I only paid attention when Tate parked outside La-La Land and Jonas jumped out.
I focused on Jonas as he ran to La-La Land and I watched him lean a store arranged bouquet of flowers against a long, thick line of flower bouquets that had already been laid there.
I turned to Tate.
“He saw ‘em when we drove through earlier,” Tate answered my unspoken question. “He asked me at the store while you were takin’ a year to pick between spiral pasta and macaroni. He wanted our flowers to be there.”
Our flowers.
Our.
I looked back out the windshield to see Jonas jogging toward the SUV. He hefted himself in and closed the door.
I stared at the flowers the folks of Carnal had laid out to show Sunny and Shambles they had the town’s support.
Carnal was a good town. It was home.
I licked my lips as Tate pulled out of the parking spot.
Then I said, “I didn’t take a year to pick out pasta.”
Jonas chuckled.
All Tate said was, “Babe.”
* * * * *
“Petal, it hurt.”
My eyes opened.
The room was pitch. No moonlight because Tate had closed the curtains.
It was the middle of the night and I couldn’t sleep. This was the fourth time Sunny’s voice woke me up and her saying “hurt” in that tone that told me exactly how much it hurt, exactly how it felt when the blade sunk in her flesh, exactly how exquisite the pain was, exactly, I knew I wouldn’t get back to sleep again.
Carefully extricating my arm from around his waist, I rolled away from Tate’s back to rest on my opposite side.
Earlier that day, we’d come home to find Neeta’s car gone. Tate discovered through a phone call to Pop that Wood and Stella had come to collect it.
We’d had lunch, I made cookies while Tate and Jonas cleared the gutters of leaves (and yes, I’d let Jonas have some dough, a lot of it). This took them awhile so I sorted our pool bags, did laundry, changed sheets and ran the vacuum cleaner in random rooms, all this intermingled with sitting out on the deck and listening to them work and talk.
When they were done they played multiple games of horse at the basketball hoop that was mounted over the garage door. Sometimes I watched (okay, mostly I watched) while I sipped grape Kool-Aid.
The Kool-Aid reminded me of Carrie and Mom and Dad and home so I went into the house, got my phone, went back out to the deck and called them while I watched Tate and his son play basketball. I told my family about Jonas; about Neeta; I told my sister about Tate loving me and me loving him (she was cautiously happy for me, still thinking it was too soon but also liking Tate so she didn’t give me much guff); and I told them all about Sunny. I didn’t want to worry them but I also didn’t want to keep it from them. They didn’t like hearing it but they also made it clear they’d prefer it that way rather than me keeping it buried like I did with Brad and when I wandered the country looking for Carnal.
As for me, it felt good telling them, I needed to do it, to give it to them and they took it, as families do.
After basketball, I was off the phone and Tate and Jonas came to me. Tate took my newly refilled with Kool-Aid, retro, pink glass and downed a huge gulp.
When his hand dropped, his eyes narrowed on the glass then came to me.
“Jesus, Ace, that’s like suckin’ back a mouthful of sugar.”
He said this like it was a bad thing.
“I know,” I replied. “Isn’t it yummy?”
“Yummy,” Jonas muttered, his voice filled with humor. “Goofy.”
“Do you want some?” I asked Jonas.
“He knows where it is,” Tate answered for his son and then looked at the boy. “Get me a water while you’re in there, Bub.”
Jonas nodded and raced to the house, his arm still curved around the basketball.
I knew why Tate sent Jonas on his errand when he put the glass on the table beside me and leaned into me, a hand to either arm of my chair. He was sweaty, his hair around his neck and ears was wet and curling and there were more wet bits plastered to his forehead, as his t-shirt was mostly plastered to his chest.
Another kind of yummy.
“How you doin’?” he asked softly.
I took in a breath and on the exhale shared, “How I’m doing is, I keep thinking about it and she told me all of it but I still think we didn’t get much.”
“We got more than we had,” Tate replied.
“That’s true but it’s not enough,” I said. “He was wearing a ski mask.”
“Bad luck,” Tate muttered. “He came prepared.”
“She was too scared to notice the color of his eyes and he didn’t barely speak,” I reminded Tate of what he already knew since he’d been listening in with the Feds.
“She’s talkin’ now and they’ll get someone in to work with her, get more. But now we know he’s built, strong, not a wimp, and we know he’s white. We also know it wasn’t opportunity. He’d seen her before.”
“How do we know that?” I asked and, unfortunately, Tate moved away but pulled another chair close to mine and sat down.
“He came prepared,” Tate repeated as he leaned down, wrapped an arm around the backs of my knees and then lifted his legs, feet to the railing, pulling mine up, twisting me in my chair and throwing my legs over his.
“The ski mask,” I guessed.
“Yeah, it’s July,” Tate stated. “He was also wearin’ gloves. Left no prints on her bike, left nothin’.”
“But it’s him, the one who killed Tonia,” I stated.
“It’s the same kind of knife so that’s a good assumption.”
“I don’t get it.”
“Shambles was with her before,” Tate told me. “Tambo talked to him. She’d go out and draw down the sun on her own but not at that spot. At that spot, Shambles was always with her.”
“So this time, alone…”
“He’d seen them together, she was alone this time, he took his shot.”
“So, planned but not planned, exactly.”
“Not planned exactly but planned, yeah.”
I looked to the trees.
“He lives up there Laurie,” Tate muttered and my eyes shot to him.
“What?” I breathed.
“Bet my f**kin’ life on it, he lives up there,” Tate reiterated. “He knows that spot. He knows those woods. Bet my f**kin’ life he lives up there. He hunts up there. That’s his space. It’s his.”