit me?"

"Of course I care." Jeanette tried to shake a cigarette out of the crumpled pack.

"You should, because he hit me over and over again. I thought . . . I thought he would crack my ribs."

"But he didn't, did he?" Jeanette managed to shake out a cigarette and light up despite the fact that it was slightly bent. Her hands were trembling.

Anne-Marie stared down at her mother. "Not yet. But he will."

"No, no. You don't know that."

"He's going to really hurt me."

"Now, look, Anne-Marie," Jeanette said, sighing in a cloud of smoke. "This is not good. But you knew he had a temper before you married him."

"Not like this. I didn't know he was violent."

Lifting up her sungla.s.ses, Jeanette squinted at her daughter through a thin tendril of smoke. "So what do you want to do?"

"Go to the police."

"What? Oh, Lord!" She shook her head at the thought, then set her cigarette in the ashtray. "No way. You have to leave the police out of it."

"He beat me, Mother. What part of that don't you get?" To prove her point, Anne-Marie took off her own shades to display the red in her eye, the bruise surrounding her eye socket.

"Oh . . . oh, dear." Jeanette winced.

Not stopping with the damage to her face, Anne-Marie lifted her T-shirt to show the black, blue, and sickly green discoloration across her abdomen.

Her mother sucked in a swift breath. "I'm so, so sorry." In an act so foreign to her mother that Anne-Marie was stunned, Jeanette grabbed a towel draped over a nearby chair and dipped one corner into the pool. "Sit," she said, indicating the end of the chaise and then, smelling of smoke and her signature perfume, she gently dabbed at her daughter's injuries.

Anne-Marie sucked in her breath as her mother touched her face, pressing the cold towel against her cheek.

"I think you'll live," Jeanette p.r.o.nounced.

"This time."

"It's not that bad." She took her time folding the towel.

"He attacked me, Mother. Beat me. Then raped me." Anne-Marie was trembling inside, the memory of the vicious attack fresh and brutal. She needed her mother to understand, to be her champion.

"Oh, darling," her mother said softly.

For an instant, Anne-Marie believed Jeanette's hard exterior had cracked with empathy and love for her only daughter, but that hopeful impression was short-lived as the older woman asked gently, "Whatever did you do to provoke him so?"

"What? Didn't you hear me? He a.s.saulted me, gave me these." Once more, Anne-Marie lifted her T-shirt to display her bruises. She hurt inside, was as emotionally beat-up as she was physically. But it was at the hands of her own d.a.m.n mother, the woman whom she'd hoped would believe her and protect her.

"Oh, I heard you, sweetheart," Jeanette said as she leaned over the table and took a final puff of her cigarette before putting it out in a series of nervous taps until the filter tip was mashed in the ashtray. Then she turned to grab her daughter by the shoulders. "I know you're sore. It's obvious, but . . . but your husband's a good man, maybe a little rough around the edges in private, but you just have to try to please him."

"How can you say that?" Anne-Marie nearly screamed. "These aren't the Dark Ages, for G.o.d's sake! Mother, listen to yourself. Do you really think I should stay with a man who does this to me?" She held her T-shirt higher, where bite marks were visible on her b.r.e.a.s.t.s over the top of her bra.

"Honey." Her mother picked up the towel again, and, looking as if she really had no idea what to do, tried to dab at the contusion on Anne-Marie's cheek again.

Anne-Marie dropped the hem of her T-shirt and grabbed her mother's wrist, stopping her. "He's an animal," she hissed. So angry she was nearly spitting, she shoved her face close to her mother's so that their noses nearly touched. She saw the tiny imperfections in the older woman's face, the pores that were a little larger on her nostrils and the telltale web of red lines running across her nose to her cheeks. Minuscule threads lurking beneath the surface, they were evidence of far too many gin and tonics by the pool that were stubbornly resisting an ever-thickening layer of makeup.

Anne-Marie said, "I will not be used as a human punching bag."

Jeanette backed up. "You married the man."

"I didn't know."

"Listen to me, Anne-Marie. There is no divorce in our family. You might see that as archaic, but that's the way it is. Your father is an elder in the church, a respected businessman. And your grandfather's a preacher. Do you hear me? My father preached from the Good Book. Your brothers have problems with their wives and kids and they're working it out. You haven't been easy, my dear. Not at all. Not with the craziness you spew. But," she said and then repeated, "but . . . we are proud, genteel people, expected to set an example for the community."

"You would sacrifice me? For the sake of... what? Some ridiculous and antiquated notion of what a marriage is? Your precious reputation?"

Slap!

Her mother's palm struck fast and hard, leaving a red mark over Anne-Marie's already bruised cheek. "Sacrifice is a part of life, a path to heaven. And marriage is sacred. Don't you ever forget it. And as for divorce? In this family, it's out of the question." She yanked her arm back.

Anne-Marie let it go. "You can't tell me what to do. I'm a grown woman."

"Then act like one." Disgusted, Jeanette added tautly, "Do your duty, Anne-Marie."

"Are you kidding?"

"You're a wife. His wife. Your choice. And, let's face it, you haven't been a very good one, have you?"

Anne-Marie didn't answer.

"I didn't think so." With a frown, Jeanette said, "Look into a mirror. Think about what you've done. You're not the victim here."

"He hit me."

"Then deal with it. But, please, don't come running to me!" She started for the inside of the house.