One Little Secret (ARC)

by Cate Holahan

  Ben tilted his head in Jenny’s direction, seeking a second opinion. She’d heard that the drug could make kids sluggish, but she wasn’t in a position to comment. Her medical license was only for maintaining the MD in her television moniker and writing personal prescriptions. Moreover, she didn’t want to pontificate about either of her new neighbors’ twins. Though she knew Jonah’s diagnosis, Susan had never discussed it with her in detail. In fact, their relationship had yet to progress much past polite chatter about school functions. Jenny assumed she and Louis had been invited to go in on the Hamptons house simply because any place on the water would have been prohibitively expensive for two couples alone.

  Rachel tossed a hand in the air. “Maybe they don’t like the drug’s side effects.”

  Louis shot Rachel the same exasperated look that Jenny gave her fellow anchors when they tried to diagnose Achilles’ injuries from instant replays. “Or maybe,” he said, “they’re having difficulty finding a doctor willing to prescribe it. Doctors are gun-shy when it comes to autism. The anti-vaxxers made us all afraid of some lawyer taking us to court for developmental delays.”

  Rachel returned Louis’s irritated expression. As a personal-injury attorney, Rachel was more likely than not to be some lawyer. “Doctors don’t need to fear providing drugs that are FDA approved to treat particular diagnoses. If the physician has the problem correctly pegged, then he’s in the clear. Unless he’s been specifically alerted to another ailment that would result in a complication.”

  Jenny felt Louis’s energy change beside her, his vibrations intensifying like a tuning fork struck twice. “Well, we should get on the road.” He gave a curt wave and whirled in the opposite direction, announcing his aggravation with the conversation.

  Jenny offered what she hoped was an apologetic smile. “See you at the beach.”

  Louis echoed her statement over his shoulder. “See you …” Jenny caught up to him as he trailed off, grumbling the last word under his breath. To Jenny, it didn’t sound like beach.

  CHAPTER THREE

  THE DAY OF

  “Do I have the right address?”

  The incredulity in her husband’s tone startled Susan awake. She’d drifted off watching the repetitive green blur outside the passenger window, exhausted and emotionally drained from the morning. The foliage outside had since ceased moving, but her view still seemed out of focus, a shaking Polaroid yet to reveal a real image. All she could see clearly was Jonah sprawled on the dirty sidewalk, his flailing legs enforcing a circle of personal space, and the gawking onlookers who had surrounded the two of them, all staring as though her son had been some kind of break-dancing street performer and not a child breaking down.

  Susan blamed herself for Jonah’s flare-up. She should have known that the combination of the humid morning, dense crowd, and seeing his brother taking off with his new best friend, Will, would prove too much for her hypersensitive nine-year-old. But she’d convinced herself that witnessing Jamal’s excited departure would ease Jonah’s anxiety about his own week-long stay at “camp.” As a result, Jonah had displayed the worst of his symptoms in front of their neighbor’s boy and countless other families, many from their new town.

  “Is this it, honey?” Nadal leaned over to inspect the screen on the SUV’s console and the waving red flag announcing they’d reached their destination.

  Susan shifted her fuzzy attention to the windshield. A grayed cedar structure loomed at the end of the clamshell drive. Her stomach dropped. No. This can’t be it.

  She called up the address in her text-message history and compared it to the number on the mailbox at the property’s edge. It matched, though it shouldn’t have. The timber-clad saltbox before her with its long rectangular sides and slanted roof was not a “luxury farmhouse.” It was a barn. A plain, simple, $3,000-per-night barn.

  She imagined her new friends’ reactions to the building in front of them. Ben would be a good sport, as always, and she didn’t know Jenny and Louis well enough for them to be anything but polite. Whether or not anyone said anything explicit, though, they’d all be thinking the same thought pulling up her husband’s right eyebrow: Why on earth did she book us here for a fortune?

  “Location is everything, right?” Nadal tried to cover his quizzical expression with a smile.

  The cliché had been their real-estate agent’s refrain when they’d been searching for houses ten months earlier. The woman had taken her and Nadal through a series of tiny Tudors on lots measured in square feet, each listed in the same price range as multiacre estates back home. “This isn’t Washington State, sweetheart,” the realtor had said when Susan had balked at the listings. “This is Westchester. You’re sixteen miles from Manhattan on a commuter train line. Basically, you’re moving to Mecca.”

  The agent had said that last part smirking at Nadal, as though her analogy had contained particular relevance for the almond-colored man considering kitchen appliances. Susan had informed her that Boston-born and -bred Nadal believed Mecca was where the Sox played. “Living twenty minutes from Yankee Stadium doesn’t have the same attraction,” she’d said.

  Quip notwithstanding, they’d purchased one of those overpriced homes in the “right” locale. And, Susan reminded herself, so had all their new neighbors. Perhaps Nadal was right. The barn before her was nestled in the Amagansett dunes with direct access to the Atlantic Ocean. Surely the others would know not to expect much curb appeal, exorbitant cost aside. Wouldn’t they?

  Nadal turned left and let the car roll toward the forest marking the edge of the property and the inverted L-shaped driveway. Shells rattled beneath the chassis until the vehicle finally pulled parallel to a white gate leading, Susan supposed, to the backyard. She exited and squinted at the structure, hoping that the late-afternoon sunlight would illuminate some redeeming feature. The house appeared just as dour as it had through the windshield, however. Rain had weathered the siding to a drizzly gray. The windows were small, squinty insect eyes atop a gaping barn-door mouth. The smallest panes, tucked beneath the ski-slope roof, appeared to wink at them. From the front, the home hardly seemed large enough to accommodate three couples. “It looked so much bigger on the website. Didn’t it?”

  A beep answered. Nadal disappeared beneath the SUV’s rising hatch. He grunted from the weight of something that Susan knew couldn’t be their suitcase. Her husband prided himself on his fitness regimen. Weights multiple times a week. Cardio on weekends. He woke at five daily for the gym—a fact that had once impressed her though lately had made her resentful. She couldn’t squeeze in regular workouts between caring for the twins and the house. Her CEO husband was becoming even more handsome (and wealthy), while she was letting herself go.

  “It has three bedrooms, three baths, an outdoor shower, a pool, and is on the beach in the Hamptons, honey.” Nadal emerged, a vein pulsing in his left bicep from carrying the massive cardboard boxes cradled in his arms. “If it were any larger, it would have only been available for the full summer and cost the down payment on our house.” He braced the wine cases against his chest and headed toward the door. “Don’t worry,” he called behind him. “Everyone knew what they were getting into.”

  A shrill ring emanated from Nadal’s pocket. Her husband’s lips parted. For a moment, it seemed he would try to shift the weight onto one arm to answer the phone—an act almost as insane as leaving a wife with a screaming child to answer an office call, as he’d done that morning.

  “Honey. I know work is crazy right now.” Susan forced a lightness into her voice so that Nadal wouldn’t realize how angry she still was about his earlier disappearance. “But let’s try to be present this week. It took a while for me to plan this, and it’s important for our family to make some real friends in the area. Jonah needs people that will look out for him like we had back home, and we have to foster that. He’s not Jamal.”

  Nor, Susan thought, was she. Though both her boys were tall, dark, and handsome, like their father, only their
neurotypical son had inherited Nadal’s attractive personality. Jamal, like her husband, came across as smart and affable, the kind of person others welcomed onto their team and into their homes. Susan, like Jonah, was shier—or, at least, she’d become that way since her recent fiasco. To make friends, she had to plan vacations for the neighborhood.

  Nadal readjusted the weight in his arms. “I know, honey.” The stress on the nickname turned it sour. “And I’m sorry. Again. Something came up right before we left, and I still—”

  “You’re the CEO of a tech start-up. Something always comes up.” Susan felt the scowl parting her lips. She forced a tight smile. “It would mean a lot.”

  “I already promised and I mean it.” Nadal returned her smile like a tennis volley. “I won’t let anything spoil this week.”

  He started toward the house. Susan retrieved their duffle from the trunk. She slung the bag over her shoulder and then stretched to shut the hatch. The overhead motion released the acrid odor in her armpits. Stress sweat stunk worse than regular perspiration. Maybe, she thought, she could freshen up before the others arrived. Apply some makeup. Slip into a sundress. At the very least, she could assess whether or not the barn’s interior measured up to the online photos. If it didn’t, she couldn’t back out of the rental. But she could preempt complaints with her own.

  Susan hurried toward her husband as he closed in on the entrance. “I’ll get the door.”

  Nadal wouldn’t wait. He raised a knee and shifted the liquor boxes onto his left side, freeing his right arm to retract the sliding panel mounted on a thick overhead track. Behind the barn door stood another, though this one was glass, coated with a dark film to cloud the view inside. A round electronic keypad had been bolted above the handle.

  Susan jostled in front of her husband to deal with the lock. As she touched the black screen, numbers appeared. She tapped in the four-digit code, an easy-to-recall “1492,” the same year “Columbus sailed the ocean blue.” A green light flashed around the high-tech device, followed by a welcoming tone and a whirring noise like an electric can opener.

  A rattling overwhelmed the sound of the lock. Susan turned to see a familiar cherry Range Rover crunching down the driveway. She pressed the door handle. Showering before saying her hellos was out of the question. Still, perhaps she could glimpse the inside before the Murrays.

  “Hey, hold the door for us?” Jenny called as she climbed out of the Range Rover. “I forgot the code you emailed. I’ve no head for numbers.”

  Susan pushed back the tinted glass in front of her. A glance inside the house revealed only a narrow hallway and the glow of a distant window. The online photos had shown a ton of natural light.

  The clink of bottles called her attention back to the threshold. She turned to see the wine cases at Nadal’s feet and his arms around Jenny as they said hello. “How was the ride?” he asked.

  “Can’t complain.” Jenny separated from Nadal and extended her toned arms toward Susan. The three-hour-plus car ride had done nothing to dull Jenny’s cover-girl appearance. She wore a flowing, off-shoulder shirt that displayed her pronounced clavicle and raw linen shorts revealing her long, chiseled legs. Her makeup, which Susan could tell included foundation from the uniformity of her caramel skin color, was flawless beneath her Jackie O sunglasses. If a paparazzo jumped out of the bushes to ask whether the Giants’ injured running back would play next season, Jenny would be ready.

  Susan’s discomfort deepened at her own haggard appearance. She forced a smile and leaned into the waiting hug. “Sorry. I’m a bit sweaty from the ride up.”

  Jenny grinned. “Who isn’t?”

  You, Susan thought. Unless, of course, Jenny’s natural BO smelled of gardenias. Susan half suspected that it did. Jenny Murray was the Mary Poppins of neighborhood moms. She was TV beautiful with a body like sculpted glass, and an encyclopedic knowledge of both the human body and sports. To boot, she was painstakingly pleasant. Not once, in the ten months Susan had lived next door to her, had she ever seen Jenny evidently stressed. She’d never heard her snipe at her spouse in the backyard, snap at her daughter, or betray a hint of sarcasm in her tone, let alone raise her voice as Susan did, too often. Practically perfect in every way.

  “You look great.” Susan brushed the sleeve covering Jenny’s bicep. “I love this blouse.”

  Jenny winced. The reaction made Susan feel catty for the compliment, as though she’d intended to shame her neighbor for being too done up in a casual setting. Susan hoped that hadn’t been her motivation, though she couldn’t be sure. Insecurity with a pinch of marital anxiety and a dash of jealousy, whipped together by a stressful morning, was a recipe for bad behavior.

  Susan tried sweetening her comment. “The Hamptons is preppy chic, right? It’s the perfect top for out here.” She gestured toward her jeans–and–T-shirt ensemble. “I plan to shower and change into something more appropriate after we get settled. Put on a little makeup myself. We’re on vacation, right?”

  Jenny pushed her sunglasses to the crown of her head, revealing her soft brown eyes. “You don’t need all this paint to look good.”

  And that, Susan thought, was why she’d invited Jenny to the Hamptons, even though she didn’t know her that well and her sons would probably never befriend the Murrays’ preteen daughter. Jenny, unlike so many of the other moms she’d met in their new town, didn’t act as though she was too good for anyone—even though she, out of all the people in the neighborhood, could have gotten away with it.

  The social hierarchy of East Coast suburban moms, Susan had learned, mimicked high school. Stay-at-homes who regularly ran out the door without their hair brushed, as Susan so often did, were the wallflowers of her new world. Harried working moms were the nerds, begrudgingly respected though not particularly admired or envied. Ladies who lunched, aka stay-at-home moms with staff, were the popular girls who planned lavish charity events and shared all the relevant gossip. At the top of the ladder, however, were the women like Jenny who somehow juggled successful careers and still showed at school functions and fund-raisers looking like they’d spent all day at the salon. They were the prom queens.

  “Let’s get the booze out of the sun.” Nadal was again cradling the cases in his arms. Susan became aware of her dry throat. A glass of wine would surely take the edge off her house tour.

  She held her breath as she entered with Jenny steps behind. Plasterboard, painted the stark white of a gallery, narrowed the small foyer into a tight corridor. On Susan’s right, two oak slabs hung from a track like long slabs of meat. Jenny slid back the first door, revealing a crowded bathroom. The second door had been left half covering the opening, possibly because the room behind it would have made anyone claustrophobic otherwise. It barely appeared large enough for the full bed inside.

  Susan caught Jenny’s nostrils flare beneath her cat-eye sunglasses. “This will be fine for Nadal and me,” Susan said. She’d booked the place, after all. If she’d done a horrible job, the least she could do was agree to take the worst bedroom.

  Susan headed deeper into the house, her fear that she’d fallen for a scam increasing with each step. Perhaps the owners had posted images lifted from a realty site and populated their rental page with fake reviews. Could she get everyone’s money back if she could prove fraud? She hadn’t read the fine print on the agreement. “The photos showed a ton of windows. Where are—”

  The house responded to Susan’s unfinished question, opening into a great room with a double-height cathedral ceiling and a far wall constructed almost entirely of glass. Tall French doors composed the base of the transparent expanse. Above them, trapezoidal panes of graduating sizes met at a pentagonal center window. Beyond the wall, a deep sapphire pool sparkled in an emerald setting. Relief flowed through Susan’s tightened throat like a good glass of cabernet.

  “It’s beautiful. Louis,” Jenny yelled over her shoulder, “come take a look at this!”

  Susan couldn’t stop looking. Beyond the l
awn, a patch of scrub forest separated the backyard from a blue field of sea and sky. The beach was right there, as promised.

  A doorbell rang. Nadal’s voice reverberated in the high ceilings from somewhere behind her. “I’ll get it.”

  Susan wrested her gaze from the view to take in the rest of the house. The furnishings in the great room were sparse, but elegant. A U-shaped sectional faced a brick fireplace pressed against what appeared to be the barn’s original stone wall. Behind it stood a farmhouse dining table in the same pale oak as the ceiling beams. The kitchen, identifiable by its white cabinets and stainless-steel appliances, hid behind the dining area at the front of the house. It was separated from the great room by the plasterboard wall that had made up one side of the cramped hallway and a low ceiling supporting the second story.

  Most of the upstairs had been left open, a loft tucked beneath the elongated slope of the saltbox’s roof. Two glass panels, each of which stopped at chest height, cordoned off a furniture-less mezzanine leading to what Susan assumed were the second-floor bedrooms.

  “Susan, look at this place.” Ben Hansen emerged from the hallway, the strap of his bag slung between his large pectorals. He opened his arms toward her, offering a hug. She dove in for one, suddenly overwhelmed by the resurgence of her earlier gratitude when he’d carried Jonah—in full meltdown mode—from the crowd. A second into the embrace, she realized how her enthusiasm might look to Ben’s wife and pulled away, awkwardly double-tapping her neighbor’s back to decrease intimacy. Ben had a face that called for a camera: perfectly symmetrical with a strong nose, diamond jaw, and dark-blue eyes that appeared deeply interested in whomever they focused on. Such handsomeness made any congeniality from the opposite sex appear coquettish—probably because, on some level, it was. Susan needed to be extra careful around him, especially around alcohol. Acting too friendly, a glass or two in, had gotten her into enough trouble back in Seattle.