The Midnight Hour Read online

  At the time, she’d been sure that, if she was only prepared to work hard enough, she could have it all.

  Now she knew better. Now she knew that life was a series of trade-offs. At the law firm, she had been expected to work all the hours God sent. After school, Jessica had gone to day care until Grace could pick her up. There had been babysitters at home at night. There had been plays Grace had missed, field trips she hadn’t gone on, homework supervised by someone other than herself. She loved her daughter, always, and she knew Jess knew it, but she hadn’t been there lots of times when Jessica had needed her. Little by little, they’d become, not distant, exactly, but separate people. Jessica stopped confiding everything in her mother, stopped expecting her to be there, stopped even wanting her to be. And that was the worst thing of all. By the time Grace realized the enormity of what was happening to them, Jessica was twelve. The catalyst for change had been the afternoon that Jess and a group of friends were caught, during school hours, shoplifting at Eastland Mall.

  Grace hadn’t known Jessica wasn’t at school that day. She hadn’t known Jessica had started hanging out at the mall every chance she got. She hadn’t even known the names of the friends Jessica was with when she was caught.

  And she realized that she should have known. All those things.

  After that wake-up call, she started looking around for a job where the hours were sane. A job where she could come home every night at the same time, and fix supper, and supervise homework, and in general be there for her daughter. A job that was more family friendly than the one she had.

  Then Thomas Pierce died unexpectedly, and his position as a Juvenile and Domestic Court judge was left vacant. With the help of her boss and mentor at the law firm, George Loew, she had been appointed to fill the remaining five years of Pierce’s term. That had been three years ago. The position had seemed ideal at the time, from Grace’s perspective. She wouldn’t even need to run for reelection when her term was up, she’d thought, because Jessica would be seventeen then. Grace could, if she chose, return to Madison, Graham and Loew, and her lucrative career, her duty to her daughter largely done.

  Only nothing had worked out as she had imagined it would.

  Pulling on a pair of slim khaki trousers, Grace sighed. When did life ever work out the way it was supposed to? She yanked a white T-shirt over her head, tucked it in, and slipped on a navy cotton cardigan sweater, which she left unbuttoned. Thrusting her bare feet into a pair of loafers, she headed back downstairs.

  Thanks to her reduced work schedule, she and Jessica had regained some of that wonderful closeness they’d shared when Jess had been little. Then everything had happened at once: Jessica had become a teenager, she had been diagnosed with diabetes, and her father and his new wife had had twins down in New Mexico. Any of those events by itself would have been enough to send a sensitive child careering out of control. All three together were practically guaranteed to. Grace had tried reasoning with Jessica, talking to her, pleading with her, bribing her. Now, in the face of this latest catastrophe, she was applying tough love. If that didn’t work, she didn’t know what she would do.

  Sometimes it seemed to Grace that she was living with a hormone-driven, teenage version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. One minute Jessica was her familiar sweet self, and the next she was a monster. Over the last few weeks, since Jessica had started high school, Grace had felt as if they were more adversaries than anything else. Basically, Jess told her nothing and blamed her for everything.

  Grace sighed again. Motherhood was the hardest job in the world.

  Jess and Tony Marino were in the kitchen. They glanced up in unison as she entered. He at least had the grace to look faintly guilty for being there.

  “Your daughter was kind enough to offer me a glass of water.” Standing by the sink, one hip resting against the counter, he held up the glass he’d been drinking from as proof. He was sweaty, his hair curling slightly, his skin shiny with a faint moist sheen.

  “I’m going up to take a shower,” Jessica announced, swallowing the last drops in her own glass and setting it down on the counter. She looked at her mother. “Have you see Mr. Bear, by the way? He’s not on my nightstand.”

  “I took him to the cleaners. There was something yucky on his fur,” Grace lied. She didn’t want to admit the truth—that Mr. Bear was hidden away in her closet because she felt he had somehow become tainted with evil. For one thing, it sounded ridiculous. Besides, there was no point in frightening Jessica.

  “Oh.” Jessica accepted that without difficulty and smiled saucily at Marino.

  “You’re pretty good, for an old man.”

  “So are you,” he said, “for a little girl. Maybe next time you’ll beat me.”

  “Maybe nothing. I will.”

  Grace thought with pride, there’s my confident girl. Then Jessica’s gaze switched to her mother again. “We need to eat soon. I have to be over at Maddie’s at seven.”

  “Darling, you’re grounded, remember?”

  Jessica was already heading for the door. She stopped, turning, her eyes widening on her mother’s face.

  “But I have to go! Talent show tryouts are Friday after school, and we have to practice our act! We’re going to do a dance routine!”

  “ ‘Fraid not, sweetie pie.”

  “I have to go!” Jessica’s voice grew shrill. Her eyes were as big as quarters in her whitening face. Her hands clenched into fists at her sides. “I promised Maddie and Becca and Allison and Jenna I’d be there. We’re going to be the Spice Girls! If I’m not there, it’ll ruin it! We need five!”

  “I’m sorry about that, but you can’t go.”

  “I have to. I promised them. They’ll get somebody else if I don’t show! Mom, please!”

  “No.”

  “Mom! . . .” It was a wail.

  “We’ll talk about this later, Jessica,” Grace said in a low, even voice, acutely conscious of Marino leaning against the counter watching every gesture and listening to every word.

  “No! There’s nothing to talk about! I’m going over to Maddie’s at seven! I don’t care if I’m grounded! Being grounded is stupid! What good does it do? Do you think it will keep me from doing anything I feel like doing? I’ll drink beer if I want, and I’ll smoke pot if I want, and I’ll go out with my friends in the middle of the night if I want! And you can’t stop me!”

  “Jessica Lee Hart, that’s enough!”

  “You can’t! You can’t!”

  “Watch me,” Grace said through her teeth, patience lost, her eyes snapping as they met Jessica’s turbulent gaze. “For starters, young lady, you can go to your room. Right now.”

  “I hate you!” With a sob, Jessica whirled and fled. Eyes closing, Grace listened to her feet pounding up the stairs and then running along the hall. Seconds later the slam of a door reverberated in the air.

  It was a moment before Grace had recovered enough to turn and look at Marino. He was studiously watching something through the window over the stove, his face in profile to her, his expression as innocent as if he hadn’t witnessed anything so agonizingly personal as a quarrel between mother and daughter. He must have felt her gaze, because he turned to meet it.

  “Grounded her, did you?” he asked. “Think that’s going to work?”

  “That’s my problem, and my business,” she said bitingly, walking toward the front hall. In the few minutes she was out of his sight, she retrieved his jacket from the closet.

  “Here,” she said, returning to the kitchen and thrusting it at him. She knew she was being ungracious, knew this latest upset was not his fault, knew that nothing that had happened was his fault, but still she was furious at him. Because of the way he looked at her—as if he judged her mothering skills and found them wanting. Again.

  Because maybe the truth was that they were wanting.

  “Thanks,” he said, accepting his jacket.

  “So why did you really come?” she asked, striving for a measure of calm. Her
gaze challenged him.

  “I told you. For this.” His glance indicated his jacket, which was now draped over his left forearm.

  “Bullshit.”

  He smiled a little, as if amused by her bluntness, and shrugged. “All right. To check on your daughter, to see if she was doing okay. And to see if you’d changed your mind. About her helping us.”

  “The truth comes out.” Grace had known it. “No, Detective Marino, I have not. I will not. It’s too dangerous. I’d appreciate it if you would just leave her alone, please.”

  “You’re not going to be able to keep her away from her friends forever, you know.”

  “Like I said before, that’s my problem.”

  “Yeah, I guess it is.” Reaching into the back pocket of his jeans, he came up with his wallet, which he opened. Extracting a business card from it, he handed it to her.

  “What’s this for?” she asked, accepting it and looking at it with suspicion.

  “If you change your mind, my pager number’s on this. All you—or she—have to do is call.”

  “I won’t change my mind.”

  For a moment their gazes locked.

  “That’s up to you,” he said, heading for the front hall. Just before he walked out of the kitchen, he looked over his shoulder at her.

  “Good luck with the grounding. For your daughter’s sake, I hope it works.”

  His tone told her he doubted it would. Grace was left to grit her teeth and glare after him as he disappeared into the front hall. A moment later, the sound of the door opening and closing told her he had left.

  Grace stood where she was for a moment, taking a deep breath, trying to get her emotions under control. For a moment she thought about heading upstairs to confront Jessica. But then sanity reasserted itself. The necessary discussion was far better postponed until she was calmer. Until they were both calmer.

  She went to lock the front door. Then she returned to the kitchen, stuck Marino’s card in her purse, and headed toward the coffeemaker.

  What she needed before she did anything else was a strong cup of coffee. Her body cried out for a jolt of caffeine.

  Chapter

  13

  WEARING NOTHING but a pale-blue nylon nightgown, one bare foot tucked beneath her as she sat on the porch swing, Jessica took a deep drag on her cigarette and immediately felt better. God, she’d needed that. She’d had a real nicotine jones going. She’d just started smoking at the beginning of the summer and already she loved nicotine, craved it, lived for it really. With her mom on her case so much these days, plain old cigarette smoking was getting to be as hard to manage as scoring dope. Once she was out of school for the day (smoking at school was easy, in the restrooms or out behind the gym, where everyone went; none of the teachers cared) she had to sneak out of the house like a criminal for a quick puff whenever she could squeeze one in. Her mom had the nose of a bloodhound. If she dared to light up in the house, she’d be caught. And her mom would have a shit fit. Better to come out here on the porch, like she was doing right now. It was just after midnight, her mom was asleep upstairs, and there was nothing in the whole wide world but herself and the cigarette and the swing on which she sat and the tinkling wind chimes for mood music and the darkness all around.

  The smoke as she drew it in steamed over her tongue, rolled down her throat, curled into her lungs. For a moment she held it there, the red tip of her cigarette glowing bright through the shadows, and then she let it out, practiced blowing it out her nose so that it made cool twin streams of smoke like a dragon exhaling.

  Allison had taught her how to do that. Allison could blow smoke rings, fat round circles that floated through the air like ghostly Cheerios. Jessica had tried, but she hadn’t quite gotten the knack yet.

  Damnit, she was old enough to smoke. She’d been smoking on the porch when that cop had stopped by. He’d seen her, she knew he had, and he’d been cool with it. He hadn’t said a word, hadn’t told her mom either or she would have heard about it when they had their “little chat” before her mother went to bed. Instead he’d talked to her like one adult to another, said hi, asked her how she was feeling. Then he’d picked up a basketball and started shooting hoops and challenged her to a game—which she’d missed winning by two points. While they’d played, they’d talked like two ordinary people, not about dope or being in trouble but about normal things, like the weather and basketball and her friends.

  Not like her mom talked to her: She was grounded. The police were watching her. She had to be careful. Please, please don’t do dope.

  Holy hell. Her mom treated her like a baby. She just couldn’t let go. And the diabetes thing had made it worse. She hadn’t been able to so much as go to the bathroom without her mom in her face ever since they’d found out she had it.

  Did you take your insulin? Did you test your blood? You know you shouldn’t eat that. You need to get more exercise. If you don’t take care of yourself you’re going to die.

  Well, all right, her mom had never actually said that last thing. But she thought it, all the time. Jessica knew that she did.

  The thought of dying scared her. She shouldn’t have to think about dying yet. She was young, a kid. Old people worried about dying. Not kids like her.

  Once her friends found out about the diabetes, they treated her differently. Should you eat that, Jessica? Jessica can’t do that, she’s sick. Jessica, are you going to die?

  It was always there, that dying thing. Once people knew, they all treated her like they thought she was going to die.

  She just wanted to be treated like everybody else.

  She didn’t think Rusty knew about the diabetes. He didn’t act like he did. He treated her like she was perfectly normal, like he kind of liked her, even. Rusty was so hot. All she had to do was think about him and her insides melted. He was tall, with a big, broad-shouldered body and dark brown hair with kind of a reddish tint to it that accounted for his nickname, and real light blue eyes. He was a junior, he had his driver’s license and his own car, and he was on the basketball team. Becca liked him too, and Allison kind of did. Maddie was friends with a girl he had broken up with last year, and she said you had to have sex with him if you wanted to be his girlfriend.

  She would have sex with Rusty anytime.

  Her mother would die, though. Her mother thought she was a virgin. She wasn’t, not anymore. She’d had sex with Drew Kennedy in the tree house in Christy O’Connell’s backyard last summer, twice. Both times she’d snuck out of the house after her mom was asleep. They did that a lot, she and her friends, because their parents were all hopeless, trying to keep their children babies forever, refusing to allow them to grow up.

  Sex hadn’t been all Christy and Katie Morris, her old best friends, had made it out to be. At least, sex with Drew hadn’t. Truth was, it had hurt, and it had been kind of icky and embarrassing and just plain gross. She didn’t like to see Drew now, remembering. But that was probably because he was only fifteen, he didn’t know what he was doing, and anyway she’d never really wanted him like she wanted Rusty.

  Rusty was seventeen. He wasn’t a little boy like Drew. Sex with Rusty would be different. Allison and Becca and Maddie and Jenna all said so.

  She wasn’t stupid, though. She was prepared. Christy had stolen a pack of her mother’s birth control pills before the thing with Drew and given six to Jessica. If she wanted to have sex more than six times, she was on her own, Christy said. So far she had used only two, for Drew. Jessica figured that she would worry about where to get more when she ran out, because she and Christy weren’t really friends anymore. What worried her more than running out was the possibility that there might be something in birth control pills that would cause a reaction with insulin or diabetes or something. She was supposed to tell her doctor about any prescription medicine she needed to take, and birth control pills were prescription medicine. But if she told him, he would probably tell her mom, and if he did the shit would hit the fan for real.
/>   She’d already decided to just go ahead and take the birth control pills when she needed to and hope for the best.

  So far nothing had happened, except she’d bled a little.

  People with diabetes had sex. They had to take birth control pills, didn’t they? And nobody died, so worrying was stupid.

  Bonnie, the Scottish terrier that lived two doors over, started to bark suddenly, interrupting her thoughts. The dog’s yaps were loud enough and shrill enough to almost completely drown out the windblown melody of the wind chimes. God, couldn’t the Welches ever remember to let that dog in at night? One of these days somebody was going to call the police.

  Must be a fox around or a deer or something—they got those from time to time in Bexley—because Bonnie was really going to town. Jessica spit on the tip of her cigarette to douse it, and flicked it over the porch rail into the big snowball bush beside the steps. Her mother would never find the butt there, not in a million years. The snowball bush had been growing in front of the porch forever, longer than they had lived in the house by far, and no one ever bothered it. There was no reason anyone, especially her mom, ever would.

  Her mom was not a gardener. Whatever the opposite of a green thumb was, she had it. She couldn’t even keep houseplants alive. Every single flower and piece of foliage in their house was silk.

  She looked toward the Welch’s to see if she could see what was agitating Bonnie so. The night was dark, so dark she could barely see to the end of her own yard. The canopy formed by the treetops largely blocked stars and moon from her view and created a shifting, formless mass of shadows that turned her own beloved front yard into a suddenly alien place.

  Jessica froze on the swing. There was something—someone—standing in the darkness by the iron park bench beneath the big oak in the center of the yard. The shifting shadows had allowed her just a glimpse, before once again swallowing up whatever or whoever it was.