A Man to Die for by Eileen Dreyer Read Free Book Online Page B

hers, as if the closed blinds would offer explanation. “Did you see that damn tattoo?”
    “Quite a beauty. I’m sure she was just showing you hers so you’d show her yours. I think he’s a vampire, Abe.”
    “I tell ya, it’s a fuckin’ curse to be blessed—who’s a vampire?”
    “Hunsacker,” she allowed, jumping off the desk. “It’s the only reason I can come up with for Janice acting like a cocker spaniel puppy around him. She doesn’t for you, ya know, and you have the Dick of Death. I bet he has thousands and thousands of red-eyed rats out in the parking lot.”
    Abe waved her off. “He has money and a great set of hands. And he’s tryin’ to make points. Once he has enough uteruses in his waiting room, he won’t waste any more time on the help. Besides, he’s taller than Janice, and she’s archaic enough to think that makes a difference.”
    Casey heard it then, that funny little yelp. Just like Mrs. VanCleve. It made her flinch.
    Suddenly it wasn’t quite as funny. “I’m going to invest in garlic,” she decided.
    “You don’t have to,” Abe retorted dryly. “Your charming personality will save you.”
     
    Casey got home late that night, almost one. A bunch of teens out in Fenton had picked change of shift to play demolition derby. Casey hadn’t had any plans to get in the way of staying, so she’d accumulated a little overtime, a lapful of vomit, and the undying gratitude of a set of parents whose hands she’d held. By the time she pulled into her drive, she didn’t have any mercy or compassion left.
    “Damn it.”
    The lights were on. Casey wanted to pull right back out and go someplace else. Anyplace else. Maybe Poppi and Jason would still be up. Maybe she could go into the city where the bars stayed open late. Maybe she could just run away from home. She didn’t want to have to face her mother tonight.
    She didn’t want to face her mother any night. Casey remembered pulling up to this driveway three years ago, seeking asylum from a disastrously misadvised marriage. Seeking peace. Conveniently forgetting why she’d run in the first place.
    It was a prison here, a stifling, airless limbo that smelled of despair and evasion. This sprawling Victorian confection of porches and windows, which young married couples slowed in the street to envy, was nothing but a shrine to decay.
    It hadn’t changed since she’d been a girl, since the very day her father had died at the dinner table. The very next day her mother had bought her first bandanna, made her first novena for forgiveness. The great Irish disease that had only lain dormant in the vague, maternal little woman had flared, malevolent and deadly, upon her husband’s death and taken her soul with him.
    Guilt, the Catholic motivator, the national suppressor, the parental rod. The cancer that sent her brother Benjamin first to the seminary and then to the road, figuring first to face it and then, finally, to outdistance it.
    Casey knew better. There was no more running. No appeasement or atonement. There was only worship. And since her mother took care of that, she figured there was nothing left for her to do, either with guilt or the God who had thought of it.
    But with her mother under the roof, there would be no ignoring it. Casey knew she should run. She knew she should get as far away from the madness as she could, just leave her mother to her prayers and her fasts.
    Gathering her nursing bag and purse, Casey opened the car door and stepped out onto the driveway. The night was cool, the breeze fluttering the big elm tree that shaded the front porch. She could smell the hyacinth on the night air, cloying and heavy, like an old lady’s perfume. She could hear the Jackson’ poodle yipping a few yards down. She saw a silhouette in the third-floor window and knew that Sister Helen was praying for her tonight.
    Sighing with the weight of it, she walked on up to the house.

Chapter 3
    IT WAS HIS eyes.
    Casey didn’t realize it