“Found you,” Annie sang out. She stopped when she realized what Lena was looking at, clapped her hand over her mouth.
“Oh shit. Lena. I didn’t think.”
“It’s all right,” Lena lied.
“He was a year behind me in high school,” Annie said. “We were in the same group of friends, but I never brought him up because I thought it would—and see, you are upset.”
There had been a circle of young women at the funeral, neat dark suits and shining hair. Their high-pitched sobs of disbelief had lassoed Lena with shame. Had Annie been among them?
“It’s fine,” Lena said. She felt and sounded cross. “Don’t worry about me, Annie. I’m the last person you should feel sorry for.”
Feel sorry for Gary Neary. Feel sorry for Bryce, and the life he might have constructed, given the chance.
Lena could still feel, all these years later, the sickening soft bump under her tire late at night, see the boy’s empty blue sneaker planted upright in the middle of the road.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Jen sat in a garnet-cushioned hotel chair, in the empty front row of the ballroom where Maxine Das had just completed her Q and A. Maxine was still onstage, trying to extract herself from the group of overly enthusiastic elephant fans grouped around her.
Maxine’s latest documentary had been framed by the heart-pulverizing story of Flower, a baby elephant born with a birth defect, and consequently ostracized by his herd. Jen still felt slightly sick from watching poor Flower desperately wander the savanna to the soundtrack of mournful violins.
Nature was brutal.
So was the nasty little voice in Jen’s head. It sounded a lot like Scofield and tended to lie in wait, piping up when Jen was weak and shaky.
Abe’s the vandal, the voice said. You know he is.
Jen did not know that. School, therapies, Colin; things were more hopeful than ever.
Only because you’re in denial.
Jen felt the world lurch.
Was she in denial? Maybe her brain was spending all of its energy obscuring unsavory facts about Abe, which was why she couldn’t focus on anything of substance?
Or maybe the Scofield voice had piped up because Jen had developed a warped kind of Münchhausen syndrome, where her identity had gotten so wrapped up in Abe’s conditions—
Jen stood up abruptly and marched herself to the long table with coffee urns and metal trays of cookies.
Another woman perused what was left of the picked-over treats. With that bushy gray hair and the long floral scarf overwhelming her tiny frame, she reminded Jen of Nan Smalls.
It was Nan Smalls, which made no sense at all unless Jen was now hearing voices and hallucinating. She slipped her right hand inside the left sleeve of her cardigan and pinched her forearm.
The woman, still there, turned and smiled. “Hello, Jen. So nice to see you here.”
“Nan?” Jen said hesitantly.
“My son got me into elephants,” Nan said. “He found them fascinating.”
Jen felt an ache deep in her heart. Sweet chubby-cheeked Danny Smalls had toddled around, stuffed elephant in hand. Years later, his mother was at Maxine’s talk, maintaining the connection.
Nature was brutal.
“Have you ever seen gummy elephants before?” Nan was regarding the tray of mini cupcakes, which were white-frosted with pink elephant gummies on top.
“No. Just gummy bears,” Jen said. “Well, everyone’s seen gummy bears, right?”
“Mmm.” Nan selected a cupcake, plucked the gummy elephant off the top, and popped it in her mouth. “I always feel a little thrill eating sticky candy. My ex-husband hated it.”
Jen managed a sympathetic cluck.
“It’s the ritualized bonding that amazes me,” Nan continued.
“With gummy candy?”
“With the elephants.”
“Yes.” Jen nodded vigorously. “Yes.” Speaking of bonding … “I’ve been meaning to check in with you.”
“Oh?”
“About Abe.”
“What about him?”
“Just, you know, how’s he doing?”
Do you think he might be destroying private property in his spare time and lying about it for kicks?
Nan beamed. “Colin’s wonderful, isn’t he?”
The nonresponse said it all.
Danny Smalls. Flower the elephant. The worry about Abe. The moment—this world—was gray and hopeless and suddenly all too much. Jen felt the prick of tears in her eyes.
Nan reached out her hand, paper-thin skin, knobby blue veins, to Jen’s shoulder. She spoke in a soft, quiet voice that made Jen’s eyelashes flutter. “Please draw strength from this.”
Jen felt herself lean forward, into Nan’s space. She held her breath.
“‘He will cover you with his feathers and under his wings you will find refuge. His faithfulness will be’—”
Without warning, Jen was yanked backward into a patchouli-scented embrace. Her cheek was crushed against Maxine’s beaded necklace.
“I’m free,” Maxine said. She released Jen from the clutch. “Shall we?”
Jen looked cautiously around the hotel conference room. “There was a woman here when you came up, right? Quoting a psalm?”
Maxine nodded, lowered her voice. “Oy. Sorry. Some of the fans are a bit … Well, let’s just say that this tour has been confirmation that it takes all kinds to make the world go ’round. Are you crying?” Maxine tilted her head and squinted at Jen.
“Your talk was so great,” Jen said, in broken voice. “Flower got me, and I know, I know. Preservation of resources.”
“Flower is just fine,” Maxine said, “very happy at the preserve, I promise. Listen, Laurence, my manager, wants to join us for dinner. He’s hoping you don’t already have one.”
“A manager?” Jen said. “For what?”
“You know, things like this.” Maxine gestured to the ballroom, now empty, and its rows and rows of chairs.
“Why on earth would he want to meet me?”
“Your book.” Maxine overenunciated the words like Jen was being dim. “Your grant.”
“I’m just in the research stages.”
“Fair warning: he’s pretty aggressive. Actually.” Maxine snorted. “You’ll be an excellent match.”
“Me?”
“Please. I was there when you hid those books in the library so no one else could find them for that paper on—was it novice management?” Maxine clasped her hands together gleefully. “I can’t believe I remember the topic.”
“It didn’t happen like that,” Jen said.
“It did. You hid the whole stack in the lower archives, you little rat.”
Jen recalled hazily the jostle of books in arms, a rushed walk, a charged feeling of battle-readiness. The memory should be embarrassing, but Jen only felt a dull melancholy for her loss of ambition.
It had been electric to feel such purpose, to have that fiction of control over her life.
“I was a total asshole.”
“No.” Maxine wagged a finger. “You were a tigress.”
“I’ve become a soft-boiled egg. I sit in the audience and weep for Flower the elephant.”
“Not buying it.” Maxine regarded Jen with an annoyingly superior grin. “People don’t change that much.”
* * *
“Hello?” Jen called. She walked into the kitchen. “I’m home.” She stepped out of her shoes, rubbed her heels.
The boys had left a half-full pot of congealing ramen noodles on the stove. And a pile of dirty bowls in the sink, but she didn’t care.
Dinner had been delightful. Laurence the manager had handed Jen his card, with a sincere-enough call me whenever you’re ready and a double-cheek kiss. She felt inspired to sit down at her computer and finish that leatherback-turtle study, maybe even take a peek at the one involving monarch butterflies.
Upstairs, a door slammed. There was the thunder of footsteps.
�
��Hello?” she shouted again. Above her head was the screech of something being dragged across the wood floor. She heard Colin’s footsteps on the stairs.
“You won’t believe who I saw tonight,” she said in a half shout. “I won’t make you guess, it was Nan, who said you’re wonderful, and then I got a personalized psalm, something about feathers, do you know that one? It made me think of Emily Dickinson, ‘hope is the thing with feathers,’ which is ironic, because I think it was about worry, which is the opposite of hope. She smelled it on me, but it wasn’t entirely my fault because—”
Jen glanced up.
Colin was still in the doorway. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other.
“We have,” he said, “a bit of a situation.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
“Holla123 unfriended Abe,” Colin said in a rush.
Jen felt an all-too-familiar tsunami of hatred toward Holla123. “That little bastard,” she said.
She clipped up the staircase to Abe’s room and Colin rushed to keep up. “The thing is,” he stammered, “Holla123 is apparently only nine years old.”
“What?” Jen stopped midway up the stairs. “Did we know that?”
“No. Apparently his parents didn’t realize it was a war game, and saw some of Abe’s online communications and were horrified by the violence.”
“What did those idiots think? The game is called Foxhole.”
Colin laughed nervously as Jen knocked on Abe’s door.
“Wait. Before you go in—”
Jen opened the door.
“Abe had a strong reaction.”
The desk chair had been overturned and the video monitor was upside down and unplugged. A red beanbag chair had been eviscerated. Its white-bead filling covered the entire floor of his room like a fresh blanket of snow.
Abe was hunched like a turtle in the middle of the room, head tucked into knees; a pair of scissors were clutched in his fist.
“I have a new enemy,” he said. His voice was muffled.
Jen tiptoed through the beanbag filling and sat beside him, placed a hand on his spine, which felt damp and knobby.
“Holla123 is not the only game in town,” Colin said. “We’ll find another Foxhole mate.”
“The same thing will keep happening,” Abe said quietly. “The same exact thing.”
This is what the experts didn’t get: Abe was vulnerable, not some sophisticated villain.
Yes, said the Scofield voice, but every villain starts out vulnerable. In superhero movies and life.
“Why are we moping about a nine-year-old?” Colin said. “What happened to the power of positive thinking?”
Jen and Abe watched him curiously. Given the choice, their family would always hunker down to mope. She had been about to suggest they open the Oreos.
“Let’s go do something,” Colin said. “Let’s play hoops.”
“Now?” Jen said. “It’s ten o’clock on a school night.”
“I don’t feel like it,” Abe muttered.
“I’m sure your mom will let you earn points for it, right Jen?”
“It might be fun,” Jen offered.
“Come on, Abe,” Colin said. “A change of scene.”
“I really don’t want to,” Abe said, more firmly.
“For points,” Jen said. She felt a little guilty backing the idea when Abe was against it, but Colin was probably right. Doing something was better than wallowing.
“I have to go if it’s for points,” he said bitterly. As they left the room, he shot an exaggerated angry look in Jen’s direction.
She started to shovel the tiny white balls into a pile, an impossible task, given how they clung to her clothes. Abe’s look had unsettled her, and Jen wondered if it had been wrong to force him outside. But it was only basketball, she reasoned, and he was with Colin.
She peeked out the window, caught the two of them as they rounded the corner.
Abe followed after Colin in quick steps, like he was trying to keep up, but if Jen didn’t know, if she were one of her neighbors glancing out the kitchen window, she’d assume they were two friends around the same age, meeting up for a casual night game.
Jen did not like the way her heart lifted. Ordinariness should not be aspirational, and she did not want to care what her neighbors thought.
Her eyes caught on a flash of light farther up the road. A runner’s reflective vest. The figure was slight, their pace even.
A child, Jen guessed, all alone, late at night. That familiar rising tide of disapproval: What parent would allow this?
Jen was aware of the irony. She should be more compassionate toward other parents and their choices, but could judgment ever truly be suppressed? It was always there in the wings, certain and outraged.
And it felt so much better than doubt.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
It was a chilly dark morning. As Annie waited on Lena’s doorstep, she balled her fingers inside the sleeves of her thin sweatshirt.
Maybe Lena hadn’t heard the knock? Annie shook out her hands and pressed the doorbell. Its ring echoed through the house.
She peeked into the dark front window. Lena was probably sleeping in. Or out running an errand.
There was probably an excellent reason why she hadn’t returned any of Annie’s texts from earlier this morning, but Annie sensed it was a reaction to seeing those photos of Bryce Neary last night. When she’d turned around, Lena’s eyes had been cold and hard, her mouth had been a straight line.
Annie had never seen Lena look so—
Mean. Lena had looked mean.
After the kids and Mike had gone to sleep, Annie had tiptoed to the den and lifted the photo from the wall. She’d sat with it on the couch, remembered the last time she’d seen Bryce alive, on the night of the Meekers’ last party.
She’d been a few feet away from where she was now, on the other side of Lena’s house, when she’d felt a hand on her shoulder, and then a rise of hope.
Please be happy, she thought. Please, please, please.
When Annie turned around, she looked straight into Bryce’s green eyes. His summer cut made him look a bit like a shorn lamb, innocent and exposed.
Years before, Mike had tried to persuade Annie to position the photo less prominently, but she refused. It was the only way she could think to express how much Bryce Neary mattered. And how sorry she was.
On Lena’s steps, Annie was subsumed by a wave of despondency so strong that she could hardly breathe for the thick of it, washed up her nose and down her throat.
It would pass.
And then—who knew when—it would return. No matter how hard you fought for one, there was no such thing as a completely fresh start. Even without the photo of them together, Annie would carry Bryce with her forever.
With trembling hands, Annie grasped in her bag for a pen, scribbled a note on the outside of the envelope, tucked it under the cake carrier’s handle, and hurried back to her car.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Lena woke up sweaty, to the sound of her doorbell’s chimes.
She had dreamed she was at Bryce Neary’s funeral, standing next to Rachel in the back of the hot room with cramping calves, listening to the organ drone. Her eyelids had been so heavy, but whenever she shut them, she could only see one thing: blood seeping onto pale skin.
Lena sat up in her bed, reached for the insulated cup by her bedside, took an icy gulp.
The dream had felt too realistic. The air in the nave had been so thick with overapplied perfume and now, almost fifteen years later, Lena could taste it, heavy and floral, in the back of her throat.
Do not stand at my grave and weep.
It happened when Bryce’s college friend stood to recite that beautiful sad poem.
I am in the birds that sing—
Rachel’s wails drowned out his young voice. This is wrong, she cried. It’s wrong, what you did is so wrong.
The speaker stopped, uncertain.
Lena
caught, a few rows ahead, strangers exchange a pointed look. That’s the daughter of the man who— A ripple of miscomprehension waved through the crowd.
They assumed Rachel was talking to Tim, but Lena had known that Rachel’s judgment was meant for her.
Lena leaned back against her pillow and took another sip of water. She closed her eyes and slowed down her breaths. Simple as they were, deep breaths helped.
You’ve gotten away with it, she reminded herself. You’re safe now.
Lena thought she functioned well, given the weight on her conscience. She did not abuse substances. She paid her bills on time. She was capable of making small talk, discerning the ghosts from reality. When life required it, she could drag herself onto a plane.
If she had a slight problem with online shopping, so what? She could afford it. Generosity was hardly a crime.
But in the beginning, in those empty days after Rachel left, Lena would wake up from similar dreams just like this—empty and parched—and not leave her bed for the entire day.
She couldn’t go back to that.
The doorbell rang again, its chime like an electric shock. Another wave of heat crashed through Lena. Little beads of sweat slickened the skin on her nose, upper arms, neck.
She bolted out of bed and to the window.
Annie’s car was parked in Lena’s driveway. Lena watched her hop inside it and zip back down the hill like she didn’t have a care in the world.
She had left something on the doorstep. Lena opened the front door and pulled her cleaned cake carrier inside, read the note on the envelope.
Thank you for coming last night! We loved having you! Hugs!
She ripped open the envelope.
Dear Lena,
Here is the invitation to my graduation. I really hope you can come.
Love,
Laurel
P.S. Thank you for being so nice to me last night.
Lena’s eyes filled with fat tears of relief. Their kindness felt like absolution.
It’s not. Rachel’s voice in her head was sharp as a tack. They have no idea what you are.
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