Laurel shifted her weight from one foot to the other, chewed a cuticle, obviously chagrined.
“Aren’t you supposed to be doing that project on, um—?” Annie looked at Deb.
“Mesopotamian trade,” Deb said.
“We finished,” Laurel said. “Haley’s mom can pick us up at the Cottonwood sign in fifteen minutes, and drive us home.”
“It’s a school night, though,” Annie said.
“We really need a break,” Laurel said. Her voice squeaked as she said it and Sierra nodded wide-eyed.
“We really, really do.”
Annie and Deb locked eyes for a silent conversation.
“Home by eight thirty,” Annie said.
The girls nodded and opened the door, darted out before minds were changed.
“Wait,” Annie shouted after them, “don’t you need money?”
They skipped down the hill, heads together, giggling.
What was that quote about a little rebellion being a good thing? Maybe Annie should be happy.
“Is school more intense this year?” she asked Deb.
Last week, Beth the librarian had stopped by Annie’s small office, a comically high stack of science textbooks in her arms. “Laurel’s interlibrary loans came in,” she said. At home, Laurel had accepted the books with a terse nod.
“Seems the same as always,” Deb said. “But if Laurel thinks it’s too intense it probably is.”
“You know the part,” Janine’s slurred voice broke through from the other side of the room, “the part, where they’re tangled in the sheets and the way he touched her, the way he touched her.”
Drawn back into her living room, Deb sighed again. “The lovemaking was beautiful.”
Annie could feel the sick swirling in the back of her throat.
“I have an announcement.” She rapped her fist on the doorframe until everyone turned around. “Lena Meeker is coming to book club next month.”
There was a shocked silence, followed by hushed murmurs between the women.
“I’ve seen her car,” Janine was saying. “But I’ve never actually met her.”
“That’s a lovely gesture.” Harriet Nessel nodded her approval in Annie’s direction. “Inviting Lena.”
“I’m so glad she didn’t come tonight,” Priya said. “Can you imagine if she had to read this month’s book? An ode to a beloved dead partner?”
Harriet Nessel shifted on the sofa. Next to her, Priya pounced.
“What’s that face, Harriet?”
“I didn’t make a face.”
“You did. You guys saw it, right?”
Harriet pursed her lips, which emphasized the vertical lines under her nose. “It’s not really my place.”
“Spill the tea.”
Harriet’s palms skimmed over her legal pad.
“I have no idea what she thinks of him now,” she said finally, “but even before Tim killed that young man, I’m not so sure it was paradise at the Meekers’ house.”
FIFTEEN YEARS EARLIER
Lena didn’t care about the girls. Her attitude toward Tim’s affairs had evolved through the years. What started out tender had callused.
She cared about the scene he was making at her party, though.
He was at the far end of the lawn, by the lilac bushes, broadcasting in a drunken foghorn voice to an audience of twenty-somethings that the beaches in Mauritius were otherworldly.
Oh, Tim, you urbane sophisticate, you.
Lena tried to figure out which young woman he was trying to impress. The well-endowed blonde, probably.
“The opposite of you,” Mel had once pointed out helpfully, after Lena had described Tim’s type.
Thankfully, Rachel appeared oblivious. She was distracted by something tonight. Lena suspected a crush on Jett the rented bartender, who was stringy-haired and too-cool.
Rachel had beamed when he’d showed up, and declared herself his assistant. Just a second ago, Lena had overheard Rachel telling Jett a made-up a story about partying with friends. A familiar note of worry had vibrated in Lena’s stomach: Was Rachel still that desperate to impress?
Tomorrow, Lena would have a talk with Rachel about dissembling, but tonight, Jett was a harmless distraction. He was visibly disinterested in Rachel, which left Lena free to spend time with Gary Neary.
Someone in Tim’s group shattered a glass on the ground. Incoming! There were shrieks of laughter.
Lena looked again to Rachel, who had propped her chin on her fists to watch Jett sloppily pour a vodka tonic.
Yes, tomorrow she and Rachel would have a nice long talk.
“I should probably clean up the broken glass,” Lena said to Gary Neary, who had returned with two mojitos.
“Not your job.” He handed a glass to Lena. “Have you seen my son? He’s supposed to swing by to meet you.”
“I’d love that,” Lena said.
As a technical matter, Lena already knew Gary’s son, just as she’d known Gary: for years, just another person in their small town.
But everything felt different now.
A few weeks earlier, when his divorce settlement had finalized, Gary had moved to Cottonwood Estates, into the small gray cape on Wildcat Court. Lena had whipped up a batch of raspberry-mocha brownies and knocked on Gary’s door, because this was the type of neighborly gesture that was reflexive to her, and also because she wanted to talk to as many divorced people as she possibly could.
She had long fantasized about divorcing Tim but had always felt trapped. Alma didn’t believe in quitting a marriage, and Rachel was generally horrible with change.
After Alma died, when Rachel entered high school, Lena realized that she no longer had to shield her so protectively. They had been curled up in Lena’s bed one night, watching the Pride and Prejudice miniseries, when they’d heard Tim’s sloppy footsteps down the hall. He’d stopped, one hand on the wall in the bedroom doorway.
“Alma’s girls,” he said. He was smiling and Lena registered the expression on Rachel’s face: hopeful, surprised.
“You both got her jowls,” he said, with a helpful swipe under his chin. “Alma’s masculine jowls. Such a Mack truck of a lady.”
Rachel’s skin had flushed but she’d held her head high.
“Just think,” she’d said, her voice wavering the tiniest bit, “if it weren’t for Uncle Ernie, that would be my male role model.”
She’d turned the volume up so loud that Tim had walked away.
Tim wouldn’t leave as easily as that, Lena knew, but at the insistence of her family lawyer, he’d signed a prenup, and she was starting to feel strong enough for a fight. By the time Gary Neary moved into the neighborhood, Lena had already scheduled a few appointments with divorce lawyers and had started to taste her freedom.
Pace yourself, Lena thought as she waited on Gary’s front step, brownie pan in hand. Don’t bring up his divorce right away, no matter how inappropriately on fire you are about the topic.
When he opened the front door, something about the twinkle in his hazel eyes rendered her momentarily speechless.
Zing.
He had felt it, too.
Gary Neary, tall and rangy with bushy gray hair, was not half as handsome as Tim. He had an angular face and comically deep crow’s-feet and a large nose, and giant, outsized grapefruit calves from all the cycling he did. Beauty was symmetry, they said, and Gary Neary’s face might have been the least symmetrical Lena had ever seen.
But he had listened to her with his whole body, which Lena had never experienced before. It felt like being struck by lightning.
In the weeks before tonight’s party, Gary had been Lena’s savored secret. Even though Lena freely complained to Melanie about Tim, she had kept quiet about Gary. It was too new, too first-blush. She had been happy to wait for it to unfold like fate.
For a few more hours, Lena would honestly believe that life made sense in its own funny way, that its primary lessons were about perseverance and patience. Bec
ause she had suffered through a bad marriage and learned she deserved more, Lena had earned True Love.
By the next day, she would understand that this line of thinking was mythology—trying to see the narrative in a series of thoroughly meaningless acts.
It had been real with Gary, though. After the accident, even with everything else she had to grieve, Lena’s heart still made space to mourn him. But just because something was real, just because you might deserve it, didn’t mean you got it.
Every time she thought of telling Melanie what had almost transpired, Lena would imagine the silence on the other end of the phone.
Gary Neary and you? It defied belief.
And what was there to even divulge?
It had been nothing: a few weeks flirtation, and then one night of distraction, which had caused Lena to take her eyes off the ball completely.
It had been everything.
There was a parallel universe where Lena and Gary had a condo on a West Coast beach, and went for long sunset walks and hosted slightly awkward blended-family dinners. Sometimes, in the moments before sleep, Lena allowed herself to visit.
In the real world, Gary Neary was gone. And even if some magician were to bend the rules of time and space and deliver him to her, Lena was certain that Gary would take one look at Lena and run as fast as he could in the opposite direction.
CHAPTER TEN
“Please don’t make me go in,” Abe said.
He slouched in the passenger seat of Jen’s car and flicked his finger to close the air vents before flicking them open again.
In front of them was the Kingdom School, a double-wide trailer with peeling white paint, located one mile down an unpaved road. The bright sunlight exposed the scragginess of the lot—the half-bare trees, the patchy brown grass. Across the street were a rusted tractor and a fenced-in trio of malnourished horses swooshing their tails.
Even with their car windows rolled up, Jen could smell manure.
“Think of all the points you’ll earn if you try it for the day,” Jen said. She watched conflict play across Abe’s face. Dr. Shapiro’s bribe offensive had been almost too easy to implement.
Abe had created a shared spreadsheet and in the past week had enthusiastically taken out the recycling and the trash and neatened his room. The monitor would be his by summer, he’d promised.
“Ugh,” Abe said. He flicked closed the vents. Flicked open the vents. “Why can’t I just homeschool?”
“Ms. Smalls, the principal, is supposed to be wonderful.”
Although when Jen had talked to her, she had sounded vacant, maybe not all there.
Prior to the call, Jen and Paul had discussed how best to explain Abe’s conduct disorder diagnosis to Nan Smalls in a way that didn’t scare Nan, but provided sufficient notice of what she was getting into.
But Jen had never gotten the chance. During their phone call, Nan Smalls only wanted to talk about Faith—her Faith in the children and the children’s Faith in the teachers and the teachers’ Faith in Nan. The Kingdom School, Nan seemed to want Jen to know, was one giant inescapable circle of Faith.
Whenever Jen tried to interject, there had been painful pauses, into which both of them would speak at once, and then Nan would say, “After you,” and Jen would say, “No, please, after you.”
“Well,” Nan had said finally, “he’s free to spend the day and we’ll take it from there.”
“You’re dropping me into a horror movie,” Abe said. He flicked the vents quicker: open, close, open, close.
Jen saw his point. On the lawn was a hand-painted off-kilter sign, THE KINGDOM SCHOOL: TAKING TRUTH FROM SCRIPTURE. It was begging for a chilling breeze in which to creak ominously.
But back in the Bay Area, they had looked at gorgeous schools with landscaped campuses and endowments and state-of-the-art libraries and mission statements that separated church and state.
Abe hadn’t been a fit there. Or anywhere else.
This was their reality: sitting in the car outside the Kingdom School with whispered prayers of Faith.
A beaten-up blue sedan pulled into the spot next to them. The banjo strains of bluegrass streamed out the open windows. Jen bobbed her head along to it, but Abe didn’t even crack a smile.
A young man with a chin-length bob and a bandana headband hopped out of the car and, whistling, went around to the trunk.
“Does he go here?” Abe said.
“Maybe?”
They watched him hoist a guitar case from the trunk, loop it over his shoulder.
“Is he wearing eye makeup?” Abe said in a low voice. He slunk down even further in his seat. “He saw us. He saw us.”
Indeed, the young man, who did seem to be wearing eyeliner, was waving at them through the windshield. Jen zipped down her window.
“Morning,” he said. “I’m Colin.”
“Hi,” Jen said in a bright phony voice. “This is Abe. He’s visiting today.”
“Awesome,” Colin said.
Abe scowled. Flicked the vent.
Colin pointed to the graphic novel on Abe’s lap. “What’s that?”
“Gothracula.”
“Never heard of it.”
Abe looked skeptical. “Seriously?”
“Cross my heart. What is it?”
“The best vampire fantasy battle series in the world. There are, like, seven books. You’ve really never heard of them?”
“Nope.”
“I’m going to turn the books into a ten-level video game,” Abe said. “Like Foxhole. You know Foxhole?”
“No,” Colin said. “But maybe you can show me sometime?”
“Are you a student?” Abe asked suspiciously.
“In graduate school. I’m a new assistant teacher here. I like it.”
“It’s creepy,” Abe said. “It looks like a horror movie.”
Colin considered the outside of the double-wide as if seeing it for the first time. “It totally does. There’s nothing scary inside, though. I promise. You know we do customized curriculums, like that video game could be part of your homework.”
“Video games as a class,” Abe said suspiciously. “Is there a decent Wi-Fi connection?”
“Come check it out.”
Before Jen had gotten out of the car, Abe was following Colin up the steps.
“I’ll get Nan,” Colin promised Jen, as he opened the door. “Abe, follow me, there might be snacks in the back if you’re hungry. Emma, she’s the other teaching assistant, usually bakes something over the weekend.”
Inside, the schoolroom looked small and spare: a few desks, a small kitchenette, mostly bare-walled but for a world map taped to the wall and some quotations stenciled in a flowery cursive.
I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will counsel you with my eye upon you. Psalm 32:8.
“Jen?”
Jen looked up from reading and was face-to-face with a tiny woman, swaddled in a gigantic olive cardigan. She had short bushy gray hair, vampiric pallor, and stern brown eyes.
Colin hovered closely behind her, like a cautious grandson who’d been tasked to watch that grandma didn’t fall and rebreak her hip.
“Hello,” the woman said. “I’m Nan.”
Their handshake felt dry and delicate, like a tight squeeze from Jen might break Nan’s thin bones.
“Abe made himself at home,” Colin said with a half laugh. “He’s back there trying to boost the internet connection.”
“Computers are his passion,” Jen said.
“Nice.”
Jen broke the awkward silence. “Nan, is there any more information you need from us?”
Medical records, Dr. Shapiro’s report, transcript from Foothills? Anything?
“No,” Nan said. “Let’s just see how he feels being here.”
Jen decided that if Nan wasn’t going to ask, she had no obligation to share Abe’s diagnosis, at least not at this early stage. First, give them a chance to get to know Abe, minus any labels.
After all, Jen still hadn’t decided if the diagnosis truly fit.
Nan nodded solemnly. “‘My God is my rock, in whom I take refuge, my shield and the horn of my salvation.’”
It was just unexpected enough that Jen panicked. She looked desperately at the ceiling, then the floor, then Colin. It was almost indiscernible, his teensy nostril flare, the way he widened his eyes at Jen as if to say, Better get used to it.
What stopped Jen from a torrent of giggles was the sobering realization that she was leaving her son under the responsibility of a woman who seemed—all due respect—not entirely there.
“Don’t worry,” Colin said, as if reading Jen’s mind. “We’ll take excellent care of Abe, I promise.”
NOVEMBER
To: “The Best Book Club in the World”
From: [email protected]
The book: This month’s pick, THE GIRL IN THE WOODS, promises to be quite controversial!*
When Fiona wakes up to find herself in a remote alpine forest with no idea how she got there, can she piece together what happened in time to save her son? And is it just a coincidence that her ex-husband has recently bought a log cabin in the very same remote woods where she is found?
Reviews have called it “a taut psychological thriller” and “the literary page turner of the year!”
The place: Our lovely Jen Chun-Pagano is saving our bacon by hosting this one last minute (mwah, mwah Jen!!!! Forever grateful!) and she has asked for a start time of seven o’clock sharp.
PSA: The Thankfulness Turkey is looking a little bare!!! Please, everyone, remember to take your kiddos to tape on their “Thankfulness Feathers”!!!!!! (Red, yellow, or orange construction paper only, please and black markers work the best. You can’t miss it—It’s the Giant Wooden Turkey right by the Cottonwood Welcome Sign!)
Katie will be selling BRACELETS at FALL FEST to raise money for her MOCK TRIAL TEAM’S trip to SUNNY CALIFORNIA! WE APPRECIATE ALL OF YOUR SUPPORT!
And speaking of THANKFULNESS, as always, I remain thankful for YOU, my wonderful book club family! xoxoxoxoxo
*True story: two members of my sister-in-law’s book club almost came to blows when they discussed this!
The Neighbor's Secret Page 8
