A Fatal Twist Read online

  Tiffany skipped out the back door, wearing a surprised-looking smile. I said a quick prayer to the universe that Bella would behave herself, then shifted gears and prepared the practice space for my six o’clock class: Yoga to Overcome Grief.

  Tonight’s class was special, as it was the last class in a series designed to help students find new meaning after loss. Everything needed to be perfect. I placed the bouquet of golden sunflowers on the altar, lined the walls with flickering tea lights, and set two large bamboo bowls on the floor next to my mat. One contained unlit candles; the other, purple envelopes that I’d filled with Pacific Northwest wildflower seeds. Seeds of joy, if you will, that I would ask each student to scatter someplace special. I finished by burning sage to clear the room’s energy and chanting “Om Shanti,” the ancient Sanskrit mantra for peace.

  The chime on the front door rang, announcing that the first students had entered the reception area. I scanned the yoga space a final time to make sure everything was perfect, turned on my favorite Deva Premal CD, and headed to join them.

  Justine Maxwell and Rachel Jones, two of the workshop’s fifteen students, loitered uncomfortably by the front desk.

  “Sorry, Kate. Are we too early?” Rachel asked.

  “Not at all, I’m glad to see you.”

  I never got used to seeing Rachel in yoga clothes. I’d met her only two months earlier, at the Lake Washington Medical Center when Rene was hospitalized there for preterm labor. At the hospital, Rachel wore a dishwater-blonde ponytail and a brightly colored nurse’s uniform. Tonight she wore a black yogatard, a purple headband, and a worried expression. Her normally lively blue eyes seemed clouded.

  “Everything okay?” I asked.

  “It’s Nicole.”

  Nicole Amato, Rachel’s sixteen-year-old daughter, normally attended class with her. I glanced out the window, expecting to see her sulking outside. The sidewalk was empty.

  Rachel chewed on her thumbnail. “She was supposed to be home from a school event over an hour ago. My husband is going to be furious. He hates it when she’s late.”

  “I told you,” Justine replied. “If Richard can’t handle Nicole acting out like a normal teenager every now and then, don’t tell him about it.” She grabbed a paper cup and poured hot water over a bag of chamomile tea. The sweet floral scent clashed with the room’s tense energy. “What Richard doesn’t know won’t come back to bite you.”

  “I suppose, but … ” Rachel’s words trailed off.

  “But what?” Justine asked.

  “What am I supposed to tell him if she doesn’t show up at all? I have to get home somehow.”

  Justine replied with a tired smile. “I’ll drive you home. It’ll be no trouble at all.”

  We all knew she was lying. Justine had very little spare time and no extra energy. She worked as a labor and delivery nurse at the same hospital as Rachel. When she wasn’t helping deliver babies, she was the sole caretaker of a mother with advanced Alzheimer’s. Her deep brown eyes were almost always underscored by purple-gray half moons, and her graying brown hair usually seemed wilted. Although she’d recently celebrated her forty-second birthday, Justine looked at least a decade older.

  I circled the conversation back to Rachel’s daughter. “So, it seems Nicole isn’t coming tonight?” The absence disappointed me. The often-sullen teenager seemed to be benefiting from the class, though I doubted she would ever admit it to her mother. Or to anyone else, for that matter.

  Rachel’s lips wrinkled. “Honestly, I have no idea what Nicole is doing tonight. She’s up to something again, and it can’t be good. I swear that girl is going to be the death of me.”

  I paused for a moment, trying to formulate an appropriate response. I wanted to tell Rachel not to worry—that all sixteen-year-old girls drove their mothers nuts. I wanted to encourage her to have patience. Nicole’s father had died of cancer two years ago, and his death had been devastating for the young teen. I especially wanted to ask her to give Nicole a break; she was finally adjusting to life without her father. A minor indiscretion could surely be forgiven.

  In the end, I said nothing. Before I could get out my first word, the studio’s front door crashed open. A furious-looking man stormed through it, followed by a small, hesitant group of my students. Frankly, I was a little taken aback myself.

  What on earth is he doing here?

  The man I knew only as Dr. Dick glanced through me as if I were invisible. He glared at Rachel, then whipped his head left and right, clearly searching for someone. If he remembered me from last night at ABBA, he didn’t show it.

  “Where in the hell is she?” he snapped.

  I suppressed my surprised recognition, pasted on my take-charge, business owner expression, and marched directly up to the rude stranger.

  “I don’t know who you are, but unless you’re planning to take a yoga class, I’m afraid you’ll have to leave.” I hesitated a millisecond before adding, “Or I’m calling the police.”

  Rachel’s face reddened. She stepped between us, whether to block me from Dr. Dick or him from me, I wasn’t quite sure. “It’s okay, Kate,” she said. “Please don’t call anyone. This is my husband, Dr. Richard Jones.”

  Three

  I stepped a few feet away to give Rachel the illusion of privacy, but stayed close enough to intervene if the confrontation turned violent. Justine huddled near the schefflera tree and stared into her tea as if reading her future in a bag of Cozy Chamomile. The rest of the students loitered in front of the yoga room’s entrance, shifting back and forth and murmuring at the commotion.

  Rachel placed a calming hand on her husband’s arm. “What are you doing here, Richard?”

  “Looking for that daughter of yours.”

  “Nicole’s not here. She had an event after school today, remember?”

  Dr. Dick’s—I mean Dr. Jones’s—face burned so hot, I was surprised the sweat dotting his forehead didn’t steam up his glasses. “Don’t make excuses for her. She promised to be home in time for yoga, and you know it. Besides, I went by the school. That good-for-nothing delinquent lied to us. They had early release today. If she’s not here with you, then she’s up to no good.”

  “Calm down, Richard. She’s probably just running late.”

  He crossed his arms and scowled. “She’s not late, she’s a thief. She stole fifty dollars out of my wallet.” His hands formed tight fists. “That little tramp is off doing drugs with her friends again, and I will not stand for it.”

  Rachel flinched. “Are you sure? She’s seemed better lately. She passed her last three urine tests.” She lowered her voice as if suddenly aware that she had eavesdroppers. “Can we talk about this at home?”

  Dr. Dick grabbed Rachel’s arms and yanked her to within an inch of his face. “I warned you both. One more strike and she’s out. If you won’t control that girl, I’ll send her someplace that will.”

  Rachel froze, but she didn’t give ground. She narrowed her eyes and hissed through clenched teeth. “Let go of me. Now.”

  I backed slowly toward the desk and laid my hand on the phone, ready to dial 911.

  After several long seconds, Dr. Dick roughly released her and made one final proclamation. “When Nicole comes back—if she comes back—tell her to pack her bags. She’s no longer welcome in my home.”

  The door’s chimes clanged forcibly behind him, as if punctuating the seriousness of his threat.

  Rachel stared after him, absently rubbing the finger-shaped welts he’d left behind. “He doesn’t mean it. He’d never send Nicole away.” Her voice didn’t sound confident.

  I stepped away from the desk and gestured to the gawkers. “Hey, everyone. Go inside the studio and set up your mats. We’ll join you in a minute.”

  Justine hovered near the entrance to the yoga room, seeming conflicted—as if she wanted to escape Rachel’s dra
ma but felt compelled to stay behind. I motioned toward the door. She mouthed the words “thank you” and disappeared behind it.

  I gently placed my arm around Rachel’s shoulders and guided her to the bench. “Are you okay?”

  “Yes. Or at least I will be.”

  I hesitated before speaking. The question I was about to ask was important, but I wasn’t sure how Rachel would receive it. “I don’t know how to say this, so I’ll just blurt it out. Are you safe at home? I can help if you need—”

  She cut me off. “Don’t worry about that, Kate. Nicole brings out the worst in Richard, but he’s never been violent.” She examined the marks on her arms, which had already begun to fade. “These aren’t as bad as they look. The only thing Richard bruised was my ego.” She buried her face in her hands. “I’m so mortified.”

  “Don’t worry about it. You should see some of my fights with Michael.” I poured a glass of cool water. Rachel’s hands trembled as she took it.

  “Richard and I never fought until Nicole moved in. Now arguing seems to be all that we have in common.” She took a small sip, then a larger one. “I feel like a terrible mother for saying this, but some days I wish he would send her away. Maybe then our life could go back to normal.”

  “Normal?”

  “The way it was before Nicole joined us. Parenting was a heck of a lot easier when it was two weekends a month.” She covered her face again and moaned. “Oh good lord, I am a terrible mother.” When she looked back up, her eyes begged for understanding. “Please don’t hate me. It’s been a hard adjustment—for all of us. Nicole adored her father. She’d lived with him since she was three. She and I, on the other hand … ” Her voice trailed off.

  I considered, not for the first time, asking Rachel why her ex-husband had raised Nicole, but I didn’t. The answer was likely painful, private, and complex. Definitely too complex for a five-minute conversation in a yoga studio lobby. If I’d learned anything during my reconciliation with my own mother, it was that good parents sometimes made terrible choices. Choices they later regretted.

  Rachel sighed. “Sometimes I think Donny got off easy by dying. He’s beyond earthly problems now. The rest of us are still trying to piece our lives back together.”

  She stood, drained her cup, and tossed it into the garbage can. “Thanks for listening. I’m okay now. Time to slink into the studio and pretend that the whole scene with Richard didn’t happen.” She paused at the door. “Will you do me a favor?”

  “Sure.”

  “If Nicole comes, don’t say anything to her. I’ll talk to her after class.”

  While Rachel joined the others, I moved behind the desk and absently checked in the last straggling students, none of whom were Nicole. My body sat firmly in the present, but my mind was trapped in the past. Nurse Tamara had been right last night: Dr. Dick truly lived up to his name. Not only was he a first-class jerk, he was also a cheater. A cheater who might be planning to divorce Rachel.

  All of which left me with a true dilemma. What was I supposed to do with that information now?

  Ten minutes later, I walked into the yoga room wearing a serene—and entirely fake—smile. This wasn’t the first time I’d learned that a friend’s husband was cheating, but that didn’t make having the unwanted information any easier.

  No matter how hard I tried to come up with a solution, my heart and my mind refused to agree. My heart begged me to tell Rachel what I’d seen last night, and quickly. Living with a cheater couldn’t possibly get easier with time. My mind warned me to keep my mouth shut. Rachel was a student, not a friend. For all I knew, she was already aware of Richard’s infidelity.

  I shelved my conflicting impulses and invited everyone to sit in a circle for a final pre-class check-in. “Since this is our last class, I don’t have any lecture material prepared. This is your time to talk, if you want to. Do you have any questions or thoughts you’d like to share?”

  A few students asked questions. Most simply listened. Rachel glanced at the door every ten seconds, looking for her daughter. I was about to send everyone back to their mats when Justine spoke.

  “I don’t have any questions, but I want to say something.” She paused as if searching for the right words. “I told you all in our first class that I lost my husband and daughter—” Her throat caught. “I lost Bob and my baby Anya in a car accident three years ago. She was only two.” She looked down at her hands. “What I didn’t tell you is that I was injured, too. A piece of metal penetrated my abdomen. They had to do a hysterectomy to stop the bleeding. I’ll never have any more children.” She took a deep breath and continued. “For the longest time, I wished that I had died that day, too.”

  The yoga room door cracked open. Nicole eased through it and quietly unrolled a mat in the back. Her mother gave her a dark look.

  Justine continued speaking. “Some days I still don’t think I can bear the pain, but maybe … I’m beginning to think that maybe I’ll survive. The breathing, the movement … It helps more than I ever could have imagined.” She made eye contact with me and smiled. For the first time since I’d known her, she didn’t look tired. “Thank you.”

  Justine wasn’t the first student to tell me that yoga had changed her life, and I prayed that she wouldn’t be the last. Stories like hers made the stresses of small business ownership worthwhile.

  She gave me a hug, and then everyone returned to their mats.

  I led a gentle, emotionally balancing class for the next forty-five minutes, trying to connect with each of my students. The grandmother in the second row had lost her husband to lung cancer six months ago. The young couple in front, their child to whooping cough. The heavyset man in the back recently lost the love of his life, a tiny black poodle named Lucy. I mentally sent each of them positive energy, each of them strength.

  But no matter how hard I tried to focus on all of my students, my gaze kept landing on two: Rachel and Nicole.

  Was Nicole high? Yoga was a relatively safe form of exercise, but all things considered, I preferred that my students be sober. Nicole had seemed flustered when she’d entered the room, but that wasn’t surprising. She’d arrived over twenty minutes late. Her dark, shoulder-length hair could have used a good washing and her black sweats had dirt encrusted on the knees. But her movements seemed easeful. Her breath, fluid. If she was high, she was good at concealing it.

  Her mother’s movements, on the other hand, were erratic. Not at all linked with her breath. Her shoulders were still tense from the fight with her husband, but that didn’t surprise me, either. Not even the best yoga practice could make up for being married to a jerk.

  Admittedly, the thought wasn’t yogic. The Yoga Sutras—yoga’s key philosophical text—ask us to be neutral toward evil, and my attitude toward Dr. Dick was anything but neutral. Still, I had to believe that whether he was handsome—and likely rich—or not, Nicole and Rachel could do much, much better.

  I finished the movement portion of the practice and asked the students to close their eyes for a brief meditation.

  I sat crossed-legged on my meditation rug and spoke. “Take a moment to reflect on your life. Not as it was in the past, but how it can be in the future. As you’ve all discovered, we can’t always control the events in our lives. We can, however, choose how we react to them. Tonight, if your future feels dark, lighten it.”

  “How?”

  Nicole’s question surprised me. Talking during yoga class is a well-known taboo. Even outside of our formal practice time, Nicole had asked at most two questions in the past six weeks. Evidently her third was going to be a doozy.

  The girl’s lower lip trembled. Her eyes glistened. Her expression held yearning, as if begging me to draw her a road map home. If the confused expressions on the room’s other fourteen faces were any indication, she wasn’t the only one lost.

  I gazed at the hardwood floor for a moment and
thought back to the first horrible years after my father’s death. Before Bella and Michael, I had also been lost, though I didn’t realize it at the time. Bella and Michael had been my road map home. But telling the overweight, likely depressed teenager that her problems would be solved by getting a boyfriend and a dog didn’t seem helpful—or truthful, for that matter. I thanked the universe for Michael and Bella every day, but I’d become stronger in the past year. Strong enough that if by some unfathomable chain of events I lost them both, I knew I’d survive.

  Which brought me back to Nicole’s question.

  How?

  The answer came to me as a single word. I lifted my eyes and said it out loud.

  “Hope.”

  Fifteen confused pairs of eyes stared back at me. The man who’d lost his dog frowned at his mat. The couple leaned subtly away from each other. Nicole rolled her eyes.

  “Seriously,” I said. “No matter how tough life gets, we can always find hope. Hope sustains us, lifts us up, and motivates us to move forward.”

  They still didn’t get it. Frankly, I wasn’t sure I did, either.

  “Let’s try a different meditation. Close your eyes again, and notice your breath.” Everyone except Nicole complied. She crossed her arms and scowled. I kept speaking. “Whether you can see it or not, hope exists all around you. You just have to allow it inside.”

  Nicole pretended to gag herself with her index finger. “Whatever.”

  Rachel stood, I assumed to chastise her daughter. I motioned for her to sit again. Nicole finally closed her eyes.

  “Imagine that hope is a bright yellow light filling the space around you. Every time you inhale, breathe that light into your lungs and feel it soak into your heart. Each time you exhale, imagine it moving through your entire body, illuminating every cell.”

  It wasn’t the meditation I’d practiced, but it was the one I was meant to teach. As the minutes passed, the creases in the grandmother’s brow smoothed. The couple who had lost their child reached out and held hands. The tension in Rachel’s shoulders finally released. Nicole’s energy shifted; her protective armor softened.