Darkness in the Light

Chapter 9

            We didn’t meet up again the rest of the week. Nat and I talked a little about it but Levi hadn’t been able to do anything after school because he said he had some tutoring or something to go to. I didn’t understand how a boy who listened to Oscar Wilde books would need to go to tutoring. Then again, why did he need to listen to A House of Pomegranates? I had just met Levi that week but I could at least tell he was trying to hide something.

            There hadn’t been any more bodies, at least they hadn’t found them. Nat said she wanted to take a day off from everything so that Saturday she took me to an Italian restaurant called Angelo’s. My dad used to take the rest of us there all the time but once the accident happened we hadn’t even looked at it.

            It was an old school kind of restaurant that reminded me of a normal house. The food wasn’t the best in the world but it reminded me of the old days when everything was normal. When Danny still walked the earth and there weren’t psychopaths roaming the streets.

            “That sheriff doesn’t wear her wedding ring.” Nat said while stirring a cheese tortellini with a fork across her dish.

            I had gotten simple caesar salad with bits of chicken inside it. I was just looking around the restaurant so I didn’t hear her the first time. “Huh?”

            She held up her left hand and wiggled her ring ringer, which had on a ring the shape of the Batman insignia. “Liliana Perez doesn’t wear a wedding ring.”

            I remembered when Nat had been looking at her hand the first time we met her. “Okay? So maybe she’s just divorced. It’s not uncommon nowadays.”

            “Yeah, that would be it.” A glint appeared in her eyes. “If there wasn’t a tan line from the ring.”

            I pretended to be horrified. “Scandalous!”

            Her nose crinkled. “Shut up. But as I was saying…” Her voice trailed off as she stared at something behind me.

            “God, I hate when you do that.” I muttered. “What is it?”

            Her eyes looked shocked, her mouth twisted with pain. “Speaking of scandalous…”

            I couldn’t help it. I jerked around in my chair and the first thing I saw was my dad. His hair had been long enough to be pulled back into a ponytail but his beard was trimmed. He was wearing his normal work clothes of a suit and tie. He was smiling, something he doesn’t usually do, and at first I was kind of happy to see that he was happy. Until I saw who he was sitting across from.

            It was woman who looked no older than thirty with luscious brown hair that curved around her olive face, eyes a deep chocolate brown, sharp angled cheekbones, basically the perfect face. She didn’t try to hide the body her momma gave her either. She was wearing a short black cocktail dress and black stilettos, way too expensive for a place like Angelo’s. She was the kind of woman any guys would drool over.