Neon Nights Chapter 3
I got married last weekend in the Islands. I thought you should know,” Kyle Lane said.
Detective Carly Hill stared at the phone confused, a cascade of emotions running through her body, each jockeying for pole position.
Shock, amusement, jealousy.
Her ex-husband was the same guy who couldn't commit to a choice at the drive-thru, sometimes holding up the line for three or four minutes while he went back and forth through the brightly colored menu board. Now thirty days intodating this girl, he has the clarity of a freshly cleaned window, and he gets married to her?
All she could muster back was, “Okay.”
“Can you bring April to the house on Saturday night for our party?”
No please … never a please.
“Okay,” she said.
She could picture him out on the deck of their old house, sitting back in a lounge chair by the pool with a putrid-smelling cigar in his
hand, like a tycoon from the twenties. The image in her head made her sick to her stomach.
“April will love Tiara so much. Tiara can’t have kids, so she’s really excited to spend more time with her.”
Tiara. What a name.
Carly bit down on her tongue.
“I hope you’re happy that I’m happy, Carly. I want the same thing for you so bad.”
Such a gross lack of self-awareness was a terrible quality to have as a person.
What was worse, though, was a sociopath who knew precisely how to leverage their manipulative tendencies. She fought the urge to smash the phone against the wall and stayed quiet.
He didn't let up.
He never did.
“You’re welcome to come too. Tons of our old friends will be there. I’m sure they would love to see you,” he said.
She said nothing.
“Party starts at seven. If you can have April here by then, that would be amazing. Oh, I need to take this call. Talk soon, Car.”
No, thank you. Never a thank you.
Carly sat down at the kitchen island to finish her coffee. Her blood boiled as she sipped from the #1 MOM cup thatApril had given her for Christmas last year. She looked out her back window at a flurry of activity in the trees, a gangof blackbirds assaulting the leaves with their wings like they owed them money.
Why is this getting to me?
She heard footsteps behind her and looked up to see her nine-year- old daughter April wearing a t-shirt with a cartoondolphin holding a shovel that read, I dig dolphins. The girl took to just about anything she touched, but she loved the piano and the ocean more than anything else in the world. She was sweet to strangers and kind beyond her years, andhardly a day went by that someone didn't pay Carly that compliment.
How she had come from him was beyond her.
A moment of fear seized her at the thought of April spending time with him, unlocking some hidden evil buried deep inside her.
What if April started to act like him?
Would it change the way she felt about her only light in the world?
“Good morning, Mommy!” she said, giving Carly a hug that melted away the morning’s start on contact.
“Hi, sweetie.”
She hugged the girl back tighter than she needed.
April sat on the barstool across from her mother and put a book down on the countertop. Never anything electronic. Itwas always a physical book or magazine … and she read all the time. She said she loved the way the pages felt, andshe couldn’t connect to a story the same way if she couldn’t touch it.
“Could I have some toast and fruit for breakfast, please?” Carly smiled and moved to the pantry to get the girl’s breakfast started.
“I've got some news for you, honey,” Carly said. “Good or bad?”
“Ummm.”
“Bad it is,” April said.
Nine-year-olds picked up on shit quick. “I don’t know how to classify it.”
The girl smiled. “Is it about dad?”
She’s like a damn shrink.
“He got married again,” Carly said. “To who, Tiara?” April asked. “Yes, to the crown girl.”
The little girl smacked her hand to her head. “Do people usually get married that fast?”
Carly set a medley of fresh blueberries, strawberries, and bananas in front of her daughter.
“Sometimes, but it usually has to do with Las Vegas.”
The girl attacked the fruit as if it had been weeks since she ate.
“He wants you to go to the wedding party this weekend at his house.”
April stared at the bowl of fruit as if it contained the answer to a riddle she needed to solve.
“Oh, okay … do I have to?”
“No, but it would make him feel good if you did.”
The little girl took a deep breath and poked at her fruit this time, seemingly less enamored by it.
“Okay then.”
Carly stood in front of the mirror naked and looked herself over.
Maybe she wasn’t as taut as she was in her college tennis career, but she didn't think she was doing bad. Everythingwas staying up, more or less, and police work kept her stomach flat, and her ass elevated. She got closer to the mirror,smacked her lips, and opened her teeth like she was checking a horse’s gum line.
Maybe she was trying to protect herself and overlook some glaring flaw, but she honestly felt pretty good about how she looked.
Yet she had struggled to scare up a date in the last five years, while Kyle had been married now two more times.
It wasn't that men didn't have any interest, but she had a few strikes against her. One, she had a nine-year-old, and mostmen her age still had the maturity of a nine-year-old. Two, she had a badge and gun, and most men were too insecureto be with a woman who could take care of herself.
She sighed and came to the same decision she made every time she felt this way. April needed her one hundred percent focus, and any relationship that she took on could steal time from her daughter. Unlike most fathers, mothers, with the very rare exception of those that made their way onto tabloid TV, contained a built-in self- destruct button when anything concerning their kids was threatened.
Carly opted to stop the self-pity train in the middle of the tracks and walked into the closet to put on her khakis andblack polo. She tied her hair back in a ponytail and grabbed the Glock 19 and her holster from the gun safe. She heard the phone ring in the kitchen and hurried down the stairs to answer it.
She smiled at the name on the screen as she hit accept. “Coffee?” Marc asked before she could speak.
“No hello?”
“I think coffee is actually hello in Icelandic.”
The laugh that escaped felt like freshman year, and she tried to tone down some of the teenager in it.
She heard music floating through the house from April’s room and recognized a number from Mozart her daughter had been working on.
The day was on the way up.
“Okay, well, I’ve had quite a morning and coffee sounds great,” she said.
“Everything okay?” Marc asked. “Eh.”
He laughed.
“That good, huh? April okay?” “She's great, more ‘me’ stuff.”
“Well, I’m ready to listen. I need to run by the marina to talk to Paul, meet the chief at the station, and then head to the hospital if you want to join.”
Few phrases had the same impact on the human species as “the hospital.” It had the power to uproot a conversation and veer it off in a much different direction.
“Who’s in the hospital?” she asked. “Kerry Baker,” Marc said.
“No! What’s wrong?”
“Looks like she took a pill last night at that Neon Jungle festival and is in critical condition. She’s not the only one it happened to.”
“Why would we bring in a festival with 50,000 kids on a week where we are already understaffed?” she asked,frustration seeping into her voice.
“Don’t get me started,” Marc said.
“You and me both. I’m ready. I just need to drop April at my mom’s place. Sandbar for coffee in an hour?”
“Perfect,” he said.
Then his voice broke just the slightest bit as if he were trying to bite the words back before they could leave his mouth.
“Oh … one more thing I need to tell you.”
This was headed nowhere good.
“Okay,” she said, trepidation in her voice.
“I put in my resignation effective one month from today.”
Then he hung up the phone before she could start yelling at him.
She steamed as she drove down Route 1 toward her mother’s condo, April blissfully unaware in the backseat, her head buried in a book on shipwrecks.
How could he just quit and not tell me? I thought we were closer than that. Maybe we aren’t as close as I thought or hoped?
Horns and music blared over each other on roads that up until twenty-four hours ago were relatively stress-free todrive down. The six-lane highway ran through the heart of an army of hotels, condos,
and restaurants, interspersed with ice cream stands, t-shirt shops, and miniature golf courses that tried to outdo one another with every new opening, upping the average spend for a family of four to unprecedented levels for the thrill of a sticky-handled putter and a brightly colored golf ball.
It was already crazy … and it was only Thursday.
By tonight, the entire road would become a parking lot, and traffic on the two bridges would be at a standstill. Thedreams of elaborate nights out at one of the hotspots on the Wharf would be extinguished by the gridlock and force the occupants to start drinking in their cars long before their hotels and vacation rentals came into view.
Life in a beach town.
Her mother’s condo sat at the end of Seashell Street in the development of Sandcastle Cove, a bizarre name for a subdivision given sandcastles’ propensity for washing away. Manicured grass and hedges lined the road, and a network of sidewalks that would have made the designers of Central Park envious weaved along the sides. Therewere thirty-foot tall water features on each side of the security booth, and the name of the development stood proudlyin a radiant silver and blue, that looked like it was leaping from the stone wall behind it. Once through the gate, the neighborhood was a mix of sprawling single-family homes, condos, and townhomes featuring the latest and greatest in appliances, finishes, and colors. If a buyer loved HGTV, and they all did here, they would love this neighborhood.
The front of her mother’s townhome was striking, with bold purple globes of alliums lining the walkway and a wooden sign from a big box store that was like catnip to women over the age of thirty. In white cursive paint, it read:“The 4 Ss of Summer; Seashells, Shorts, Sunsets, and Sangria.” The front porch had two rocking chairs, ivory whiterailings without a chip in the paint, and bright yellow daffodils in thick bundles next to the steps.
This side of the development felt like a Golden Girls episode, but everyone was much more active. Carly’s motherthrived on it. Sandra Hill moved a million miles an hour, and anyone around her was bound to get caught up in the whirlwind. Though she had been a widow for nearly twenty years, she had never found the desire to remarry or date.Her husband had been the gold standard for her, a medal she didn’t need to validate again. A shrinking violet she was not, flittering her way into everyone’s business, a gossip merchant that made her presence felt at every community event. It also made her a fixture in East Bay’s real estate community, and she had been responsible for thirteen percent of the sales inside The Cove.
Carly rapped on the door with the gold knocker that had the word “Welcome” scrawled in cursive, to announce theirarrival. A striking woman with a face that had maintained a youthful glow through a two-pronged diet of salt air andDr. Beverly, the town's pre-eminent plastic surgeon, answered the door with an excitement reserved only for visiting grandchildren.
"Hello, my dear!" she said as she pulled her granddaughter close. The little girl smiled warmly at the hug. Carly knewher mother was over the top, but April always seemed to love coming to see her.
Then she looked at Carly after releasing April from her squeeze, offering up her arms in a gesture of peace.
"You still mad at me?" her mother asked.
Carly shook her head and gave her mother a shallow hug, long enough to have some authenticity and short enough to express her continued dissatisfaction with some of her antics.
"No, I'm good. Thank you for watching April. It's a busy weekend ahead."
"I'll take every minute I can get with my granddaughter."
Carly went to give April a bear hug and fought back a tear in the corner of her left eye. She hated leaving her daughter. It stripped something in her soul away. She felt guilty every day that she had chosen the police force withits unpredictable hours and danger, but it had been her dream since she was a little girl.
She was good at it, and she loved it.
The apple doesn't fall far.
Her mother glanced down at her holster, her face a mask of perpetual disappointment.
“Something's wrong with you," Sandra said. "Daddy got married again," April said.
"To who?!" her grandmother asked. "The crown lady," April replied.
Carly couldn't contain the laugh that burst from her lips.
"Kyle told me they dated for a month," Carly said.
Her mother's face hinted at the slightest surprise in the announcement but also seemed to acknowledge that thiswasn't out of the realm of possibility.
"Oh, my."
"Can I go play, Mimi?" April asked, eager to extricate herself from the grown-up conversation that was about to follow.
"Of course, you can. I put an iced tea on the counter for you, and the piano seat is all warmed up."
The girl's smile beamed, and she gave one last hug to her mother before running inside.
Sandra didn't hesitate to speak now that April was out of earshot.
"You have to keep doing this job, huh? I'll bet its why Kyle left. It's certainly why your father isn't here anymore. I just don't get it."
Always her job. Always her marriage. Always her father.
"I'm not getting into Dad or the job today, and as far as the sperm donor goes … if he weren't so busy screwingeverything that walked near him during our marriage, he wouldn't have cared that I was a cop. Good luck to the crown princess. She's in for a real surprise."
Her mother composed herself and looked past Carly to her neighbor two doors down, who had walked out onto her front porch.
They exchanged a wave and an inane pleasantry.
Appearances were important at The Cove.
"I've gotta go. Thank you again," Carly said without another moment's hesitation.
A soft melody floated out the doors with clean, precise notes that had a haunting feel.
How could her daughter be this good at nine?
Sandra looked hard at her daughter and took her final shot.
"I'm done nagging for the day but find yourself another nice man. You don't have to prove how tough you are to your father."
Carly turned, walked down the steps, and drove off without another word.
