Lauren hangs up the phone and looks again at Chauncey.
Maybe she should go over and give him a poke—just to make sure he’s okay.
Nah—let sleeping dogs lie.
She can see him breathing from here. He’s fine. Just tired.
Who isn’t? she thinks with a yawn—just before a bloodcurdling “Mom!” pierces the air.
The photo albums were among the first items Elsa unpacked when they moved into the house. They always are.
There are no built-in living room bookshelves here, like there were in Tampa, so Elsa made a home for the row of albums on the raised brick fireplace hearth beside her favorite chair.
Every day, she brews herself a cup of strong tea and she sits down to leaf through the pages. Some might view the ritual as self-torture. Others, as therapeutic.
For Elsa, it is both. She looks at the pictures daily because she has to. Because she can’t—won’t—let go.
Sometimes, she makes her way through the whole stack of albums, losing herself in the memories. Other days, she flips through only a few pages before she’s had enough. Sometimes, she goes through the photos chronologically; other times, randomly.
Today, it’s random.
Jeremy in his new room, Jeremy at the carnival with a helium balloon, Jeremy on the first day of school, Jeremy with Elsa…
Your son looks just like you, people used to say, and she would smile. It was true. Jeremy, with his black hair and eyes, was the spitting image of Elsa.
He’s smiling in many of the early photographs—yet his eyes betray a hint of desolation, even then. Why didn’t Elsa notice that in person? Why can she only see it in retrospect, captured on film? Why now, when it’s too late to help him?
But you did try to help him. You just couldn’t figure out how. You didn’t get the chance.
Frustrated, she puts the album aside and carries her half-full mug into the kitchen. After pouring the lukewarm tea down the drain, she carefully rinses every trace from the white porcelain basin. The protective glaze has worn away, leaving the surface porous; vulnerable to stains, cracks, scratches.
Lost in thought, Elsa runs the tap for a long time, absently watching the water engulf imperfections that can never be washed away.
Water. Uh-oh.
Abruptly, she turns off the faucet, slips her bare feet into a pair of sandals, and steps outside.
The forgotten sprinkler rotates with a rhythmic pattering, drenching a wide swath of the front walkway. Elsa waits for it to pass, then darts over to the spigot. She turns the valve and the spray becomes a trailing dribble, then a steady drip into the flowerbed.
Even from a few yards away, she can see the results of the prolonged drenching, but she steps closer, just to be sure.
Yes.
The plants that were seemingly wilted beyond salvation have miraculously sprung back to life.
For a long time, Elsa stands staring at the rejuvenated garden, wondering whether it just might be a sign.
Her mind made up, she goes inside.
It’s time to call Mike Fantoni.
As she walks down the hall toward her room, Sadie shivers in her wet bathing suit.
Maybe she shouldn’t have insisted on going into the water one last time after the swings.
Mommy was anxious to leave the pool, but Sadie wasn’t ready yet. It wasn’t that she was having so much fun—just that she dreaded going back home.
“Can I stay here with Ryan?” she asked her mother.
“No. He’s with his friends.”
Sadie turned to her sister. “Will you stay with me?”
“No, I want to go, too.” Lucy didn’t even bother to look at her. She seemed more obsessed with her phone today than usual, checking it every two seconds.
“Why don’t you want to leave, Sadie?” Mommy asked.
“Because I want to go back into the pool,” she lied. “Pleeeeeeease.”
Mommy let her. Only for ten minutes. It was freezing cold and it wasn’t even fun. Sadie didn’t know any of the other kids her age. They were all playing together on one end of the wide steps as she splashed around, shivering, on the other.
But she figured anything was better than going home.
Now that she’s here, though, it’s not so bad. Not upstairs, anyway.
But the downstairs looks different now without all the stuff Mom gave away. Sadie isn’t comfortable there.
And Mommy said yesterday that she was going to clean out the bedrooms next.
Not my room. No way, José.
That’s what Daddy used to say whenever he was in a good mood, a long time ago.
No way, José.
Sadie hasn’t heard him say that in a long time.
The second floor is drafty. All the bedroom doors are open for the cross breeze, and the ceiling fans are on.
As Sadie approaches her bedroom door, she reminds herself that she needs to duck under the fishing line from now on.
She’s about to, when she stops short at the threshold.
The fishing line no longer stretches across the doorway.
How can that be?
She made sure it was in place before they left earlier. She was the last one down the stairs; Mommy and Lucy were already waiting for her by the back door.
That can only mean one thing.
Someone was in the house—in her room—while they were gone.
“Mom!”
For a moment, Lauren can’t tell which of her daughters is calling for her—or where the voice is coming from.
Lucy, she realizes. She’s still outside in the yard.
“Mom!”
Lauren hurries to the back door, wondering if Lucy stepped on a bee or something.
But there’s nothing gingerly about her daughter’s barefoot dash across the grass toward the house—and she’s waving her phone in her outstretched hand.
Lauren immediately prepares herself for the worst—until she sees Lucy’s expression.
It’s not bad news, because her daughter is grinning broadly, her face etched in relief.
“Guess what? I just heard from Daddy!” she announces exuberantly. “He’s totally fine!”
CHAPTER TWELVE
At dawn on Tuesday morning, Marin awakens in an empty bed with a splitting headache.
That Garvey isn’t here isn’t unusual. He frequently goes for an early morning run.
That she didn’t stir when he left is most definitely unusual.
Marin attributes it—and the fact that her head is pounding—to her own foolishness the day and night before. The chocolate ice cream cone on the street was the only thing she’d ingested all day—followed by a champagne toast to her husband and two glasses of red wine at last night’s fund-raiser dinner—a meal she didn’t even get a chance to eat.
That part wasn’t her fault. She had ordered the vegetarian entree. There was a mix-up in the kitchen, and she was served beef instead. By the time they brought her a new plate, the head table had been summoned for a photo op, and she was whisked off on an empty stomach.
Flashbulbs, people, endless small talk, smiling until her face hurt…
All in the line of wifely duty.
After the fund-raiser, Garvey was off to another event. She collapsed into bed beside an empty pillow, wondering, in a wine-induced melancholy, if marrying him had been the worst mistake of her life.
No. Not the worst mistake.
She knows what that was. She’s been paying for it every day for more than twenty years now.
Twenty-one years, five months, and three days. She could figure out the hours, too, if the prospect of turning her head to the nightstand to check the digital clock wasn’t so excruciating.
She should probably get up. She has a million things to do today—as she does every day—and she never allows herself to linger in bed.
But maybe just for a few more minutes…
Marin closes her eyes and wills herself back to sleep, but sleep refuses to come. Instead, s
he finds herself looking back—something she rarely allows. If you keep moving, stay busy enough, there’s no time to lie around and wonder what might have been, if only…
Everyone in Marin’s world had wanted her to marry Garvey. She’s well aware that few—if any—of the Quinns were rooting for Garvey to marry her.
True, she had gone to all the right schools, worn all the right clothes, traveled in the same circles as Garvey. That they met in the first place really wasn’t surprising. That they made it down the aisle surprised everyone—except the two of them.
They were crazy about each other. They had everything in common—well, everything that mattered. Or so Marin believed, at first.
She, too, had been raised in the Back Bay—though not in a four-story brick townhouse that had been in the family for generations. Her entrepreneurial parents were as wealthy as—if not wealthier than—the Quinns. But nouveau riche didn’t cut it in Garvey’s world.
Perhaps her biggest sin, as far as Garvey’s famously conservative family—and, at first, even Garvey himself—were concerned: Marin didn’t go to church.
In addition to his law degree, Garvey had obtained a master in theological studies from Harvard Divinity. He spoke seven languages, including Hindi, Arabic, Latin, and Hebrew. But he didn’t speak Marin’s.
“I don’t believe in atheism,” Garvey informed her early in their courtship—but not early enough to nip their romance in the bud. It was already too late for that.
“Well, I don’t believe in God,” she shot back.
“How can you not?”
Marin shrugged. “I wasn’t raised with religion.”
She could tell it was a deal breaker right then.
Sure enough, he soon made a halfhearted attempt to stop seeing her. That lasted about twenty-four miserable hours.
Then they were back in each other’s arms, and to hell with the rest of the world.
Had Marin known Garvey all her life, she might have recognized that she was his brief—and only—rebellion. It was fueled, she later realized, by the most meaningful loss of his life: the recent death of his grandmother, Eleanor Harding Quinn.
Marin has never quite been able to grasp her husband’s complicated relationship with his grandmother, whose formidable influence far overshadowed even that of his own parents. As far as Marin can tell, the relationship was built on a foundation of mutual respect rather than genuine affection.
No one other than Garvey seemed to miss the family matriarch. If anything, there was almost an air of relief that she was gone. Once, when her name came up at a family gathering, one of the more distant cousins intimated that Eleanor had suffered from some kind of mental illness. But the subject was dropped immediately, and when Marin asked Garvey about it, he replied that it was the cousin, and not his grandmother, who was crazy.
Marin wasn’t surprised. She knew how much Garvey’s grandmother meant to him. Eleanor wanted for Garvey what he wanted for himself. Her death—unexpected, from pneumonia—brought her grandson either profound grief or perhaps, Marin suspects, subconscious relief, a fleeting reprieve.
In any case, Garvey temporarily lost sight of his goals. Maybe he needed to blow off some steam after all those years spent living up to his grandmother’s ideal. Maybe he wanted to fall in love. Or maybe he needed to. Maybe it was just part of the master plan.
Every great man needs a loyal woman by his side, he told Marin—so frequently that she sometimes felt as though he’d been keeping a checklist of all the elements necessary to get him to where he wanted to be.
Family Pedigree: the Quinn bloodline went back to the Mayflower. Check.
Ivy League Education: Harvard Divinity and Harvard Law, like his father and grandfather before him. Check.
Trust Fund: kicked in when he turned twenty-one. Check.
Loyal Woman: enter Marin. Check.
“How would you like to be first lady one day?” he asked her not long before he proposed, and she knew he was dead serious.
“I’d love it,” she told him. But she didn’t really mean it.
What she really meant was, I love you.
Nothing else mattered back then.
His parents had no choice but to go along with the engagement. It was either that or disown their only son.
Their June wedding date was set well over a year in advance, to be one of the biggest social events of the season.
Then, the September before it was to take place, Marin found herself pregnant.
She dreaded telling Garvey. She kept telling herself that he would understand and support the decision she had already made—and that everything would work out for the best.
She was dead wrong.
Running along the reservoir in the predawn gloom, Garvey is alone today. Yesterday’s meeting was a risk—slight, but a risk just the same.
Two days in a row would be foolhardy. He doesn’t even like to risk phone calls—though he received two yesterday.
Both times he saw the familiar number pop up in the caller ID, he sensed it wasn’t going to be good news—and he was right.
This is going to take more time than he expected. More time, and a helluva lot more money. But there’s no choice. Now is not the time to get sloppy.
“Tread carefully,” was his curt advice. “Do you understand me? I don’t want any red flags going up over there just now. It’s too soon after the others.”
“Don’t worry. I’ve been watching them. I already have a plan. All I need to do is borrow—”
“Don’t tell me what you need to do! Just do it.”
The less he knows, the better. That’s what he thought at the time, anyway.
Now, however, he wonders.
Borrow…
Borrow what? Borrow from whom?
“Borrow” implies that someone else will be involved. And that’s out of the question. Surely it’s a given that from here on in, it’s just the two of them.
And then, when all is said and done…
It’ll be just me.
There was a time when he’d have been pained at the prospect of losing his only true confidant: the one person who knows his darkest secret and understands why he did what he did.
Not anymore.
Now Garvey doesn’t need anyone.
No. That’s wrong. He needs his family. Marin. Caroline.
What about Annie?
How many times has his wife asked him that very question?
Always, he lies. Tells her that he needs Annie, loves Annie, too. Of course he does. Isn’t he her father?
Garvey’s eyes narrow.
She’s your child, Garvey. That’s all that matters now.
He can still hear Marin’s voice; still see her tearstained face as she held out the pink swaddled bundle.
He forced himself to take it, forced himself to glance down at the baby he wished had never been born. Unlike her big sister, Annie looked nothing like a Quinn. But he could forgive her that. He thought he could forgive her—and Marin—the rest of it, too.
Maybe he could have, if she hadn’t been such a demanding baby from the start. So different from Caroline. Annie was colicky. Annie had allergies and asthma. Annie kept the household up all night with her screaming.
“Difficult babies become easygoing kids later,” Marin liked to say. “And vice versa.”
“Where’d you hear that?” he’d ask, and Marin would shrug. She heard a lot of things.
When all was said and done, she was half right. Annie turned out to be an easygoing child. Even now, at fourteen, she tends to go with the flow.
Not Caroline. But she’s certainly not difficult. Willful, yes. But that’s a characteristic Garvey wholeheartedly admires. Caroline is a Quinn, through and through.
He can’t help the way he feels about his daughters. And it’s not as though he treats Annie any differently. Like Caroline, she has everything she needs, and pretty much everything she wants, from designer clothes to her own horse boarded up in Westchester—though b
oth girls have lost interest, lately, in riding. They used to love to spend weekends on the trails at Greymeadow.
Ah, well. That’s how it goes. Children grow up.
If they’re lucky.
Garvey’s thoughts turn to the little girl up in Glenhaven Park—somebody else’s daughter.
No, he doesn’t need the details.
He doesn’t want to know.
He just wants—needs—it to be over, one way or another.
Yawning deeply, Lauren pads barefoot into the still-darkened kitchen and flips on the light.
She probably would have had a sleepless night even without Sadie in her bed, but it was impossible to doze off with her neck in a four-year-old’s stranglehold for much of the night. Sadie kept saying she was scared, but she refused to say why—and frankly, Lauren didn’t press her. She had other things to worry about.
Just when she thought she was starting to accept and move past the worst thing Nick could have done—having an affair and asking for a divorce—he had to go and top himself.
Lucy, honey, I got all your messages and I’m sorry I didn’t make it back yesterday. I need a few extra days off to think things through. I love you. Please tell Mom I’ll be in touch soon.
The moment Lauren read the text message on Lucy’s phone, her momentary elation that Nick was alive and well—which had just replaced her fear that something had happened to him—gave way to sheer rage.
He needs a few days off to think what through?
What the hell is he talking about?
Lauren immediately called—and texted—both his phones to ask him the details, and of course he had ignored her.
Coward.
He should have discussed the change in plans directly with her in the first place, not with the kids.
Ryan called from the pool to report a similar text message on his phone. He was so relieved to have heard from his father that he, like Lucy, didn’t seem to hold Nick accountable for their ruined Sunday plans or all the needless worry.
As far as the two of them are concerned, all that matters is that their father is okay. Then it was life as usual. By last night, they were both caught up in their typical exchange of phone calls and IMs with their friends.
Live to Tell Page 18
