by Liza Bennett
“I don’t recall what Abe and I talked about, but I remember thinking how much I’d come to like him. My personal barometer for judging people these days is the girls—if they go for someone I just automatically trust that person. Brook and Phoebe adore Abe—well, you’ve seen them all together. And Abe can always make me laugh, even when things are really bad. Whatever happens, I get the feeling with Abe that he’s already been there—whatever down place you’re at—and he has great empathy, I think that’s the word. That’s why it was so awful to see his face, to feel his whole body go kind of dead, when he saw them. Talk about making love on a dance floor; Becca had plastered herself against Ethan, moving her hips in that way. And Ethan, well, I can’t pretend that he was exactly pushing her away, but she was definitely all over him, rather than the other way around. People were staring. And laughing a little to each other. I was so hurt and embarrassed, I just wanted to cry. But Abe—he saw it all in a flash and he lost control. He went after Ethan right there on the dance floor.
“And Abe is, what—three inches shorter than Ethan was? Twenty pounds lighter? It was a joke. Ethan overpowered him from the start, but Abe wouldn’t give up. It was awful. Abe took a real beating. Of course, Becca and I tried to stop them. Finally Owen and two other guests pulled them apart and Owen asked us all to leave. It was pretty terrible. But that was just the beginning of it. Ethan was furious with Abe for accusing him publicly like that of coming on to Becca when she had spent the past nine months or so throwing herself in his path. So he got his revenge the one way guaranteed to hurt Abe the most.”
“He started up with Becca,” Meg said for her.
“With a vengeance. About two really intense months of it. Just enough to totally destroy the marriage. Not that the Sabins weren’t heading for the rocks before Ethan came along. But he made sure the thing shattered for good.”
“So that’s why they divorced. And why Abe hated Ethan.”
“They wouldn’t have lasted anyway. I’ve gotten to know Becca and Abe awfully well through all of this—and that marriage was definitely a case of opposites attracting—for a time. Becca is totally self-involved—to her, nothing is more interesting or important than the drama that is her life. Initially, I think, Abe liked that—the intensity, the self-absorption. Abe thought Becca was high-strung, a bit neurotic, you know—this overly sensitive, exotic flower. But he also thought she loved him, when what she was actually responding to was his love for her—the flattering, comforting reflection in the mirror.
“Ethan was the first man Becca ever knew who pulled her out of herself—who forced her to look at herself and wonder what was lacking. It made her nuts, in the beginning, when he rejected her advances. But it also made her think. Take stock. She came to realize that she didn’t want to simply be adored. She wanted to be known—ravished, diminished, redeemed—all the things that a deep physical passion can do. What she was really after, and I see this now, was to grow up. And Abe kept wanting to protect her, to keep her this sheltered special woman-child. It was just the opposite of what she needed.”
“Janine said that Becca couldn’t cope with Ethan ending the affair. That she continued to pursue him when everybody else knew it was over,” Meg prodded.
“Janine.” Lark frowned. “There’s a twelve-step word for her: co-dependent. She’s gotten so into this family that all of our dysfunctions have become her own. She sort of feeds off us—emotionally, I mean. But that’s her choice. And, yes, she’s right—when Ethan threw Becca over for a second time, she had a really bad time dealing with it. She couldn’t believe it, after giving up her marriage for Ethan, that he didn’t seem to care. He’d been cooling way down on her for months and then, after he got the Judson show, he just cut her off.
“There was a lot in New York to keep him occupied,” Lark went on, looking down at her hands. She picked up a rubber band from her drawing board and started twisting it tighter and tighter as she spoke. “And nothing in Red River to keep Becca going, to keep her from obsessing about the whole thing. I got to hear all about it. She turned to me for comfort. Me, of all people. But, you know, Francine and I had been talking a lot about forgiveness and forbearance, about learning to live with the world as it is given to us. I decided that I could actually help Becca. I knew what Ethan was like. Once he was through with someone—that was it. I wasn’t jealous of Becca anymore. And the more I listened to her pain, the more I felt sorry for her. She was so pathetic, Meg. This beautiful, glamorous woman—groveling for information about Ethan. She kept asking me if there was someone else. Someone new. Who could it be? Who?”
“How in the world did you stand all of this, Lark?” Meg said. “I think I’d have killed Ethan, if … ”
26
It was Sunday morning and Meg could hear Lark and the girls getting ready for church, Brook admonishing Phoebe to hurry up because they were all going to be late again. Meg had begged off going to the service the night before. She’d told her sister that work was running her ragged and she just needed a morning to sleep in. Now, she could hear her sister whispering to her daughters on the stairs to be quiet—Aunt Meg was still sleeping.
Actually, Aunt Meg had been wide awake for several hours. She’d been lying in bed, staring at the ceiling, thinking through everything she knew so far about Ethan’s murder. But her thoughts ended up leading her around in circles, spinning uselessly through motives and opportunity, going back to a question that she’d raised with Lucinda: Would you kill someone because he’d stopped loving you? Could Lark, or could Becca have murdered Ethan for that reason? Would you destroy the object of your passion—or try ever harder to win him back? And then the question of passion had led Meg’s thoughts in an entirely different direction.
Abe. Abraham Leonard Sabin. She remembered examining his business card when he first suggested years ago that she call him if she needed advice on starting her agency. They were both in the early stages of starting their own companies then. The very next week she had taken him up on his offer.
After an exasperating meeting at her bank, Meg said to him, “They want to know what kind of business I’m going to have. I said an advertising agency, but apparently that wasn’t what they meant. I need to file something or other with the state. They told me a lawyer would know.”
“And luckily, they’re right,” Abe said, laughing. “There are different kinds of corporate entities—Chapter S, sub-chapter S. Come on in and we’ll go over the details. It’s pretty simple really.”
He’d made it fun as well. He was able to explain things—her office lease, the eventual credit line from the bank, the papers of incorporation—in a way that was clear without being condescending. The first year she was in business, she called him at least twice a month on one issue or another.
“This new client, Jonas Sportswear, wants to know when I’m going to send over the contract agreement. I haven’t got one Abe—you know me, I prefer to conduct business on a handshake.”
“Jonas puts you in the big leagues, now,” Abe pointed out. “And it’s probably time we drew up a standard contract. I’ll call their lawyers and see exactly what they have in mind. And I also think it’s time I started charging you my regular rates.”
“Jesus, Abe, how the hell much money do you lawyers make?”
“It’s disgusting, isn’t it? But then I saw your third-quarter financial statement. I’m not exactly going to bankrupt you.
Most of their conversations over the years had been about business. The news. The goings-on in Red River when Meg shared a ride up there with him. Gradually, as he became a close friend of Lark’s, and especially after his marriage to Becca, she began to open up to him about some of her problems with men.
“I’m beginning to think I was born without that radar most women seem to have,” Meg had told him after the fiasco with the sports broadcaster. “You know, the ability to properly read male signals. They can be literally right on top of me before I realize that I’m seeing some triple-timing egomaniac.”
“Were your parents happy?” Abe had asked. “There’s an awful lot of learned behavior that we pick up from them. I’m beginning to realize that I’m just like my father.”
“Which means what about you, Abe?”
“I’m a romantic. I fall in love like a ton of bricks.”
“I think that’s wonderful,” Meg said, curious about his rueful tone of voice.
“Sure, until you hit the ground.”
They were both older and wiser now. Meg doubted that Abe could have any illusions left after Ethan stepped in and tore his marriage apart. And Meg? After what she’d been through recently, could she really still believe that she’d eventually find the real thing? After what she now knew about the only married couple she’d ever respected—did she honestly think that a good marriage was even possible?
Probably not. And yet… since Friday evening, the thought of Abe had been lingering behind everything else she’d been going through. She could taste him on her lips. Feel his touch on her cheek, his breath in her hair. Of course, he knew that she’d been through hell lately. She’d been afraid. They were friends. He cared about her, no doubt. He’d kissed her as a way of reassuring her that everything was going to turn out all right. He had simply been trying to be kind. And he’d probably be horrified, Meg decided as she finally got out of bed, if he realized the kind of passionate response he’d aroused in her.
There was one other person in Red River who Meg knew for sure would not be at Francine’s Sunday morning service. For several years now, Meg had been hearing about Matt’s refusal to so much as put a foot inside the First Congregational Church.
“He has to hear her preach every day of his life,” Ethan had said last Christmas when Lark was bemoaning Matt’s behavior. “That’s more than any human being should have to endure.”
The rectory sat up on the hill above the church, its western property line bordering Lark’s and Ethan’s extensive acreage. A roughly cut path through the woods joined the two households; it meandered along the riverbank and then climbed along the side of the hill. It was a shortcut that Lark and Francine often took when they visited each other. Meg easily found her way along it that morning through the still, leafless woods.
Like most of the houses in Red River, Francine’s had been constructed in the mid-1880s of clapboard, though an effort had obviously been made to give this important residence some extra degree of elegance. Gingerbread woodwork decorated the front porch and eaves, and a diamond-shaped stained-glass pane graced the tiny window in the attic.
Meg rang the doorbell on the side entrance three times before she heard any movement from within. Finally, there was the thumping of heavy steps on the stairs. A clomping down the hall. The door was wrenched open.
“What do you want?” Matt fixed her with a heavy-lidded stare. His upper lip, smudged with a fuzzy attempt at a mustache, was twisted into a sneer.
“A moment to talk with you,” Meg said. “I wanted to know how things went with Lucinda yesterday.”
“Didn’t get to see her,” Matt retorted. “We just dropped the stuff off. That’s all Francine really wanted, you know. Make the big gesture.”
“Did your mother know you were sleeping with Lucinda?” Meg asked as he began to close the door. He stopped.
“How did you know?” he demanded, his deep voice straining with emotion.
“Actually, I guessed. I’ve spoken a lot to Lucinda since all this happened. We talk on the phone—at least once a week. Your name comes up just a little too often for me not to wonder what was going on.”
“That so?” Matt stepped out on the porch and lit a cigarette, inhaling deeply.
“What about Francine?” Meg persisted. “Did she know about you and Lucinda?”
“Despite my mother’s do-good posturing, she actually considers Lucinda beneath contempt. I’m sure you can understand why I wouldn’t confide in her about having sex with Lucinda.”
“But you could have been the father of Lucinda’s baby. You could have spoken up and told us what was going on. You knew Ethan wasn’t involved.”
“That’s true. But almost every other boy from here to Montville could have gotten her pregnant.”
“She did imply that she was seeing a lot of guys,” Meg agreed, but something in Matt’s tone intrigued her. She thought she detected anger under his carefully modulated words.
“That’s an understatement,” Matt went on. “It was like her way of being validated, as Francine would phrase it. She knew what Ethan thought of her—and that really hurt her. Sleeping around was her way of showing him that guys found her attractive. That she was worthwhile, you know.”
“And you thought she was?”
“That’s none of your business, is it?”
“I’m making it my business,” Meg said. She looked out across the monotone landscape of trees, rooftops, chimneys, and the rolling hills beyond and tried to think how she could reach the boy beside her. Though the more she listened to him, the more she realized how close he was to being a man. There was a depth, a maturity to Matt that she’d missed at first. She also sensed that he could be an important ally in her battle to get Lucinda a fair hearing.
“How is she?” Matt asked after a long silence.
“Scared stiff. How would you be?” Meg said, and then added more softly, “You care about her don’t you, Matt?”
“I did at one point,” he replied, looking away. “I thought the feelings were reciprocated.”
“Are you sure they weren’t?”
“Yeah, I’m sure. I was a jerk, okay? It meant a lot to me—more than I should have let it—being really close to someone, making love, talking half the night. People think Lucinda’s so tough, but she isn’t. She’s just not a hypocrite like almost everybody else in this damn town. She’s totally honest. You know, I would have given anything to have that be my kid. To have it live. Be a dad. I never knew who my dad was.”
“I’m sorry. Francine has never told you who …”
“I think she likes to believe it was an immaculate conception. I mean, if she can’t actually be God, bearing Her child might be the next best thing.”
“I’m not convinced Lucinda murdered Ethan.” Meg turned to face Matt.
“I see. Lucinda told you otherwise? Explained away some crucial evidence? She can be very persuasive when she wants your help.”
“She needs my help, Matt,” Meg told him. “Our help. I’m trying hard to understand why everyone’s so willing to convict her. There are plenty of questions in my mind about exactly what happened in the studio that morning. Lucinda was not Ethan’s only visitor.”
“What do you mean?”
“Janine identified two cars, at two different times, not long before the murder.”
“Yeah, well Ethan was working there, right? If he had visitors, they probably just had some business with the studio.”
Meg had been hoping to enlist his sympathy and support, but she sensed a real determination on his part not to be drawn in. She tried a different tack. “There are plenty of people in Red River who aren’t particularly devastated that Ethan’s gone.”
“Exactly,” Matt said, flicking the butt of his cigarette off the porch.
“What do you mean by that?”
“Why not lay it on Lucinda?” Matt replied. He turned back to the door. “Why not let everyone think that Lucinda killed her stepfather because he got her pregnant. They all hated Ethan. Thought he was capable of anything, even that. This town despised them both—father and daughter. Blame this thing on the two of them and don’t look back. Don’t look closer. Everybody knows how many people had it in for Ethan. Maybe everyone’s afraid that someone close to them might have flipped out and done it.” Matt nodded across the lawn and woods to the rooftops of the town. “Any one of us could’ve done it,” he said, stepping back into the house and closing the door on further conversation.
No one had actually lied to Meg, at least, not as far as she could tell. And yet, everywhere s
he turned in Red River, with everyone she talked to, she had the feeling that no one was exactly telling the truth. A flicker of the eye. An intonation that was off. An emphasis that felt forced. As she rode with Lark and the girls down Main Street later that afternoon on the way to the general store to pick up groceries, Meg saw a town that was intent on keeping its secrets, protecting its own. Of course, everyone gossiped, talk was cheap. But when you got down to it, when you asked the hard questions, you got a shrug, a mumble, an excuse.
When she walked into Yoder’s behind Lark and the girls, suddenly, for the first time in Meg’s memory, the chatter around the deli counter stopped. Meg felt the looks. She sensed what was being thought, and probably said. Meg was that outsider who was going around stirring up trouble. Suggesting they all consider Lucinda’s side of things, for heavens’ sake. As though they all couldn’t see right through that viper’s story. Lark’s own sister, can you beat that?
But if Lark sensed any of the town’s hostility, she didn’t show it. And if she was aware of Meg’s growing belief that Lucinda deserved a fair hearing, she pretended not to know it. Meg now realized how often her sister willfully did not see what was right in front of her face. How good she was at living in a world of her own making. It was, after all, what Meg had taught her to do as a child.
“Thank you so much for coming up this weekend,” Lark told her, giving Meg a hug as she was leaving later that afternoon. Abe was waiting for her in the car outside. Lark had been too preoccupied with her own concerns to have noticed—or at least commented on the fact—that Abe hadn’t stopped by all weekend. “And for listening to me. And for just being there, big sister. Love you.”
“I love you, too,” Meg said, holding Lark in her arms, and then pulling her close. It had always been her role to be the responsible one, to think for them both. Now, for the first time in her life, she found herself torn between protecting Lark once again—and doing what she thought was right.
“Remember that, baby,” Meg said as she stepped away. “No matter what.”
