A Catered New Year's Eve by Isis Crawford

Author:Isis Crawford
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Kensington Books
Published: 2019-09-08T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 19

Lori reached over and turned the heater a notch higher. After a moment, she began. “I’ve lived in this town for the last forty years and been editor of the Sunset Gazette for the last fifteen and the one thing I can say about the Sinclairs is that there’s always been drama. Lots of drama.”

Bernie asked the obvious question. “What kind of drama?”

“Not comedy, that’s for sure,” Lori replied. “My husband used to say the Sinclairs put the d in dysfunctional.” She went on to give examples. “Like when Ada’s mom, Linda, found out that her husband was having an affair with Vicky—this when Vicky was working for him as an assistant—Linda locked him out of the house.”

“Doesn’t seem unreasonable,” Libby observed.

Lori raised a finger. “That’s where most people would walk away. Does Jeff walk away? Or bang on the door? Or call a locksmith? No, he does not. He gets in his SUV and bashes the front door in.”

“Messy, but effective,” Bernie commented.

“And then,” Lori continued, “to put the finishing touch on everything, Linda goes into the garage, gets a five-gallon container of gasoline, throws the gasoline on the SUV, and lights it up. Fortunately, the firemen arrived in time to save the house from going up in flames as well.”

“Obviously, Linda was unclear on the concept,” Bernie remarked.

Lori went on. “Yes. It was quite the story—not that I wrote about it in the paper.”

Libby cocked her head. “Why not?”

“The publisher is a family friend of the Sinclairs,” Lori told her. “I also couldn’t write about the time Ada got into trouble for shoplifting and for doing E.” Lori extended her hands palms upward. “Mickey Mouse stuff, right?”

Bernie and Libby nodded.

“Most people,” Lori said, continuing her narrative, “would have grounded their kid and left it at that or sent them to a therapist, but Linda hired some people to come and kidnap Ada and take her to some camp or other out west in the middle of nowhere. One of these outdoor, living in the wilderness kind of deals.”

“Like boot camp,” Libby said.

Bernie wrinkled her nose. “Lucky our dad didn’t believe in that,” she commented, thinking about all the stuff she’d pulled in her adolescence.

“Anyway,” Lori went on, “Ada was there for three weeks before she ran away and hitchhiked back.”

“I’m impressed,” Bernie said. “Shows determination.”

“Then she went and had a mini nervous breakdown—or at least that’s what her mother said.”

“And judging from your tone of voice you didn’t believe it?” Bernie asked.

Lori shrugged. “Some people said it was drugs and she was in a rehab facility. The other story I heard was that Ada had tried to stab Vicky, her new stepmom to be, and Linda had worked out a deal and put her daughter in a psychiatric facility so she wouldn’t get arrested.”

Libby thought about the crack someone made at the Sinclairs’ New Year’s Eve dinner about Ada needing to go back on her meds and wondered if that’s what the person who’d made the remark was referring to.

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