The Neighbor's Secret

by L. Alison Heller

  “I gave her a pair of Laurel’s sweats and sent her back to science. There was some big finger-pricking blood lab that she didn’t want to miss.”

  “Bless you, Annie, because I have to show a house in half an hour. Are we done with the boring stuff?”

  What had Annie expected from Deb? The woman had once worn a crop top and leggings to book club.

  “It’s not boring, Deb, it’s—”

  “Yes, I know, of premium importance. How ever can those poor, weak boys learn while our daughters’ outfits distract them? So”—Deb’s voice lowered to a conspiratorial tone—“are you visiting Lena Meeker again today?”

  The day after that first visit, Annie had returned to Lena’s with paint thinner and Lena had invited Annie in for some shortcake granola cookies. There had been two more visits after that, always with baked goods. Hank had tagged along on the last one and Lena had given him cupcakes and let him draw all over her patio with sidewalk chalk.

  “You’re a good person,” Deb said. “She must be so lonely.”

  “I enjoy her,” Annie said simply. And although there was more to the situation, it was true. “Math club was canceled tomorrow, so I’m taking Laurel up.”

  Seriously? Mike had asked. Again?

  I don’t pull up a chair and start confessing things, Annie had assured him. But she understood his raised eyebrows.

  “Great idea,” Deb said. “Older people love being in the presence of youth.”

  “Lena’s not old.”

  “Isn’t she? Anyway, I picked up some cute plaid fabric for the girls’ Halloween costumes, but,” Deb teased, “those skirts are far from dress-code-compliant. Postage-stamp-sized. I’ll check with Laurel before I cut the fabric.”

  Annie laughed.

  Deb still frequently told the story about how during their toddlers’ play group, Laurel had waddled over to Sierra, who’d been happily eating dirt from a bucket. “No, no,” Laurel had said with a grab of Sierra’s hand. “Dirty!”

  Designated hall monitor right there, Deb had said. She’ll keep ’em on track during high school.

  “Thanks, Deb,” Annie said. “Just let me know what I owe for the fabric.”

  “Pish,” Deb said blithely. “It’s like fifty cents. Talk later.”

  As Annie hung up, she tapped the eraser against the notepad again.

  When Laurel was a newborn, it had occurred to a horrified Annie that this pure and perfect infant would probably make some of the same mistakes Annie had: trust the wrong people, run headfirst into danger.

  Thank goodness Laurel turned out to be more risk-averse than Annie had been. It was better to be a rule-follower, wasn’t it?

  Although, sometimes Annie also thought that she would have at least understood a daughter like Sierra. Deb and Sierra Gallegos were besties—for Christmas they had gifted each other BFF necklaces with real diamonds. Even with all of the love between Annie and Laurel, Annie sometimes felt—

  Not even a wedge. A hint of a wedge between them.

  Does Laurel seem joyless, Annie sometimes asked Mike. Heavy?

  In graduate school, Annie had learned about Jung’s collective unconscious and the theory that stress in one generation could alter the DNA of the next.

  Laurel sees right through us, Annie would whisper to Mike. She knows my sins.

  Mike knew his job in that moment was to bring Annie down to earth. She’s an observer by nature, he’d say. People are who they are.

  Annie was willing to bet that Mike had forgotten where he’d first heard that little nugget of wisdom, but she never would. Thirteen years before, their labor and delivery nurse had been a woman who seemed to derive a large part of her identity from being a redhead. When she spotted Mike, sitting in the guest chair, she’d squealed with such glee that Annie assumed they’d grown up together.

  “Fellow ginger,” she’d whooped, holding up her hand for a high five. Mike shot Annie a confused look and hesitantly returned the slap.

  In a stage whisper, the nurse said, “Don’t tell anyone I said this, because I’m not supposed to play favorites, but there is nothing cuter than a red-haired baby. Nothing.”

  Mike was more unnerved than Annie, who by Laurel’s birth, was inured to the fact that some people felt compelled to confess their wackiest truths to pregnant women, like they were all involuntary priests.

  But when Laurel came out, all pale milky skin and jet-black hair, the nurse had looked at Mike, her lips pressed into a tight line. She’s lovely, she had finally said in a brisk tone that might as well have been an apology. People are who they are, after all.

  Annie had lain on the hospital bed, annoyed less by the stings of the doctor’s stitches and by the fact that her midsection was an accordion squeezing out a tortured “La Vie en Rose” than by the nurse’s disappointment about Laurel’s hair color, which seemed to Annie like disappointment about Laurel.

  She almost said something defensive about how perfect Laurel was, but pandering to the foot-in-mouth set wasn’t how she wanted to kick off motherhood.

  It only occurred to Annie years later that this entire memory was less about the nurse and more about Annie’s own fears of Mike’s disappointment. Which was silly. He couldn’t have cared less, didn’t even react to the nurse’s comment about Laurel’s hair, was immediately besotted.

  But of course he was. Mike was Mike. People are who they are.

  Laurel had been born cautious and cerebral, while Hank had been born energetic and confident enough to push boundaries.

  Just last week, Annie had come home from her walk to see him in the driveway, stripping a D-cell battery to find out what was inside. Mike’s mom, hearing the story, had reminded Annie that in all of his childhood pictures, Mike was in a cast or on crutches. A bandage and a giant smile.

  They’re two peas in a pod, Mike’s mom had said.

  Who would Laurel turn out like? Who was her twin pea?

  But Annie should stop pegging her children. They were too young for it, and even if their personalities seemed predetermined, things changed.

  And kids soaked up that stuff. Parents were flawed human beings, who for a few years there had all the power of gods. How you were treated, experiences, mattered just as much as disposition.

  Take Lena Meeker.

  Annie found it almost impossible to reconcile Lena now with the woman she’d seen on that summer night fourteen years ago.

  Light on her feet, tendrils loose around her face, Lena had been a vision, gliding around the party in that seafoam-green dress with floaty layers. She was here, there. A hand on an arm, her head tossed backward, mouth open in laughter.

  And Rachel?

  It was almost impossible to assess.

  Based on what Annie could glean online, Rachel Meeker was living a full life in Boston. She had a boring corporate job with one of those meaningless-sounding titles—vice president of operations and sales blah blah blah—and a fiancé.

  The way Rachel had fled home that summer, though, indicated a disruption in trajectory. She’d still been a kid then, and as far as anyone knew, she’d never returned, not even for summer breaks or Christmas or to show off her new boyfriend. It didn’t seem healthy to Annie, but she liked to think that Rachel had good reasons for staying away—maybe her life on the East Coast was so chock-full of great things that she couldn’t find the time to come back.

  Annie wasn’t aware of how hard she’d been pressing the pencil tip to the legal pad until its tip broke off.

  The corollary to Mike’s philosophy—people are who they are—was that life wore grooves in people. It changed them.

  How very poetic, Annie. How oblique.

  Life wore grooves completely glossed over Annie’s part, how she’d watched from the shadows that night, poised to pounce.

  Life’s grooves may have eroded the Meeker women’s vibrancy—sure, why not—but you know what had helped things along?

  One swift impulsive push from Annie.

  If it was m
urder: What happened between the two of them out there?

  An hour before the party, I passed by Lena’s house with the thought of catching her for an early drink, before the crowds. When I arrived, I saw that Annie appeared to have the same idea. She and Lena were outside, sitting next to each other on an outdoor sofa.

  I was halfway across the lawn to them when I heard Annie’s sobs, shaky and gasping, as uncontained as a child’s.

  Lena looked straight ahead, her back rigid. She wasn’t comforting Annie or yelling at her or, from what I could tell, acknowledging her at all.

  Even from several feet away, I could feel that the energy between them was deep and ugly. On the way home, I realized my arms were covered in goose pimples.

  At the party, though, Annie and Lena were back to normal, thick as thieves.

  So maybe it was nothing.

  I can’t exactly ask now.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “The wedding dress is gorgeous,” Lena said.

  “It looks okay?” On the video chat, Rachel’s dark eyes were filled with skepticism and hope. “Even from the back?”

  “Gorgeous from all angles.”

  After a thin smile—I can’t exactly trust you—Rachel ducked her head. “Thank you for buying it.”

  “My pleasure.”

  Rachel’s wedding dress was a slinky slip of a thing, done in Mikado silk. Its price tag had made even Lena’s eyebrows hike up, but she’d been delighted to pay.

  For years, Rachel had treated the money like it was toxic. She’d insisted on living in that tiny apartment, had taken out student loans for business school, and been unnecessarily pious about vacations and restaurants.

  For the wedding, however, Rachel had relaxed the self-imposed budget. This had to mean that Rachel was deliriously happy, didn’t it?

  Marriage was a statement of optimism and Lena was relieved that Rachel was making it, even if Rachel’s choice of groom seemed safe, a little stale. That Evan Welnik-Boose called Lena dear in their brief video chats, like she was some decrepit aunt—Hello dear. How’s summer, dear?—seemed a tad creepy.

  Maybe he thought Lena was a decrepit aunt. Who knew what he’d been told?

  Evan’s parents, Samara Welnik, Ph.D., and Miles Boose, M.D., were lovely, cultured, accomplished people who lived twenty minutes from Rachel and Evan, when they weren’t at their beach house on Cape Cod. Miles was a pediatric something or other and Samara was a psychologist specializing in childhood trauma (neither Lena nor Rachel had articulated the ironies of that to each other), who sent Lena warm notes in a lovely cursive about what a blessing it was that their miraculous offspring had found each other.

  The wedding was to be at their beach house, which meant something to Rachel and Evan, if not Lena. The current debate was whether the ceremony should be on the beach (too public?) or in the yard (private, but too small for a tent).

  There was, in Lena’s yard, an expanse of lawn that had been literally designed to fit a party tent. And years ago, Lena had thought that the spot under the bough of the cottonwood tree, between the garden and the gate, with that view out to the snowcapped Rockies, would be perfect for a wedding ceremony.

  Lena understood that the fantasy had been imagined for another life, but it didn’t mean she couldn’t notice the loss of it.

  Lena’s own wedding to Tim, which her mother Alma had planned entirely, had been at Lena’s childhood church. Lena had worn Alma’s wedding dress, let out to fit Lena, and there had been a reception afterward in her parents’ backyard. She recalled no choices, only traditions to uphold.

  She had also felt the tiniest bit like a dress-up doll.

  The doorbell rang and Lena peeked over the stairwell.

  Annie Perley peered through the window by the door, hand shielding her eyes in an attempt to see inside the house. Hank stood to her left carrying a plastic container, and the girl next to him, one lanky leg wound around the other like a contortionist flamingo, must be Laurel.

  Lena inhaled sharply.

  “What?” Rachel said. She leaned close to the phone camera, so Lena could only see the top half of her face: giant troubled eyes and forehead zigzagged with worry lines. “What’s happened?”

  “Someone’s at the door,” Lena said.

  “Who?”

  In the years since Rachel had left, Lena had tried to be as honest with her as possible, but something had kept her from mentioning Annie Perley’s visits.

  Rachel was, for the most part, functioning beautifully in the anonymity of a big city. She had the job, the fiancé, the big group of friends. Dragging her attention back to Cottonwood Estates might defeat the purpose of their sacrifices.

  “Mom.” Rachel leaned so close to the camera that all Lena could see were panicked eyes. “You’re freaking me out. Who’s there?”

  Just Annie Perley, and she has a daughter with long curly dark hair and a familiar innocent coltishness and if I squint, I can fool myself into thinking she looks like you did, back when we were like everyone else.

  “Rudy about pruning the cottonwood,” Lena said, which was only a half lie because she did need to discuss it with him soon.

  “I have to go anyway,” Rachel said. “Love you.”

  “Love you too.”

  The words had come out hard. Lena desperately clutched for a joke, a funny story, something to smooth that worried brow, but nothing came to mind.

  * * *

  Lena waited until Annie was settled on the sofa before she presented her with the wrapped box.

  “For you,” she said.

  Annie eyed Lena suspiciously. “What have you done?”

  “Open it.”

  Lena sat down and clasped her hands in anticipation as she watched Annie carefully remove the wrapping paper.

  “Lena.” Annie’s nose crinkled. She unfolded the tissue paper and looked accusingly from the box to Lena, who could wait no more. She leaned forward and snatched the peacock-blue cashmere wrap, held it up to Annie’s face.

  “Your eyes pop,” she said with approval. “Sometimes it’s hard to tell online, but I had a feeling about this color.”

  “I can’t keep this,” Annie pleaded. “I don’t own anything this nice, Lena.”

  “All the more reason why you must.”

  Annie lowered her voice, even though the kids were outside on the patio. “You’re doing too much for us. The baking, the sidewalk chalk for Hank—I know you bought it—the camera you just gave to Laurel.”

  “It brings me joy,” Lena said simply.

  Even before the accident, the act of giving had brought Lena a sense of connection and purpose.

  And now?

  She’d felt a shot of giddiness when ordering the wrap for Annie, and an explosion of joy when Hank had barreled inside the house to grab one of the homemade biscotti. The best I’ve ever had, he’d said in earnest.

  “We’re here,” Annie said firmly, “because we enjoy your company, not to … acquire.”

  “I know that,” Lena said.

  “It is stunning,” Annie said. After a moment of hesitation, she looped the scarf around her neck, patted it.

  “So”—Lena crossed her legs—“any improvement with Mike’s restaurant?”

  “It’s the same,” Annie said.

  A year ago, Mike Perley had started his own restaurant, called CartWheel. It had been a lifelong dream of his, and although, according to Annie, Mike was working very hard and the chef was amazingly talented and the concept was fabulous—American bistro fusion fare served via dim sum carts—business was slow.

  Now, Lena settled in to listen. Annie was trying her best to be supportive, she explained, and she wanted Mike to be happy. He deserved to be happy, and she didn’t want to be a dream killer, but she couldn’t help but struggle with his decision to open a restaurant now and to use their home as collateral.

  Lena nodded sympathetically and nudged the biscotti plate across the coffee table to her.

  Annie took one and bit into
it frustratedly, speaking through the chew. She couldn’t object because—again, Annie lowered her voice—Mike hadn’t wanted to live in Cottonwood at all. They could have afforded something bigger and far less expensive on the other side of the hogback.

  Annie had insisted, though. She had wanted to raise a family here. She looked guiltily at Lena. He had compromised back then. Didn’t Annie have to now?

  “Wanting the best for your children is hardly a crime,” Lena said.

  She had always been drawn to blurters, people like Annie who wore their hearts on their sleeves. The choice was: step back or get swept up.

  Lena always chose to get swept up.

  Freshman year of college, Lena had walked into the Psychology 101 lecture room and found an empty chair next to a stranger who announced that she had not done the reading, because there had been a party in her hall, and even though she hadn’t planned on going she had, and did Lena want to know what had happened at this party because it was crazy.

  Oh, she had said, I’m Melanie, by the way.

  And later that same semester Lena had met Tim, who could have majored in authoritative proclamations. When he zeroed in on Lena it had been thrilling: This is the plan! You and Me!

  Who was she to argue?

  Rachel had it wrong: Lena wasn’t a manipulative supervillain. She was, at heart, a people-pleaser. In early life, it had been Alma’s opinion that mattered, then Tim’s. Finally, even though Rachel would never want to see it this way, it was Rachel herself who had motivated Lena to act.

  It wasn’t that Lena didn’t have her own opinions or goals, just that other people’s seemed more important.

  But maybe everyone thought of herself as a follower. So many book characters were victims of circumstance—Alice in Wonderland, the Little Princess, Hamlet. Poor Odile up in the tree. Things had happened to them, and then their reactions propelled the story.

  Just like Lena. She had merely reacted.

  “You should bring these to book club when you come.” Annie took a rabbitlike nibble of her second biscotto. “Deb will flip.”

  “If I come to book club,” Lena corrected.

  Annie made a swooping motion with the biscotto to indicate she was dismissing Lena’s if.