“Jesus Christ,” Frank said to Billie, while Nancy sat alone at the dinner table.
This was not how he wanted his very last evening with Nancy to go.
“This must be the third time you’ve called me for bail just this year.”
“You promised, Frank,” said Billie. “You promised to bail me out. You said you’d post bail for Stacey. But here we are, sitting in lockup, not doing the one job you hired us for.”
“The money’s gone, Billie. And there’s not going to be any more money for jobs that never get done.”
It had been years now. Years of hearing the same old shit from Billie Earl Johnson. Years of putting up with him and Stacey—with Stacey’s knuckleheaded son, Dustin, and with Billie’s idiot nephew, Michael.
Years of this shit, and hundreds of thousands of dollars flushed down the drain in the past twelve months alone.
“The thing is, Frank, we’ve got a sure-fire plan. A plan that doesn’t allow for mistakes. But that plan cannot be executed from here.”
“I gave the last of the money to Michael.”
“And that’s money that Michael’s earned, because he’s the one who came up with this plan. But it’s like I’m telling you: the plan only works if you post bail.”
Nancy was moving around; Frank could hear it. Had she been eavesdropping on him? Or was all his skulking around turning him paranoid?
“Honey?” he hollered, poking his head out the door.
Nancy’s not there, after all.
“Just getting some water, Frank!” she called back from the kitchen. But Frank’s jittery now. Best to get off the line as soon as possible. This was why he hated it when Billie’s calls caught him at home.
“And if I don’t?” he said quietly into the receiver.
“If you don’t, Frank, I’m looking at a corrections officer right now who would be very interested in certain stories that I could tell him. Stories about a woman in Carrollton. A mighty nice lady. Church lady, in fact. And I could tell him at least a few things about the man this church lady lives with.”
“Is that a threat, Billie?”
Frank’s trying his best to sound hard while talking softly. Quiet menace was the tone he was going for.
“Are you threatening me?”
“What I’m telling you, Frank, is what things look like, to me, from the place where I’m sitting.”
Frank poked his head out the door once again, put the phone down on his desk, and walked to the window. The Japanese maple outside his home office swayed gently in the August breeze. The neighbor’s dog barked at the little girl who lived next door. The girl was bouncing up and down on her new trampoline, and Frank thought about his own children, about Suzanne and her girls, about Nancy. And now Billie Earl’s ruined his last night with the woman.
“I’ll send it,” Frank said under his breath. He was about to say it into the receiver, but when he picked his cell phone back up, no one was there. Just a few moments ago, he was prepared to hang up on Billie.
Instead, Billie hung up on him.
It seemed like an hour had gone by. But checking his watch, Frank saw it’d been just a few minutes. He peeked into the dining room only to find Nancy waiting, patiently, hopefully, with her hands in her lap and the linen napkin stained, ever so slightly, with her mascara.
Crying again, Frank thought. He knew he’d been rude, getting up from the table, leaving Nancy alone as the dinner she made for them grew cold. But if he was going to be perfectly honest, he wasn’t sure that he cared. Sometimes, he thought, it was as if Nancy simply didn’t notice how hard he worked for this family of theirs. And even without Suzanne in the picture, he didn’t see how he could keep on living with the woman. She’d been beautiful once. She had worshipped him. But when he looked at her now, Frank could barely see the beauty that he had fallen in love with. And instead of admiring him, all that Nancy seemed to do now was nag.
Who was this woman who’d taken the place of the Nancy he’d married?
She’d be dead anyway inside of a week. And so what if she didn’t deserve what was coming her way? What did deserving mean anyway? Did Richard Raley deserve the millions he’d made off the government—made by shipping ice to a desert? Why did Raley deserve that money any more than Frank Howard did? He was a man who had spent his whole life taking care of Nancy, the kids, and their needs. But now, with the kids grown, hadn’t the time come for Frank to look out for himself and his own happiness?
If Frank could have divorced Nancy, he would have. But the time for that was years earlier, before he’d started siphoning money out of Richard Raley’s company. Frank couldn’t risk being found out. And he certainly couldn’t stomach the thought of spending another month—much less the rest of his life—with Nancy.
Frank could admit to himself now that he’d let Billie Earl Johnson get away with every excuse because, in his heart, he had hoped for a better solution. But years had gone by, with no other solutions presenting themselves. Life with Nancy was a lie—a lie that felt worse than death. And if someone had to die, why should it be Frank Howard?
Frank was a preacher’s kid, not a killer. But ever since meeting Suzanne, he’d felt trapped—cornered like an animal—each time he’d come home to Carrollton and Nancy.
Everyone knew that cornered animals were not responsible for their actions. And that was the conclusion Frank had come to when he became aware of Nancy, still crying in the next room.
It made Frank resentful, the fact that he’d have to ask her forgiveness for taking the call, that he’d have to pretend to kiss and make up—that he’d have to spend one more night with the woman he wanted dead.