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This one is for all the caregivers
and also for Z, for whom I’d do (almost) anything
Curses, like chickens, come home to roost.
—SUSANNA MOODIE
I saw the two of them leave the party.
They were five minutes apart, but they each slipped through the back gate and into the woods the same way—quick as foxes, like they didn’t want to be seen.
I could think of no appropriate reason for them to sneak off together, but I told myself it was none of my business.
Since they found the body, I’ve been replaying what I saw. What happened between them, out where no one could hear?
I think it was murder.
ONE YEAR EARLIER
To: “The Best Book Club in the World”
From: [email protected]
Hello Cottonwood Book Club!
If you haven’t picked up your copy of LOLITA it’s time to get cracking.… Our first meeting of the year is September 4th at Harriet Nessel’s house, 7:30 sharp! Are you as excited as I am???
We’re baaaaaack!
Xoxo,
Janine
P.S. Themed snacks only, please!
SEPTEMBER
CHAPTER ONE
It all started that brilliantly sunny Thursday morning, with Janine and her gossip.
As the familiar green minivan cruised around the bend in the road, Annie considered flattening herself against the Jensens’ hedges. She truly appreciated Janine and everything that she did for the neighborhood, but sometimes, especially first thing in the morning, the woman could be a lot.
Like how now, Janine had pulled over to the side of the road with a screech, zipped down her window, leaned out her head, and excitedly flapped her hands in front of her face, like she’d taken a bite of a scalding-hot breakfast sandwich.
Gossip, Annie suspected, as she tugged the dog’s leash to coax her over to Janine’s car. Or worse, bragging.
Janine’s daughter Katie was always achieving things, which was wonderful. In theory, Annie rooted for Katie—for all children—to succeed, but something about Janine’s presentation always caused a flash of panic within Annie: Should Hank and Laurel be composing oboe concertos? Why haven’t they written cookbooks for charity?
Annie would have to remind herself that Laurel’s grades were excellent, that Hank was a joy, that both were curious and kind people, and that people who bragged about their children were usually overcompensating for something.
“Did you hear about the vandal?” Janine asked. Her face was pink with excitement and there was a halo of frizz around her blond ringlets.
“The what?”
“Read your texts, Annie. Someone spray-painted the street sign on Canyon Road, right by your house. It now says SLOW CHILDREN PEE.”
Annie swallowed her laugh and matched Janine’s frown. Janine leaned further out of her car window.
“The Gleasons claim he also yanked the windshield wipers off their son’s van, although honestly that thing is in such bad shape, I’m not entirely convinced it even had wipers before. Anyway. You fixed your conflict for tonight?”
There had been minor drama when Sandstone K-8 had scheduled its annual blood drive on the same night as the September book club meeting. Because the eighth graders handed out juice to the donors, Laurel’s attendance was mandatory.
“Mike’s rearranged his schedule to take the kids,” Annie said. Not like anyone will be eating at the restaurant anyway, he’d said glumly.
Janine gave a satisfied nod. “Until tonight then.” She blew an aggressive kiss in Annie’s direction. “Mwah!”
As she zoomed off, Janine’s voice trailed out the open window, “Remember to park in your garage, Annie!”
Annie and Mike had the only one-car garage in all of Cottonwood Estates: someone was always going to have to park outside.
As she continued uphill, Annie tried to retrieve the vague feeling of contentment she’d been enjoying before Janine appeared. Her daily walks were meditative and, if Annie was honest, less for the dog than for her.
She’d started the habit almost fourteen years before, when Laurel was a newborn. At first, the four-mile loop around her neighborhood had taken Annie hours to complete. Her entire existence had felt wispy and unfamiliar back then, and some days the sound of her sneakers slapping on concrete seemed the sole proof that Annie was real.
(Sole proof! Back then she wouldn’t have had the brain power to catch the pun.)
What had she been thinking about before Janine’s announcement?
Not that.
Janine, Janine, the Cottonwood Queen, May I recommend a little less caffeine? Annie wished she could take credit for the couplet, but Deb Gallegos had come up with it a few years back at a barbecue. Janine had laughed harder than anyone.
The neighborhood would probably be up in arms about the graffiti; it took effort to maintain the safe, deceptively low-key feeling that Cottonwood Estates cultivated, and occasionally, people cracked under the pressure of doing so. Last Memorial Day weekend, all hell had broken loose after the McNeils’ friends parked their RV on the street for three days. There had been months of angry memos and name-calling until an emergency meeting amended the neighborhood bylaws to ensure such a blight would never again stain the pristine lawns of Cottonwood Estates, at least for no more than twenty-four consecutive hours.
Annie, who had grown up in a very different kind of neighborhood—on the wrong side of Highway Five—recognized that her neighbors could be a little precious.
They were good, generous people, but most of them didn’t understand that there were far worse things in life than a little graffiti.
Annie did.
Lena Meeker did, too.
Annie had almost reached Lena Meeker’s house at the top of the hill. She still—even now—held her breath when she walked by, like a child going past a graveyard.
The first time Annie had been inside was for a swim-team dinner when she was around fifteen, only a few years older than Laurel now. The Meekers had hosted even though their daughter, Rachel, was young and relatively new to the team, because that was the kind of thing they did.
A teammate’s father had driven a group of them over and after he’d pulled into the driveway, he had squinted and tilted his head against the windshield.
“Is this a resort?” he’d asked.
The house was sprawling elegance, wood and glass, with oversized windows to capture the view. Inside, Annie had leaned her forehead to the glass and looked west. No other houses were visible, just the shimmering wave of aspen leaves on the hills, the snowcapped purple Rockies behind them.
Better than a postcard, Annie had thought.
Now, she walked quickly past the low garden fence separating Lena’s yard from the road. The giant cottonwood tree in the back corner of her lot was the development’s namesake, and every spring, it snowed down fluffy
cotton seeds on the neighborhood below.
A few months after they’d moved in, Mike and Annie had, one mild spring afternoon, unfolded aluminum beach chairs in their small backyard. While Laurel napped inside, they’d brought out mugs of lemonade and rested their feet in the grass. For a brief moment, everything finally felt normal.
But then the wind picked up and cottonwood tufts—so many, too many to count—showered down on them with the intensity of a summer squall. Annie had known exactly where they’d come from, and she’d been unable to stop sobbing.
It had taken time and therapy and antidepressants for Annie to pull herself back from the brink and begin to function. But she had. In the past thirteen years, Annie had gotten her master’s, they’d had Hank, she’d gotten a dream job at Sandstone.
Lena Meeker had all but disappeared.
On the night of the swim-team dinner all of those years before, Lena Meeker had seemed to Annie as delicate as a summer breeze. Annie had asked where the bathroom was and Mrs. Meeker had put a light hand on Annie’s shoulder and pointed down the hall. There you go, dear. Her touch had been so gentle, the air around her so sweet, that Annie wanted to sink into it all like a feather bed.
Annie remembered staring at the back of Rachel Meeker’s small head, the mass of dark curly hair coaxed into an elaborate braid—probably Mrs. Meeker’s careful work—and feeling a strong current of jealousy, even though Rachel was just a little kid.
A group of them had gone upstairs, peeked in a room that had to be Rachel’s: canopied bed, personalized art, a giant giraffe stuffed animal whose neck stretched almost to the ceiling.
Life’s unfairness hit Annie like a slap that night. She wanted a mother who’d braid her hair and a beautiful room with a ridiculous stuffed giraffe. Rachel Meeker probably didn’t even appreciate any of it.
Annie now winced with shame at the memory.
Lena Meeker had lost so much—
Annie’s front teeth scraped her bottom lip. For distraction, she glanced at the copper mailbox and came face-to-face with its large round goofy eyes, oblong nose.
Not eyes—goodness, were those?—testicles.
A giant smiling penis had been graffitied along the entire side of Lena’s mailbox. Annie could practically hear a dopey teenager still guffawing somewhere in the valley below.
Annie grew irate thinking of Lena Meeker innocently checking her mail, seeing the damage and feeling that stunned but-why-me victim’s shame. The woman had been through enough. Someone should warn her.
How many times had Annie pictured knocking on Lena’s door? You won’t remember me, but …
(The fantasy was always brief: Annie had never been able to decide what she’d say next.)
For the rest of her life, Annie will remember how she’d dragged the confused dog up those three wide stone steps to stand at Lena Meeker’s front door. She felt the morning sun on her back, a buzz of nervous adrenaline in her stomach. She was vaguely aware of how tightly she gripped the leash with her left hand, how the rough nylon abraded her palm.
Annie balled up her right fist and knocked.
CHAPTER TWO
It wasn’t that the knock frightened Lena, although it was startling.
She had been deep into chapter 7 of Beyond the Fields (just wonderful!). Odile, escaped from the concentration camps, was hiding up in a tree in a Bavarian forest, salivating at the smell of cheese and bread from the German family’s picnic a few feet below her. Trying to stop herself from fainting from hunger, Odile shifted slightly in the tree and accidentally rustled its branches. The family’s little girl looked up and—
Had Lena perhaps imagined the knock?
Nope, there it was again. Three impatient raps.
Tommy, her UPS man, rang instead of knocked and it was too early for packages anyway. Rudy the landscaper wasn’t due until eleven, which reminded Lena, she had to collect fresh mint leaves and get his tea brewing soon.
Another two knocks, insistent, harsh: I know you’re in there! An aggressive Gestapo knock.
Lena always wondered while reading Holocaust novels, which she did with some frequency: When the Nazis were rounding up people from the ghettos, did anyone just not answer?
Presumably breaking down a door would be nothing for the SS—they were capable of much worse—but did anyone in the ghetto successfully grab that small window of time to escape?
Lena would bet they didn’t. When faced with true evil, your mind tricked you into minimizing it. Work with it, it commanded, just go along.
At least, Lena’s mind commanded that; maybe other people had more admirable instincts.
A third series of knocks pounded on Lena’s door. In her mind, Rachel shook her head in alarm.
Don’t answer it.
The version of Rachel who lived in Lena’s mind was constantly judging Lena’s bad choices. It hadn’t always been that way between them, but unfortunately, before the night everything changed, Rachel had been going through an obnoxious stage. Lena had, back then, openly complained about how Rachel treated her, which she now regretted. Hearing the stories, Lena’s best friend Melanie had compared sixteen-year-old Rachel to a demanding hotel guest.
Lena decided to ignore the door, and turn back to Odile.
Had the little girl picnicking with her family heard the crack of the tree branch? Odile looked down and the little girl looked up into the foliage and yes, met Odile’s eye.
She had been caught.
Lena gasped—aloud—just as the bell rang twice in quick succession, sharp and accusatory.
This was why everyone answered when the Gestapo knocked: it was futile to do otherwise. The authorities never gave up. Lena had read with rapt attention about one fugitive who responded to the knocks of federal agents by darting into a back room, trying to hide under the bed.
Not an effective strategy, as it turned out.
She placed her finger in the middle of the book to hold her place, and carried it with her down the front hall.
When she opened the door, she tried to place the small woman on the other side of the door, who was immediately familiar. She stared at Lena from under the brim of a dark baseball hat, her lips pursed tightly in a not-quite-smile.
It was the Fierce Walker, the slight woman who thrust herself around the neighborhood loop at a breakneck pace in rain, shine, or snow, pumping her little arms and dragging behind her that muscular ugly taupe dog, who now stood next to her on Lena’s front step.
The dog had yellow eyes, which slanted as it regarded Lena with a sharp-toothed pant. Not a Nazi dog, Lena was pretty sure—they only used German shepherds—but hardly cuddly.
The Fierce Walker worked to maintain a brittle smile, because what else would Lena inspire?
Lena and Tim had picked the Cottonwood Estates neighborhood all those years before because of the natural beauty and the community—the bridge clubs, the cocktail hours, the tennis tournaments, the poker nights. Everyone in each other’s business was wonderful for social creatures like the Meekers!
But there was a dark side to having everyone in each other’s business that Lena hadn’t foreseen. For starters, the judgment. Even if Lena never heard it, she could feel it drift uphill with the wind: Poor, lonely Lena, rattling around in that big house.
The Fierce Walker had obviously heard the whispers of the wind. She chewed on her bottom lip and Lena could see, beneath the woman’s dark glasses, the darting movement of her eyes, from Lena to the ground and back to Lena.
To put her at ease, Lena waved her right hand in a friendly way. It was a regretfully awkward movement, given that Lena was still holding the book, the pages of which flapped ridiculously.
But it seemed to work: Fierce Walker inhaled and then sighed like a woman in love.
“That. Book,” she said, and clutched her heart.
Lena leaned closer, despite herself. “I just got to the part where Odile is in the tree.”
“With the family below her? I was dying.”
&nbs
p; “Tell me it turns out okay.”
“I’m not going to spoil it for you. You’d never forgive me.”
The Fierce Walker frowned suddenly, like she’d received a silent reprimand from an unseen handler to remain on task. She pushed back her shoulders and jutted out her jaw.
“I’m Annie Perley and I live down the hill on Pinon Road,” she said.
“Lena Meeker,” Lena said even though Annie knew this, of course she did. Poor Lena Meeker. A cautionary tale. Tell your children.
Annie removed her sunglasses and folded them onto the collar of her shirt, revealing a cluster of tiny tattoos—an elephant, a star, a butterfly–on her inner wrist. She was younger than Lena had imagined, and freshly pretty, with smooth, pale skin and delicate features.
Lena smiled: she’d always appreciated beauty, and Annie had the comforting attractiveness of a stock photo model. But waves of intensity evaporated off her, and for a dizzying moment, Lena worried that Annie would start the sympathy stutter, So sorry, thoughts and prayers and I can’t even imagine.
“I’ve seen you trekking around the neighborhood,” Lena said to cut this off at the head. “And marvel at your willpower. I wish I had the drive in regards to exercise, but alas I never have. I have all the momentum to start any kind of fad, but it’s the follow-through that stumps me. The consistency. Too many bad habits, too ingrained, I guess. Do you do the entire loop every day?”
Lena was aware she was babbling, but the angsty look in Annie’s eyes was gone, so it had been worth it.
Annie nodded. “As pathetic as it sounds, exercise keeps me sane. And it helps Yellow.”
When she patted the dog’s head, Lena surmised that he/she/it was Yellow, even though it was more of a muddy greige.
“We got her when my son Hank was learning his colors,” Annie explained. She shot a wry look at Lena. “Or not.”
Lena managed a passable casual laugh. This wasn’t going horribly, not at all, or maybe it was?
The Neighbor's Secret Page 1
