Third Degree. Greg Iles
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bathroom, opened one of the windows, then took the bag from beneath the toilet and dropped it out the window. She leaned out far enough to watch it fall behind some shrubbery; she’d retrieve it before she left for school, then toss it in a Dumpster at a gas station somewhere.
As she closed the window, she looked across her lawn, a vast dewy expanse of Saint Augustine grass dotted with pecan trees greening up for spring. There was almost no chance of her little disposal mission being seen; their house stood on a ten-acre lot, with their nearest house on this side—the Elfmans’—almost two hundred yards away, with much foliage between. Now and then Laurel saw the husband cutting grass where the property line ran near her house, but it was early for that.
Before the full psychic weight of the pregnancy could crash back into her thoughts, Laurel pulled on some black cropped pants and a white silk top, then applied her makeup in record time. She was putting on eyeliner when she realized she was avoiding her own gaze as much as she might her husband’s. As she stepped back from the mirror for a final appraising glance, a wave of guilt hit her. She’d put on too much makeup in a vain attempt to hide that she’d been crying. The face looking back at her belonged to what more than a few women privately accused her of being—a trophy wife. Because of her looks, they discounted her education, her work, her energy, her devotion to causes … all of it. Most days she didn’t give a damn what people thought, especially the women who gossiped nonstop about her. But today … the pregnancy test had confirmed every savage insult those witches had voiced about her. Or it almost certainly had, anyway.
“How the hell did I get here?” she whispered to her reflection.
The reproof in the large green eyes staring back at her was enough. She pulled down a curtain of denial in her mind, then turned and hurried down the hall to face her family.
The kids had almost finished breakfast before Warren looked out of the study. Laurel had just washed the skillet and was turning back to the granite counter where the kids were eating the last of the biscuits when she caught Warren’s deep-set eyes watching her from the study door. He hadn’t shaved, and the shadow on his chin and jaw gave him a look of unusual intensity. His eyes looked hollow, and his expression gave away nothing, except perhaps a sense of malice, but she wrote that off as hatred of the IRS. She raised her eyebrows, silently asking if he needed her to walk over for some private words, but he shook his head.
“If the earth keeps getting hotter,” asked Beth, her six-year-old, “will the oceans boil like when you boil eggs for tuna fish?”
“No, punkin,” Laurel assured her. “Although it doesn’t take much of a temperature change to melt a lot of ice at the north and south poles. And that can have very serious consequences for people living at the beach.”
“Actually,” Warren said from the study door, his deep voice carrying easily across the great room, “the oceans will eventually boil.”
Beth knit her brow and turned on her barstool.
Warren said, “The sun will eventually heat up and grow into a massive ball of fire, and the oceans will bubble away just like water in a pot on the stove.”
“Seriously?” asked Beth, her voice filled with concern.
“Yes. And then—”
“Daddy’s talking about millions of years from now, punkin,” Laurel cut in, wondering what the hell had got into Warren to be telling Beth that kind of thing. She would worry about it for days. “Your great-great-great-great-great-great-granddaughters won’t even have been born by then, so it’s nothing to worry about.”
“Supernova!” cried Grant. “That’s what they call that, right? When a star explodes?”
“Right,” said Warren with obvious satisfaction.
“That’s so cool,” Grant said.
“It’s a boy thing,” Laurel explained to Beth. “The end of the world sounds really cool to boys.”
Despite her predicament, Laurel was tempted to give Warren a chiding glance—it’s what she would have done had things been normal—but when she looked up again, he had gone back into the study, and she could no longer see him. More thumping sounds announced that he was still searching for something. On any other day, she would have gone in and asked what he was looking for and probably even helped him. But not today.
Grant slid off his stool and opened his backpack. Now Laurel felt some satisfaction. Without a word from her, he had begun reviewing his spelling words for the day. Beth went to a chair at the kitchen table and started putting on her shoes, which always had to be tied with equal tightness, a ritual that occasionally caused paroxysms of obsessive-compulsive panic, but on most days went fine.
Laurel sometimes felt guilty when other mothers complained what a nightmare it was to get their kids off to school in the mornings. Her kids pretty much did their preparations on autopilot, running in the groove of a routine so well established that Laurel wondered if she and Warren had some sublimated fascist tendencies. But the truth was, for someone who spent her days teaching special-needs students, handling two normal children was a no-brainer.
Should I go into the study? she wondered again. Isn’t that what a good wife would do? Express concern? Offer to help? But Warren didn’t want help with things like this. His medical practice was his business, and his business was his own. He was obviously preoccupied with the audit. And yet that prolonged stare from the door had disturbed her on a deep level. It seemed months since Warren had given her even a long look. It was as though he were intentionally giving her the space she had silently requested. He never looked too deeply, because she didn’t want to be seen, and he didn’t want to see. It was a conspiracy of silence, a mutual denial of reality, and they had become expert at it.
“We’re going to be late,” Grant said.
“You’re right,” Laurel agreed without looking at the clock. “Let’s move.”
She helped Beth get her backpack on, then picked up her own computer case and purse and walked toward the door to the garage. With her hand on the knob—almost out!—she glanced back over her shoulder, half expecting to find Warren gazing at her, but all she saw was his lower legs. He had climbed a small ladder to search the top shelves of his custom bookcases, ten feet up the wall. She breathed a sigh of relief and led the kids out to her Acura. Grant called shotgun—Beth never thought of it in time—but Laurel motioned for him to get in back, which earned a smile from her daughter and an angry grunt from her son.
After they were belted in, Laurel mock-slapped the side of her head and said, “I think I forgot to turn off the sprinkler last night.”
“I’ll check it!” cried Grant, unbuckling his seat belt.
“No, I’ll get it,” Laurel said firmly, and quickly got out of the car.
She hit the button on the wall and ducked under the rising garage door as soon as it was four feet off the concrete, then trotted around to the back of the house. She would retrieve the Walgreens bag, crush it into a ball, then slip it into her trunk and dispose of it sometime during the school day, at a gas station or convenience store. (She’d done the same with a valentine card and roses and a few actual letters during the past year.) She was making for a gap in the shrubbery when a woman’s voice called out, “Laurel? Over here!”
Laurel froze and looked toward the sound. Just twenty-five yards away, almost obscured by some boxwoods, knelt a woman wearing a straw hat and bright yellow gloves. Bonnie Elfman was about seventy, but she moved like a woman of forty, and for some reason she had chosen this morning to beautify the western boundary of her considerable property.
“I’m just adding some nasturtiums to this bed!” Bonnie called. “What’re you up to?”
Retrieving a positive pregnancy test so my husband won’t find it. “I thought I left the sprinkler on,” she called back.
“That’ll sure kill your water bill,” Bonnie said, standing and walking toward Laurel.
Laurel