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Nerve

By Bethany Macmanus

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“Get them ugly Noah pictures off my brand new bureau. They're gonna warp the wood with their pairs of beady little eyes,” said Mama's taut, clipped voice.
Lauren “Wren” Masterson slid the deep-fried gator tail with dipping sauce to the back of the shelf before she closed the freezer she'd been stocking with food for the coming week. “I put them there on the odd chance you might change your mind about coming to his funeral. I picked some where he's smiling really nice.” She rounded one of the few corners in Mama's efficiency cabin and held the top picture up for her to inspect, the one of Mama and Daddy at their engagement party on the beach in Fort Lauderdale. Mama wore a peasant top and a pair of hot pink bell bottoms with the bottoms rolled halfway to her knees. Daddy's green polyester leisure pants were rolled likewise. “I'll move them over to the chair, if you'd like.”
Mama frowned, sat up partially in bed, and cocked her head. “I sure do hope that's the only slide show photo you plan on displayin' of me.” She cocked her head to the other side, the bottom of her chin changing directions like bellows on an accordion. “At least I looked skinny.”
Wren smiled. “Yes, Mama. You were positively glowing.”
Mama appeared skeptical. “If I was, it was the only time in our marriage, I assure you. So naive, that first year.” One of her legs, wearing the pale pink silk pajama pants Wren bought her for Christmas last year, was exposed as she pulled the covers up unevenly.
Wren crossed her arms below her chest. “He may have made a few mistakes, but he remained a wonderful father, even after the divorce. He took me to plays, called me regularly, we even played Bingo.”
“That's what you always say,” said Mama, lifting a rippling arm and resting it on the pillow behind her head. “You're more like a dove than a wren, cooin' and cooin' about how Doctor Noah Masterson hung the flippin' moon.”
Was I the one who made you bitter? Wren moved her gaze over the clutter on Mama's shelves, and out the picture window at the Everglades. Did she have the nerve to say what she needed to say to Mama? An egret flapped high in the air, the sun upon its back, reminding her of a magazine photo she'd shot the week before Daddy died.
“Mark you well, Lauren Masterson, not one of his million--” and she brought her hand back from her pillow to make air quotes--“friends is gonna miss the dirtbag. I guess if you'd had a better man for a father, you would've known the wheat from the chaff. Maybe you'd stop going out with losers and start payin' more attention to the Good Eggs.”
Wren tried to stifle an amused smile. She let her head loll to one side and tightened her arms to the point of feeling her ribcage. “And just who are the 'Good Eggs,' Mama?”
“Well, that handsome red-haired cop is one. Why you never dated him is beyond me.”
Lieutenant Justin Breck. His name alone sent a wave of heat up her spine. Mama's endorsement was hardly a point in his favor.
“An heiress like you has the option to marry for love instead of money. And Justin may be more the uniform type than the suit type, but he does those blues justice, doesn't he?” Mama actually winked.
Yes, he did those uniform blues justice, she had to admit. But he was not on her radar. Not now, not ever. It wouldn't be right to date if she couldn't marry. Because it wouldn't be right to marry if she could soon die.
No, even the money she would inherit from Daddy wasn't enough of a consolation when it was very possible Lauren “Wren” Masterson had a fatal neural disease.
“Suit! That reminds me,” said Wren, “I wanted to bury Daddy in his favorite gray wool suit. It's still hanging in his closet and they need it at the funeral parlor. Oh! I have to feed Gordon, too. I'll see you later.” She gathered up her purse, scrapbooking bag, and camera and started for the cabin door.
Stop being a coward. Just tell her. It'll be so good for her to get out, at least once.
Wren stopped at the door. “And Mama?”
“What?” She took the satin sleep mask off her eyes.
“A very nice gentleman at the Bingo hall asked about you.”
“Humpf. Must have me confused with the trim blond on the corner.” Her left eyebrow raised, a sure sign of interest, though she obviously tried to hide it. She rolled to face the wall.
“Everett Schaeffer. Name ring a bell?” Wren didn't take the time to let it. “Said he'd like to see you out and about sometime. It's been way too long, he said.” She backed out the door. “Well, okay, tell Ellie I said hi.”
Ellie Berton was Mama's personal care assistant. Gordon was Wren's ferret. Everett Schaeffer asked about all single women at Bingo when Wren went with her friend Jill, but who's counting?
“Fine, leave a poor old woman to rot in her bed until next week,” said Mama in a begrudging tone. “At least take some shots for me of the dirtbag in his casket with that fancy camera of yours.”
“I will, Mama.” She waved goodbye, then got in her periwinkle blue SUV and drove fifteen minutes north on State Road 869, to her childhood home in Violetta.
Straying from the stone walk, she paused to grab several waterlogged newspapers off the lawn, and proceeded to the porch, where she neatly stacked them.
That's not good.
She frowned at the empty spot on Daddy's porch where his spare key usually stayed concealed under a young hibiscus, then deepened the furrow in her brow as her gaze drifted over the leaded glass transoms, the rich tones of the solid walnut door, up to the knob. She extended her fingertips to test it, then paused.
What if someone was--
She'd watched enough CSI to know what to do. Reaching back to her camera bag, she hooked the edge of a Kleenex with her finger and spread it out over the polished nickel. Turned it. She nudged the door with the toe of her knock-off ostrichskin pump, waiting as it opened on well-oiled hinges to the foyer. In place of the entry's normal welcoming feeling, a foreboding sense had invaded, splashed like dirty water over everything she passed as her heels clinked across the slate floor. She stood silent, breathing in the stale, shut-in air.
Daddy's hospital bed, linens askew, still lurked like an ugly troll in the corner of the downstairs sitting room, where he'd chosen to set up shop during the last three days of his life. Now that area of the room had the tranquility and the organization of a train wreck. Nobody had bothered to clean up after the paramedics. Too much else to worry about. Daddy thought he'd be able to rehabilitate at home, away from the sterile atmosphere of the hospital. But he and his private care nurse had been wrong. And his leaving had been much too sudden.
A thump ripped her attention to the second floor.
Was that a footfall?
She set her camera bag down on the Oriental rug and withdrew the Canon EOS Rebel with the telescopic lens. As she stood, her throat tightened. On second thought, she bent down in favor of the camera on her phone instead of her heavy professional one. She punched 9-1-1 on the keypad, ready to hit “call.”
Who else knew about that key? Nothing looked newly disturbed downstairs. Was it only her imagination, this eerie intuition she had of someone else’s presence in the house?
The charcoal suit hung in his closet upstairs, fresh from the cleaners. Grief pulled at her soul and she looked down at her shaking hand, white-knuckled across the glowing screen of her phone. Like a surge from an electric current, her arms felt the familiar sensations she’d battled for months. The numbness. The tingling. The burning down into her fingertips.
Trying once again to ignore it, she ventured back through the hall, then made her way gingerly up the stairs. The carpeted risers muted her footsteps. On the landing she stopped again, letting her photographer senses record her surroundings. The A/C shuddered and cut off, leaving the house's creaks and groans undisguised for her to interpret to the tune of her wildly beating heart. In front of her, the upstairs hall seemed to span miles, each room branching off a cavity of mysterious space holding only-God-knew-what.
Daddy, why'd we have to buy such a huge house all those years ago?
Her arms felt hot, raw like a sunburn. She swallowed and pushed tickling hair off her temple. The house sat silent. If she went into the right room, she'd see it: something precariously balanced must have fallen, thumping against the floor. That's what she'd heard. She caught a glimpse of her ashen face in a gilt-edged mirror and chuckled.
Her crazy imagination!
Then, the reflection of something else, in the adjacent spare bedroom behind her. Half-hidden behind one of the blue silk drapes that hung in the floor-to-ceiling windows, and flush with the cream-colored embossed wallpaper, she saw someone—well, his leg at least—his foot shod in a white athletic shoe.
She gulped air, her eyes widening in the mirror. Was he watching her?
She had no ability to analyze, over the throb of her pulse in her ears and the rapid firing of adrenaline through her bloodstream.
Run.
Why hadn't she taken a knife from the kitchen?
The other end of the hallway. Daddy's bedroom suite. Maybe his old nightstand still housed his gun. Her toes screamed as she leaped in long strides, jarring them against the faux ostrichskin of the silly pumps. Footwear-wise, the intruder had gotten the better of her for sure. As she darted like an injured doe, she managed to hit "call." Surely he could hear her ragged breathing, as she slumped to the carpeted floor by the California king bed.
She slammed the phone against her ear.
"9-1-1, what is your emergency, please?" The female voice chimed.
"Somebody's here." She cupped the receiver in her hand, hoping to muffle her voice.
"Ma'am, do you mean there's been a break-in?"
"Yes. I'm in my father's house, and he's dead, and--"
"You found a body?"
"No, no." She choked on the saliva she tried to swallow. "Please, I just need you to send the police to 222 Hazel Terrace. In Violetta." She sucked in a breath. "This is Wren Masterson. I'm alone and I'm scared."
She lunged for the nightstand drawer and it slid open against her hip.
No gun.
"A car is already on the way. Just hold tight, Ma'am. Is the intruder close by?"
"A few rooms down, I think."
His legs rustled past each other in the hall, then his rubber-soled shoes pounded down the stairs.
"He's getting away." She stood up, and the room spun for a moment.
"Wren, please stay where you are. Let the police handle this."
What if she could see the intruder's face?
"I've got to go." She punched the red “end call” icon and scrambled for a window.
Would he go out the way he came, or another way?
She pressed her forehead against the glass, looking down at the pebbled front walk. Nothing.
Something smacked down hard on the pebbled backyard path. She spun around and flew across the hall to the game room window, overlooking the backyard. But all she caught sight of was a leg in jeans, from the knee down and the white athletic shoe, before the intruder disappeared down the alley behind the house. Her heart plummeted.
Maybe he dropped something.
She spun again and nearly tumbled down the stairs in the offending heels. Her smacking footfalls echoed in the high-ceilinged living room. She picked up speed, getting her second wind, and smashed into the utility room door, before her hand obeyed her brain's desire to open it.
Oomp.
The second of suffocation passed, then air slammed back into her lungs. As she slid into the room, her left ankle buckled. The heel of her shoe turned inward, parallel to the floor. She twisted her face, biting the inside of her cheek against the blinding pain, and pushed through it. Ahead of her, the curtains fluttered, framing the now open utility room window. She limped toward it, grimacing with every step. The “ostrich” pumps should have come off long ago. If she'd had half a brain--
A sharp wrap on the front door stole her attention from the window. “Violetta police.”
“Come in, it's open.” She shed the shoes like they were covered with fire ants, and gradually put weight on her left ankle. Ouch, she would feel that one for a while. She blew the incessantly tickling hair off her temples, and thrust her fists against them in exasperation. A maelstrom of questions swirled and churned in her brain.
“Ought to put some ice on that.” A deep voice admonished her, and she startled.
She wheeled around and took in the broad-shouldered, red-haired cop standing mere feet behind her. He lifted his gaze from her bum ankle and slid it up to her face. As their eyes met, she froze, then had a compulsion to flee.
“You again.” She blinked. Steered the irrational corner of her mind back from her immediate attraction. “How typical of you, answering a call you knew involved my childhood home.” She wanted to suck the words right back into the black hole she apparently had for a brain, as soon as she'd said them.
“We'll discuss that later,” said Lieutenant Justin Breck, “when there's time. Tell me what you know.”
“The intruder climbed out this window. I think it was a male of average height and weight wearing medium wash denim jeans and white sneakers. For his size, I'm going by the size of his shoe, which was about the only thing I saw.”
"Did you get a look at his face?” He had a small notebook out, and a black ballpoint.
She crinkled her forehead and shook her head. "Sorry. Didn't see his shirt, either."
He turned with a nod, and she couldn't help but smile with appreciation at his retreating form. He pivoted once more, almost caught her checking him out. “I’ll drive around and see if I find anybody matching that description. Are you going to be okay until I get back?”
She nodded. “I think so.”
In a few seconds she heard the front door open and close as he left.
She hobbled out of the utility room and took a deep, cleansing breath. No doubt she should be looking around the house for what the intruder might have taken, but all she wanted to do was rehearse the image of Justin’s face in her thoughts.
His rich auburn hair cut close to his head, a little longer on top and combed forward, slightly mussed across his forehead. His proportionate features from strong, masculine genes. The pierced left earlobe he probably thought nobody noticed. And that perfect skin, stretched over a jawline and cheekbones that could make Roman gods jealous.
Ah, we meet again, Mr. Breck. Mama called it.

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