The Neighbor's Secret

by L. Alison Heller

  “About fifty yards up the hill,” Harriet demurred. “I didn’t see it.”

  Deb paused for either of them to pick up the story, but when neither did, she shrugged and continued.

  “Bryce’s dad lived in the Yung’s house, you know, the gray cape on Wildcat that backs up to the red rocks? No? God, Jen, next weekend I am going to give you a personal tour of the neighborhood, it’s like you don’t even live here sometimes.

  “Anyway, Bryce had just graduated from college a few weeks before, and was about to move to Chicago. The night was supposed to be a reunion of sorts for a bunch of them who’d gone to high school together, and they started at the Meekers’ party before moving the celebration to a classmate’s parents’ house just across Highway Five.

  “Meanwhile, after the Meeker party ended, Lena went to sleep and Tim drove off to God knows where to do God knows what. When he drove back—at the same time Bryce was walking home from the house party—”

  Deb pushed the tips of her fingers into the other hand’s flattened palm, to indicate the crash.

  “Tim didn’t even stop. Lena woke up when she heard his car, saw the cracked windshield and managed to, I don’t know, interrogate him successfully enough that he admitted he hit something near Harriet’s. When Lena knocked on your door in the middle of the night, her eyes were like a wild animal’s. Just filled with pure grief and shock, right, Harriet?”

  “It was forever ago,” Harriet said briskly.

  “You told someone that, Harriet. I couldn’t make up that detail, it’s so chilling.” After a shudder, Deb continued. “Lena screamed at Harriet to call the police, that it was Tim, and you did, right Harriet? And they came for him a few hours later. He had a record, which we don’t think Lena knew—DUIs—I think even an outstanding warrant or something. The police dumped Tim in a cell and he had a heart attack that night, they think from alcohol abuse. Anyway, he died in the jail cell, only a few hours after he hit Bryce.”

  “Oh my God.”

  “Awful, I know. And Lena’s daughter, Rachel, fled for boarding school after that, and as far as we know, she’s never deigned to come back, not for Christmas, or her mom’s birthday or anything, she’s just frozen out Lena, and oh my gosh, Harriet are you okay? Do you need some water? There’s a cold going around, Sierra’s started just like that with the gunk in the throat and—oh, hello Lena! I didn’t hear you walk up, how are you? So glad you came! We were just talking about all your fabulous donations, weren’t we, girls?”

  Deb finally stopped talking, slammed her lips together. Even in the dim moonlight, Jen could see her face flush with embarrassment.

  Lena’s guilty eyes made clear she had heard, if not all of the story, the tail end.

  Annie sidled close to her and squeezed her arm and started babbling something about all the boxes and Jen chimed in and then Deb said she had egg whites waiting inside to froth for the drink, and was desperate for Lena’s help with getting the spices right and it’s so cold, what are we doing out here, let’s all go inside.

  * * *

  Deb Gallegos’s hands were a whirl of measuring and pouring. Every few minutes she shoved a shot glass filled with test cocktail at Lena: too sweet/bland/weak?

  Lena wanted to comfort her, and all of the other women, so sweetly frantic in their attempts to make her feel better. They thought they’d hurt her feelings, but she’d been riveted.

  “The Story”—Lena’s story—had been reshaped into a neat little package: beginning, middle, end.

  It wasn’t the first time Lena had heard a version of it. It’s a small town, Dr. Friendly had admitted in their initial consultation. I already know what you’ve been through.

  In Dr. Friendly’s reverent retelling, Lena had sounded like a movie heroine: the burdened widow with an impossible choice! Her family … or the greater good?

  In the gossipy neighborhood version, though, Lena had sounded more like a victim. And a little mad with grief, thanks to Harriet’s graphic detail about her wild animal eyes.

  Lena felt the teensiest bit defensive hearing the part about how Rachel stormed off to the East Coast in a huff, angry at Lena for unintentionally killing her father. It made Rachel sound like some immature brat who couldn’t cope, when in truth, her anger was righteous and complicated. If they had only seen Rachel’s hysterics when Lena had dropped her off in New Hampshire.

  Lena could never correct them, though. If people thought they knew The Story, it meant they had accepted it, plot holes and all.

  There had been not quite four hours between when the last guest had left Lena’s party and the police officers knocked on her door looking for Tim. They were the defining moments of Lena’s life.

  The fewer questions about them the better.

  FIFTEEN YEARS EARLIER, 12:01 A.M.

  Jett the bartender was the last to go, with a fat tip in his pocket. He had nodded tiredly when Lena slipped it to him, as if in agreement that he’d earned every last cent.

  Lena leaned against the front door, stepped out of her heels. Always such a bittersweet feeling when a party finally ended, a little relief, a little sadness mingled with the contentment.

  She surveyed the kitchen. Alma used to say you could gauge an event’s success by the mess, in which case tonight had been epic: wineglasses and stacked dirty plates and half-empty platters covered the countertops.

  Lena stole a cube of Manchego from a platter on the island and popped it in her mouth before going upstairs.

  Behind the door of her room, Rachel sang along to loud music in an unselfconscious falsetto. Lena thought against knocking, did not want to ruin the carefree moment.

  In her bathroom, Lena smeared cold cream on her face, carefully slipped off her dress and pulled on a nightgown, sat down at her vanity to sponge off the cream.

  She heard the mechanical whir of the garage door.

  Through the years she would agonize: Why hadn’t she really listened?

  She’d have realized that Tim was in no position to drive, and she could have run downstairs to stop him, stop all of it.

  Because Lena was too selfish to see past her own happiness to care about anyone else, too filled with thoughts of how, right before Gary had left to drive his son to meet friends, he’d said a casual I’ll call later, twisted his pinky finger around hers and held it a little too long.

  She pressed in her face oil with light upward sweeps of her finger, climbed between the sheets and fell into a dreamless heavy sleep that was interrupted by the ring of her phone.

  The clock said 1:15. Her heart sprinting, she fumbled the cordless receiver off its stand, pressed the phone to her ear.

  “Hello?”

  “Did I wake you?”

  “No,” Lena lied. Her eyes adjusted to the darkness. Indulgently, she stretched her arms above her head. “What are you doing up?”

  “Waiting for my son to call for a ride home,” Gary said. “Want to sneak out and wait with me?”

  Lena paused.

  “Don’t say no.”

  Lena didn’t. She was already getting out of bed.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  “Do you think Colin is gay?”

  Paul ignored Jen’s question. He took a sip of wine, swallowed. Carefully cut another bite and pushed it onto his fork and slid it onto her plate.

  “You have to try the lamb,” he said.

  They were at a restaurant that had once been a ranch house, and was perched atop a winding road on acres of farmland, deep in the Foothills. Paul and Jen were in front of the giant stone fireplace, with a view outside to the rows of evergreens, Christmas lights strung through their branches.

  Jen had decided they should split a bottle of champagne. Since book club started in the fall, she’d found herself adopting the club’s attitude to alcohol, which she could best describe as: Why not? I deserve it!

  And it was true. A glass of something now and then made everyone seem more fun and every problem a little more bearable. Even Jen’s mother could
n’t find the worry in her new habit.

  You go girl, she’d told Jen clumsily, uncork a little.

  “Or do you think Colin’s bi?” Jen said. “And before you accuse me of stereotyping because he’s got the hair and the eyeliner, I asked him this afternoon whether he ever thought of dating Emma and he said, ‘Not my type.’ Have you seen Emma?”

  Paul nodded. Yes, he had seen Emma, the other assistant teacher, who was gorgeous with that long shiny hair and creamy skin and the boobs and get positive boppiness. Jen guessed that Emma would be anyone’s type.

  “Maybe Emma’s simple?” Jen said. She held up a hand. “Not dumb. I don’t mean dumb. I mean not complicated. Colin is complicated.”

  “If you say so.” Paul forked another morsel of lamb.

  She sighed. The problem was that alcohol made Jen uncork and Paul brood. It really wasn’t as much fun when you were the only gabby one.

  “I know Colin’s young, but he’s got a wise soul. Bruised, though.”

  “A wise, bruised soul,” Paul repeated.

  Colin’s “um, no” when Jen had asked if he wasn’t going to Texas for Christmas had been sardonic, like he’d rather be touring Superfund sites.

  She had a picture of his parents that was admittedly very stereotyped—Jell-O salads and plastic-covered La-Z-Boys and Colin hiding behind a hay bale, strumming the Cure on his guitar and being told to stop listening to that devil music.

  He wasn’t as religious as Nan, that was for sure. And while Jen knew he was a student at the seminary, she wasn’t sure how ardently he believed.

  “I bet he’s like, a real Christian, you know? It’s not about the politics or the repression, but about the principles. Maybe he’s asexual too,” Jen said. “There’s an entire generational movement now. I read an article. They’re all above mortal urges.”

  “I think you’ve pegged him,” Paul said. “A real Christian asexual with a bruised soul.”

  “Don’t be like that.”

  “What?”

  “Condescending.”

  Paul arched an eyebrow. “I’m not sure why we have to spend this entire meal talking about Colin’s romantic preferences. We pay him enough to not have to think about him in our free time.”

  “It’s not about the money with him.”

  Whenever Jen took out her wallet at the end of each week, Colin blushed and ducked his head and did one of his nervous tics—Jen knew them all by now—the sleeve chew, the hair push back behind the ears (always repeated at a tortured double-time clip). Jen had started leaving the money in a drawer to avoid the entire dance.

  “That’s pretty naive,” Paul said, “it’s always about the money.”

  “It’s really not.” She popped the lamb bite in her mouth. “Oh, this is good.”

  “Maybe it’s not about the money. Maybe you’re the appeal.”

  Jen, who’d been taking a sip, swallowed wrong, ending up sputtering. “Um. No,” she said, after a cough.

  After sixteen years of marriage, Paul still thought Jen—who had (and she was being objective here) only become older and slower and nuttier and more square-shaped through the years—inexplicably desirable.

  There was no logic to it: Jen had just been lucky enough to marry someone equal parts devoted and stubborn. This, she had come to learn, was no small thing. Some of the book club women talked as if one hundred percent of their romantic moments came from the books they read.

  “I’m changing the subject,” she said.

  “Thank god.”

  “The vandal struck again last night, and this is actually pretty creepy. He attacked an inflatable snowman on Wildcat Court. Like, took scissors and snipped off its little carrot nose and then stabbed the body until it deflated.”

  “Jeez.”

  “Agreed, but at this point I don’t know which is more disturbing: the vandal or Janine’s obsession with him. Thirty-seven texts.” Jen held up her phone to Paul and scrolled through Janine’s endless group-broadcast panic. “You know what I keep thinking?”

  Paul shook his head.

  “Whoever this kid’s parents are, they’ll probably just shrug it off. They’ll make a deal with the police, or whomever, that’s it. They’re not going to be up all night, unable to sleep, worried that they’re about to unleash a psychopath on the world.”

  Jen cut herself another piece of Paul’s lamb, stabbed it onto her fork.

  “I don’t know about that.”

  When Jen railed against other clueless parents, Paul frequently reminded her that everyone had their shit to go through.

  But this was a lie. Jen had been to enough book clubs, scrolled through enough social media to understand that she was having a fundamentally different parenting experience from anyone else.

  She’d gladly trade her vital sex life for a little more boring, a little more normal. The lamb in Jen’s mouth, which she had been chewing angrily, suddenly tasted like straw. She looked down at her plate.

  “I should just count my blessings that Abe isn’t the vandal,” she said.

  At the funny look on Paul’s face, Jen felt a ping of warning vibrate inside her.

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  “What.”

  “It hasn’t crossed your mind that burning the Thankfulness Tree might possibly derive from the same great criminal mind that brought you last year’s boys’ bathroom trash-can fire?”

  “No way.” Jen shook her head stubbornly.

  “Think about Abe’s school career: the hamster, the fire, the locker-bank destruction? The patio-furniture topple. The Harper French stabbing.”

  Paul was saying it like a litany, like there had been an inexorable progression when in fact those had been isolated incidents, all triggered by cruelty and separated by years.

  “It’s not him.”

  “How can you be sure? I travel and have no idea where he is,” Paul said. “You go to bed totally depleted—and rightly so—from working and being a single parent most weeks.”

  If he was so worried that Abe was the vandal, how could Paul fly off every week? How could he sit there eating his lamb shank like it was nothing? Why hadn’t he tried to do anything?

  And his tone—light and disinterested, like he found it all slightly amusing, like it was somebody else’s problem and not the thing that kept him awake at night and slapped him in the face every morning and was a steady hum in the back of his head all day?

  Jen swilled her champagne but didn’t sip. “No, everything’s different with this school. We have Colin now.”

  “That’s what you said about Harper, even whatshername, the bratty one—”

  “Isabelle.”

  “Right. It’s the same pattern. It’s only a matter of time before it all goes to pieces. You loved Harper, and her mother, and remember, you took them to all of those plays, because Harper loved theater? Sometimes I think I could replace Colin’s name with Harper’s and poof, it would be last year.”

  “I never loved Harper, Paul, that’s— No.” Jen’s fork clattered down to the plate. “You’re not paying attention.”

  “I pay attention.”

  “You try. But you’re not here. If I’m telling you it’s different, you have to believe me, you cannot just sit there and judge, when you don’t have any firsthand information about—”

  “Okay.”

  “You’re not here half the time.” Her voice had hiked up, come out loud and shrill. “You have no idea what’s happening.”

  “You’re right. I’m sorry.”

  She stabbed her trout with a fork. Her hand was shaking and her eyes were filled with tears.

  “Should I not have hope? Should I give up trying? What are my alternatives here, Paul?”

  She’d spoken too loudly. Diners at some of the tables near them had turned their heads.

  “I’m sorry,” Paul said. But the apology wasn’t enough. When he extended his hand across the table, she was physically incapable of reaching across and taking it.
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  She understood how unfair she was being, that the avalanche of fury burying her had little to do with Paul, but she was in too deep to see a way out. She pushed back from the table, grabbed her bag.

  “Well”—she flashed him an icy smile—“thanks for ruining dinner.”

  And then she stalked outside into the cold.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  It was Christmas Eve and the Perley house was filled with garlands and tea lights and poinsettias and presents and Mike’s family, who had arrived from California a few days before.

  They’d managed to find a spot for everyone to sleep: Mike’s sisters and a brother-in-law were in the unfinished basement, on the Gallegos’s air mattresses, and Hank and Laurel were with their cousins, in a pile of sleeping bags on the floor of the den. Annie and Mike had given his parents the master bedroom and themselves the kids’ room, where they were both trying to change into pajamas in the narrow space between bunk bed and desk without colliding.

  “How on earth do Hank and Laurel peacefully coexist in this room?” Mike said.

  Annie could hear her father-in-law’s snores through the wall like a buzz saw. She knew their house was too small, but whenever Mike pointed it out, she got an uncomfortable guilty feeling in the pit of her stomach.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I would’ve given anything to be close to my brothers, or have a giant cousin sleepover every Christmas Eve.”

  Her childhood Christmases had felt quiet and empty. Holidays like the Perleys’—with traditional recipes and group karaoke and gingerbread houses and skating—were so much more fun for a kid.

  According to the therapist Mike had dragged Annie to after Laurel was born, Annie’s lonely childhood explained a lot of her bad decisions later in life. She had been an obvious accident, born twelve years after her next-younger brother, and when Annie was four years old, it was decided she should move to her grandmother’s silent two-bedroom apartment from August through June—ostensibly for the superior school district. But even as a small child, Annie had felt her parents’ relief each August when she’d left.