Chapter 20

“I SHOT MY HUSBAND.”

“You shot your husband?”

“Last night, when he came home. I was scared. I'd just received another card from Eddie Como-this time bearing your address, Jillian. And… I swear I called out Dan's name first. But he didn't answer. So I pulled the trigger, and I… well, I hit him in the upper arm. Pretty good, really. The doctor was impressed.”

Jillian frowned. “I thought we agreed no guns.”

“No, Jillian, you said no guns. I, on the other hand, still reserve the right to think for myself. So how do you like that?” Carol's tone grew hot.

In contrast, Jillian's voice remained particularly cool for this first emergency meeting of the Survivors Club. “I think the real question is,” she said dryly, “how did Dan like that?”

Meg sighed and slid down deeper in her chair. This was not going well. Carol was so agitated she couldn't even sit at the table they'd reserved in the private room of this intimate Federal Hill restaurant. Jillian, on the other hand, was wearing a navy blue power suit buttoned up to her chin and sitting stiffly enough to do the Queen of England proud. The tension was sky high. Except for Meg, of course. She never knew enough to be tense. Besides, this morning she was too busy nursing her first hangover. At least she thought it was her first hangover.

“In the words of my mother,” she spoke up now, “could you two please use your inside voice?”

Carol glared at her. Jillian's look was droller.

“Little slow getting going this morning?” Jillian asked.

“You could say that.”

“Did you get to worship at the porcelain God last night?”

It took Meg a moment to get it. Oh, puking. “No. At least I don't think so.”

“Well, you'll live.”

“Excuse me,” Carol interjected curtly. “I was discussing shooting my husband. What do I have to do-kill him?-to get some attention around here?”

“I don't know,” Jillian replied. “Is that why you shot him?”

“Oh for God's sake-”

“No, you listen to us for a minute-”

“There is no us, Jillian. There's just you. It's always been you. Meg and I are merely window dressing for your holy pursuit of justice. Survivors Club. That's a joke. This club isn't about surviving, it's about vengeance. You just can't use that word in front of the press. Well, here we are now. Eddie Como's dead, I've shot my husband, another girl has been attacked, and the press is crying miscarriage of justice. What are you going to do, Jillian? How are you going to spin this one?”

Jillian got up from the table. She walked a small circle, then repeated the motion two more times. Her movements were stiff and jerky. Her face was pale and impossible to read. Meg had seen her in this mood only once before. The first time Eddie Como had contacted them. Meg had honestly been a little frightened of Jillian that day.

“Someone trespassed on my property last night,” Jillian said crisply. “Someone loosened all the bulbs in my motion-activated lights, then walked up to my home and spray-painted ‘Eddie Como lives' on my mother's bedroom windows. Then he screwed the lights back in. For God's sake, my mom had to receive oxygen to recover from the shock. You think I don't understand fear, Carol? You think I don't know what went on in your head last night as you heard unknown footsteps coming down the hall? If I'd had a gun twelve hours ago, I would've shot someone, too. And I probably would've hit a neighborhood boy, which is why I said no guns.”

“Holier-than-thou Jillian…”

“Goddammit. You want to have this conversation, Carol? Fine. Detective Fitz and Sergeant Griffin are going to be here in less than ten minutes, so let's get it done.”

“There you go again, Jillian. I'm trying to have a conversation and you're setting an agenda.”

Jillian thinned her lips, then switched her gaze to Meg. “Do you want out?”

“What?”

“Do you want out? Have you had enough? Are you sick of this group?”

“I don't… No,” Meg said more firmly. “I don't want out.”

“Why not?”

“Because… because we need each other. Look at us. Who else could discuss midnight vandalism and shot husbands without looking at us as if we were freaks? With other people… the conversations aren't real.”

“But these conversations aren't real either!” Carol said impatiently. “That's my whole point. It's been a year. We're beyond polite conversation, victims' rights or legal strategy. At least we should be. If we are the Survivors Club, then it's time we got down to the business of surviving. Or maybe the fact that we're not surviving. Except you don't want to have those conversations, Jillian. You're fine about getting the police in here to give us briefings, or getting D'Amato to present legal tactics. But when it's simply us, all alone, ragged, raw, emotional. You shut down, Jillian. Worse, you shut us down. And that's not fair. Frankly, if I wanted to be treated like that, I'd go home to my husband.”

“Armed?” Jillian asked.

“If I had a brain in my head,” Carol snapped.

Jillian finally smiled. The wan expression, however, only made her look tired.

“I'm sorry,” she said quietly.

Carol regarded her suspiciously. Meg yawned, wishing they would both just get on with it. Jillian's and Carol's personalities were like oil and water, but they did need each other. They all needed each other, especially now, when a new girl had been raped and murdered. Meg kept thinking it could've been her. And poor Jillian, she had to be thinking of Trish. After a night like last night, how could she not be thinking of Trish?

Jillian's chin had come down a fraction. She regarded Carol steadily. “It's possible…” Jillian's voice trailed off. She cleared her throat, tried again. “When I'm under stress, when I'm angry, it's easier for me to remain focused. To outline a plan of attack and implement that plan. I need to keep busy. Keep… moving. I suppose I might be forcing that approach onto the group.”

“I can't do that,” Carol said flatly. “I go home to the same house every night, to the same husband who didn't come home in time, to the same second-story room where a man crawled through a window and took away my life. You can get some distance from things. Meg can get some distance from things. I can't. That night has become like mud, and I'm just spinning my wheels in it over and over again.”

“Why don't you sell the house? Why don't you move?” Meg this time. She was curious.

“Dan loves that house,” Carol said immediately.

“I'm sure he loves you more.”

Carol didn't say anything. The look on her face was enough.

“He shuts you out that much?” Jillian asked softly. The mood in the room shifted. Grew more subdued. And Meg was thinking again, that poor, poor girl. They were fighting with each other, but really, underneath it all, that poor, poor girl.

“Dan shuts me out so much, I don't know why he bothers coming home,” Carol was saying. Her shoulders had come down, her angry expression giving way to a pain that was far worse. “He won't talk. He won't fight, grieve or even rationalize. The subject is strictly off-limits. We live in a house with a giant elephant both of us pretend not to see.”

“You've never talked about the rape?”

“In the beginning we talked about what the doctors said. Then we talked about what the police said, or what D'Amato said. Sometimes we talk about what our group says. So we talk. About what other people say.”

“It's got to be hard for him,” Meg spoke up. “I mean, he's a guy. Look at my father. He still hates himself for not being there when Eddie attacked me, and he didn't even live in my apartment. For your husband, that's gotta feel like a hundred-pound weight around his neck. I wonder what other guys say to him.”