Alice Hoffman - Turtle Moon

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Turtle Moon
by
Alice Hoffman
Berkley Publishing Group
Copyright 1993
ISBN: 042513699X
PART ONE.
The last major crime in the town of Verity was in 1958, when one of the
Platts shot his brother in an argument over a Chevy Nomad they had
bought together on time. Usually it's so quiet you can hear the
strangler figs dropping their frilit on the hoods of parked cars,
leaving behind pulp and tiny black seeds. Since Verity is the most
humid spot in eastern Florida, local people know enough to drink their
coffee iced in the morning. The air all around the town limits is so
thick that sometimes a soul cannot rise and instead attaches itself to
a stranger, landing right between the shoulder blades with a thud that
carries no more weight than a hummingbird.
Charles Verity, who founded the town, after killing off as many native
people as he could, is said to have discovered this the hard way. He
couldn't get rid of the spirits of all the men he'd murdered; they
perched up and down his spine and on top of his cookstove, until he
caught them in a sugar bowl, then tied the lid closed with thick brown
string so they couldn't escape. Charles Verity swore he would live
forever. Every night he drank a bitter tea made from the bark of the
paradise tree to ensure his good health, but as it turned out he was
eaten by an alligator up by the pond where the municipal golf course
was later built. Each year, on Charles Verity's birthday, children
parade down Main Street to the parking lot of the medical center, where
a mud pit ringed with ropes is set up. For ten dollars, anyone can
wrestle a papier-mache' alligator and raise funds for the burn ward.
Up until the early sixties there were alligator farms all around the
outskirts of Verity. At least once a year there would be a big escape,
and Half Moon Road, which is now part of the Interstate, would be green
and slithery for days, until a posse went out with shotguns and fishing
nets. When breeding for profit became a federal offense, Verity turned
its past around to suit itself, naming the high school football team
the Gators, and featuring Alligator Salad in most restaurants, a
mixture of spinach, green pepper, avocado, and chopped egg tinted with
green food coloring.
People in Verity like to talk, but the one thing they neglect to
mention to outsiders is that something is wrong with the month of
May.
It isn't the humidity, or even the heat, which is so fierce and sudden
it can make grown men cry. Every May, when the sea turtles begin their
migration across West Main Street, mistaking the glow of streetlights
for the moon, people go a little bit crazy. At least one teenage boy
comes close to slamming his car right into the gumbo-limbo tree that
grows beside the Burger King. Girls run away from home, babies cry all
night, ficus hedges explode into flame, and during one particularly
awful May, half a dozen rattlesnakes set themselves up in the phone
booth outside the 7-Eleven and refused to budge until June.
At this difficult time of the year people who grew up in Verity often
slip two aspirins into their cans of Coke; they wear sunglasses and
avoid making any major decisions. They try not to quit their jobs, or
smack their children, or run off to North Carolina with the sertticeman
who just fixed their VCR. They make certain to stay out of the ocean,
since the chemical plant on Seminole Point always leaks in the first
week of May, so that the yellow film float to the surface, bringing
sharks closer to shore. In the past few years, there has been an
influx of newcomers, lured by the low rents and wild hibiscus. As a
result, Verity is now home to more divorced women from New York than
any other town in the state of Florida.
None of these women had any idea of the sort of mess the month of May
in Verity could make of their lives, any more than they knew what daily
exposure to cMorine could do to their hair. There were now dozens of
green-headed women all over town, all addicted to Diet Dr. Pepper, and
each and every one of them was shocked to discover that in Verity
mosquitoes grew to the size of bumblebees and that the sea grape, which
grew wild along the beach, could pull their children right into the
thicket if they didn't keep to the wooden paths.
After midnight, when the heat was almost bearable and anole lizards ran
fearlessly across quarry tile floors, these women never wept but did
their laundry instead. While the bleach was added to the white wash
and the laundry softener doled out, it became clear that although some
of the children these women had transplanted were doing well, most were
not. There were toddlers who called out for their fathers in the
middle of the night, and boys who dreamed so deeply of the houses where
they grew up they'd wake damp with sweat, smelling of cut grass. There
were sullen teenage girls running up astronomical phone bills, and
babies so accustomed to ranch houses they got hysterical at the sight
of an elevator.
At 27 Long Boat Street, just off West Main, in a pink stucco
condominium facing the flat blue bay, there lived a twelve-year I old
boy, a mean little Scorpio named Keith Rosen, who would have liked
nothing better than to knock someone's block off. He was so mean he
could cut his own finger with a serrated steak knife and not flinch.
He could drop a brick on his bare foot and not cry out loud. Last
week, when his only friend, Laddy Stern, dared him to pierce his ear
with an embroidery needle, Keith didn't even bleed. The following
afternoon he stole an earring shaped like a silver skull from a jewelry
concession at the flea market over at the Sunshine Drive-In. He has
never been a particularly good boy, but after eight months in Florida,
he is horrid. Already, he has been suspended from school three times.
He is willing to steal almost anything: lunch money, teachers' wallets,
birthstone rings right off his classmates' fingers. He keeps
everything in a secret stash in the laundry room down in the basement,
inside a hole he punched into the plaster behind a washing machine.
Punishments are pointless. They don't work with him. He is no longer
allowed to see Laddy Stern, not since they were caught cutting school
and drinking KaMtia and Coke, but who can really stop him? Laddy's mom
is the hostess at the yacht club restaurant, and she works odd hours,
so Keith still goes over to their condo whenever he pleases. That is
where he spends most of the first day of May, and by the time he
leaves, after a vicious argument that has left Laddy with a bloody
nose, it is already ninety-nine in the shade, although where he
bicycles, on Long Boat Street, there is no shade. He's dizzy from the
Miller Lites he drank and the half pack of Marlboros he chain-smoked,
and it isn't so easy to avoid the smashed turtle shells. Hard green
globes the size of Scooter Pies line the asphalt and clog up the sewer
traps. There is no point in Keith's trying to talk to his mother.
Most days he sneaks out of the apartment while she is getting dressed
for work, or he waits in bed until he's sure she's left, so he won t
have to see her and pretend to be normal or cheerful or whatever it is
she wants him to be.
He bikes as fast as he can, through the heat waves, past the surfers at
Drowned Man Beach.
He keeps at it until his lungs hurt, then he rides over the curb and
into the park at the corner of West Main and Long Boat, where he pulls
out the cigarettes and matches he stole from Laddy.
It isn't his parents' divorce that bothers him. He could have lived
with that. It was the way things just happened to him. He wanted to
live with his father, but who asked him? His parents argued with each
other until they came to a decision, and now his mother is stuck with
him, when everyone knows they have never gotten along.
He never climbed into her lap or held her hand.
He knows he was a difficult child, he's been told often enough. He
threw off his blanket, rattled the bars of his crib, bit baby-sitters
so hard he left teeth marks in their flesh. His mother can pretend to
want him all she likes, but the only thing he wants is to go back to
where the heat doesn't make you break out in red bumps, and every
restaurant doesn't serve grits and Alligator Salad, and some people
have fathers.
Keith balances his bike against his hip, then lights a cigarette, which
he keeps cupped in his palm, the way he's seen the high school boys
smoke, even though the embers burn his skin.
Nothing ever happened in Verity. That was a fact.
He could die of boredom, right now, his heart could give out and he'd
shrivel up in the heat and turn purple before anyone thought to look
for him. He'd probably fossilize before his mother reported him
missing. When his heart doesn't stop, Keith props his bike up against
a trash can, then flings himself on a wooden bench so he can blow smoke
rings in the air. The smoke rings just hang there, dangerous white
clouds going nowhere. School won't be out for another fifteen minutes,
but at the far end of the park some teenagers, playing hooky, toss a
Frisbee around.
As far as Keith is concerned, anyone down here who is capable of
enjoying himself is an idiot.
The high school boys are so busy diving for the Frisbee and pounding
each other on the back they don't notice the patrol car in the parking
lot, idling beneath an inkwood tree. Keith sits up, interested in
spite of himself when he sees on the side of the car. They don't allow
dogs at the condominium where he lives. If the super discovers that
you have even a guinea pig you're out forever. There's a list of rules
three pages long you have to agree to before you move in.
That way there's no argument when they insist you take a shower before
you swim in the pool, and you can't even swim alone without an adult
until you're thirteen. If Keith could have a dog, it would be just
like the one in the patrol car, a big German shepherd that sits
perfectly still, eyeing the boys playing Frisbee. He would love to see
what the super had to say about a dog like that; just let anyone try to
give him orders if he had a monster like that on a leash.
When the cop gets out of his car, Keith hunkers down on the bench. He
was suspended yesterday, and technically he's not required to be in
school. Still, he hasn't informed his mother of the suspension, so he
figures he's guilty of something. The cop has a mean scar across his
forehead and black hair that reaches over the collar of his jacket. He
looks like he could pick you up and toss you, a long way. Plus he has
that dog, just the turn of a car handle away. They didn't have cops
like this back in Great Neck, where Keith grew up. You never saw a
pickup with a gun rack attached, or dead turtles in the street. As
Keith watches, the cop approaches the high school boys; before he can
reach them the boys take off through a grove of cabbage palms, leaving
their Frisbee behind. The cop picks up the Frisbee, then goes back to
his car to let his dog out. The dog circles around the cop's legs,
banging its body against him, until the cop lets the Frisbee fly. Then
the dog takes off like black lightning, scaring the red-crowned parrots
in the palms until they scream and take flight. Beneath a cloud of
birds, Keith grabs for his bike, then hops on and races out of the
park, toward West Main. He's sick to his stomach from his last
cigarette, but he's also completely charged. This was almost
dangerous. The cop could have turned and spied him; the dog might have
attacked. You can get addicted to trouble if you're not careful. You
can feel like you're flying, when all you're doing is pedaling through
the Florida heat. Instead of heading straight home, Keith turns into
the driveway of the Burger King, where he isn't allowed to stop before
supper. As he walks inside, he reaches in his pants pocket for the
money he stole out of a classmate's locker just yesterday. It's there,
every cent of it, and Keith feels a wicked surge of elation. Sooner or
later, he's going to get caught.
Julian Cash slouches down behind the wheel of the patrol car as he
passes by the Burger King.
Through the plate-glass window, he can see the little truant from the
park devouring a burger and fries. Julian has seen dozens of these
hotshots, boys who pretend to be fearless and dare somebody to prove
them wrong. Julian himself isn't scared of much, but he avoids the
Burger King. He doesn't care what anyone says, he knows the truth
about the gumbo-limbo tree that grows at the edge of the parking lot.
On the night of his seventeenth birthday he crashed into it, and twenty
years later he still has the scar to remind him. The plain truth is,
he would rather confront a psychopath hopped up on drugs than be forced
to pull up to the Burger King's drive-in window.
Twenty years ago the Burger King didn't exist, and in its place was a
stretch of gumbo-limbos.
Julian used to park there with Janey Bass until dawn, then drive her
home and watch as she climbed up the drain pipe to her bedroom
window.
Back then, there were still islands in the marshes around Verity,
although some of them u weren't any bigger than half a mile across,
home to little more than cottonmouths and foxes. The town expanded
slowly, embracing the marshes with a Winn Dixie and a Mobile station,
and now all the islands are connected to each other by roadways that
funnel over the creeks and into the Interstate. There aren't any more
coral snakes in the branches of the mangroves and you can get USA Today
and The New' York Times as well as the Verily Sun Herald over at the
general store, and at Chuck and Karl's diner they now serve croissants
along with their hickory-flavored coffee. The first time Julian was
apprehended, two weeks after his seventeenth birthday, he was standing
outside Chuck and Karl's, waiting to be caught. He had a bowie knife
hidden in his left boot and a hundred and fifty dollars in quarters,
which would have seemed suspicious even if all the parking meters on
West Main hadn't just been smashed open with an axe. It was May of
course, and the temperature hadn't fallen below one hundred for days,
and before June came around, Julian would be apprehended five more
times, although he was never officially charged with anything.
Those were the days when the Verity police force was made up of two
men, and one of them was a Cash through marriage, not that he, or any
of the Cashes, had spoken to Julian since the night of the accident.
They sent him away, to the Boys' School of Correction in Tallahassee,
and that was where he first got interested in dogs. There was a
hundredand-twenty-pound bloodhound named Big Boy whose job it was to
track down anyone courageous or stupid enough to scale the barbed-wire
fence. Big Boy stank, and his ears were infected, but appearances
didn't mean much to Julian. His own mother had fainted the first time
she saw Julian and she gave him away that very night. As a little boy
he was so ugly that tree frogs would go limp with fear in the palm of
his hand. So Big Boy's red eyes and fleas didn't put Julian off in the
least. He stole pieces of meat from the dining hall and started
hanging around the kennel after lights out. It didn't take long for
Julian to discover that if you looked a dog straight in the eye and
thought real hard, you could get him to come to you and lie at your
feet without ever having to say one word. By the end of the year, just
before Julian got his high school equivalency, the director of the
school got rid of Big Boy. They could hold the sweat-stained shirts of
escaped boys under the dog's nose for as long as they wanted, but Big
Boy would just calmly set off and track down Julian Cash every time.
In all his years of working with dogs, at the army base in Hartford
Beach, and now with the Verity police, Julian has come to believe that
there are two kinds of dogs that go bad. The kind that go bad slowly,
whether from inbreeding or being beaten it didn't much matter. And the
other ones, good dogs who suddenly turned on a night when there was a
full moon, hauling themselves up from the living room rug and a
peaceful sleep, to jump through a window or attack a child for no
apparent reason. Julian Cash attributes this to a short circuit in the
brain, and that is why he no longer believes in crimes of passion.
When men snapped it wasn't passion, it was only a short circuit, just
like that well-behaved dog who was after a ball one minute, an arm and
a leg the next. The fact that this sort of behavior is so much rarer
in dogs than in people, who seem to snap like crazy, especially during
the month of May, makes no difference to the nine other men and women
on the Verity police force. Not one of them will approach Julian if
his dogs aren't leashed, yet these officers will break up a bar fight
without thinking twice. They'll stop a speeder on a deserted back road
when they know damn well there could easily be a weapon in the glove
compartment. They don't seem to understand that it's possible to know
exactly who a dog is by looking it in the eye for fifteen seconds.
This is not, and never will be, possible with a man.
Twenty years ago, when Julian drove through the hot Florida night in
his Oldsmobile, he truly believed it was possible to reach up and steal
the stars right out of the sky. Now he doesn't even see the stars
anymore. He doesn't look up.
The nature of his job as a tracker forces him to look down, and that's
why he can recognize the footprint of an armadillo in the dust. He can
hear a caterpillar chewing sweet bay leaves. Since he sees no reason
for neighbors, he lives out in what little is left of the marshes, past
Miss Giles's place, in an old cabin some people say belonged to Charles
Verity. A kennel runs along the far side of the cabin, built with the
strongest chain link available, and this is where Julian leaves the big
dog, Arrow, since his reaction to people is much more extreme than
Julian's. Julian usually has t,he other dog, Loretta, with him, even
when he isn't on duty. When he stops for supper, he picks up something
for Loretta as well, often from the Pizza Hut. Julian believes in
rewarding his dogs, even if this means tomato sauce on the upholstery
of his cruiser. This is not the way dogs were handled in the army.
On the base in Hartford Beach small riding crops were used on dogs that
refuse to perform, and the lieutenant was proud to claim there
wasn't a dog born he couldn't train to attack in two weeks. It gives
Julian great pleasure to know he's never once used force on a dog and
he's been asked several times to instruct the K9 corps at the base.
In all things, Julian knows, what you need is patience and time,
although some talents can't be taught. Loretta is a great tracker,
much better than Big Boy ever was. In seconds flat, she can search out
a bundle of marijuana hidden in a packed Suitcase, even if it's been
locked securely inside a car trunk. Last summer, when the mosquitoes
were so thick you could hardly breathe and the heat sent you reeling,
she found a lost hiker over near Lake Okeechobee long after the state
troopers had given up hope. With her record, Julian figures she
deserves a slice of pizza now and then; hell, he would buy her a Diet
Coke if that's what she wanted. It's his other dog, Arrow, who's the
difficult one. He would have been put down two years ago if Julian had
not seen him pacing the yard behind the animal hospital on the day he
took Loretta to the vet for her rabies shot.
Arrow's owner had bought him right after her divorce, for protection
and company, from a religious order that raised dogs and had greedily
allowed the breeding of a bitch known to be vicious. The result was
Arrow, a hundred-pound monster who was so out of control his owner
could no longer walk him down the street. When Julian stood by the
fence, Arrow charged him, on his hind legs, biting at the chain link,
standing as tall as a man. That afternoon, Julian took him home.
The vet sedated Arrow and helped lift him into the backseat of the
patrol car, and when the dog awoke, trapped in Julian's kennel, he went
crazy.
Julian had to wear heavy leather gloves just to set his dish of food
inside the kennel gate. It took six weeks before Julian could trust
Arrow not to attack when his back was turned, and even now the dog
can't be off his lead around people. There are times when he startles
for no apparent reason other than the sound of the wind or a shift in
air pressure. That may be why he took naturally to his specialized
training. He sees not what is there but what isn't, and that's what
makes him the best air dog in the state, with a sense of smell so fine
he can gauge the slightest difference in the air around him. There
isn't a park ranger or state trooper who hasn't heard about Arrow.
They call him the dog from hell, and some rangers insist he be muzzled
while tracking.
The officers at the Verity police station don't like Arrow, and they
don't like his owner much, either. Julian knows what they say about
him down at the station house: that he can't find anything right with
human beings or anything wrong with dogs, that he encourages the
merlins who nest in the sweet bays and bald cypresses on his property
to frighten visitors away, that he's never once sat down for so much as
a cup of coffee with any of his fellow officers. Well, if people want
to complain, let them; let them get down on all fours and shimmy
through the sea grape and poisonwood and see how they like sand up
their noses and fire ants stinging their feet. Let them just try to
make their way through the strangler figs and the saw grass. Chances
are, not one of them would ever find a baby sleeping in the reeds.
Bethany Lee, who had never heard of Verity before she drove into town,
left New York last October. She didn't think about what she was doing,
so she didn't begin to panic until she was in southern New Jersey. The
full moon had washed the turnpike with silver light, and then, quite
suddenly, a drenching rain began to fall. In the trunk of Bethany's
Saab there was a suitcase, and inside the suitcase she had twenty
thousand dollars in cash and three neck1ace I two strands of diamonds
and a string of gold and sapphires.
Bethany's hands shook as she tried to keep the car steady; each time a
truck passed her, a tidal wave of rain slapped against the Saab. Her
baby, Rachel, who was then seven months old, was asleep in her car
seat, warmly dressed in pink pajamas with feet, unaware that the rain
was so hard windshield wipers could do nothing to improve visibility.
Six hours earlier, Bethany had set off to take Rachel to the park, but
on this day she drove right on past. Rachel had let out a cry of
delight when she saw the slide and the swings, but Bethany ignored the
tightness in her own throat and stepped down harder on the gas. If she
was lucky, the housekeeper wouldn't worry and phone the police when she
arrived to find the doors locked and no one at home. If she was
unlucky, as she had been for quite some time, her husband already knew
she was gone.
She probably should have pulled over that night, but she kept going at
a slow crawl, never more than thirty miles an hour, until she reached
Delaware.
She parked down the street from the Wilmington Greyhound station and
when Rachel woke up, fussing, her diaper wet, Bethany climbed over into
the backseat, told the baby what a good girl she was, and quickly
changed her. Then she hoisted Rachel on her shoulder, grabbed the
diaper bag, and went out to the trunk for her suitcase. She left the
Saab where it was, keys in the ignition.
They washed up in the ladies' room at the bus station, got some
brealtfast from the snack bar, including a glass of milk to fill
Rachel's bottle, then waited for the eleven-o'clock bus to Atlanta.
By then, Bethany had not slept for two nights, and she barely had the
nerve to ask for her bus ticket. In the past four months she had spent
thirty thousand dollars on lawyers, and it had not done her a bit of
good. If she had just taken off at the start, she would have had fifty
thousand in her suitcase instead of twenty, but she had never made a
real decision until the day she drove past the park. She'd had faith
in her lawyer. She believed him when he insisted she'd easily win
custody, but somehow it hadn't worked out that way, and it took months
for Bethany to realize she'd been tricked. It turned out that the
house in Great Neck belonged not to her and Randy but to his family's
business. Even the Saab belonged to Randy's family. And now they had
decided the baby was theirs, too.
Bethany had been a freshman at Oberlin when she met Randy. His sister,
Lynne, was her roommate, and she'd warned Bethany that her brother was
the handsomest man she would ever meet.
He had dozens of old sweethearts from high school and college pestering
him, but when he saw Bethany he fell in love instantly. He told her it
was because she was the most beautiful girl he had ever seen, and in
fact she looked more like him than his own sister, with the same dark
hair and clear olive skin. But after a while Bethany came to believe
that he wanted her so badly because he had never in his life met a girl
quite so naive. She was perfect, if not for him, for his family. His
parents picked their house and their furniture and their cars, and they
thought Bethany was the sweetest thing they'd ever seen. It didn't
seem to matter so much that Randy was rarely home. Bethany didn't
question him when he worked late or on weekends. He managed, that way,
to be both married, which his parents insisted upon, and single, which
was the way he liked it. And the truth was, he seemed more relieved
than upset when Bethany began to talk about a separation during her
pregnancy.
He moved out five weeks after the baby was born, and he might have been
happy to be a weekend father if his parents hadn't put pressure on
him.
Rachel was their grandchild, their first and only, and they were
willing to pay any amount to a lawyer who could win her. Randy's
parents, and even his sister, had testified against Bethany, and her
medical records had been subpoenaed from the times when she was
depressed, especially right after the baby was born and the marnage was
already dead and she began taking Elavil. Right before God and her
lawyer and everyone, she was ripped apart until she herself was almost
convinced her child would be better off without her. While they waited
for the court's final decree, Bethany had to let Rachel go off to visit
her father every weekend. There had been strong words between them by
then, and Randy said he couldn't bear to see Bethany face to face.
Instead, his parents sent a driver. Every Friday night Bethany had to
stand and do nothing while Rachel screamed and the driver forced her
into her car seat. Often, Bethany had to turn away.
She just couldn't bear to see her baby cry, and afterward she'd be sick
to her stomach; she'd have the dry heaves for hours.
It might have continued that way Friday after Friday, until the final
decree, and Bethany might never have driven through that horrible storm
in New Jersey, if she hadn't turned at the instant when Rachel was
flailing her arms and screaming and seen the exasperated driver slap
the baby's face. And still, Bethany was so paralyzed she didn't run to
the car and grab her daughter.
She stood there, in shock, beside the automatic sprinklers that came on
each day at dusk, too horrified to weep. The next morning, Bethany
went to the bank to make her first withdrawal, and she went every day
that week, until the one joint account Randy had not closed was all but
drained. On the following Friday she refused to answer the door when
the driver came for Rachel.
She turned off all the lights and sat on the kitchen floor, holding
Rachel and rocking back and forth while the driver rang the bell for
what seemed like forever. An hour after the driver left, the phone
started ringing. Bethany ignored it. She fixed Rachel a bottle and
put her to sleep in her own big bed, with pillows all around her so she
wouldn't roll off. Finally the phone stopped ringing and Bethany's
heart no longer felt like it was going to burst. She actually thought
it was over and went to get herself a bowl of cornflakes and milk, but
at a little after nine Randy's car pulled into the driveway. Bethany
sat on the couch, watching the door shake as he knocked, harder and
harder, and when it stopped she thought, for a moment, that he had
given up.
She had forgotten he still had a key, although he couldn't do much more
than reach his arm halfway inside, since the safety chain had been
fastened.
"God damn it," he called. "Bethany?"
Bethany sat on the couch while he screamed at her through the crack in
the door. She was fairly certain that she was no longer breathing.
Throughout their marriage he had never once shouted at her or called
her names; it didn't even sound like his voice. Then she realized, all
in a rush, that they were no longer the people they had been, neither
of them, and that that was what happened once you started to fight over
custody.
"I'm going to break the door down," he vowed.
She really couldn't move, that was the amazing thing. She couldn't
have let him in if she'd wanted to. When the door didn't give way,
Randy backed off. Bethany was still on the couch when she heard the
glass breaking. He had put his fist right through the living room
window. Bethany's breathing was hard and sharp as she ran into the
kitchen and went through the drawers. She had a rubbery feeling in her
legs, as though she might collapse, but instead she grabbed the bread
knife, a long one with a serrated edge, and ran back to the living
room. Randy was shouting her name, as if they didn't have neighbors or
a baby asleep in their bed. He had unlocked the window and was sliding
it up when Bethany went to the front door and flung it open. It was an
Indian summer night, and Bethany wore only shorts and a white blouse.
She stood in the doorway, her long dark hair electrified, her white
shirt illuminated by moonlight, waving the knife in front of her.
"Get out of here!" she screamed in a voice she had never heard
before.
Randy walked right toward her. There were shards of broken glass in
his hair and blood on his hand and down his arm, staining one of his
favorite blue shirts. "Go on," he said. "Act crazy.
That's what you do best."
"I mean it," Bethany told him.
The knife didn't feel the least bit heavy in her hands. A few months
before, the most she had to worry about was picking up lamb chops for
dinner and whether the gardener had planted white or purple wisteria.
Now, as Randy walked closer, Bethany thought about Rachel being taken
from her for no good reason, and the knife felt more and more
comfortable. Randy had that serious, sweetly concerned look on his
face, the one that made women go limp with desire. He had thought
briefly of being an actor-he'd been the lead in all his high school
plays-and although his father had finally convinced him to go into the
family business, Bethany could see he would have made a good actor. He
could make you believe that you needed him, that he cared.
"The decision is up to the court," he told Bethany that night.
"There's no point in us fighting."
He had almost reached the door by then.
Bethany jabbed the knife in the air and he stepped back. For a moment
she could see she had truly frightened him.
"You can have anything you want," she told him. She'd grown up in Ohio
and her voice had a sweet, flat timbre, although tonight it was little
more than a whisper. "You just can't have Rachel."
"You want to tell that to my parents?" he said.
There was a dinner party going on next door at the Kleinmans', and they
could hear laughter through the open windows. They used to go to those
parties together. Bethany would bring her ribbon cake, and Randy a
blue glass pitcher of margaritas, and when they came home they'd take a
shower together and get into bed.
"If you try to take her, I'll kill you," Bethany said in her quiet
voice.
"Can I quote you?" Randy said. "In court?"
Bethany lowered the knife to her side. She was a beautiful girl who
had never finished college or balanced a checkbook and who needed to
take antidepressants in spite of the fact that she'd married the boy
everyone had been in love with.
"We should stop fighting," Randy said.
"You're right," Bethany agreed.
"We're not going to kill each other, we're just going to make each
摘要：

TurtleMoonbyAliceHoffmanBerkleyPublishingGroupCopyright1993ISBN:042513699XPARTONE.ThelastmajorcrimeinthetownofVeritywasin1958,whenoneofthePlattsshothisbrotherinanargumentoveraChevyNomadtheyhadboughttogetherontime.Usuallyit'ssoquietyoucanhearthestranglerfigsdroppingtheirfrilitonthehoodsofparkedcars,l...

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