“Jill?”
“It’s okay, I’m okay.” She swiped at her eyes; she wouldn’t talk about it, she wouldn’t say his name out loud, because if she did the tears would never end. The car suddenly veered right, skidding slightly on gravel, as David pulled into one of the small parking lots for the hiking trails that rose in the wooded hills around them. It was empty at this time of night.
“Hey, c’mon, don’t cry.” He shut off the car and reached for her.
Jill tried to fend him off. “I’m fine. We have to get home.”
“No, you’re not fine.” He smoothed the tears gently from her face with his thumbs. She’d always loved his hands; they were massive next to hers. “It’s okay. We’ve got time.” He kissed her gently and she returned it. She kissed him the second time, desperate to think of something other than loss, other than work and parenting and the daily stress of a life that often felt as if it had gotten away from her. He kissed her back, wrapping a hand around her head and pulling them together with an urgency that matched hers. His other hand slipped between her legs and then they were both moving, shedding clothes and shifting seats, and he lifted her on top of him, entering her in an act that was as much about desperation as love.
chapter twelve
OCTOBER 2013—ONE DAY
Sophia was going as a fairy princess to Paige and Andrew’s Halloween party in a sparkly pink costume she’d chosen herself. “No, me do it!” she yelled as Jill came to help her zip up the tulle and satin that Sophia was struggling with since she wouldn’t relinquish the light-up wand clutched in one little fist.
“Fine, you do it.” Jill threw up her hands and walked out of the room.
“Are we ready to go yet?” David popped his head out of his study as she came downstairs. “We’re already late.” He’d gotten himself ready and seemed to assume that meant that everything else would just get done without his help.
“No, David, ‘we’ are not ready. Maybe you’d like to help out and get your daughter dressed?”
Her husband groaned and headed upstairs, taking them two at a time. She could hear him working his charm on Sophia: “My goodness, are you a fairy princess?”
Shaking her head at the sound of Sophia’s giggles, Jill headed into the kitchen to pack up the brownies that she’d made as their contribution, absurd since the party was undoubtedly catered, but she wasn’t comfortable arriving empty-handed. But then she was rarely comfortable when they socialized at the Grahams’.
Both Andrew and Paige were friendly and outgoing, and so down-to-earth that Jill felt like a witch for not embracing their company. Certainly David thought she exhibited working-class snobbery toward them. He was practically the president of the Andrew Graham fan club. “He’s a great guy,” he’d said before introducing her. “You’d never believe how much money he has.”
Except Jill was always acutely aware of how much they had, and it wasn’t only their material wealth. Andrew and Paige had three children—James, Andrew Junior, and Matthew. Paige had easy pregnancies, yet looked like a woman who’d never given birth. She thought it was cute that her sons’ initials spelled JAM. Their annual Christmas photo card, which resembled an ad for Brooks Brothers Kids, always had JAM emblazoned somewhere on it. One year the photo featured the three boys surrounding an enormous stoneware crock of grape jam, with pieces of bread slathered with jam held just below their smiling mouths.
The Grahams lived in a mansion rumored to have been a wedding gift from Andrew’s father. It was less than ten miles from Jill and David, but several significant zeros away, a three-story brick Georgian with an enormous front swath of emerald lawn and a slobbering Saint Bernard. It was half past five by the time the Lassiters arrived, but the party was already in full swing, as evidenced by the cars parked in a long line along the road. The Grahams’ dog came bounding down the stone walk to greet them, as always making a beeline for Jill, seeming to intuit which person cared the least for big dogs.
“No, get down!” She tried to block him, but he leapt up anyway, landing big dirty paws smack against her chest.
“Hey, stop trying to cop a feel, fur ball,” David said, laughing as he helped her push the beast away, which wasn’t easy with Sophia in his arms. Jill brushed at her blouse as Sophia leaned out of her father’s arms, trying to get to the dog.
“Stop that, Bruno! Heel!” Paige called from the doorway. She came clicking down the walk in high heels, clapping her hands at the dog. He ran to her, tail wagging excitedly. “I’m sorry about that,” she said as she reached them. “Isn’t this weather just terrible? And it was so nice yesterday. That’s Pittsburgh for you.” She threw out her arms to hug Sophia, exclaiming, “Who is this beautiful princess?”
“It’s me!” Sophia giggled, as David handed her over. Paige and Sophia had a mutual admiration society, which made it a bit easier for Jill to accept that next to Paige she’d always look frumpy. Sophia said things like, “Paige wears pink lipstick,” and “Paige is so pretty,” which felt like indictments of Jill’s fashion sense. They were like a before-and-after style show: Jill in jeans and a black blouse and flats, her hair tied back in a loose knot, while Paige wore a clinging black jersey dress that showed off her flawless figure, paired with high-heeled leather boots that screamed sex and high fashion in equal measure.
“C’mon in and enjoy yourselves,” she said, handing Sophia back to David and traipsing ahead of them up the stone walk, her slight hips canting with every step.
The house was packed with people. Adams Kendrick didn’t host many functions that included family members so most people took advantage of this one, especially those with kids. David swung Sophia down to the floor, but she shrank back against him as a gang of boys dressed as Power Rangers came racing through the house shooting at one another with Nerf guns. “Outside, boys!” Paige called, striving to be heard over the din. “Monster Mash” played loudly in the background. “Drinks at the bar and the serious food is in the dining room,” Paige said. She bent down to talk to Sophia. “Do you want something to eat, honey, or do you want to see the surprise out back?”
“Surprise!”
What Andrew and Paige referred to as “out back” was approximately six landscaped acres. It had been transformed into a Halloween paradise, complete with waitstaff dressed in showy costumes, miniature jack-o’-lanterns hanging from the trees, and an enormous hay maze. “Wow, that’s big!” Jill exclaimed and a woman standing nearby smiled.
“Andrew said it took over two thousand bales to create.”
“Amazing.” Leave it to Andrew and Paige to top themselves. They hadn’t stopped at the maze: Pony rides were being offered off to the left and to the right was a bouncy castle. Gas torches and dozens of other jack-o’-lanterns lit the night and the crescent moon added to the festive air. Despite the cold and the fact that it had already rained heavily once, turning the grass slick and muddy, there were parents with children lined up. Jill expected Sophia to choose the pony ride, but she dropped Jill’s hand and headed straight for the maze.
Jill understood why when she spotted the young woman dressed as a fairy princess handing out cotton candy at the entrance. “Are you a princess, too?” the woman said as she delivered a pink fluffy cloud on a paper cone to Sophia’s waiting hand.
Sophia nodded, unexpectedly shy. The cotton candy was bigger than her head. She darted under the arched entry following a young couple and Jill hurried after her. “Wait up, Sophie!” she called as her daughter rounded the first corner. Straw had been sprinkled along the path to try to sop up the mud, but Jill slipped in it as she hurried. The bales were too high to see across, and arranged in narrow channels that were at most three people wide.
Jill followed Sophia at another intersection to the left; the young couple disappeared to the right. They were suddenly alone. Sophia trotted ahead, wand in one hand, cotton candy in the other. They turned another corner and passed a clown juggling. His wide painted face with its huge grinning mouth and red triangles drawn
around the eyes was creepy, but Sophia just laughed with delight as he pulled on and off his red nose, juggling it along with a handful of small balls. He winked at Jill. Two more turns, left, then right, then straight on for about six feet. Jill thought she heard a distant rumble of thunder. They kept turning corners, sometimes backtracking when they hit a dead end. Jill lost count of how many turns she took, lost all sense of direction. The heavy, earthy smell of hay was overpowering. She felt sweaty despite the cold; it was claustrophobic. At one point she heard people laughing and realized that they were just on the other side of the bales. She had to resist the sudden urge to push the hay over to get to them. “I want a pony ride,” Sophia announced.
“Okay,” Jill said, “but first we’ve got to find our way out.”
Now she led the way, with Sophia falling behind. The remainder of the cotton candy dropped to the ground, immediately coated in straw and mud. “Just leave it,” Jill said as Sophia whined, trying to pluck off the straw. A few drops of rain fell, then a few more. The clouds were heavy and gray, hanging low in the night sky, ominously portending a downpour.
Sophia let it drop and took her mother’s hand. They continued at an even slower pace. Jill felt the prickly walls moving closer, the smell of wet hay and dirt overpowering. She could hear voices in the distance, but they were alone in there and would never find the way out.
She swallowed, clutched Sophia’s hand more firmly, and dragged them around another corner. A man in black walked ahead of them. Jill felt immediate relief; they might be lost, but at least they were no longer alone. She hurried after him, slowing as he paused at the end of that passage, standing there with his back to them, deciding which way to turn. “Maybe he knows the way out,” Jill said to Sophia. Just as they reached him, he turned around.
The cry tore from Jill’s throat. A monster stared back at her, a contorted skeleton’s grimacing face, with fangs for teeth, and dark sockets where the eyes should be. Then the man reached up a hand to peel off his face. A mask, just a mask, but Sophia was screaming. She jerked free of her mother, pelting back the way they’d come. Jill ran after her. “Sophie, stop! Wait! It’s just pretend.” She caught her daughter in her arms and held her tight as the three-year-old struggled, still yelling. “Sophie! Stop it!” Jill shook her a little and the child burst into tears. Jill picked her up and rocked her for a moment, waiting for her own heart rate to return to normal.
The man holding the mask called, “Sorry, it’s just me!” It was Andrew. He grinned sheepishly as Jill came back toward him carrying Sophia, who clung to her, sniffling. “Sorry about that; I guess it’s more effective than I thought.” He reached out to Sophia, but she shrank from him, turning her head away. “I’m sorry, sweetheart. You know Uncle Andrew wouldn’t hurt you.”
More drops of rain. Jill shifted Sophia in her arms. “Can you show us how to get out of here?” He led the way quickly through the rest of the maze, talking the whole time about how much work he’d had to go through to get the maze built, while Jill barely listened. The few drops of rain became a sprinkle, and if that rumbling was any indication, they were at most minutes from a major downpour.
They emerged from the maze just as the storm clouds opened and Jill, along with everyone else, made a run for the house. “Pony!” Sophia protested, wriggling in her mother’s arms. “I want to ride the pony!”
“Here, let me take her,” Andrew offered, lifting Sophia from Jill’s arms. “You don’t want your princess dress to get ruined do you?” he said to Sophia.
They hurried up the wide stone steps onto the veranda and through the French doors behind a group of laughing adults and children. Andrew put Sophia down at her mother’s feet. “There you go, sweetie—nice and dry.”
“So where do you keep this gun collection I keep hearing about?” a balding man Jill vaguely recognized said to Andrew. Paige was passing by with a tray full of Halloween-themed cupcakes and grimaced.
“Just make sure none of the kids are around,” she said to her husband. Then she rolled her eyes at Jill. “Boys and their toys.”
Jill hoped that this was one passion that David wouldn’t share with Andrew. He’d gone target shooting with him a few times, but so far he’d expressed no desire to own a gun of his own.
“I want to ride the pony,” Sophia whined, pulling on Jill’s shirt. “I want the pony!” She tried to go back out the door, but Jill pulled her away.
“Not now,” she said, bending down to look Sophia in the face. “It’s a thunderstorm right now, we can’t ride the pony in the storm, it’s not safe.”
Sophia dropped to the floor, kicking and screaming, her face flushed like a ripe apple. “Pony! Pony! I want the pony!”
“Stop it!” Jill snapped. She was conscious of other parents staring at them, at her. She knelt and hauled Sophia up, holding her firmly. “We’re not going to ride the pony at all if you don’t stop screaming.”
This only made Sophia’s wails louder. She kicked and flailed and managed to hit her mother in the nose. Jill reeled in pain, clutching at her face and letting go of Sophia in the process. The little girl immediately darted past another group coming in the door and ran back out into the storm.
“Damn it all!” Jill jumped up, one hand still holding her nose, and pushed past the crowd to go after her. She found Sophia running across the wet lawn toward the pony, which was tethered to a post, head down, enduring the rain while his minder huddled under an umbrella nearby. Lightning arced across the sky. “Get back here!” Jill yelled, but the thunder drowned her out. Fear quickened her pace. She lunged for Sophia, but just as she touched her small shoulder Jill slipped on the sopping grass and fell to the ground, pulling her daughter down with her. Sophia promptly started crying again and Jill struggled to her feet, pulling Sophia up, too. “This isn’t safe,” she said over her daughter’s cries, hauling her back toward the house just as another bolt of lightning crackled overhead, illuminating a crowd of partygoers standing at the floor-to-ceiling windows watching them.
* * *
“It’s no big deal,” David said later, after she’d endured the stares and whispers of other guests and after they’d been fussed over by Paige, who offered Jill a change of clothes, only to rescind that offer seconds later, since they probably “wouldn’t fit.” Several hired helpers brought them towels, which were quickly smeared with muddy streaks. A lifetime later, though it was probably only twenty minutes, they were finally, blessedly, heading home.
“Easy for you to say—you weren’t there.” No, while Jill had been dealing with their child, David had been talking Glock and Smith & Wesson with Andrew. “I can’t believe Paige lets him keep guns in the house.”
“They’re locked in a safe and he keeps his study locked, too.”
Jill glanced back at Sophia fast asleep in her car seat wearing just her little undershirt and panties. Her face and hair were sticky with cotton candy, the mud-soaked princess costume on the floor at her feet, and her beloved wand still clutched in one small fist. She looked angelic. Jill sighed. “I’m sure I’ll laugh about this someday.”
“Yeah,” David said, sounding relieved. He chuckled. “It is pretty funny—”
“I said someday, David. Not tonight.”
“Sure, okay.” He drove with one hand, reaching out to stroke her hair with the other. “Ooh, what is that?” He lifted his hand away, trying to peer at his palm and the road at the same time.
“Probably mud.”
He sniffed, nose wrinkling. “Actually, I think it might be pony—” He stopped abruptly and reached for a tissue from a box in the center console, wiping it off. The BMW swerved a little.
“Are you saying I have pony shit in my hair?” Horrified, Jill grabbed tissues and swiped at her head.
“No, probably just mud.” David stared scrupulously ahead.
“Oh my God! It is shit!”
“It’s no big—”
“David, if you tell me it’s no big deal again, I swear I’m going to sm
ear pony crap all over you!”
“Okay, okay—calm down.” He slowed to turn on to their street. The front lights glowed from several neighbors’ houses. A flash of lightning and Jill pictured again the faces of all those people crowded at the window watching her struggling with Sophia.
David pulled into the garage and shut off the motor. “You go ahead and take a shower—I’ll give Sophia a bath.”
“Thanks.” Jill tried not to touch anything as she got out of the car. “Be careful, she’s probably covered in it, too.”
David unlocked the back door and reached in to the car seat. “We’re not afraid of a little equine excrement, are we, Sophia?”
Jill trudged into the house, still feeling upset and embarrassed. What must those people think of her and her daughter? That Sophia was a spoiled brat? That Jill was a terrible parent? She’d certainly given them lots to talk about.
The upstairs hall was dark, which was the only reason she noticed light pouring from under the door of the spare bedroom. Strange. They were almost never in that room; it was set up as a guest room, but they mostly used it for storage. Jill opened the door and looked around. One side of the double closet stood open. Jill looked inside. Extra bedding sat gathering dust on the shelves, and some of her dresses and the tux that David wore approximately once a year hung in garment bags from the rod. They kept nothing else in there, so why was this even open? Had the cleaners been in there? A few metal hangers pinged as she slid the door closed. She looked around the rest of the room. An old clock ticked quietly on the dresser. The duvet on the bed seemed a little rumpled, as if someone had sat on it. She must have brushed against it, Jill thought, pulling it straight and smoothing the cloth with her hands. One more look around, before she switched off the light and pulled the door closed again. Odd.
She continued down the hall to the master bathroom, shedding her filthy clothes on the tile floor, and sighing with relief as she stepped under the warm spray of the shower. She took her time, shampooing her hair twice, wishing it were that easy to wash away the entire evening. She didn’t think she’d ever be able to look some of those people in the eye again.
Only Ever You Page 9
