All the Broken People

by Leah Konen

  “No,” I said. “I don’t see many people on this street.”

  “Okay.” She sighed. “At first he was going on about a criminal case, but nothing ever came of it; then he started talking about a lawsuit. He hasn’t filed yet—from what I hear, his lawyer is still speaking to people in town, trying to get witnesses to assassinate John’s character—but it’s going to happen very soon. It has to. In New York, the statute of limitations for emotional distress is only one year.”

  Vera bit at one of her nails, then stopped abruptly, lacing her hands together. “I spoke to a lawyer. Since Claire hasn’t reported a crime, the police can’t charge John for statutory rape, but she—well, her father—can sue us for emotional distress, and the damages have a high ceiling. Even if he can’t prove it, even if Claire won’t testify, we could be tied up in it anyway, hemorrhaging money. He hates John, he believes his daughter has been violated, and he’s not going to let it go,” she said. “Any lawyer worth their salt starts at three hundred dollars an hour. We’ve only got twenty grand saved between the two of us. That’s sixty-six hours of work, Lucy—I’ve calculated it more than once—not even two goddamn weeks. We would be completely wiped out by a lawsuit, and once the savings were gone, we would have to take out a second mortgage, dip into the little equity we have in the house. And if Sam Alby did win . . . the house, the cabin, the business, it’s all in both of our names. He could take everything. It would destroy us.”

  She tugged at the ends of her hair. “John found this area an hour west of Lake George in the Adirondacks. It’s really remote, all woods and state land. He wants to go there, not tell anyone where we’re going. If we use our savings and rent out the house, if the gallery sells a bit more, if we had one big show that could kind of put it on the map, perhaps we could come back after the statute of limitations is up, once things have died down . . . Don’t look at me like that.”

  “Like what?” I asked.

  “Like I’m foolish,” she said. “The more I think about it, the more John and I talk about it, the more I know it’s foolish. I know moving, even if John calls it disappearing, isn’t going to stop a lawsuit from going through. If we go, we have to really go. We have to make damn sure Sam can’t harass us anymore—and that his lawyers can’t find us. Sometimes I think this asshole won’t stop unless John is dead.”

  Van Gogh. The name, the way they’d morbidly turned it into a verb, rang in my head. Their always joke.

  Dusty jumped down, leaving white hairs all over Vera’s black leggings.

  “Look,” she said, lifting a hand before I could ask any more questions. “I’m sorry to spring all this on you, it’s not your problem to solve. I just hope you won’t hold this against us.”

  “Of course not,” I said. “I would never hold anything against you. I just, I don’t understand—”

  Her hand found my knee, squeezed, almost a touch too hard. “Let’s not talk about it anymore, okay? Let’s just try and go back to normal. We care about you, Lucy, we really do. Have dinner with us. We can even go somewhere nice. Screw Sam, we can even go somewhere public. There’s a place just down the road in Kingston that’s having a grand opening tonight. It’s only fifteen minutes away, but hey, at least it’s a different town. It could be our treat.”

  “You don’t have to do that.”

  “I want to,” she said. “Please.”

  I hesitated, questions dancing in my mind. Questions I could tell she didn’t want to answer. But did the details even matter right now? I had skeletons, too, plenty of them. We were linked, the three of us, by our torrid backstories. There was a reason we’d met, and I knew it maybe better than they did. They were the best thing that had ever happened to me, and I understood, deep down, that they were good. Our friendship couldn’t just end, half-cocked plan or not. “Okay.”

  Vera stood up, brushing off Dusty’s fur. “Forget we said anything about this. I’ll see you tonight.”

  I nodded, but I knew as well as she did that I wouldn’t forget. I couldn’t.

  * * *

  • • •

  The restaurant was dark, accented in rich wood and painted a shade of burgundy, like a scene out of The Maltese Falcon.

  The waitress led us to a booth in the corner, John and Vera piling into one side, me on the other. I hadn’t seen John in days, and I noticed the changes in him like a lover would. His eyes were puffy, as if he hadn’t been sleeping well. His beard was unkempt, needing a trim.

  I glanced around, wondering if the gossip mill extended beyond the confines of Woodstock. My eyes caught a woman across the restaurant, her head turned toward us, her eyes fixed on John. Christ, I thought. Maybe it really was that bad.

  I kept my gaze focused straight ahead as the waitress came and went, rattling off specials, bringing us wine, taking our orders, things that none of us could really afford—lobster fettuccine for John, rack of lamb for Vera, grilled branzino for me.

  When the menus were gone, John looked up, his eyes quickly casing the room before landing on me. “Vera said she told you everything.”

  Vera set her wineglass down, nudging him. “I told you we weren’t going to talk about it tonight.”

  “I know,” John said. “I just—I want to thank you, Lucy, for believing me.”

  I bit my lip, feeling suddenly awkward. I stole another glance around the restaurant, spotted another woman looking over, but it was hard to tell if I was being paranoid or not.

  “It’s nothing,” I said, turning back to John. “I hope you’d believe me if it ever came down to it.”

  “Obviously I would,” John said.

  I took a deep breath, wanting to say more, wanting to say what I’d been thinking since Vera left my cottage . . .

  “All right, enough already,” Vera said, lifting her glass. “Cheers. To putting all this behind us.”

  We lifted our glasses and clinked them together, quickly falling back into the comfortable familiarity of our little trio, leaving the bombshells of the last few days unspoken.

  It wasn’t until our dinners came out, smelling of rosemary and lemon and earthy roasted goodness, and I took a first bite of fish, that I again got up the guts to say what was on my mind. I swallowed. “Whatever the plan is, I want to come with you.”

  Vera froze, a forkful of bleeding lamb hovering in front of her mouth. John grasped at his wine.

  I flaked off another bit of fish, summoning all the courage I had in me. “I know that sounds wild, and I know you guys are still figuring out what you’re doing, and we’ve only known each other a short time, but if you do go, I don’t have ties here. My ties here are . . . you.”

  Their hands intertwined, and Vera’s mouth opened to deliver her verdict.

  A crash, a wine bottle smashing onto her plate, breaking her glass, sending bones of lamb flying—onto the table, onto John’s dish, into Vera’s lap.

  The wine was everywhere, droplets spattering the bottom of Vera’s chin as if she’d been shot in the heart, covering my branzino, turning the white fish purple.

  “Goddamn it,” Vera yelled.

  “What the hell?” John looked up, became a statue.

  The man responsible for the spill was large, with a thick neck and sausage-fingered hands. He looked to be in his mid-fifties, with receding gray-brown hair, and he wore a button-up denim shirt, Brillo-pad hairs crawling from beneath worn cuffs. His eyes were fixed on John.

  “Oh my god, I’m so sorry!” our waitress cried, hurrying over.

  “Sorry about that,” the man told her, his voice almost comically apologetic. “I tripped on my way out, knocked their wine bottle right over.”

  “It’s okay, sir,” she said, surveying the damage as everyone around us stared. Vera blotted at the front of her shirt with a napkin, her gaze fixed on her lap. “Let me go get someone to help.”

  The man’s eyes turned to slits
once the waitress was out of sight. He looked disdainful, disgusted, but at the same time disturbingly calm. He didn’t look at me or Vera, only at John.

  “She was sixteen, you pervert,” he said, before walking away.

  THIRTEEN

  Come over,” Vera said as soon as we reached Shadow Creek Road. “We can’t let the night end like this.”

  “Of course,” I said. John pulled into their driveway, and we all got out, still half in shock.

  Once inside, Vera went upstairs to change and John headed to the kitchen to make us a much-needed drink.

  I sat on the couch, caught the sound of glasses clinking, and leaned back, sinking deeper into the cushions.

  They will definitely leave me now, I thought. No question.

  I sat up straight, my body rigid, something digging into my back from the bowels of the overstuffed sofa. Turning, I lifted a throw to uncover the brass edges of a picture frame. I flipped it over. Vera grinned back, soft and sultry, like she’d taken some kind of course on maximizing her smile. John squinted, as if the flash had temporarily blinded him. And there she was, sandwiched between them, her auburn hair glossy.

  Rachel.

  Her smile was open and free, laugh lines etched into relief by the harsh lighting of the flash. She looked happy. They all did. Genuinely. What had changed? Had the rumors been too much for her? Or had something actually gone on between her and John?

  “You can give that to me.”

  I jumped. Vera stood over me, hand reaching for the frame. Her voice was unusually cold, her face blank. “Stuff is always turning up in there,” she said, offering a weak smile. “The cushions are too deep.”

  “I wasn’t trying to pry.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t care if you did, you know me. I’m just shaken up from tonight.” She gripped the frame tight in her hands. “That’s our old neighbor, Rachel, the one we told you about.”

  I know.

  “Oh,” I said instead, clearing my throat.

  Vera blinked rapidly, her hand still on the corner of the frame, and I wondered if I should tell her that Rachel had been to the cottage, that I’d given her her mail, swapped numbers with her.

  Only, so much had happened tonight, it didn’t seem like the right time. Or maybe I didn’t want to risk hurting Vera—or, worse, hurting my own standing with her.

  John came out then, glasses clinking. “Sorry,” he said, forcing a laugh. “Ice tray malfunction.”

  Vera turned on her heel, strutting toward a cabinet in the corner of the room. She opened the top drawer, tossed the frame in, and shut it firmly, then opened another drawer and began to rifle through it.

  John took a seat and swirled his glass, became suddenly enamored by the ice inside it.

  After only a moment, Vera returned, tossing a sheet of paper and a blank, torn-open envelope on the coffee table. I leaned forward. The paper was standard size, with big words printed in the middle, typed in an ugly font, one only nominally better than Comic Sans, one my dad used to use on his letterhead. For a moment, I completely forgot about Rachel.

  GO BACK TO BROOKLYN YOU PERVERTS

  “Jesus,” I said, scooting back.

  John didn’t look up, but Vera cleared her throat. “Sam Alby, who you had the pleasure of meeting tonight, sure has a way with words, doesn’t he?”

  “He left you that note,” I said. It wasn’t exactly a question.

  “Most likely,” she said. “Or maybe it was one of his loser friends. Or his wife, for all I know, over here, checking on things. You’ve never met her, have you?”

  “His wife? No, I don’t even—”

  “The notes started in April, just after the classes ended,” John said, cutting me off. “They come pretty regularly now. Got this one just last week.”

  The graffiti flashed to mind. It had to be the same guy. “Have you told the police?”

  Vera began ticking off her fingers. “About the letters, yes. About the tires slashed on John’s truck. The graffiti on our gallery. And about the dead rabbit that showed up on our doorstep, too.”

  “A dead animal? God.”

  Vera nodded. “Just a few days ago, in fact. Thank god we don’t have a dog or a cat or something, or else I’m pretty sure we wouldn’t anymore.”

  I closed my eyes. Suddenly, I wanted to be with Dusty, holding him as close as I could.

  When I opened them again, Vera was scratching at the corner of her lip. John, for his part, had returned to staring at his drink. He looked almost green.

  “The police don’t care,” Vera said. “Think it’s just some drunk teenager. Or maybe a hunter, annoyed by the anti-gun bumper stickers we used to have on our cars.”

  “I still wonder who down at the station came up with that creative line of reasoning,” John said, briefly looking up, his eyes catching Vera’s.

  “We know it’s him,” Vera said firmly. Taking the note from the table, she folded it and meticulously slid it back into the envelope, as if she’d done it many times before, and returned it to the drawer. “We’re not even from Brooklyn. No offense,” she added with a small smile, returning to her place next to John, setting a hand protectively on his thigh. “But I suppose it doesn’t matter to him. The Daily Freeman does pieces on Brooklynites coming up here often enough, I think he lumps us all together.” She reached for her drink, took a cautious sip, and turned to John. On the floor, her foot tapped, impatient. “Do you believe me now?”

  He took a sip, but his mouth puckered, as if the whiskey had somehow gone rancid.

  “Does he believe you about what?” I asked.

  Vera sighed. “Since the talk of the lawsuit, we’ve known we had to get out of here. If we stay, he’ll destroy us financially. Or else”—her breath came shakily, her voice half-cracked—“or else one of these days, he’ll get tired of hurting us indirectly and actually do something to John. He’s already slashed his tires. How hard would it be to cut the brake line? The cops would never be able to prove it was Sam, even if they did care enough to try and figure it out.”

  Her eyes briefly caught her husband’s, then turned back to mine. “Where we disagree is, John hopes that it’s all going to drop by us moving and not telling anyone where we go, waiting out the statute of limitations, but I think we need to . . . I don’t know, I think we need to do something a bit more drastic.”

  Abruptly, John set his glass down. He gulped, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down, then pressed his palms to his knees, as if willing his hands not to shake. He nodded to Vera, then turned to me, eyes steady on mine. “You know that hike we went on, right when we first met?” he asked. “Vera’s idea is, well . . . I’m not sure if you remember, but a girl died there.”

  “How could I forget?” I asked, feeling again that back-of-the-neck, hair-standing-up sensation, like Dusty with his hackles up. Knowing true safety couldn’t be guaranteed anywhere.

  Vera leaned ever so slightly forward. “We want to be honest with you, Lucy.”

  “I thought you were being honest with me,” I said. “I can’t handle any more secrets. It’s like emotional whiplash.”

  She nodded. “What I’m trying to say is, can what we say not leave this room? Hell, not leave this coffee table?”

  “You can trust me,” I said.

  Vera’s hands were folded neatly in her lap. “I was thinking if John, you know, actually disappeared, maybe this would go away.”

  “You already told me that,” I said.

  “No, if it really looked like he was gone,” she went on. “If he and I went to that spot, and he went off the trail—he’s an experienced enough hiker to find his way—and if I told the police he fell, I think they’d believe me. Sam Alby would have no choice but to drop this.”

  My gaze darted between them as I tried to understand.

  “It’s not as far-fetched as it sounds,” J
ohn said. “They didn’t find the girl for weeks. She was way down, past where the river feeds into the Hudson. It was awful, but Vera thinks, because of that, it would be believable if they didn’t find me, that people would assume I’d drowned . . .”

  “Wait,” I said, jaw agape. “You’re not actually serious. Faking your own death?”

  It was ridiculous, something cribbed from a noir movie. People didn’t do that in real life.

  They do, though.

  Vera’s eyes caught mine, and silence hung between us, neither one of them trying to set me straight. “Van Gogh,” I said finally.

  Vera laughed. “Yes, Van Gogh,” she said, blinking too fast. “I didn’t tell you before because I wasn’t even sure John was on board.” Her eyes flashed to her husband’s. “Are you?”

  John bit his lip. “I don’t think I really have a choice anymore.”

  Vera turned back to me. “Are you absolutely horrified?”

  I paused. For the first time in ages, I held the power, not them. “Why are you telling me now?”

  Vera spoke first: “You’re like family to us. We owe you the truth.”

  I pursed my lips. “How would it even work?”

  John scratched his chin. “You saw it, that hike isn’t far from my studio. Vera’s idea is, I would go there, rest until dark, then leave in the middle of the night, head up to Lake George. It’s not totally foolproof. Vera would have to get a car with plates that weren’t tied to me . . .”

  Vera cut in. “I would manage it, don’t worry. There’s a guy, he’s an artist, but he has other ways of making money, too.” She turned to me. “John would drive up that night, but I would stay. I could mourn, keep the gallery going, and try to sell his works. Eventually, I’d put the farmhouse and the cabin on the market, get out the little equity we have, hire someone to manage the gallery, and join John when things were in good shape and his death was accepted as a finality.”