by Liza Bennett
“I’m not here on the weekends. So perhaps Dr. Fredricks can…”
“Actually, I wasn’t on the premises myself. You know, we rotate into the prison ward. I’m on call Saturdays and …” the doctor began, but Meg interrupted, saying:
“Can we find someone who was here? We’d really like to know firsthand what took place.”
“I was thoroughly briefed,” Dr. Fredricks said. “And I can certainly walk you through the chain of events with authority. Lucinda had been admitted. Her routine physical at that time showed that her blood alcohol level was through the roof. We sent the blood sample to the lab for further testing and for a more definitive breakdown of alcohol and drugs, et cetera. No one at that time suspected she was pregnant, though the lab tests would, of course, later confirm the fact. The nurse saw that she had begun to bleed and assumed it was the beginning of her normal cycle. She gave her a menstrual pad.”
“Nobody thought to ask?” Meg demanded.
“Actually, they did. It’s a routine question here. She told them she wasn’t pregnant.”
“The bleeding worsened through the night, apparently,” Dr. Fredricks continued. “The nurse on the floor thought it was just a particularly heavy period. Lucinda, by the way, gave her no reason to think otherwise. She even demanded a painkiller at one point, complaining about her cramps.”
“But she didn’t alert you that it could be more serious than that?” Abe asked.
“Frankly,” Dr. Fredricks replied, “from what the staff has told me, she was incoherent, profane, and extremely rude. No, she made no mention—in word or deed—of her condition.”
“Surely you understand how critical some of these issues are to us,” Meg said.
“Look, this is a busy hospital,” Dr. Fredricks said. “We were shorthanded on Saturday night, doing the best we could.”
Meg stood up. She glanced over at Abe, who hadn’t moved or spoken in several minutes. He was looking thoughtfully from Meg to Dr. Fredricks.
Dr. Sutphin also rose, and walked around his desk. He took Meg’s elbow and started to lead her gently to the door. “Let us know if we can be of any further help. You can call me directly any time.”
Abe got up to join them and they had opened the door to the corridor when Meg stopped.
“I’ve a question,” she said, looking back at Dr. Fredricks. “What happened to the … baby?”
“Excuse me?”
“When Lucinda miscarried?” Meg asked. “What happened to the fetus? We are trying to determine who the father actually was.”
“As I told you before,” Dr. Fredricks said slowly, “the nurse on duty thought Lucinda was simply experiencing a particularly heavy menstruation. It wasn’t until a resident examined Sunday morning that we realized she’d in fact had a miscarriage.”
“So where’s the fetal tissue?” Meg demanded. It was the crucial question. If Ethan was the father, and Lucinda had lied about their relationship, then she could very well be lying about the murder, as well. “Apparently,” Dr. Fredricks said, “from everything we can ascertain …” He cleared his throat and continued, “we don’t think she really knew what she was doing at the time, but Lucinda flushed it down the toilet.”
14
Abe and Meg weren’t five minutes out of Montville before he asked, “You want to tell me about you and Ethan?”
Abe had a stare that could be disconcertingly personal, Meg decided, as though he was appraising your net worth as a human being.
“I’ve been wanting to for a while,” Meg replied. “It’s just not easy explaining that your brother-in-law is coming on to you.”
“He was the man Paul saw you with at lunch that day, right?” Abe said, turning back to the road. The storm that had swept up the coast the day of Ethan’s murder was to be followed, according to local forecasts, by a series of unstable, possibly dangerous weather systems over the next few days. The wind was ripping the last of the leaves off the trees and, though it was just noon, the sky was the lowering gray of early evening.
“Yes.” Meg sighed. The blocks of quiet homes circling Montville had given way to acres of farmland and rolling, wooded hills. She looked out over the rural landscape and wondered if she would ever be able to respond to its beauty again. “It started the night of his opening. We’d all had too much to drink. Lark wasn’t there. He saw me back to my place. He kissed me and he tried to—God, Abe—I just assumed he was drunk at the time.”
“And you responded … how?”
“With a lot of anger.”
“You mention it to Lark?”
“At the time it seemed unnecessary, hurtful even. I thought he’d just gotten drunk and sort of lost it.”
“But it was more than that?” Abe asked, slowing down as they neared a diner at the intersection of two county roads. It was a popular place that catered to local farmers and truck drivers, and Abe suggested that they stop there for lunch. With a subtlety that attested to his skills as a lawyer, Abe drew out the rest of the story from Meg over sandwiches and coffee.
“And you didn’t think to tell Lark yourself what Ethan was up to?” he asked after she had described her conversation with her sister the night before. “You two seem so close. That surprises me, Meg. Why were you protecting him?”
“Thinking back on it now,” Meg said, fiddling with the edge of her napkin. “I believe I just didn’t want to be the one to hurt her. It was Ethan who was causing the pain, damn it, asking for trouble. But, you know how Lark is about him—she’s still so smitten. Or was… I just can’t seem to get used to thinking about Ethan in the past tense. Anyway, I sensed she would somehow end up blaming me for it. And it turns out that I was right.”
“I’ve known and admired Lark for many years,” Abe said as he looked out the window at the half-filled parking lot. “Her feelings for that son of a bitch are, as far as I’m concerned, the one flaw in her character.”
Meg had forgotten about the bad blood between Abe and Ethan, capped in her mind by the scene at dinner over Columbus Day. But when she thought about it, she realized that Ethan and Abe had been at odds for several years. When had it started? Why? Too much to drink over a long holiday weekend? A difference of opinion about art or politics? They were both competitive, ambitious, and proud in different ways. Neither tended to keep his opinions to himself. But recently it seemed that they were disagreeing over just about everything. Whether it was tax reform, or the rightful place of the Grateful Dead in the rock and roll pantheon—you could almost count on Abe and Ethan taking different sides. The contempt in Abe’s voice when he talked about Ethan was palpable.
“I think he really managed to convince her that I was after him,” Meg said finally, breaking the silence. “And that makes me so angry. What a blatant manipulation of the facts! She was blind to what he was doing, what he was really like. Lark actually told me that other women—even Lucinda—‘threw themselves’ at Ethan.”
“In Lark’s defense,” Abe replied evenly as he signaled for their check, “Ethan was obviously very charismatic. Women did come on to him. I’ve seen the dynamic in action. He clearly had a certain appeal—a very strong one. And I’m not saying Lucinda’s lying about her feelings toward Ethan. But it’s impossible to say she’s telling the truth about what happened—she can’t remember what the truth is.”
“But she’s being honest enough about Ethan’s feelings toward her” Meg insisted. “And she’d be better off letting people think he did molest her. That would give her a motive that everyone could at least understand.”
“Explain her flushing the fetal tissue down the toilet, please,” Abe said, his direct question unsettling her.
“She didn’t know she was pregnant,” Meg said quickly, uncertain herself about this piece of the puzzle. It did look suspicious that Lucinda had destroyed the one piece of evidence linking her to the father. “She made that very clear.”
“Maybe too clear?”
“You’re just so quick to blame her.” Her tone sounded defensive,
even to her. “As far as Lucinda goes, forget any presumption of innocence.”
Abe reached across the table, touching Meg’s hand.
“Listen to me, okay?” he said. “We’ve hired an excellent lawyer for Lucinda. There’s a whole team of detectives combing the crime scene for evidence. It’s going to take a couple of months for them to complete their work and present their findings to the D.A. But I know Arthur Pearson, the D.A. He’s tough and demanding. He’ll make sure there’s an airtight case, one way or the other. The trial, if there is one, is many months off.”
“So what are you saying?” Meg asked.
“Let the professionals do their job. Stay out of it.”
“Do nothing. Close my eyes. Hope for the best,”Meg said. “That’s exactly what I did with Ethan. That’s precisely why we’re here now. Because I didn’t have the courage—the strength—to stand up against what I knew was wrong.”
“I see,” Abe said, shaking his head. He picked up the check the waitress had slipped under his plate and tapped it sideways against the tabletop. “Ethan’s murder is all your fault, right? You’re just as responsible as Lucinda because you weren’t able to reform Ethan’s character in time? It wasn’t possible for you to rid the world of evil and pain, therefore you should be blamed for its multitude of wrongs?”
“Please, you know what I’m trying to say, Abe,” Meg told him.
“Yes,” he said, standing up to go. “You feel sorry. You feel guilty. And you’re so used to being in charge of your life—your problems—that you can’t handle the fact that this one is out of your control. Lucinda’s just going to have to live with the consequences of her actions. Justified or not.”
“But, it’s not fair, Abe,” Meg said, walking with him to the register.
“Meg Hardwick.” Abe laughed, a bit sadly. “When did you ever start thinking life was fair?”
A cherry-red car was pulled up in front of Lark and Ethan’s house when they arrived.
“Oh God,” Meg heard Abe mutter under his breath.
“What’s the matter?” Meg asked, leaning forward to get a clearer view.
Ignoring Meg’s question, Abe turned off his engine as he said, seemingly to himself: “I’m not going to let that woman drive me away. This is my town, too. My home. I told Brook we’d have a game of Scrabble when I got back and, damn it, we’re going to.”
By then Becca Sabin was already walking toward the car. Stalking it, was a more precise description, Meg thought, as she watched the tall, dark-haired beauty approach. Her hair was shoulder-length, ebony, cut in a classic pageboy, glossy as mink. She’d been a model once, or so Meg remembered hearing, and she certainly had the height and the lean, loose-limbed build for it. It was a tall boy’s body, slim-hipped, angular, but with generous, low-slung breasts.
Meg used to think that Abe and Becca made a stunning couple—both dark, lean, and intense. Becca didn’t have Abe’s sense of humor, or his flashing intelligence, but she did possess a self-assurance and an innate sense of style that complemented his more substantial personality. He had adored her, and he’d been unembarrassed to show it. She was easily ten years his junior, and he tended to treat her with the absurdly lavish affection a father shows a favorite daughter. Theirs had been one of the most physically demonstrative relationships Meg had ever witnessed. They were forever kissing and fondling one another in public. They’d had a seemingly endless litany of pet names for each other, “snuggle bunny” and “snuggins” being two that Meg had always found particularly cloying.
What had gone wrong after five seemingly idyllic years of married bliss Meg had never really discovered. Lark had once hinted to her that there had been “someone else” in the picture, not surprisingly on Becca’s side. Whatever the cause, the breakup had been explosive, immediate, and irreparable. It was obvious to everyone that Abe was the injured party. His pain and anger had been terrible to see, made worse by his refusal to discuss the thing that was clearly eating him alive.
Meg had never been able to get close to Becca. She had tried to do so in the beginning, when Abe was proving to be so generous and helpful to her professionally. Meg had suspected that Becca was jealous of the friendship she had with Abe. Their shop talk. The inside jokes. But she had come to believe that Becca saw any unattached, attractive female as the enemy. Hands off, Becca’s narrowed gaze had told Meg while Becca cooed into Abe’s ear at cocktail parties.
Meg didn’t trust women who treated men like territory, or wives to whom marriage was a form of ownership. So she’d learned to stay out of Becca’s way, keeping up her friendship with Abe primarily in the city. Frankly, she preferred Abe when he wasn’t around Becca. It bothered her to see how hard he’d had to work to keep Becca happy and entertained.
“She’s a high-maintenance type, all right,” Ethan had declared during a late-night post-party discussion with Lark and Meg.
“Hey, she’s a beautiful woman,” Lark responded in Becca’s defense. “And Abe was totally aware of what he was getting into when he married her. He told me when he first met her that he knew she was difficult. I think he sort of thrives on the challenge of her.”
“No, you’re a beautiful woman,” Ethan had corrected his wife. “She’s only an excellent replica of a beautiful woman. I’m not sure she actually has blood in her veins.”
Blood in her veins, Meg remembered, as Becca marched right up to Abe’s side of the car and made an impatient circling motion with her right hand indicating he should roll down the side window. He opened the door instead and stepped out, so quickly in fact, that Becca stumbled getting out of his way. Their first terse words were inaudible. Then Becca’s voice rose above the slamming doors as they all scrambled out of the car.
“Happy now, you bastard?” she demanded. She attempted to hit him on the chest, but he stepped deftly aside.
“Spare me the histrionics, Becca,” he told her, and Meg was disturbed to see that he was smiling.
“Feel like a man again?” Becca hissed, fighting his grip. The whole exchange took less than a minute, yet it seemed to compress months of intense loathing. Meg had always believed that couples have one or two core arguments—about money, family, or ambition—that they keep recycling and refining over time. Meg felt that she’d just witnessed that between Becca and Abe. An ugly little morality play right there on the front lawn. It was the first time Meg had seen Abe and Becca together since their breakup, and it was clear to her that the marriage hadn’t just dissolved—it had ignited into hatred.
“Abe, Becca—” Meg hadn’t noticed Lark come around the side of the house, carrying a basket of salad greens in one arm and Fern in the other. Brook and Phoebe trailed along behind her. “I can’t believe you’re fighting here.”
“I’m sorry. “ Abe came to his senses, glancing around at the circle of women. “I better go. We’ll make another date for Scrabble, Brook,” he said as he opened the car door. “Call me if you need anything, Lark.”
“Meg, would you take the girls back to the house?” Lark asked as Abe drove off, handing the basket to Brook and giving Meg the baby. Turning to Becca, she said, “I was going to make a salad for lunch. We’ve been living off these cakes and cookies people have bought us.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t think to bring anything,” Becca apologized, as Lark took her by the arm.
“Meg? You’ll make the girls lunch, please?” Lark said dismissively as she and Becca walked slowly back to the car.
A dispiriting mix of stale cooking smells and damp ash hung in the front hall. The house felt neglected, as though a coat of dust covered everything. But the truth was, Meg thought, that no one was actually living there at the moment. Each of them was existing in her own locked room of sorrow, in a cold gray dimension parallel to the full-color one they used to inhabit.
No one had any appetite either, though Meg put together a big salad and heated up one of the casseroles. Once Brook and Phoebe were seated and picking at their macaroni and cheese, Meg carried F
ern back down the hall and slipped into the front dining room, which offered the best view of the turnaround. Becca had turned on her car’s engine and exhaust was pluming down the driveway. The windows were fogged and it was hard to see, but it looked as though both women were smoking. They’d been talking for over twenty minutes. About what? Meg wondered. Didn’t Becca have enough sense to know that this was not exactly the time to burden Lark with her troubles?
Though Meg was never able to make much headway with Becca, Lark had become her closest confidante in Red River. It wasn’t that the two women were friends exactly, sharing time and laughter. It seemed to Meg that Lark was more like Becca’s amateur therapist, or non-denominational Mother Confessor. In the same way Lark turned to Francine for advice and guidance, Becca depended upon Lark. There appeared to be one main problem that they were dealing with, but when Meg had once asked what the hell Lark had been talking to Becca about on the phone for over an hour, Lark had been evasive.
“She just needs someone to listen to her,” Lark had replied. “I know we used to call her Beautiful Becca and all but, believe me, that sort of perfection comes with a price. There’s a good, giving person hiding somewhere under all the hard nails and high gloss. I’m trying to help coax her into the open.”
Lark, the healer. Lark who would do anything, go to any lengths to make the world a better place. As Meg watched, the passenger door opened and Lark emerged from the car, and she felt her heart constrict with love for sister. How pitiful, how sad, that now—when Lark herself most needed comfort and love—Meg was cut off from giving it to her.
Her uselessness was made even more evident later that evening when Francine came by to finalize the plans for Ethan’s funeral the next day. The evening had been filled with phone calls and visitors. Clint and Janine had dropped in, bringing a fully prepared dinner, and Janine had stayed on after Francine had arrived to do the dishes.
“Can I help?” Meg asked Janine, as Lark settled the girls upstairs. Francine was waiting alone in the living room.
