Scared to Death

by Wendy Corsi Staub

  But the fact that she and Nick were on the verge of divorce didn’t change the fact that she’d loved him once, that he’d been brutally murdered, that her children had lost their father, leaving her to raise them single-handedly, without a break from the overwhelming emotional, physical, and financial responsibility.

  Thanks to time, therapy, and a healthy new relationship, she’s managed to pick up the pieces, building a new life for herself and her kids.

  These days, they’re doing as well as can be expected—perhaps better.

  Even little Sadie has gone back to sleeping in her own bed, after months of night terrors. She’s made her first friend: a girl named Lily, whose mother invited Sadie to visit a water park with them today. And after a rough start to the school year, Ryan and Lucy are now fully back into the swing of academics and athletics.

  For their sake, Lauren has no choice but to be strong. After all they’ve been through—all they’ve lost—she can only give them strength by example, and love them. She’s not going to let them down.

  Yes, Lauren believes in herself—even if her family and Trilby do not.

  The phone rings again.

  Lauren glances down at the paint-coated bristles, not entirely sure about this russet color for the trim. Why was Autumn Mist so much more appealing on a small strip of paper in the store?

  Maybe she should hold off on painting for a few minutes. In fact, maybe she shouldn’t have let Trilby talk her out of plain old white.

  But Trilby is convinced Lauren’s fresh start in life calls for a fresh palette—not just in the house, but in her wardrobe, even cosmetics.

  It didn’t take long for Lauren to realize she’s just not a red lipstick or slinky gold dress kind of girl. Maybe, she decides, climbing down the ladder to answer the phone, not an Autumn Mist kind of girl, either.

  “Hello, Lauren?”

  “Marin! How are you?”

  “Oh…you know…”

  Yeah. Unfortunately, she does know. She isn’t quite in Marin Quinn’s shoes, but close enough.

  It was Sam’s idea to usher in the new year—their first as a couple—with resolutions designed to put the tumultuous past behind them. For Lauren, the first logical step was to get in touch with Marin Quinn. It proved to be a wise decision. Unlike just about everyone else in her life these days, Marin gets it. Gets her.

  “What’s going on?” Lauren carefully props the paintbrush on the tray and settles herself on the bottom rung of the stepladder.

  There’s a long pause on the other end of the line.

  Not good.

  “Marin?”

  “I’m just…for one thing, I’m getting ready to put the house on the market, so I’ve been sorting through piles of old things. It’s brutal.”

  “I can imagine.” Lauren’s done everything she can to avoid selling this rambling Victorian, the only home her own kids have ever known. Moving might mean leaving town altogether, considering that real estate in suburban Westchester County has skyrocketed over the past two decades, despite the recession.

  Regardless of all that’s happened under this roof, Lauren simply can’t afford to leave.

  Unlike Marin, who can’t afford to stay.

  “I remember how hard it was when I had to go through all of our stuff last summer,” Lauren tells her, but doesn’t mention that she gave almost everything to a tag sale.

  Yes, and look where that led.

  “Try to just think of it as a miserable stomach flu,” she advises Marin. “You feel awful now, and the actual purge will probably be even worse, but trust me…you’ll feel a lot better once you’ve done it.”

  “Thanks. I knew you’d have some helpful advice.”

  “Yeah, well…been there, done that.”

  Though a drastically different set of circumstances led Marin to become a fellow single mom—circumstances that make them improbable friends—Lauren can relate to her more than just about anyone else in the world.

  She wasn’t looking for a confidante, though, when she first got in touch with Marin. Dogged by the press herself after the kidnapping nightmare and Garvey Quinn’s arrest, Lauren felt a strange sense of kinship whenever she opened a newspaper or turned on a television and spotted Garvey Quinn’s wife looking like a deer in headlights.

  Poor Marin.

  Poor both of us.

  “Do you want me to come down there and help you go through everything?” Lauren offers, and holds her breath, waiting—hoping, really—for Marin to turn her down.

  She doesn’t necessarily think she’s overstepping the bound of new friendship—though she might be. But in the six months since she and Marin met, they’ve seen each other only on neutral turf, meeting for lunch and dinner at various restaurants. She’s never been to the Upper East Side apartment where Garvey Quinn presumably plotted the atrocious crimes that destroyed life as Lauren and her kids once knew it. She has no desire to set foot in there.

  “Thanks, but I think this is something I have to do myself.” Marin sounds resigned. “I just wish I could run away from home for a little while, you know? I’m so sick of dealing with all of this.”

  “Why don’t you come up here today and visit?” Lauren offers spontaneously—then wonders what the heck she’s doing. Why would Marin want to do that?

  Then again, why not? They’re friends. Plus, Lauren’s bloodstained kitchen walls and floor have been gutted to the studs and completely refurbished.

  Great. No blood. How positively inviting.

  To Lauren’s surprise, Marin says, “You know, maybe I will…if you don’t mind.”

  Pedestrians scurry past Jeremy at a rate that makes his head spin. They all seem to be lost in thought, headphone music, conversation with each other or on their cell phones. They don’t wait for lights to change at crosswalks, weaving skillfully amid gridlocked cars and cabs and buses filled with more distracted, impatient people.

  Where are they all going in such a hurry?

  What would it be like to be one of them?

  Torture, that’s what it would be. Pure torture.

  Homesick, he wonders what he’s doing here. Big cities have always made him nervous.

  No surprise there.

  Every time he finds himself on an urban street, surrounded by strangers and traffic, he flashes back…

  What happened right after the woman with the yellow eyes abandoned him is clouded—mercifully so. But there are bits and pieces. People everywhere. Honking horns and sitar music, thousands of voices speaking, shouting, arguing, all in a strange tongue. Steamy air pungent with curry and elephant dung and unwashed bodies.

  He was alone for days, perhaps weeks or even months—and it was worse, far worse, than what had happened to him in the foreign hospital. Without his pain medication, he was in agony, crawling and crying, eating scraps of garbage, begging—but not, like the millions of other slum children, begging for food or money. No, he desperately needed someone to listen to him, to help him find his way home, and for a long time, no one—no one—understood what he was trying to say.

  Then, at last, someone did.

  In the fading light of another agonizing day, as Jeremy was dreading another terrifying night, someone listened, held out a hand, and said in English—in English, thank God!—“Come with me, little boy. I’ll take you home.”

  Tears of joy rolled down Jeremy’s filthy cheeks as his prayers were answered.

  Then the sun went down, and the nightmare began in earnest.

  “Caroline?”

  She groans and opens her eyes to see her mother standing over her bed. Closing them again, she murmurs, “I’m sleeping.”

  “I know. I just wanted to tell you I have some things to do today. I’ll be gone for a few hours. I need you to keep an eye on Annie, and try to get along with her, please. And if Realtors call about the apartment, take down a number and tell them I’ll call them back. Okay?”

  “Mmm hmm.”

  “Caroline, are you hearing me?”

>   She forces her eyes open again and yawns. “Yes. I’m hearing you.” Then, taking a closer look at her mother, she asks, “Where are you going?”

  For the first time in ages, Mom’s blond hair is long and loose, tucked behind her ears—and she’s actually wearing earrings. And a sleeveless black top and white slacks. And, Caroline notes with surprise, eye makeup. It doesn’t cover the dark circles or worry lines, but it helps.

  She’d forgotten that Mom really can look pretty when she wants to.

  So…why does she suddenly want to?

  “I’m going to take a drive up to Westchester to see a friend.”

  “Who? Kathy?” Her mother’s former college roommate lives in Rye, and if that’s where Mom’s headed, Caroline is definitely going, too. There are some great places to shop around there.

  “No, not Kathy.”

  “Well, if you’re going to Rye—”

  “Not Rye.” Mom leans over and kisses her on the forehead. “I’ll be back by three or four. And I’ll call to check in. Be good.”

  “You too.” Caroline watches her go out the door, pulling it closed behind her.

  She rolls over to go back to sleep, but suddenly, she’s wide awake.

  Where the heck is Mom going? She hardly ever leaves the building lately. Now, all of a sudden, she’s rocking the wardrobe and the makeup…and driving, besides? She never takes the car out. She never did, even when Dad was around. He didn’t drive much, either, relying on cabs, Town Cars, and limos to get around.

  “A friend,” Mom said.

  Clearly, it’s someone she doesn’t want Caroline to know about, otherwise, she would have told her who it was…

  Caroline sits up abruptly.

  Can it be a man?

  Did Mom forget that she happens to be married? It’s not like Dad is dead, or they’re divorced. Does she think she can go around dating while Dad is rotting away in jail?

  I have to stop her.

  Caroline jumps out of bed and hurries out into the hall. “Mom? Mom!”

  Annie appears in the kitchen doorway, holding a rubber spatula. “She’s gone.”

  “Where did she go?”

  “To see her friend in Westchester. I thought she told you.”

  “Which friend?”

  “She didn’t say. What’s wrong? Are you okay?”

  “Are you?”

  “You don’t have to be nasty.”

  Yeah, Caroline thinks, I do.

  “For your information,” Annie goes on, “Mom said we have to get along today.”

  “Guess that means one of us has to leave, then. I hope you have plans.”

  “I do. Making brownies.”

  Annie used to be such a cute kid, blond and super-skinny. Now her face is getting rounder by the second, and so is the rest of her.

  Caroline asks pointedly, “Do you really think that’s a good idea? Brownies?”

  “Why wouldn’t it be a good idea?”

  Because you’re turning into a real tub o’lard.

  Maybe it’s mean, but someone really needs to tell Annie these things for her own good, and God knows Mom hasn’t stepped up.

  “Maybe you should, like, go for a run instead.”

  “I don’t run.”

  “Why not?”

  “I have asthma.”

  “So? Plenty of people who have asthma are runners,” Caroline tells her, not certain that’s really the case.

  “Well, I’m not.”

  “Maybe you should be.”

  “Why?”

  Caroline opens her mouth, but Annie cuts her off. “Know what? Forget it. I don’t want to hear it.”

  That’s because she knows what I was going to say.

  Annie returns to the kitchen. A moment later, the electric mixer whirs to life.

  Caroline shakes her head. It was so much easier to deal with her sister when Daddy was around. She always had the feeling that Annie got on his nerves, too—especially when her asthma would kick in and she’d get that constant, annoying, wheezy cough.

  Then Mom would hover with the nebulizer, and Daddy would take Caroline out someplace, just the two of them. They’d go for frozen hot chocolate at Serendipity, or to a movie, or take a walk through the Central Park Zoo.

  Yes, Daddy and Caroline were like a team, and Mom and Annie were a team. Now Caroline’s stuck alone here with her mother and sister—and today, she’s just stuck with Annie, which is even worse.

  She heads back toward her room, hating the new emptiness along the hallway walls, formerly a gallery of family photos. On the last day of school, she came home to find that they were gone. Her dismayed cry woke her mother, who shouldn’t have been sleeping in the middle of the day anyway.

  “What did you do?” Caroline screamed at her as she stood there looking groggy and bewildered. “Did you throw them away? Did you burn them or something?”

  “Burn what? What are you talking about?”

  “Our family pictures!”

  “Of course not! I just packed them away until—”

  “Put them back!”

  “Not until after the move.”

  The move. When Mom so brilliantly decided to uproot them, Caroline was appalled. Somehow, she managed to convince herself that it would never happen. Now it looks like it might. Poor Daddy isn’t going to like it one bit when he’s released from jail and has to come home to a brand-new apartment.

  If, she thinks now, Mom lets him come home at all.

  Caroline pauses at the master bedroom once shared by her parents.

  Where, she wonders again, is Mom going today? Does she have a boyfriend in Westchester?

  Maybe there’s some indication, somewhere behind the closed bedroom door, of a secret romance.

  Shuddering to imagine what that might be, she slips into the room. Everything is picture-perfect, ready for potential buyers to traipse through the apartment. Not a personal item in sight, other than a cluster of perfume bottles on Mom’s bureau and a couple of generic-looking paintings on the walls.

  Now that all the personal stuff is gone, no one crossing the threshold would ever guess that the notorious Quinns live here.

  For that matter, no one looking around Mom’s bedroom would ever find evidence that she’s involved with some guy.

  Caroline figures the only place she might be able to find incriminating information is on Mom’s phone, and of course she’s taken that with her.

  She slouches back down the hall to her own room—also devoid of her favorite photos and mementos and reminders of Daddy that were on prominent display, until Mom made her remove them. The room looks so generic now, like it could belong to anyone. The less time she spends hanging out here, the better.

  Now what? The whole day stretches emptily ahead. Too bad none of her friends is around, and there’s absolutely nothing to do.

  You could always go back to Starbucks.

  Ha. As if.

  Then again…what about Jake?

  She never had a chance to say good-bye to him, never gave him her number. The rat incident happened right after he asked her about meeting her at Starbucks this afternoon.

  He doesn’t even know her last name, so he’d have no way of finding her if he wanted to. And she doesn’t know his last name, either. There are dozens of Jakes and Jacobs at Billington alone; there are probably hundreds of them at Columbia.

  Looks like she’s never going to see him again, unless…

  What if he shows up at Starbucks today, hoping she’ll be there?

  He never mentioned a time, but he did say afternoon. That’s a five-hour window…but what else has she got to do?

  Sitting around a rat-infested—or not—coffeehouse hoping to run into some guy is pretty pathetic…but then what about Caroline’s life these days isn’t?

  The rainy drive back from Massachusetts has left Elsa with a queasy stomach, courtesy of too much gas station coffee, or sheer exhaustion, or nerves—probably all three. All morning, she’s been dreading the quick
stop at home to pack up some things for herself and Renny, certain that once she crosses the threshold, she won’t want to leave again—and knowing that it’s necessary.

  But now that she’s here…

  I can’t wait to get out.

  The house just doesn’t feel right.

  It’s nothing she can put her finger on, really. She walks quickly from room to room. Everything appears just as she left it yesterday: rainy day bin in the kitchen, a couple of finished jigsaw puzzles on the coffee table, The Little Mermaid DVD case beside them.

  Still, she feels violated. Someone could have been here in their absence, snooping around.

  From Renny’s room, she can see Brett beneath the rain-spattered window, looking for the footprints and the broken branch.

  In the master bedroom, she goes straight to the nightstand, where she keeps the tiny key, dangling from a strip of blue satin ribbon. If anyone was rummaging through the drawer and found it, he wouldn’t have to look far to figure out what it’s for.

  She kneels in front of the cedar chest at the foot of the bed, fits the key into the lock, turns it, lifts the lid.

  The contents, at a glance, are undisturbed. The linens are neatly folded.

  Beneath her own things lie the items she rarely looks at: her wedding veil in its protective wrap, lace doilies handmade by Brett’s grandmother, a preserved baby dress that had been presented to Maman by the great Coco Chanel herself when Elsa was born…

  And then there are the little-boy clothes, the ones she can barely see because her eyes are flooded: Jeremy’s worn dungarees, his T-shirts, the red sweater he’d worn that last Christmas…

  Elsa braces herself as she digs her way to the bottom of the chest. If it isn’t there…

  But it is.

  Choking back a sob, she picks up the Spider-Man figurine she’d found lying in the grass the day Jeremy disappeared.

  “Mommy?”

  Renny is in the doorway.