The Neighbor's Secret

by L. Alison Heller

  Book club was well-trod ground between them by now—Annie pushing, Lena demurring—and although Lena had no intention of ever going to book club, she found it flattering to be so vigorously recruited.

  “Deb’s the one who makes the drinks?” Lena said.

  She knew this already, too: Deb Gallegos made the cocktails and was overly permissive with her daughter. Priya Jensen was the beauty who had moved here from India as a child, modeled lingerie in her twenties, and married that football player and had a ton of money and children and beautiful clothes but Annie said you couldn’t hate Priya, even if the laws of self-protection begged you to, because she was so kindhearted. Janine was the organizer who was, based on those frantic emails and Annie’s stories, well-meaning but a bit hysterical.

  Lena had grown fond of the women, who she thought of as characters in another book. She could imagine having a cocktail with them and advising them in the way she might Hamlet. For heaven’s sake, pay some attention to Ophelia!

  “Deb’s drinks will convince you to become a book club member,” Annie said. “She plots in a libations notebook—I am not kidding, she buys a new one each year—and orders obscure bitters and all of this equipment online. She might be a little bit of an alcoholic, though. Highly functioning.” Annie laughed nervously. “I don’t know. I’m kidding, obviously.”

  Lena was by now used to the way Annie’s eyes would habitually float over to Rachel’s picture.

  They had been seven years apart, Annie stammered last week. She’d barely known Rachel.

  But Annie had wanted to ask about her, Lena could tell, so she’d changed the subject. As she did now.

  “Do you think Laurel would like to see Waterfall Rock?”

  Just beyond the back gate of Lena’s yard were hiking paths that connected to the state forest system. Rachel had named the spot where the trail led to a giant boulder, perched above a majestic thirty-foot waterfall that roared and sprayed down to the creek below.

  Lena hadn’t been in years, but once upon a time, when Rachel was about Hank’s age, they’d picnicked there frequently, and she’d thought to show Hank and Annie during their last visit. They’d acted like it was Valhalla.

  How did we not know about this, Annie kept exclaiming.

  “Let’s,” Annie said with enthusiasm. “I have to warn you, though, Laurel’s been grouchy since she came home from the sleepover. I’m not sure if it’s lack of sleep or some teen drama. Probably both.”

  This Lena understood.

  It hadn’t mattered how many times Lena had tried to get Rachel to lighten up, she had always taken the rules a bit too seriously, which had been catnip to a certain type of frenemy. There’d been a parade of them in middle school—the overly bossy, the excluders, those who wanted to knock Rachel down a peg. Lena suspected they were jealous of the money.

  Rachel’s overly strong sense of justice hadn’t helped. She could never decide if she wanted to fit in with her peers or police them.

  With urgency, Lena watched Laurel, who was slouched on the patio chaise, tooling with Tim’s old camera.

  “How are her friendships generally?”

  “Very tight. Three of them have been together since elementary. Sierra, Deb’s daughter, lives right up the hill. Their friend Haley is just across Highway Five in the Red Mesa neighborhood.”

  “Good. Girls can be quite cruel.”

  “I know, as a counselor, I see some really—wait, Lena, why are you smirking?”

  Lena pressed her hands to her cheeks. Had she been?

  “I was just remembering how Sarah Loeffler used to have parties for the sole purpose of inviting everyone but Rachel. She was a horrid human being, and worse, she always sold the most Girl Scout cookies—”

  “The Sarah Loefflers of the world always do,” Annie said.

  “And one year, we were like, Not so fast, honey.”

  “What did you do?”

  “It’s a little embarrassing. Two grown-ups competing against this poor child like it was the Olympics. At the time I thought it was a victory, but in retrospect, maybe it’s better to not engage.”

  For weeks, their entire garage had been organized into inventory, and when they’d finally won, all three of them had celebrated by opening a box of every flavor. Tim had eaten two boxes of the coconut ones all by himself.

  Always a man of appetites, her Tim.

  “I wonder what happened to Sarah.” Lena cleared her throat, fiddled with her earring back. The good memories always landed a little rougher.

  Annie raised one eyebrow. “I’m sure she learned a valuable lesson about kindness and was never ever mean again.” Her gaze slid again to the largest photo of Rachel. “How’s she doing these days?”

  “Amazing. She’s got a wonderful fiancé, and a great job.”

  Annie made a short sharp noise—an exhale, a laugh? She pounded her fist to her chest, cleared her throat.

  “I’m so glad,” she said.

  “Annie,” Lena said. “About Mike’s restaurant? My brother Ernesto is in a business group, and they have a monthly dinner. Would Mike be open to their booking CartWheel?”

  “I’m sure there’s space,” Annie said sardonically.

  “It’s a bunch of muckety-mucks who like to throw their weight around and act like they run the city, but one of them is connected to The Post, so it’s an opportunity for press.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes, and you’d be doing Ernie a favor, because apparently their current venue doesn’t have reliable parking. I’ll have him call Mike.”

  Annie pursed her lips.

  “Ernie can call, if. If”—she folded her arms across her chest—“you come to the November book club.”

  “Oh.” The ultimatum was cold water splashed in Lena’s face; she had expected a few more months of being pursued.

  “Tell me exactly what you’re worried about.” Annie watched Lena with such concentration that two deep straight lines appeared between her eyebrows.

  “It’s that—” Lena lifted up her hands from her lap and placed them back down helplessly.

  How had the tables turned so quickly? This moment was supposed to be about Lena’s offer, which Annie should have accepted, happily, gratefully, and then Lena would feel good. The End.

  “You like to keep things quiet,” Annie said.

  Lena nodded. She did like to keep things quiet.

  On the night after the funeral, the house had felt like someone had vacuumed out all of the noise. Lena had stretched out on the couch in her black dress, watched the sun retreat behind the mountains.

  Another person might have followed Rachel across the country, started over in a new town, but Lena didn’t want—didn’t deserve—that relief. The only way forward was to shed her old pleasures, like molting a layer of skin.

  It had been easier than Lena anticipated. A few months of unreturned outreach, and her neighborhood friends had released her. They had probably been grateful: no one knew how to treat her anyway. Lena herself had no clue how she should be treated; nothing felt appropriate.

  She didn’t become a complete monk. Melanie called from Newport Beach every morning like clockwork, willing to accept whatever Lena told her at face value, too far away to observe anything to the contrary. Lena’s brother Ernie was more likely to forward emails about stocks and politics than initiate a meandering conversation about grief, mistakes, and regret, but he was there for her in the ways he could be. And he and his wife Trista always checked with her before the holidays, and if Rachel wasn’t available, or Lena couldn’t bear to travel, they made it a point to stay in town so that Lena wouldn’t be alone.

  Beyond that, Lena had her books and her shows, her online shopping and her maintenance projects and a rotating cast of paid friends necessary to dispatch them—landscapers, cleaners, Gregoire for her hair, and every few years, the painters and architect and the renovation crews—all of whom were legitimately good company.

  There were bad months that so
metimes stretched into bad years: Rachel’s off-and-on anger, palpable even across the country, Lena’s intermittent fear of travel and the panic attacks, which usually yielded to sessions with Dr. Friendly, a local therapist, and occasionally required prescriptions.

  But all in all, the soundlessness diet had been effective. Lena’s life shrank down to something manageable. That this worked for her—as an appeasement of guilt, as punishment, as a method of forgetting—she could barely explain to herself, let alone another person.

  Annie was still leaned forward, elbows on knees, number-eleven wrinkles even more pronounced between her eyebrows. (Should Lena offer Annie Botox? She had a delightful woman who came to the house every three months.)

  Lena didn’t honestly believe one book club meeting would turn her into a social maniac.

  What, exactly, was she worried about?

  Neighborhood gossip and angering the gods and upsetting the balance by not respecting the thick red line that bisects my life into Before and After.

  “I don’t really like to go out,” Lena said finally. I’m supposed to have a shell of a life now.

  “It’s not going out. It’s like this.” Annie’s open-palmed gesture swept over their china teacups. “Cozy. And November’s book is a laugh riot. There’s suspense and sex and we’ll just all have Deb’s drinks and giggle about it.”

  Annie had once mentioned a Deb Gallegos cocktail concoction: pepper-infused vodka. The thing was that Lena could see herself on a sofa, sipping it, nodding in response to Deb’s or Priya’s point, asking Deb for the recipe.

  “And Harriet Nessel, bless her, will try to bring the discussion back to the book.”

  “That sounds just like Harriet.”

  Harriet had been the first to arrive to all of Lena’s summer parties, and her hostess gifts were inevitably regifted molded hand soaps in holiday themes. Once, Lena had made the mistake of opening the box in front of Harriet. Two out of the four Christmas trees had been missing.

  Lena had been mortified on Harriet’s behalf, but Harriet was only outraged at the rudeness of her cousin Amity, who had apparently been the original giver. “Who does that,” Harriet had fumed, “who removes the soaps first?”

  Lena’s stomach quivered, her arm hairs stood at attention, as the memory of Harriet’s face—stern eyes, pursed lips—swam in front of her. Odd that her body was behaving like she missed Harriet Nessel.

  “Harriet can’t wait to see you, by the way. I mean everyone can’t, but she’s very fond of you.”

  “That’s nice.”

  “There has to be a quid pro quo, Lena.” Annie stroked the cashmere throw around her neck. “I’ll accept all of your ridiculous generosity, but then you have to do this one thing. You’ll love book club. I wouldn’t suggest it otherwise.”

  If Lena were to play devil’s advocate, she would ask herself: Hadn’t she already breached the social diet by opening the door to Annie, or to Gregoire, who usually stayed for dinner after ministering to Lena’s highlights, or to Tommy the UPS man, who occasionally came in for coffee (black with so much sugar stirred in that Lena worried about his teeth)?

  But on the other hand, Lena knew to ignore that grabby little voice piping up in her head: You deserve, you want, take it, what’s the harm?

  “It’s all book nerds,” Annie said. “Empathetic, openhearted readers. Our people, Lena.”

  Lena really wanted to go, was the thing.

  “Come once. If you don’t enjoy it, that’s— Oh, Hank,” Annie moaned. Annie’s son had smushed his freckled face against the window, then pulled it away and smiled with delight at the greasy foggy smear he’d left: I did that!

  “Lena, I’ll clean that right up.”

  “Don’t be silly,” Lena said. “Let’s go see the art.”

  Hank had drawn beautiful pastel mermaids with their hair flying behind them across Lena’s patio, and after Lena admired them, they all went out to Waterfall Rock.

  Lena made a big show of handing Hank the key to the gate and talking him through how to unlock it. They walked single-file down the hint of the path, which was nearly obscured by fallen pine needles, until they reached the large flat rock overlooking the falls.

  Hank walked to the edge and cupped his hands around his mouth.

  “Hello,” he shouted over the rushing water.

  “There’s no echoes in a waterfall,” Laurel said. “That’s caves.” The dummy was implied.

  “Such an amazing view, huh?” Annie placed a hand on Laurel’s shoulder and pointed with the other in the direction of the western valley below them, where the aspens’ waving golden leaves covered the hills like fire.

  “Please stop touching me,” Laurel said. She shrugged out from under Annie’s grip.

  Watching Annie’s face flush, Lena felt a sympathetic catch in her throat. It was something about the girl’s profile—the sweet plane of cheek interrupted by those pinpoint round dimples. Lena had always loved Rachel’s dimples, which broke up her default expression of sternness.

  Rachel’s hair had been so thick when it was long, it had grown out as much as down and it had taken Lena forever to figure out how to instruct the stylist to get the layers just so, and which products to use, and then, right after she’d gone east, Rachel had cut it all off.

  She’d never grown it out again.

  There wasn’t a true resemblance. It was Laurel’s age and what she was going through. Lena wanted to yell at her to be nicer to her mother, then throw her arms around those slouched narrow shoulders and lie that it would all be okay.

  “Kids,” Lena said. “Can I trust you with something?”

  Hank looked uncertainly at his mother for the answer—not sure, can I be trusted?

  “I’m giving you a key to the gate. You can use it whenever you want—on one condition. Your mother needs to give you permission first. And you have to share it with each other.”

  “Really?” When Laurel smiled at Lena, Lena saw into her future: with cleared skin, hair off her face, those braces off, standing up straight—the girl was well on her way to being as pretty as Annie. “Thanks so much, Mrs. Meeker.”

  Lena felt warm at having saved the moment. She’d always suspected that she would make an excellent grandmother: generous, a dash of wise humor.

  “A-hem,” Annie coughed, and nudged Hank.

  “Thank you, Mrs. Meeker,” Hank said.

  “Laurel,” Annie said slyly, “I’m trying to convince Mrs. Meeker to join book club.”

  Laurel managed to make eye contact with Lena. “You should go,” she said in a monotone.

  “There’s always really good food there,” Hank said.

  “Just one meeting.” Annie held up one finger. “Lena. You deserve to have some fun.”

  It wasn’t the most compelling argument.

  It’s only book club, Lena repeated to herself over a quickening pulse.

  She might choose to pretend that she gave in for the sake of Mike Perley’s restaurant, but the fact was that Lena enjoyed Annie’s visits a bit too desperately.

  Lena wanted more. More warmth, more fun, more noise, more belonging, and it wasn’t like Rachel was ever coming back.

  Fourteen years and Lena’s essence hadn’t evolved. When she fancied something—like she did now, like she tragically had Gary Neary—Lena went for it, consequences be damned.

  She suspected most people did.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Dr. Scofield had referred Jen to Dr. Maggie Shapiro, who had a neat gray-streaked bob and warm almond-shaped eyes and, as fate would have it, a last-minute cancellation that meant she’d been able to start assessing Abe in late September.

  Dr. Shapiro’s office was decorated in calming shades of taupe and beige and was on the seventeenth floor of a glass office building. The HVAC system hummed soothingly and the yellow-tinted windows of Dr. Shapiro’s office had a view of the jagged line where the mountains met the sky.

  Over the past two weeks, Jen had filled out reams of paperwo
rk for Dr. Shapiro about everything from the development of Abe’s pincer grip right up to the Harper French stabbing. She and Paul and Abe had all met with Dr. Shapiro in various permutations, but today’s meeting was the big one:

  Ease into these comfortable chairs, Jen and Paul, so I can tell you just how broken your son’s brain is.

  Of all the experts Jen and Paul had been to, Dr. Shapiro was the very best at assembling a shit sandwich—neatly tucking the distasteful truth inside two slices of positivity.

  I so enjoyed getting to know Abe this week, Dr. Shapiro now intoned in that soothing therapist’s voice, because he is a uniquely creative soul with deep interests and a searing intelligence.

  Abe fit the criteria for conduct disorder, a precursor to sociopathy. But: he was very lucky to have parents like Jen and Paul—present, loving, willing to do the work.

  Even if Jen recognized the sandwich for what it was, her eyes teared, in part from the diagnosis’s starkness, but also from the acknowledgment that she was a good parent. The proof tended to be in the pudding with child-rearing, and people looked at Abe and assumed that Jen and Paul, let’s face it, mainly Jen—if it’s not one thing, it’s your mother—was asleep on the job.

  But Dr. Shapiro, dressed in an expensive-looking fringy black-and-white sweater-blazer, assured Jen and Paul that they were up to the work ahead. There would be a lot: weekly individual therapy, possibly group therapy, all designed to bolster Abe’s empathy skills, which were, well, not the strongest she’d seen. Ditto his impulsivity.

  He had a pattern of lashing out when things didn’t go his way.

  “Having two involved, caring parents puts Abe in the minority, unfortunately,” Dr. Shapiro said. “Many kids with this diagnosis come from serious abuse.”

  “What if Abe was abused?” The words emerged from Jen’s mouth in a panicked rush. “He’s been bullied. What if someone—”

  Dr. Shapiro shook her head decisively. “This has been noticed from Abe’s earliest interactions. The fact that he’s grown up in a loving environment and still struggles with empathy makes me think this is about brain wiring.”