Lizzy did her best to look sheepish. “It was actually me who wasn’t looking where I was going. Sorry. I’ve always been a bit of a klutz.”
Helen was about to reply when Dennis silenced her with a look. He jerked his head toward the parking lot, where a rust-riddled Bronco sat with the driver’s door open. “Time to go.”
Helen moved to his side like a dog to heel, leaning in to drop a kiss on her daughter’s pale head. Her bruised jaw glinted in the sunlight, a bull’s-eye of purples and greens, and Lizzy found herself unable to look away. Helen must have sensed her gaze because she ducked her head, a brief but telling gesture. She was ashamed. Someone—almost certainly Dennis—had hurt her, and she was ashamed. The thought sickened Lizzy.
She watched as they walked away, Helen lagging a step behind. She turned her head briefly before climbing into the Bronco. For an instant, their eyes met. A plea or a warning? Lizzy couldn’t be sure.
THIRTY-EIGHT
Lizzy’s first impulse on the drive home was to call Andrew and tell him Dennis Hanley was battering his sister-in-law and should be fired immediately. But did she know that for sure? That Helen was afraid couldn’t be denied. She’d caught the faint tinge of urine on her breath—an ammonia-like odor she’d always registered as fear. And the bruise on her face was real enough. But did the two necessarily add up to assault?
There was no sign of Andrew’s truck as she pulled up, either in her driveway or his. Inside, she found a pair of shiny silver keys on the kitchen counter, along with a note.
Mudroom door lock has been replaced. Off to Boston—A.G.
Lizzy read the note several times. It was hard to ignore the clipped tone, the use of initials—first and last—instead of his name. Cool. Distant. But that was what she wanted, wasn’t it—distance? She considered calling him, running her suspicions about Dennis by him, but if she was serious about closing the door between them, he couldn’t be her first phone call every time something went wrong. If she was determined not to want him, she wasn’t allowed to need him.
Resolved, she began unpacking her groceries, separating what she would take to Andrew’s, and what would stay. Her stomach rumbled as she pulled out a parcel wrapped in white deli paper and opened it. She rolled a piece of swiss cheese and clamped it between her teeth, then rolled another. She hadn’t eaten since Andrew’s scrambled eggs this morning.
Had that really been only this morning?
She pushed the thought aside, focusing on her to-do list instead. It was a little after three. If she played her cards right, she could spend an hour in the barn, then another hour or two scrubbing fingerprint dust, and still make it to Andrew’s by dark. It would feel strange sleeping alone in Andrew’s bed, an uncomfortable reminder of just how careless she’d been with his feelings—and her own. But the truth was, she was still a little jumpy after last night.
She was rewrapping the cheese when she paused. Something—what was it—had caught her attention. Something she should be noticing or remembering. She looked down at the deli paper she’d been refolding with a sudden flash of clarity. Not art paper. Butcher paper. The kind that might be used at a meatpacking plant.
On impulse, she tore off a small square and held it to the light. Heavy but not expensive. No watermark. She closed her eyes, remembering words scrawled in red crayon.
Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.
The floor seemed to tilt as the pieces shifted and fell together.
Call Andrew. No, not Andrew. Roger.
Voice mail picked up on the fourth ring. Lizzy smothered a groan, praying she wouldn’t have to wait days for a return call. “It’s Lizzy. Call me the minute you get this. I need to run something by you.”
She waited, staring at the phone, willing it to ring while her brain continued to tie itself in knots. Was she grasping at straws? Seeing bogeymen where none existed?
When ten minutes stretched to thirty and Roger still hadn’t called, she slid the phone into her pocket, and headed for the barn. She needed to get out of her head, to do something productive instead of standing around, dwelling on her runaway thoughts.
The barn was cool and dark as she stepped inside. She flipped on the lights, then rolled up her sleeves, eager to see how the oil blend had aged. She unscrewed the cap from the small amber bottle, dabbed a bit on her wrist, and inhaled, slow and deep. Next, she held her wrist about an inch from her mouth, closed her eyes, and inhaled through her parted lips, allowing the scent to pass over her tongue and into her throat, a kind of back door to the nasal passages.
Dark, woody, moist, and green.
Not a perfect re-creation of the original, but as close as possible with nothing but memory and her nose to guide her. It was time to begin the dilution phase. Then two weeks to rest, and she’d be ready to bottle.
She pulled her phone from her pocket and laid it on the workbench, then scared up a pen and set to work on her calculations. She was thinking an eau de toilette at an 85 percent dilution. Not only would it lighten the overall fragrance; it would also increase her yield. She made a mental note to calculate how many bottles she’d need to order.
She had just finished her calculations and was unscrewing the cap from a bottle of perfumer’s alcohol when her cell rang. She pounced on it. “Roger. Thanks for calling me back.”
“I just got off a call. Heard you had a visitor last night. Are you okay?”
“Andrew called?”
“No. A friend at SCPD. I asked if you were okay.”
“Yeah. I came down the stairs, saw him, and bolted. But never mind that. What do you know about Dennis Hanley?”
There was a pause
