CHAPTER TWENTY SIX

I take the back way to Mrs. Winslow's house. Most of my clients are on this side of the neighborhood now that I've covered just about every house on the other side, but the real reason I take the north entrance is so I don't have to drive past Vivian's house. I don't regret the way we left things, but I worry that if I see her again, neither of us will be able to keep things where we left them, and it's better for both of us if we do.

I almost don't accept Mrs. Winslow's invitation to dinner, but I figure I owe her some closure too. She and I didn't have nearly the same relationship as Vivian and I, but she was as influential in helping me find justice for Lila as I was, so she deserves her own goodbye.

She answers the door and beams at me. "Nate! Why you look dashing as ever!"

"And you look as beautiful as those hydrangeas you take such good care of."

"Oh, stop! You're a tease! Come on in! I've made roast duck for dinner."

My eyes widen as I follow her into the house. "Wow. What's the occasion?"

"To say goodbye, of course!" She turns back to me and smiles. "Don't look so surprised. I've been around a long time. I know that this is the last time you and I will see each other. And that's all right. Some friendships are meant to last a lifetime, and others are meant to last only for a few weeks. Ours is no less valuable for its brevity."

I don't quite know what to say to that, so I only smile.

"Well, have a seat," she says. "I'll make you some coffee. I'll let you take it black this time. You don't need comfort anymore. Besides, I imagine there's nothing I could do that could compare to the comfort Vivian Chase gave you."

I start at that, and she laughs. "Don't look so embarrassed. You're a healthy young man, and you're only doing what all healthy young men do. Besides, Vivian's ex-husband was trash. Slept with everything female between here and Santa Barbara. At least she waited until after he left to find herself a pretty young thing."

For the third time, I decide I don't like Edith as much as I think I do before. But it's just one dinner, and then I don't have to deal with her disturbing intuition and disconcerting bluntness.

I sit at the table, and the smell from the kitchen almost makes Edith"s shrewdness and directness bearable. I've never had roast duck before, but if it tastes like it smells, this might be the most delicious meal of my life. I guess that's the silver lining to tonight.

She returns with coffee and sets it in front of me. "The duck should be ready shortly. In the meantime, I want to hear all the details."

"About what?"

She looks frankly at me. "I thought we discussed that pretending to be foolish isn"t attractive to you."

I laugh nervously and take a sip of my coffee. "Yeah, I guess we did."

"Well, then humor me. I'm an old woman, and this is the closest to entertainment I get."

It's a little disgusting that her entertainment is hearing all about how two parents murdered their daughter, but I guess it could just be my perspective. I didn't have any trouble telling Vivian all about it. For that matter, I didn't have any trouble telling Edith all about my suspicions the last time I was here. So why do I feel so strange about it now?

"Well, Clara killed her. They got into an argument, and Lila threatened to expose Julian's criminal activities and tell everyone that Clara was covering for him and that she was doing drugs again. Clara freaked out and pushed her to the ground, and she died."

"Oh, dear."

"Yeah. Julian tossed the body in the pool to make it look like an accident, Clara cleaned up the blood, and then Julian's business partner gave them an alibi."

"Hmm. I figured Barry would do that. He was very helpful when Julian had Derek Hill killed."

I pause with my coffee cup halfway to my lips. "How did you know about that?"

"Word travels fast in this neighborhood. You know that. Drink your coffee, dear."

I sip my coffee. This brew is brighter than the last one, slightly tangy. "Is this a new blend?"

"Yes. Colombian Supreme. I have no idea what that means, but I thought I'd try something different. Do you like it?"

"It's… interesting."

She laughs. "I'll take that as a no. Well…" she looks over at my half-full mug, and her eyes harden. "That should be enough. You don't have to drink the rest."

An alarm goes off in my head, but I have no idea why. What do I possibly have to be afraid of?

"It's too bad that Lila had to get mixed up in all of this," Edith says offhandedly. "But I don't think Julian would ever have been pushed far enough if she hadn't come forward with what she knew."

Another, far louder alarm goes off in my head. I swallow thickly. "What? What are you…"

I swallow again. My throat feels strangely thick.

"It's too bad that you had to get involved in this too," she says. "But when an opportunity comes, you take it. You're never guaranteed another."

I swallow a third time and frown. My ears are buzzing. "What are you… What's… You…"

"I told you that if you wanted to punish someone, you had to be patient. But you also have to be shrewd. And when the time comes to strike, you have to strike fast and hard."

I lift my eyes to hers. It's a lot harder than it should be. My head feels so heavy.

Edith's smile is gone. Even the fake one she wears is gone. Her lips are set in a grim line, and her eyes are cold and flinty. I realize with a shiver that her expression is a dead ringer for Julian Kensington's.

"I missed my opportunity to punish Oliver Kensington," she says. "I'll never forgive myself for that."

"What… Oliver?"

"Julian's father," she explains. "He was a beautiful man. Eyes like a summer sky and hair like the sun that shines in it. An absolutely perfect body too. I took one look at him, and I was head over heels." She sips her coffee. "I was a foolish girl, of course. He was married to Annette Hawthorne. I was pretty in my youth, but Annette…" she whistled. "She was the kind of girl men leave their wives for. The problem was that she was his wife, and all I was was the silly girl who would do things for him that she wouldn't." She smiled bitterly. "And I was happy to. My body belonged to him because the things he made me feel, oh…"

She looked at me, still wearing that bitter, contemptuous smile. "Vivian Chase was like that for you. The pinnacle of lust. A body so perfect that your entire will becomes slave to it."

I know she shouldn't be talking about Vivian like this. I also know I should say something about it, but I can't think of anything to say. For some reason, all of my thoughts are slow and muddled.

"Anyway, that's enough of that. Vivian, it turns out, is a good person. When she realized she was stealing you from yourself, she let you go. Oliver Kensington wasn't a good person. When he realized he was stealing me from myself, he just kept stealing until there was nothing left of me. When I became pregnant with Julian, I thought that maybe he would see, maybe he would understand how much he meant to me, and maybe I could mean the same to him." She shook her head. "Foolish girl."

I frown. "Wait. You're… you're Julian Kensington's mom?"

"I am. I gave birth to him in a shitty room in a shitty hospital ran by shitty doctors. Alone. I held him to my breast and sang to him, and for one hour, I thought if I could at least have him, then I could find a way to be happy. Then Oliver showed up and took him from my arms, and when I protested, he told me that if I made any trouble for him, he would have me killed."

My eyes start to close, and my head starts to sink, but when I see Edith watching me like a hawk watching a field mouse, I force myself to sit straight. "Yer… what'd you do?"

"I drugged you. I can't leave any loose ends."

My eyes widen. At least, I think they do. I'm so foggy right now, I can't really tell. "What? You… drugged…"

"Yes. I drugged you." She sips her coffee again and sighs. "I waited for years for my chance to get revenge on Oliver. I watched him in his home, followed him to his work, stalked him when he vacationed. I carried a gun for thirty years, waiting for the chance to use it, but I never found it. He died peacefully in his sleep, in the arms of his loving fucking family, while my son held the hands of a woman who wasn"t his mother."

Her lips press into a thin line. "I hated Julian for that."

"Wasn't his fault," I slur. "Wasn't him who hurt you."

She laughs. "Dear, it's not about what's right or wrong. It's about what's fair. I had my life stolen from me by a Kensington. So I stole a Kensington's life."

It should have hit me already, but whatever drugs Edith used on me are powerful enough that it's only when she says it directly that I realize what she's saying.

"You… you killed Lila?"

"No, dear. Clara killed her. I just helped her transition from cocaine to methamphetamines. Those lines you saw weren't cocaine. They were powdered crystal. I taught her to snort it because it was easier to hide the physical symptoms of meth use that way."

I can't believe what I'm hearing. Maybe I'm dreaming. The world is spinning like I'm dreaming.

"Meth is to cocaine what espresso is to chocolate. It's very easy to get someone hooked on it if they've tried cocaine. But it makes you far more paranoid. You're probably aware of this. I realize that you're a heroin junkie, but I'm sure you've interacted with meth heads before."

"You… you gave her drugs?"

"I did. And I befriended Lila, much the same way I befriended you. Just like you, she had parents who didn't care about her. She couldn't talk to them about her problems. But she could talk to me." Edith grins. It looks like the leer of a death's head. "Her Grandma Edith."

"You…" I stand, but the action makes me dizzy. I hear the thud of my body falling to the ground, but I don't feel it.

Edith sips her coffee, then stands. "I pushed Lila in the right direction. Helped her discover what her father was up to on her own. Told her to write everything down in her diary to help her deal with her feelings. Then, when I felt she had enough, I suggested that the right thing to do was to go to the police.

"It wasn't a guarantee. I had to hope that I knew them well enough to know how they would act. And I did. Clara started taking meth constantly. Lila caught her mother tweaking and in her immature rage threatened to expose her. Clara reacted the way any paranoid tweaker would. Violently. And Julian—ever his father's son—made sure that none of it could come back to hurt them."

She walks to me and looks down. Her face is blurry, but I can see those eyes, those vulture's eyes. "Except that you were there. You saved everything, Nate. You saw Lila and of course you fell in love with her. She was breathtakingly beautiful, and she was your age. As soon as she told me about you and told me that you left your vacuum at her house, I knew that was the day she had to be pushed. You needed to see her dead, and if you did, your zeal for justice would push you to discover Clara's and Julian's evil. Thank you."

"But… why… why…"

"Like I said. I can't leave loose ends. You don't strike me as intelligent enough to figure out my involvement in these deaths, but I can't take the risk that I'm wrong about that. So, you're going to be discovered with a very high dose of Oxycontin in your blood. I will find you in the morning in my pool. I'll be hysterical. I'll probably have to move. For my mental health."

"No… no…"

I intend to shout those words, but I only mumble them. I intend to fight her as she drags me to the pool, but I only hang limp. I have no idea how she manages to drag my body out of her house to the pool. The only thing I can think of is that her hate somehow gives her strength.

I don't feel the water wash over my head. I don't really even feel the water fill my lungs as I struggle to breathe. I know I'm dying, but my body and mind are far away.

I think of Lila as I struggle weakly. It's a cruel irony that Julian and his mother both drowned teenagers in their pools. Edith thinks she was robbed of her family. I think she had more of Julian than she realized.

My last thought before darkness takes me is of Vivian's smile. Her cool lips on mine, her warm body wrapped around me.

At least I got one last beautiful memory before I was taken from the world.