22 Addison

She had sixteen missed calls from Porter Hayes. And six voicemails. Mrs. McKellar, this is Porter Hayes. We really need to talk...

Since her walk in Overton Park and her confession to Libby, Addison had been too much of a coward to call Porter Hayes back. If she did call Mr. Hayes, she knew it would blow up everything she'd built these last fifteen years and create a whirlwind of shit for the kids. Dean had pretty much promised as much in his office the other night, asking her all kinds of questions about her fragile state of mind and saying he was really worried that she'd been drinking too much and taking too many pills. All this delivered in Dean's dry, condescending tone, what she liked to call his army voice, speaking down to her as both the head of the household and the true voice of reason. Of course, she denied everything and said she had absolutely no idea what he was talking about. Sure, she took a daily Zoloft (doesn't everybody?) and on the rare occasion took a Klonopin. She'd started taking them when she first got those horrible panic attacks after scuba diving in Cancun (diving into a cenote with Dean and not knowing which way was up or down, lost in a swirl of bubbles).

But Addison damn well knew how that game of telephone went. From Libby to Branch and then direct into the ear of Dean. In the last week, Dean was now more present in his family's life than he'd ever been. She'd wake the kids for school and there was Dean in their incomplete kitchen, flipping pancakes and frying bacon. The other night, he'd stayed up late with Sara Caroline on the couch to watch those awful Twilight movies. A girl in love with a vampire and in some kind of triangle with Teen Wolf. Jesus God. And then there was Dean again, driving the family to Preston's soccer game, cheering and clapping from the sidelines and gladhanding the other parents. Dean McKellar, Superdad! No one seemed to know or ask about his horrific accident in London as he helped pack up the soccer balls and took the family for a big pizza at Mellow Mushroom.

And now it was late afternoon on Friday, Dean casually mentioning the fundraiser at the zoo tonight, just an offhand comment about maybe both of them dressing up this year. Wouldn't that be fun? All forgiven and forgotten for the annual Zoo Boo, an event that McKellar Construction always sponsored. Dean and Addison would be expected to be at the opening wine mixer just outside Primate Canyon, where you could guzzle cheap pinot noir to the smell of ripe gorilla shit.

"What are you going to be this year?" Dean asked, coming in from wherever he'd been and kissing her on the cheek. "Everyone is dressing up. It'll be fun."

"No, thanks," she said. "You take Preston."

"What about Sara Caroline?"

"Sara Caroline is fourteen," Addison said. "She hasn't dressed up for Halloween in three years."

Dean sorted through the big stack of mail while he explained exactly why she had to go to the Zoo Boo. It was one of his company's biggest charitable events and everyone would be expecting her. Addison grinding her teeth, wanting to ask the obvious question: What fucking company are you even talking about?

Dean disappeared upstairs to change out of his business suit, Addison left alone in the half-finished kitchen. The cabinets had been installed weeks ago but she couldn't store anything in them until the countertops arrived. They were useless, open, and exposed. She rested her elbows on a piece of plywood set over the island until Preston walked in, pissed off that he was just being told about Zoo Boo. Horrors of all horrors, he hadn't picked out a costume.

"You have a playroom filled with them," she said. "Just pick one out."

"They're old," he said. "They don't fit."

"Preston," she said. "I don't have time for this crap. Just find something that fits and put it on. No one is going to judge you."

"The only thing that fits is Pikachu."

"Okay," Addison said, already dreading every moment of this night, playing happy and content as she made small talk with the people from the Club and Second Pres. "Pikachu's perfect."

Preston ran his hands through his hair as if the whole world had conspired against him. He was still in his blue polo and khakis from school, his hair sticky and wild after a side trip to Ben and Jerry's, which she considered a second-tier ice cream shop to her own dear and defunct Sugar Babies. "I'm ten, Mom," he said. "Kids will laugh."

"Pikachu is awesome," she said. "He can electrocute people with his tail. I wish I could do that. Don't you?"

She could get through this. She'd have to get through this for Preston. She wouldn't wear a costume, but she'd dress up just the same. All smiles and laughter. Those McKellars. What a wonderful family.

"Are you okay, Mom?"

"Just thinking."

"Can I get Sara Caroline to paint my face?"

"Sure," she said. "Sure. Whatever you want."

"What if Pikachu was dead," he said. "But then came back to life? Wouldn't that be cool? Like a zombie."

Two and a half hours later, Addison and Dean were walking into the wine mixer at the Gorilla Grillz pavilion at the Memphis Zoo. Most of their friends had dressed up. Even Branch and Libby came as characters from Pirates of the Caribbean, Libby as Jack Sparrow and Branch as a lusty wench, with big balloons up under a puffy blouse and a red scarf tied around his head, which everyone found funny as hell. Addison didn't look for anyone's approval as she accepted a glass of red from Hannah Tracy. Hannah, oh boy Hannah, going full-out as the Little Mermaid in a bright red wig, wraparound sparkly green skirt, and purple bikini top.

"Preston looks so cute," Hannah said. "What exactly is he?"

"He's Zombie Pikachu," Addison said, taking down half the wine. "Sara Caroline painted his face."

"So creative," she said.

"I know," Addison said. "Zombies are so fun. Always coming back for more."

Dean was encircled by several men she knew, including that son of a bitch Jimbo Hornsby. Jimbo, appropriately dressed like Shrek with his fat face painted green, sipped from a big red Solo cup and laughed at a joke Dean had just told. She figured everything over the last two weeks was just some big goddamn joke. Ha ha ha. Sorry, babe. Just a little accident in England, got stabbed and lost my passport. But it's all cool now. Ha ha ha.

"Addison?"

Hannah Tracy was still standing there, dressed as half woman, half fish. Who wears a bikini top out in the middle of October? Her husband, Ward, one of Dean's best friends from an old-money Delta family, had probably talked her into it. Dean wanted Addison to show off the gold and diamond-encrusted Cartier. Ward wanted Hannah to show off her new tits.

"Are you okay?" Hannah said, placing a hand on Addison's back. "Do you need to sit down?"

"I'm fine."

"You're as white as a ghost."

Addison finished the wine. "We're all as white as ghosts," she said, walking to the bar, shooting Dean a hard look. Preston ran off with his twin cousins, asking if they could go and play in the House of Glass down by the giraffe exhibit. Why the fuck not? Have a ball, Zombie Pikachu. Bring chaos and disorder to us all. Devour the meek.

Dean intercepted her before she got to the bar, reaching for her hand. His hand so cold on the back of hers, gripping her fingers. He had on a navy cashmere sweater vest over a checked shirt, a pair of six-hundred-dollar custom-made jeans with crocodile cowboy boots that added two inches. "I thought we talked about slowing down."

"I'm only getting a glass of prosecco."

"Do you think that's a good idea?"

"How do I know what's a good idea, Dean?" she said. "You've been telling me that since you reappeared like magic in our shower."

Addison couldn't stand it anymore, everyone dressed up as pirates and pimps, mermaids and superheroes, getting tipsy and making small talk. She could've recited from memory almost every word of it. All of it sounding the same. 30-A, Montana, Thanksgiving in New York, the brand new G-Wagen, Presbyterian Book Sale... "Please let me go," she said. "You're hurting my fingers."

Hannah Tracy was with Libby now, Addison not speaking to her supposed best friend and sister-in-law since they arrived. Libby nodded along with whatever bullshit Hannah was telling her but also glanced at Addison with what might've passed as apologetic regret. Why did she have to start all this? How was Addison now the bad guy in this whole melodrama? A large banner flapped in the breeze over the bar, cocktails provided by McKellar Construction. "The Mid-South's Most Trusted Name."

Dean returned and handed her a plastic flute of prosecco before pivoting and greeting more friends from the Club and the Cotton Krewe.

Addison took a big sip, and another. How could anyone get through these events without something to drink? She knew she was glowering at Dean but didn't care a goddamn bit, her face flushing and her knees weak. She felt almost weightless, not remembering the last time she ate, the fucking stuff going straight to her head. She leaned against a support beam, Hannah Tracy laughing and laughing, looking like the bow of an old ship, her artificial breasts pointing due north. Addison closed her eyes and wobbled a bit. Fuck. Fuck. What the hell was wrong with her? She was feeling lightheaded as hell.

"Are you okay, ma'am?" someone asked.

So many people staring at her. All the vampires and witches wanting to take a bite of her neck. For a moment, she thought she saw that federal agent from the Fresh Market standing beside a row of singing pumpkins. The one who said Dean was involved in something of international importance and then told her Dean died in Paris. He was dressed as a scarecrow, watching her and lifting a hand to beckon her to him before she realized it was a goddamn skeleton robot with red, glowing eyes laughing at her.

"Mom, Mom!"

A dead little yellow rat was tugging at her sleeve. "Come on," he said. "You've got to see this."

"Please get me out of here, Pres," she said. "Please."

"Have you ever been in a glass house?" he said. "Ernest ran into a wall and got a bloody nose. It's freakin' awesome."

He'd drugged her. The bastard had drugged her.

That was the only explanation that made sense as she followed the little yellow rat, aka Preston, down the winding path with inflatable black cats and spiders shuffling in the wind. Preston held on to her hand, taking her down past the construction signs for the Zambezi River and past the African Veldt. She spotted the glass house in the distance, surrounded by tons of kids and their parents. A safe place where she could hide from Dean and his friends, clear her head, and maybe get calm until she could figure this whole thing out.

"Come on," Preston said, walking up onto the metal platform.

They stood in line up a metal ramp, Addison glancing back to see if Dean or Branch was behind them. She felt safe among the costumed kids and parents. Buzz Lightyear, a human hot dog, Britney Spears, and Beetlejuice. The line moved slow and easy up to the glowing glass house flashing with string lights and neon. Preston pressed a ticket into Addison's hand as they got close to the maze entrance. Kids screamed and laughed inside, floors seeming to crack under them like ice. The ramp tilted beneath her feet as she walked, but the guardrail under her left hand kept her steady. Someone touched her shoulder and she turned and stared right into the face of a Flying Monkey, Addison nearly coming out of her skin.

"The line's moving, darlin'," said a woman behind the mask.

Addison reached out and patted the monkey on its dear little red hat as if it were ChaCha. "Good boy," she said.

She placed a hand over her mouth but kept walking, knowing Dean had done this to her. Back in college this god-awful KA from Texas cornered her at The Gin and bought Libby and her Jack and Cokes that went right to her head. The KA had held her upright and carried her out to his jacked-up truck before shoving her inside, Addison as loose and wobbly as a rag doll, when Libby came running out with two friends from the football team who helped Addison out of the truck and then took the KA behind a dumpster and beat the ever-living shit out of him. That's what she needed now. Someone to pummel the shit out of her husband.

"Come on," the little yellow rat said. "Follow me. I know the way, Mom."

And just like Alice, she was down deep in the rabbit hole, only the rabbit hole didn't look like a rabbit hole, it looked like the inside of a disco with flashing lights and awful music. Preston felt along the passageways with his little hands, being blocked at every corner until he'd put his hand through a glass wall and motioned for her to come on. Addison closed her eyes and felt her way through the glass maze, feeling the walls, knowing she could do it all by touch, when she ran smack into the glass, falling on her ass.

Preston laughed and helped her up. What a good kid. She followed. She took slow baby steps now, wondering where all this would lead. Maybe she and Pres could keep on twisting and turning until everything was far behind them. The zoo. Central Gardens. Dean and his boll weevils. She glanced down the path she'd just followed and through row after row of glass walls and saw Dean standing outside watching her. She felt all along the next wall and the next until she touched nothing at all and hustled through. He'd never catch them. Ever.

In New York, he'd made so much sense. Addison about to hit twenty-five, absolutely ancient in her mind at the time. She'd already been a bridesmaid in six weddings. You're next, Addy. You're next. The only thing she got out of the weddings was getting laid twice. The publishing world no longer held her interest. How many times could she write a crappy press release for another crappy thriller. This is Richard Jones's most personal mission ever.From the all-time bestselling master of suspense ... Flapping thousands of books for the author's scrawl at Barnes Noble and Borders and then ending up with him at a book expo in Amarillo with his liver-spotted hand moving over her knee. Addison pressed on and kept on following the rat, ramming her head into three different walls like a stupid goddamn bird. Why Dean? Why had she chosen Dean? He'd appeared like something both new and familiar. Then it came to her. Dean McKellar was goddamn Big Dick Jones, former soldier turned world traveler, a guy who talked about backpacking across Europe and all the vineyards he'd visited. The son of a bitch even knew how to sail.

She turned and saw Dean, or who she thought was Dean, waiting outside the glass house, just a shadow, a ghost, or maybe a blot of ink running down from the pages of a book. Had she made him all up? Was he even real? She began to pound on the glass, "Let me the fuck out of here. I'm locked in."

"Jesus, Mom," Preston said. "Calm down. It's just a fun house."

Addison didn't recall the ride home, only coming to in the front seat of the Escalade, Preston shaking her awake and telling her that there was a man inside their house.

They were parked right in front of the guest cottage, lights off, both garage doors down and the security gate to the street closed. Her head felt like a goddamn balloon as she flipped down the illuminated mirror on the visor. Her face was a mess. Mascara smeared across her cheek. "What happened?"

"Mom," Preston said. "You need to call the police. Dad's been in there more than five minutes and he told me to call the police if he wasn't back."

"Who's in the house?" she asked, her voice echoing inside her head.

"The one-armed man," Preston said, shaking her shoulder. "Dad saw him in the window. He said for us to stay here and he'd take care of it. But you need to call the police now. Call them."

Addison reached into her purse but she couldn't seem to find her phone. She felt along the receipts, stray coins, and business cards, a tube of lipstick and her change purse. She pulled out Preston's Pikachu cowl and a ring of keys. Outside, the trees shook in a cold wind, the only light coming from a security light on the corner of their guest cottage.

"Are you sure he saw someone?"

"Dad said he thought he saw someone."

"But you said the one-armed man?" Addison said and reached for the door handle, telling Preston to stay put. "Everyone will be fine. I'm sure Dad is just turning on all the lights."

Thank god Sara Caroline was still over at Darby Saunders's house. She said they were going to do homework, but Addison knew Darby's parents were out of town and they'd probably invited some boys over. Not her main concern at the moment. Her main concern was looking like a drunken idiot in front of half of Memphis and now facing a killer in their house.

"Stay."

Preston tried to argue, but Addison shut the door behind her and raised a finger in his direction. Stay, good boy, stay.

And where the hell was ChaCha in all this? Their curly-coated friend and companion should be barking his goddamn head off if there was someone inside. As she walked along the stone path behind the home, the wind kicked up a bit, scattering more leaves into the empty pool and across their stone deck. She heard thunder in the distance and blooms of lightning, bad weather rolling in.

Keys in hand, she walked toward the back door.

As she passed the big bank of windows in the living room, she saw Dean arguing with a much larger man. Yes, it was the same man from the kitchen, the fucking one-armed man. Dean yelled something and the man yelled something back, all of it framed like a silent movie, until the man rushed Dean but didn't get two feet from him when Dean raised a pistol and shot the man three times in the chest. The dimly lit room bloomed with flashes of bright light, almost no sound except the thud of the intruder dropping hard.

She felt herself trying to scream, something ticking the back of her throat. But instead of coming out, the scream drew back inside her. She held a hand to her mouth and started to shake. Whatever she'd taken, it had paralyzed her. She couldn't scream, she couldn't move. Oh, fuck. Preston was in the car and she didn't have a phone.

Addison walked closer to the windows and watched Dean drag the big man by his feet out of their living room, past her antique hutch filled with her mother's crystal figurines, knocking a few framed pics of the family from a side table onto the floor. Each year with the McKellars in white linen and khakis by the dunes and seagrass. Most years she used the photo as their Christmas card, running down all their travels and milestones. Preston lost four teeth. Sara Caroline made it to the playoffs. Dean is the hardest-working and bestest husband on the planet.

She hurried back toward the SUV just in time to see Dean running down the front walkway. He had a casual, confident smile on his face as he looked at Addison and watched Preston climb out of the car. "All clear," he said. "Just being extra careful."

She mouthed, Are you fucking kidding me?

Dean shot her a look. "Give me a second, and then you guys use the back door. I'm headed out. Some business just came up."

Addison just stared at him, absolutely frozen. Her husband had just shot and killed a man in their living room and now planned to calmly go out for a quick drive, probably to drop the body into the Mississippi. They both watched as Preston hustled around the corner of the house to wait at the back door, leaving Addison standing there with Dean. A light rain started to pat the asphalt.

"You know you made a real scene tonight, Addy," Dean said. "Christ. I had to carry you out over my shoulder."

"Me?" she said. "You just fucking killed a man."

"What?" Dean looked at her and slowly shook his head. The bastard had the audacity to look hurt. "Oh, Addison. Why don't you go upstairs and sleep this one off. You're not thinking straight."