Page 17 of (My Accidental) Killer Summer (Summers in Seaside)

seventeen

. . .

Elle

The thing about killing someone with a lawn gnome is that it really throws off your morning routine. I rush to make the kids breakfast and prep lunches. I grab their lunch coolers and start throwing things in them while grabbing the boxed pancake mix. No homemade delectables today!

“Mom! Where were you? We’re going to be late!” Jaq cries. They hate being late.

“What do you mean where was I?” I fake surprise. “I was here, just around doing stuff.” If hell exists, I just shot to the front of the waiting line.

I’m elbow-deep in lies, deception, and pancake batter trying not to spiral, when my phone buzzes.

MAMA DRAMA GROUP CHAT - Sandy, Molly, Jen, Elle, Amy

Great. Nothing says “good morning” like the passive-aggressive mom mafia of West Cedar Lane. I glance at the screen as the messages start to roll in.

SANDY: OMG did y’all see what’s been circulating now??

Circulating now? What does that mean?

JEN: Do you just, like, live on your phone?

MOLLY: Pretty sure it’s surgically attached to her hand at this point.

JEN: What happened now? I don’t think I can take anymore.

What are they talking about?

“What happened to you?” Jill asks. “You’re a mess.”

“What does that even mean just around doing stuff?” Jaq air quotes my words.

“Oh this?” I look down at myself, surprised to see mud and grass on my clothes since I’d changed after moving Doug from the yard. “I was, uh, helping Aunty Amy with some yardwork,” I say.

I glance back at my phone as another notification comes in.

SANDY: Sending!

And there it is.

“Garden décor assault circa 2:00 AM.”

A blurry still from someone’s security cam. Night vision green. Grainy. But unmistakable as far as I’m concerned. Me, in shorts and one of Noah’s shirts gripping the garden gnome.

What angle is that from?

My soul leaves my body.

“Mom,” Jill says behind me, “you’re burning the pancakes.”

I flip the pancake. It’s black. Same color as the pit forming in my stomach.

“It stinks.” Jill waves a hand under her nose.

“Sorry,” I say as I toss the blackened cake in the trash and pour the batter for a new one.

“Amy!” I yell.

“This early?” Jaq asks. “Wasn’t it still dark, like, a minute ago?”

“What, sorry?” I ask.

“You’ve got grass in your hair,” Jill points out. “Is that from your midnight yardwork?” She uses air quotes and frankly sounds a bit too sassy for first thing in the morning.

MOLLY: Isn’t that the Jenkins’ backyard?

JEN: What are they doing?

MOLLY: Is that a garden gnome? I can’t enlarge my screen.

How can they possibly tell those things from this photo? I barely recognize me and I know it’s me.

“I meant I’m going to be helping her with yardwork.

We had to hit up the nursery first to get some things we’ll need.

Plants, fertilizer, tools, you know.” Even I don’t believe the words coming out of my mouth and I’m the one saying them.

Sadly, I don’t let that stop me. “There was a sale. A Memorial Day sale, so we needed to go early.”

JEN: It IS a garden gnome. I just can’t tell what else is going on.

MOLLY: Okay, Sandy – spill it. What are we looking at.

SANDY: I think that’s the killer with the headless body mid attack.

MOLLY: If that’s the headless body, why are they hitting it?

“Amy!” I yell.

“Oh, is Aunty Amy here?” Jill asks.

“It was like Black Friday,” Amy pipes in after coming out of the small guest bathroom off the kitchen where she brushed her hair and washed her hands and face.

I’m a little jealous since I’ve spent my only free minutes making sure my kids don’t starve, even if I don’t remember what I dropped in their lunch bags. I did wash my hands before doing it though. There’s my win for the day.

“Totally crazy, like mobs of people,” Amy continues. I hand her my phone with the text thread pulled up where messages are still rapid firing back and forth.

MOLLY: It might not be headless yet.

SANDY: I don’t think murderers think that rationally.

JEN: Of course they do. They are rational, methodic, calculating.

SANDY: Diabolical. Erratic. Amoral.

“That’s not the correct use of the word circa.” Amy points at the photo caption.

“I don’t think anyone cares, Amy!” I hiss.

“Mobs of people at the nursery? Yeah, that tracks,” Jaq scoffs. I look at Amy, she gives a little shrug. Because, in truth, that probably was the best story we could come up with on the fly. Which is pathetic. I used to be so much better at lying.

What is happening to me?

“Can we go now?” Jaq looks a little panicked.

“You don’t want breakfast?” I ask. Yes, that is me gaslighting my kid. I wonder what I should wear when they present me with my mother of the year award.

“There’s no time!” Jaq cries.

JEN: I think you guys are describing two different crimes. One that’s premeditated and one that’s a crime of passion.

MOLLY: Oh – do you think they were lovers?

SANDY: Not all passion is sex related.

JEN: Isn’t it though?

MOLLY: Does anyone else have footage?

SANDY: Not me.

JEN: I’ll check later tonight.

MOLLY: Tonight?? What if you have the evidence to convict the killer???

JEN: Then I’ll send it to them tonight.

“Mom!”

“Okay, okay, go get in the car I’ll be right there.

” I toss my phone face down on the counter and inhale deeply through my nose.

No one’s identified me yet. I’m just a blurry figure in a sea of true crime-obsessed suburbanites who all secretly hope it was a murder so they can be interviewed on Dateline.

I can play this cool.

Calm.

Collected.

Totally not like a woman who brained Doug Finch in the Jenkin’s yard last night with a garden gnome and then came home to make shitty pancakes for her kids.

I toss a few said pancakes in paper towels for them to eat on the way, grab my phone and keys, then remember what’s in the car—“Wait, Jaq!”—and race after them.