On the Edge of Dangerous Things (Dangerous Things Trilogy Book 1) by snyder-carroll s. Page B

They were damn nice women Hester was lucky enough to have met; but nice or not, she needed to be alone. She figured she’d throw them a bone of information and then maybe they’d leave and not be offended.
    “Look, thanks for coming over, and Eve, thanks for offering to take me to the hospital. Al’s okay. He had a concussion, broken ribs, slight heart attack…”
    “A heart attack!” they said it together.
    Dee spun around and her thick lips hung open in amazement. “Hester, jeezus, so it was a freaking heart attack!”
    Why didn’t Hester just keep her big trap shut? God, she was furious with herself. Now she’d have to listen to them say how upset they were about poor Al. In an hour all of Pleasant Palms would be at her door with everything from garlic hummus to key lime pie. By noon tomorrow all the details about poor Al’s condition would be in the goddamn “PP Newsletter.”
    “Dee, Eve, I’m exhausted. Don’t tell anyone anything. Let’s just wait a few days and see how Al does. Please, I just want to lie down and take a rest now.”
    “Okay, we can take a hint. Right, Dee?” Eve got up, locked eyes with Dee, and jerked her head toward the door, but before she took a single step toward it, she said, “Oh, I forgot to ask about your young house guest. What’s her name? Nina, was it? Where was poor Nina when all hell broke loose?”
    Hester’s cheeks turned red hot. Yes, where the hell was Nina when all hell broke loose? In bed with my husband! How she wanted to say it, to tell the truth. There was a fatality. Almost two fatalities. I wanted to kill my husband. I almost did.
    But what she said was, “Nina was on the beach. Can you believe it? She was looking for shells, but she saw the storm coming and ran back here to the trailer. Thank God she had enough sense to get out of danger. Thank God she’s alright. She was pretty shaken up.”
    “Poor thing. Maybe she can help with the clean-up. Keeping busy might help take her mind off things. She can come with us. It’ll get her out of your hair, and you can have some quiet time to yourself.”
    “Well.” Hester could barely think what to say. “Well, I’ll tell her when she gets up. You know how young people are. They could sleep forever.”
     
    As soon as Dee and Eve left, Hester lowered the bamboo shade and the mini blinds. She lay on the couch in the dim room and put her feet up on the throw pillows. The wound on her calf throbbed. She closed her eyes. She hated telling lies, but she told them anyway. To her parents, to Al, at some point, to just about everybody. And now the lying was going to have to go on and on and on. What was the alternative?
    Al’s words rang in her head. He’d been emphatic. “Hester, I did not do anything wrong.”
    Maybe it wasn’t what it looked like. Maybe Nina was scared. Maybe… bubbles of thought burst inside of Hester’s skull and disintegrated. She could not sustain the process of putting two and two together. It was as though her brain had shrunk to the size of a pea.
    Nina’s dead body was in one of those thoughts. Hester tried not to let it burst open inside her head, but it did, and she saw the plastic bag in the hole beneath the Bo tree. It was useless to try to stop the thoughts. Another burst. She could see the outline of the young woman’s features against the black plastic of the garbage bag. Maybe, Hester, had made a mistake, and Nina hadn’t been dead and maybe even now the girl was trying to squirm out of the sheets and the bag and the earth.
    Old Chet’s kitchen light, probably a hundred and fifty watts, shone like a beacon and backlit Hester’s shade. What was in her medicine cabinet that might anesthetize her—K-Y Jelly, saline spray, Visine, Tums, Tiger Balm, Benadryl? Benadryl. Maybe a handful would work.
    She rolled over and turned her back to the light, but it seemed to be everywhere and penetrated her closed lids. Too exhausted to get off the couch and get the pills, Hester lay