and had drunk a bottle of warm milk. The girls had been inseparable friends from grade school on. Zoe petite and dark-haired, Lauren tall and slender with blond-streaked curls. How many times had he heard them giggling in Lauren’s bedroom or watched them walking arm in arm down the road?
Lauren and Zoe. Zoe and Lauren.
I loved you both
As my own.
Two little peas in a pod.
Arms linked and faces shining
Until death did you part.
“I’m going to get some late lunch,” Lauren said. She’d had enough of walking on eggshells with her mother and could do with a smoke and a vodka tonic. Make that three vodka tonics.
“Tristan will be here soon. Don’t you want to wait until you’ve seen him?”
No mention of Vivian, as usual. “That’s okay. I’ll see them back at the house later today.”
“Well, suit yourself.” Her mother’s face was wearing her tight, pinched look and Lauren waited for the other shoe. “You always do,” Evelyn added, her eyes spoiling for a fight.
There was a time when Lauren would have engaged with her mother’s rebuke, but she knew the battle would end up a draw and leave her feeling lousy. She picked up her purse from the floor and stretched herself to full height. “See you later,” she said with fake gaiety. She beamed a smile even though the effort cost her.
She took the elevator and found her car covered in a layer of snow at the back of the municipal parking lot where the snow had drifted. After swiping off the thick coating on the windshield with her arm and waiting for the car defroster to blast out hot air enough so she could see, she worked her way over to Princess Street and continued south toward the waterfront. The snow had tapered off to a light sprinkle but the roads were slick with ice and she drove slowly. She took a left on Wellington and was lucky enough to find a parking spot near the Iron Duke.
She pushed open the door and took a stool at the bar in front of the long line of beer taps. She ordered a tall vodka with lots of tonic and ice, knowing she had to pace herself. The bartender set the drink on a coaster in front of her.
“You look familiar,” he said.
“I used to come here a long time ago.” She took a sip, deliberately keeping her eyes down, swirling the liquid in her glass as she set it back on the counter. She sensed he hadn’t moved and tried to think him away.
“Lauren? Lauren McKenna?”
She slowly raised her eyes. Stout. Grey stubble and kinky hair. It took a few seconds for her to place his eyes. When she did, she grinned. “Hey, Clint. How’ve you been?”
“Well, you know. Trying to stay out of trouble. I started working here a couple of years ago. You were in Toronto last I heard.”
“Still am. I’m home because my dad’s not doing well. He’s not expected to be with us much longer.”
He frowned. “Sorry to hear that, Lauren. I always liked your old man.”
“Yeah, me too.”
He moved away to talk to a waitress and returned to fill glasses from the beer taps. “Is Adam flying in?”
“He’s here and Tristan and his wife Vivian are en route.”
“Tristan got married?”
She understood the surprise in his voice. Nobody could imagine her brother moving on after Zoe. To the rest of the world, her family’s lives had been frozen in that one horrific moment in time. In her case, they weren’t far wrong. “And they’re expecting their first baby.”
“Wow.” The silence following his exclamation spoke volumes. “Is she from here?”
“Edmonton. It’s where they’re living now.”
“Well … good for him. Couldn’t have been easy.”
Clint moved to the other end of the counter with some relief, Lauren imagined. She should have been used to the stilted conversations and awkward eye shifts as people searched for the right thing to say. Problem was, there was no right response when faced with a murderer’s family member. To be fair, Tristan hadn’t been charged with Zoe’s murder, but that didn’t stop anyone from believing he got off only from a lack of evidence. Hell, for a lot of years, she herself had half believed he’d done it.
chapter four
It was going on 9:30 when Lauren left the Duke and got into her car. She’d drunk the first three vodkas quickly and enjoyed the buzz while sipping on a fourth and fifth, chatting up the two men on the barstools next to her. The better-looking one had suggested she return with them to their hotel near the waterfront, and she’d considered it for all of half an hour. Before her cheeseburger arrived and the alcohol started to wear off. She’d lingered over two cups of coffee after they left and then been surprised to find how long she’d spent in the pub. She certainly hadn’t set out to kill the entire afternoon and evening there.
She looked around the darkened street at the layer of pristine white snow glistening on the sidewalks and roadway like spun sugar in the light from the streetlamps. Errant flakes drifted through the air in their lazy tumbles to earth. She’d missed supper and her mother would be pissed off, no doubt, but the thought of facing her family en masse over a meal had been more than she could bear this evening. Adam had called while she was still with her mother to say that Mona was flying in early. She’d be there by now, forming a tight unit with Vivian to make Lauren feel the outsider. Even now, with night firmly in place, she found herself reluctant to go home.
She drove through the nearly empty streets toward the harbour and turned west on King Street, catching glimpses of the lake between buildings, the moon full with the stars pinpoints of light scattered in the blackness above. She drove the route on autopilot, skirting past Kingston General on her right where her father lay dying while driving parallel to the waterfront. At Portsmouth, she turned right and continued on past St. Lawrence College, crossing Bath Road and entering her own hood, the streets and trees as familiar to her as breathing even after all the years away. Instead of turning left and winding her way onto Grenville Crescent, the street where her parents lived, she kept going a few blocks more and turned right on Elmwood with another quick left onto Hillendale.
Zoe’s house was halfway up on the right, a Victory white storey-and-a-half with red shutters and a sloped green roof. The siding looked greyer than she remembered and the shingles were blackened in places, much like on her parents’ house, but not much else had changed. Lauren slowed and drove to the end of the block where she made a U-turn in front of the aging apartment building and doubled back, sidling up next to the curb across from the Delgado house and turning off the engine and headlights. She sat for a moment, staring straight ahead and stilling her breathing.
When she closed her eyes, she was fourteen years younger, walking up the sidewalk to the Delgado front door after school. Zoe was leading the way and swivelled her head to laugh at something Lauren said, her long black hair swishing across her back as she started up the steps. “Matt is helping Dad in the shop so we have the house to ourselves.”
Their last afternoon together. Even though Zoe was dating Tristan, she kept her Fridays open
