All the Broken People

by Leah Konen

  Maggie’s eyes flitted around the room. She wanted to talk about it, only didn’t know how.

  “You heard what happened?” I asked.

  “Well . . .”

  “It’s okay,” I said. “I figured you had. About Sam.”

  “I’m glad he’s caught,” she said. “No one deserves to be murdered, no matter what they’ve done.”

  “I’m glad, too.”

  Maggie dug deep in her pocket. “By the way,” she said, tossing a silver key onto the table between us. “I was organizing, and I found this.”

  I reached for it, fingering the edges of the metal.

  “It’s the old spare key I had,” she said. “Rachel gave it to me when she lived here.”

  “Oh,” I said, pausing. “I don’t think it works anymore. Ms. Moon”—I raised my eyebrows—“or Mrs. Alby, I guess, said the locks were changed when Rachel moved.”

  “Yes, I’m sure they were,” Maggie said matter-of-factly. “You can get rid of it if you want, but I felt weird having it. I used to water her plants and things when Vera wasn’t able to.”

  “Vera had a key, too?” I don’t know why I hadn’t thought of it before, that Rachel’s neighbors might have a spare. Ellie had had one of mine in Brooklyn. So did the lady upstairs, just in case Davis or I ever got locked out.

  Maggie folded her hands in her lap. “Oh, of course Vera had a spare key, same as me. Those two were thick as thieves, popping back and forth between each other’s places constantly—until things went sour.”

  Claire was pregnant.

  “Right,” I said. “Because of everything with Claire.”

  “Yes,” Maggie said. “It’s a shame how Vera handled everything. She took it all out on Rachel, who didn’t deserve it. It’s not Rachel’s fault John got the girl pregnant.”

  “You knew about that?” I asked, my cup nearly slipping from my hand.

  “Course I did. Rachel told me as soon as she found out. She was torn up about it, didn’t know what to do, what to tell Vera.”

  I raised the cup to my lips, took another sip of tea. “I wish Rachel had told Vera the truth about Claire being pregnant. Then maybe Vera wouldn’t have cut Rachel out like she did. I know Rachel didn’t want to hurt her, but—”

  Maggie’s eyebrows furrowed. “Vera knew Claire was pregnant.”

  I froze, the cup hovering in front of my face. I set it down, trying to stop my hands from shaking. “What are you talking about? Vera only just found out, when I told her.”

  “No,” Maggie said. “That’s not true.”

  Heat rose to my face. “How do you know?”

  Her eyes fixed on her teacup, fingers tracing the edge, before catching mine.

  “When Rachel refused to tell her, I told Vera myself.”

  FORTY-FIVE

  Why would Vera lie?

  I was still trying to make sense of it when Maggie left my cottage a few minutes later.

  Vera had been so shaken when I’d told her Claire was pregnant, so much so that it had sent her into a spiral, careening toward that awful night.

  I hadn’t imagined it—Vera had told me, only this morning, that it had been a shock.

  What’s more, she’d told me she’d never doubted John’s fidelity. She’d judged me when I dared to doubt him. When I had confessed to her about John waking up in my bed, her response hadn’t been what I’d expected at all. She’d made it sound like their marriage wasn’t perfect, but it was open and honest, strong in its way. Above the fray, above these rumors.

  Her words flashed at me, sending a chill down my spine.

  If they paint me as this woman scorned, that’s motive, Lucy.

  It’s always the wife, that’s what I’d told her, only I’d never truly considered it myself—not beyond a passing thought.

  She was Vera, my Vera. She wasn’t perfect, but she was good. She wasn’t capable of something like this. She loved him.

  Only . . .

  Vera was the one who knew exactly where John would be, who had never given a real explanation as to why she went over to the cabin the morning she found him. According to our plan, he was supposed to contact us. He was supposed to be deep into the Adirondacks by then.

  Vera was the one who’d called me stupid when I suggested we tell the police the truth about our plan.

  Vera had known that Claire was pregnant—or at least had known about the rumor—but had told me, point-blank, that she hadn’t.

  Looking back on that night, at the one-eighty she’d taken when I’d told her, it almost felt like she could have been overdoing it, hamming it up to show me just how shocked she was.

  But Sam had been arrested. Sam’s the one who did it.

  Unless . . .

  Unless Vera had been furious about John’s infidelity, about the fact that he got a teenager pregnant. That was enough to send anyone over the edge.

  Unless she’d capitalized on my neediness, my fear, to lure me into their plot. Made it look like John had disappeared and then killed him—then made it look like I’d killed him.

  It would explain the theft of the photos of John, the note he’d left me. Another brick in the wall to prove to the police that I was obsessed with him, a jealous lover. All of this a tryst gone wrong.

  No, Vera would never. She loved me, and I her.

  You wanted him to be a bad guy, so you could have him.

  Besides, it had to be Sam, because Sam had access to my key. Whoever had stolen the knife had had to have access to my place. There was no way around it.

  It caught my eye then—the silver gleam of the spare key Maggie had brought over.

  Of course Vera had a spare key, same as me.

  It was nothing; it didn’t even work. The locks had been changed. Everyone said so.

  Still, I picked it up, felt its ridges, its peaks and valleys. Examining it closer, it didn’t look all that different from the key I’d been using since I got here, but so many of them looked alike.

  I closed my fist around it, feeling it in my hand.

  There was no way. Vera was my friend. She was my family. She could never. She adored John. Loved him more than any of us.

  But Davis had loved me, too, in his way. Sometimes love drove us to do the worst possible thing.

  Sometimes loyalty went too far.

  It couldn’t hurt to check—could it? I walked to the front door, twisting the handle, stepping onto the porch. The cold snapped at me again, and I pulled the door slowly shut. Hands shaking, I slid the key Maggie had given me, the one Vera had a copy of, into the lock of the dead bolt. It sank in, but that didn’t mean a thing. Most keys went into just about any lock. The trick was whether they turned.

  Taking a deep breath, I tried to turn it.

  Instant relief. It didn’t budge.

  Only there, a niggling in the back of my brain, a teensy objection.

  Sometimes the lock was sticky. I knew this from turning it so many times myself.

  I pulled the door closer to me, a matter of millimeters, but millimeters, I knew, could make a difference, and I attempted to turn the key again.

  It was like my timeline split into before and after. Trust and deceit. Love and violence. Vera and a woman maybe I didn’t know at all.

  Because the key turned.

  It worked.

  FORTY-SIX

  I was ready when I saw Vera pull out of her driveway and continue down the road, at the helm of her murdered husband’s truck.

  I headed for the farmhouse immediately—I didn’t know where she was going, or how long she’d be gone—cutting across the frosted grass as soon as it came into view, making for the back door.

  I’d seen Vera do it a couple of times when we’d had too much to drink and had locked ourselves out of the back. A multicolored ceramic owl perched along one of the
flower beds. I knelt down and lifted it, praying she hadn’t changed her hiding place. A glint of metal and a rush of relief. A key ring with two keys, marked clearly with circular tabs labeled in John’s chicken scratch. One for the farmhouse. One for the cabin.

  The key turned easily, and I stepped into her kitchen, quickly looking around. It was even more of a wreck than normal. Piles of dishes sat, unrinsed, in the sink. No fewer than three pots rested on the stove, old pasta and grime caked onto the bottoms. On the small kitchen island, a mostly drunk bottle of pinot noir sat next to dirty wineglasses and a thick stack of junk mail. I heard the creak of a floorboard, like someone was in the hallway, and my heart raced as I spun around, but no one was there. It was just the farmhouse, settling. Telling me it knew I was here even if she didn’t.

  My eyes darted around the room. At the tile, cracked in places. At the molding, beautiful but dusty. I had been here so many times, but never before had I been here like this, prying, chasing whatever secrets she was keeping from me.

  Maybe she hadn’t even held on to Rachel’s spare key. Maybe this was all just a big misunderstanding.

  The junk drawer was packed to the brim, still just as full as when John had rifled through it, looking for the baggie of weed, the first night I came over for dinner. I sank a hand into its midst—the police must have had a field day with all of this—take-out menus; loose screws and nails; batteries that had to be expired covered in dust; pamphlets for microwaves, toaster ovens, a rice cooker; papers that must have held significance at one time but surely didn’t anymore. And keys, multiple sets of them, but none of them looked like mine.

  I searched frantically, pushing papers aside, making a mess of it all but knowing she’d never be able to tell the difference, it was such a wreck already.

  I was close to giving up—I’d looked through every drawer in the kitchen and had returned again to the cluttered junk drawer—when my hand came across it, nestled in the back among unused brackets for IKEA furniture.

  A single key, silver, and the same shape as mine. With a tab on it, labeled by John. RACHEL.

  I slipped it into my pocket, but it wasn’t enough. It could just be a coincidence. I needed something more.

  I hunted for Vera’s laptop, an old MacBook Air she used mainly for email that she kept tucked away next to her art books on the bottom shelf of the coffee table in the living room.

  When I didn’t find it there, I checked everywhere: her bedroom, littered with dirty clothes, unwashed sheets; the office, packed with books but free of loose papers; even the spare bedroom, filled with John’s things. It was only when I was back downstairs that I realized it: The police had taken my laptop. They might have taken hers as well.

  I had to focus. Who knew how much time I had? I walked toward the armoire, opening its drawers, where she’d once tucked away those notes from Sam, that photo of her, John, and Rachel.

  In the top drawer, I found it, the picture frame I’d nearly sat on that night. I grabbed the velvet backing and flipped it over.

  Breath caught in my throat. The photo was marked, thick Sharpie over Rachel’s face, turning Vera’s once friend into nothing more than a black hole, like she’d never even existed.

  I took a few steps back, my heart racing. This didn’t mean anything. She didn’t like Rachel; I knew that.

  I put the frame away and returned to the kitchen, gazing again at the junk drawer, the key that had been stored there, ready to use whenever she wanted.

  I imagined Vera, manic, blacking out Rachel’s face. The anger I’d seen at Platform only a few nights ago. What if that was only the tip of the iceberg?

  What if Vera hated Rachel not because she didn’t believe John, but because she was the one who exposed to her who her husband really was?

  What if she hated John even more?

  Frantically, I began searching through her mail, picking through West Elm catalogs and credit card offers, a padded yellow envelope, until two words caught my eye. “Mass Mutual.”

  A life insurance company. A letter addressed to Vera Abernathy.

  With shaking fingers, I tore it open: A collection of papers, seven or eight of them. Near the top, it read, in formal, bureaucratic type:

  This letter is to inform you that your claim is under review.

  I flipped more pages, hungry for details. On the last page, I found it, the information about the policy. It was, indeed, a life insurance policy, taken out on John, to the tune of three million dollars. It was purchased six months ago, right around when the rumors had started, and it was a large policy—unusually so. Could this have just been one more step in her plan?

  Or was I being paranoid? They were married—and in bad financial straits. Was it so crazy she’d take out a policy on him? But why six months ago, exactly? And why for so much?

  I pushed the papers away, as if they were scalding—a burning truth I’d never, ever wanted to uncover—but as I shoved them, a chain reaction: The stack of junk mail and catalogs struck the bottle of pinot noir. It clattered against the island, then rolled onto the floor, taking a wineglass with it, crashing to the ground, making me jump.

  The bottle didn’t break, but the glass did, sending shards all over the floor, the wine surrounding it like a bloodstain.

  I grabbed the Mass Mutual letter, folded it tightly, and shoved it into my pocket. I lunged for the wine bottle next, setting it back on the island where it had been.

  I grabbed a wad of paper towels, tossing them onto the floor, then used another wad to sop up the mess on the island.

  I froze.

  The padded yellow envelope, the one that had been on the bottom of the stack of mail. It was unsealed. Something was peeking out from it.

  Something familiar.

  That marred corner of silk I knew so well. My mother’s scarf.

  There was a grumble of gravel and the truck’s growling engine, a sound I would always associate with John, with a man I thought I’d known much better than I had. Fuck.

  I had only moments before Vera returned, before she walked in on me in her kitchen, before she knew exactly how much I knew.

  Why did she have my scarf?

  With quivering fingers, I tugged at the piece of fabric, extracting it from the envelope.

  The engine of the truck cut off. Only a few more seconds and she’d be walking in, catching me.

  As I pulled it out farther, the scarf unfurled, and there was a sudden clatter, unexpected, as stainless steel and red Lucite smashed against ceramic tile.

  Then, my heartbeat so loud, banging against my ribs.

  The knife I’d been missing was caked with blood.

  The knife I’d been missing had been wrapped up in my mother’s scarf and stored in an envelope, ready to send to the police, ready to make my guilt complete.

  Vera had used her key to get into my cottage. Vera had taken my knife. Vera had used it.

  My stomach ached, and my chest seemed to constrict; I gasped for air, clawing at my throat with both hands. Only, Davis wasn’t holding me down now—she was.

  Vera, the woman I’d thought would take care of me. The woman I’d thought was my friend. She’d killed her own husband. She had killed John. She had put everything in motion to try to make me go down for it.

  Me, her friend. Me, the woman she’d promised to protect. Whom she’d said she loved.

  Then, the sound of the key turning in the lock, of Vera’s steps echoing across the hardwood floors. Desperate to protect myself, I grabbed the wine bottle, still sitting on the island, and held it tightly as her face appeared, her expression riveted in shock, in the doorway of her kitchen.

  FORTY-SEVEN

  Lucy?” Vera said. “What are you . . . what are you doing in my house?”

  “Don’t play dumb,” I said, gripping the bottle tighter. “I know the truth.”

  Vera’s e
yes flitted to the bottle in my hand, then back up to me. “What are you talking about?”

  “This,” I snapped, pointing to the knife on the ground. “You had this the whole time.”

  Her eyes caught the knife, and she drew in a quick breath. “Lucy, I—” she said. “I’m not going to do anything with that.”

  “Stop lying,” I said. I stared at this woman, this maniac. She was a sociopath, had to be. A black widow who’d spun a web that was so many steps ahead of anything John and I could even think of that we hadn’t stood a chance. “Just stop lying for one single fucking second. I’m not as stupid as you think I am.”

  “I’m not,” she said. “Just calm down. Sam’s been arrested—this is all over.”

  “How did you pull it off?” I asked, my voice aching with fear, with regret. “Grab it when you found us in bed together? Hold on to it until you could use it?”

  Vera shook her head, but my words were spilling freely now, unrestricted. “Or did you get it even before that? One of the first nights you came over? That’s why you were so eager to be friends with me from the start, right? You needed someone to pin it on. You needed me. How could you?” I asked, my voice cracking. “How could you?” My heart raced, and my hands were sweating, and yet the tears came anyway, the hurt pushing its way through all the fear and the horror.

  I had loved her, in my way. I had loved her, and all along she’d been . . . It was too awful to think.

  “It’s not like that,” Vera said, eyes flashing to the bottle, still held tight in my hand. She pointed to the knife, her hand shaking. “Please, just calm down, you’re not thinking straight. Sam’s in jail. I don’t think it was you. I know you cared about him, like I did—”

  “Bullshit,” I screamed. “You’re a fucking liar, and you’re still pretending to be on my side! You had a key to my place. You took out a three-million-dollar life insurance policy on John. You told me John never cheated on you, but you knew the whole time, you even knew Claire was pregnant—you knew he spent the night with me! You lie, lie, lie, and then you cut people out of your life when they call you on it, when they try to tell you the truth. You made me think I was going crazy. You’ve been lying to me from the beginning.”