Thirty-Five

Bonnie's car was in the driveway when I got home, so I was betting she had already been to Mrs. Tibaldi's and picked up Rachel, having seen my text.

I took a couple of deep breaths before I got out of the car and slipped quietly into the house. I did not announce my arrival. It was nearly ten. Maybe Bonnie'd gone to bed. Rachel would surely be asleep by now.

I gently set my keys into the decorative bowl on the table by the front door, slipped off my jacket, and hung it over the bottom post on the stairs.

When I went into the kitchen, I found Bonnie sitting there.

Looking at me.

"Oh hey," I said. "I thought maybe you'd already gone up."

"No," she said flatly.

She had a coffee mug on the table in front of her, her finger looped into the handle. Bonnie didn't usually drink coffee this late at night. But then I saw the empty wine bottle on the counter by the sink.

"Where were you?" she asked. It wasn't a casual question. It carried an accusing tone.

"Out," I said.

"You hadn't said anything about going out when I left."

"It was a last-minute thing."

"It must have been important, if you had to get Mrs. Tibaldi to take Rachel on short notice."

"Went to see Trent," I said.

"Why?"

"I needed to talk to him. About... everything. I wanted to hear what he had to say."

"I thought I'd helped you with all that."

"You did. You helped a lot."

"But you still needed to talk to Trent."

I shrugged. "I guess."

"So what did he say?"

"He wasn't home," I said. "He was at some school meeting."

"Oh," she said. "Then why didn't you come back home if he wasn't there? Did you go to the school, find him there?"

"No."

"Then where were you?"

"I drove around. You know, sometimes you just need to wander to think things through. What's with the wine?"

"What?"

"There was the better part of a bottle there, last time I looked. You killed it off?"

She shrugged. "I felt like a drink."

"Looks like more than a drink."

"I was a little stressed when I got home," Bonnie said.

The truth was, I needed one, too. Badly. I went to the freezer, brought out a bottle of vodka, poured some into a glass, and added some soda.

"Why are you so stressed out?" I asked, then I remembered where she'd been. "Marta. Did something happen with Marta?"

She took a beat too long to answer. "She's fine."

"You told her," I said. "I asked you not to."

"I didn't tell her," she said, bristling.

"Then what's with this?" I asked, nodding at the empty wine bottle.

"Who wouldn't be stressed, after everything you told me? Christ, I thought you'd had a heart attack today. Of course I'm stressed. You look stressed."

She had that right.

The room went quiet. Something was going on here. With both of us. I knew what was going on with me, the tension I was holding in, how I was replaying in my mind what had happened in Billy Finster's garage. But Bonnie was holding back something, too.

She bit her lower lip and looked away. I knew that look. She was on the verge of tears and was determined to hold them back. She was deciding whether to tell me why she'd been sitting here alone in the kitchen, getting drunk.

She suddenly blurted out, "I almost had an accident on the way home."

"What?"

"I got your text, had picked up Rachel, and I was turning into the driveway when this asshole tried to pass me. Nearly T-boned me."

"Jesus. You're okay?"

"Yeah, I'm sitting here, aren't I? But it never would have happened if you hadn't gone out and I didn't have to get Rachel. We could've been killed."

So if they'd been hurt, it would have all been on me. Okay. I didn't believe this was what had her so preoccupied. She was channeling, getting angry with me about one thing to cover up something else.

I broke the silence that had lasted the better part of half a minute. "What's really going on, Bonnie?"

"I could ask you the same," she said. "Why'd you go out?"

I countered, "Did you even go to Marta's?"

Bonnie finished off whatever was left in her coffee mug. She set it down with a bang, stood up, and said, "I'm going to bed."

"Bonnie, please, talk to me."

"You talk to me," she said.

I knew what I needed to tell her, but I couldn't make the words come. I'd opened up to her earlier in the evening, told her everything, but things had changed. One problem had been replaced by another that was potentially far worse.

Exponentially far worse.

She walked straight past me on her way to the stairs. That was how our day ended. I was keeping something big from her, and she was clearly keeping something big from me.

We were in some deep kind of shit here.