He didn’t answer. He was so pale, so ragged and done in. The slump of his shoulders, the way he sat with his chin lowered nearly to his chest . . . Now, with her anger abating, Annie did ache for him. She wanted to go to him and comfort him. She was angry with him but no more angry than she was with herself. And the place he was in, its very untenableness, sapped her of any remaining fury. She waited while he wiped his hands down his face. She saw the effort it took for him to gather himself.
“I came home from work one time—” He began slowly, voice halting and rough with some mix of apology and pain. “Bo was around four, and I was working nights then—and his mother wasn’t there. The kitchen was a wreck, eggs broken on the counter and the floor, flour everywhere. Back door open, stove going, TV blasting, but no Lydia and no sign of Bo, either. Scared the shit out of me. I was yelling my head off, running through the rooms like a madman. Finally, I realized if Bo was there, he was probably scared, so I stopped shouting and got real quiet, and he came out of his closet. He couldn’t tell me much, but from the little he did say, I knew Lydia went off her rocker, a full-blown episode. She’s schizophrenic, but she’s got bipolar tendencies, too. And when she drinks or does meth or any of that shit—” JT didn’t finish.
Wordless, Annie sat on the edge of the ottoman.
“I was scared to leave him with her after that. Her parents tried to help.” JT found Annie’s glance. “They’re well-off. Did Constance tell you that?”
Annie shook her head.
“They set up a trust fund for Lydia. That’s how come she gets the star treatment. At least, whenever her folks could manhandle her into Rose Hill or any of the other places they packed her off to. Once, they took her to some treatment center in Switzerland, stayed there with her six months. Didn’t do shit for her. Her dad’s dead now, though, and her mom’s not in great shape.”
Annie said she knew.
JT smoothed his palms down his thighs. “They never liked me. I wasn’t a professional man, a college man. He said I didn’t know what I was letting myself in for, like he was helping me out, which was bullshit. It pissed me off, but I should have listened to him because I knew Lydia wasn’t right. From the beginning, there were signs. But I loved her, you know?” JT’s voice caught.
Annie’s throat closed.
“Every time I look at Bo, I think I caused it. I went along when Lydia wanted a baby, when I knew there was a better-than-average chance he’d lose his mind at some point, just like his mother.”
“He’s not like her, JT.” Annie came to her feet. “He’s not nearly as—not even close,” she finished, and now her voice was shaky.
“Your mom wanted to tell you the truth, but I thought it’d only put a burden on you or you’d think Bo was better off knowing and tell him yourself. Your mama argued that you should both know—well, she went back and forth, really. She wanted to protect you. I did, too. That’s the hell of it with folks like Bo and his mother. Half the time—most of the time—you can’t figure out what’s right. It’ll drive you insane right along with them. It nearly has me, more than once.”
“Bo remembers seeing her in the hospital. He remembers her reading aloud to him.”
“Yeah. The times she ended up in treatment before we were divorced, I took him to see her. That was when I still thought things might work out, that we’d still be a family. I had this crazy idea they would get her on the right meds or she’d just get well—presto! I thought seeing Bo, being around him would make the difference. It did for a while. But he wasn’t out of diapers when she started taking off. She’d up and go for days. We wouldn’t know where. The last time, when she was gone for nearly two weeks, her dad found her on the street. She was going with men, you know, to get money for a fix. I filed for divorce after that. Her folks paid for the attorney and all the court costs. They paid for me to move here with Bo. Texas was their idea.”
“But didn’t they want Bo close by, where they could see him?”
JT brought his gaze to Annie’s, and it surprised her when he defended them, when he asked her not to blame them. “Lydia’s their only child. They’d already been through a lifetime of crazy bullshit with her. They just couldn’t face watching it happen to their only grandchild.”
“But to saddle Bo with that, before they even knew—” Annie interrupted herself. “He’s never said anything to me about any of this.”
“I don’t think he remembers much about that time,” JT said. “Or maybe he doesn’t want to.”
Annie thought about it, how she wasn’t much different. She tended to push the hard stuff out of mental view, too, the same way she stuffed her overdue bills into a drawer, as if that would make them disappear.
But her mother had never avoided anything; she hadn’t kept secrets. In fact, she’d always said she was opposed to them, that a secret was like an untended splinter, festering below the surface, and the longer it stayed there, the more trouble it caused when it came out. Clearly she’d made an exception. Maybe more than one.
The revelation surfaced in Annie’s mind, along with the understanding that her mother had shared things with JT, hopes and fears, doubts and concerns, that she’d never shared with Annie, and it pained her. It occurred to her that her mother had loved JT, and she’d never thought of that before. It was one of the realities she’d consigned to a drawer in her mind. She didn’t want to share her mom with him, and she had made sure he knew it.
She looked covertly at him, feeling the vestiges of the old resentment, a child’s jealousy, and a newer warmth of dawning shame, wishing she could change the past. Wishing for the courage to say so, to make amends, but even as she hunted for the words, she couldn’t pluck a single one from the tangle of her emotions. Suppose he didn’t know what she meant?
“Did you call Sheriff Audi?” JT asked.
Annie said she had. “They’re checking the terminals, but I don’t think he expects to find out anything. He’s got it in his mind that wherever Bo is, it’s related to drugs.”
“Well, he did have all that money,” JT said. “That’s what worries me. Where did it come from?”
“Madeleine. I told you. She paid him.”
“But she said he had more than that. Even that woman, Lauren, said what Bo showed her was a pretty big roll of bills.”
“So what are you thinking?”
“You know how stubborn Bo is. If he wanted to get to his mama bad enough, he’d find a way. He’d do whatever he needed to raise the cash.”
“Sell drugs, you mean.” Annie held JT’s gaze. “What if he tried to contact Leighton? If Leighton hurt him—” She broke off. She would never forgive herself.
“What if overhearing me talk about his mother is what caused him to leave?”
The silence that fell was heavy with blame, the futility of second guesses.
“Why didn’t he just ask me?” JT spoke to the ceiling.
“He was probably scared,” Annie said, “or mad, or maybe he didn’t know if it was real. He’s been listening to her through his earmuffs for so long.” She sat down at the desk. “I saw him right after that, at the café, and I knew he was upset. Why didn’t I ask him what was wrong? He would have told me. You know how he is; you have to ask.”
“It’s not your fault,” JT said.
Annie fingered a stack of mail. “He’s so easily confused,” she said. “Anything outside his own neighborhood and routine just—Morro Bay, JT—it’s so far.” She locked his gaze. “Anything might have happened by now. Even if he got there safely, how will he manage getting to the hospital? Does he even know which one his mother is in? Shouldn’t we go there?”
“To California? It’d be like looking for a needle in a haystack. We have to let the cops do their job.”
He was placating her, Annie thought. JT was trying to get her to accept that whatever had happened to Bo, it was something that involved drugs.
An exhausted pause hung around them like a shroud.
“They closed the command center,” Annie said.
“Yeah, but folks are still looking, and Audi swore he wasn’t giving up. He knows I won’t. Not until we bring Bo home.”
Tears seared the backs of Annie’s eyelids. If only Bo could hear his dad; if only he knew how much JT loved him. If only JT could have expressed it before, but regret now was as useless as blame. “You should go to bed, get some rest,” she said.
“I’m fine right here.” JT settled his head against the back of the recliner and closed his eyes. “You’ll stay? You need sleep, too.”
“I’ll stay,” she said, because neither one could face the rest of this night alone. She flipped off the lights, and going into Bo’s old room instead of her own, she lay down on his narrow bed, pulling the throw at its foot over her. But after only moments, she flung the small blanket aside and got up. There was another throw in JT’s bedroom, and carrying it into the den, she covered him with it. He mumbled what sounded like thanks and something else she didn’t catch, and she waited a moment before leaving him again, but he said nothing more.
Back in Bo’s bed, Annie pulled the small blanket to her chin, clutching its edge, wide-eyed. She kept thinking of the white-haired woman, of what she might know, the answer she might have. She felt wired and alert, as if she were the one endangered. It seemed to her the entire world was in jeopardy, and it amazed her how the night went on, impervious. The wind sighed through the trees, loosening the shadows in the room, making the house creak like old bones as it settled. Pretty soon, Annie heard JT’s breath fall into ragged snores, and she curled on her side. Once she had complained to her mother about his snoring, that it was loud enough to raise the roof. How am I supposed to sleep through that racket? she’d demanded. Now it was a comfort to her, hearing it, and she was glad for JT, that he was finally getting some rest, however brief.
As Wednesday night gave way to Thursday morning, Annie did little more than toss and turn, and finally, giving up on the notion of sleep altogether, she rose at four and dressed quietly. JT was still snoring softly when she left the house and drove through the darkened streets to the café. It was her usual routine, flipping the lights on in the kitchen, pulling the ingredients from the walk-in pantry, sifting quantities of flour, measuring out cups full of butter, spoonsful of spices, and she gave herself to it, losing herself in the rhythm of mixing and kneading. Madeleine came at five thirty and tied on her apron, and if she was surprised to find Annie there, she didn’t remark on it. Neither did Carol, when she arrived a while later. Not one of them talked beyond what was necessary to get breakfast going, and at seven, when Madeleine unlocked the café’s doors, several of the regulars walked in, and they were subdued, too.
Annie couldn’t face them and stayed in the kitchen, making herself useful by washing dishes, Bo’s old job, until the breakfast crowd thinned.
“You don’t have to be here,” Madeleine said when the last diner left. “We can manage.”
But Annie had no place else to be. She sat with Madeleine and Carol over coffee and told them about Bo’s mother, that she was alive, that he might have gone there. They agreed it made sense.
“I don’t believe that business about the drugs, though,” Madeleine said.
“I’m lighting a candle,” Carol said.
They took their empty mugs to the sink, and Annie asked Madeleine if she could use the computer in the office. “Just until the lunch crowd picks up.”
“Honey,” she said, “you take as long as you need. Carol and I can manage.”
Carol nodded, exchanging a look with Madeleine that on any other day might have caught Annie’s attention, but her registration of such details now wasn’t more than subliminal. She was grateful when they didn’t question her. The last thing she needed was one more person telling her how futile it was to search for the white-haired woman through the ownership of a blue-eyed dog.
She was startled a bit later by a light tapping on the door frame, and looking up, her eyes collided with Lauren Wilder’s.
“Madeleine told me you were in here,” Lauren said. “I hope you don’t mind.”
“No, it’s fine,” Annie said, although she wasn’t sure. “Did you find your car?”
Lauren said she had and abruptly averted her gaze, pointing her face into the late-morning light that slanted through the window, as if to signal she couldn’t say more without losing her composure.
She looked awful, Annie thought. Parched and bruised, like a ruined flower. She looked . . . haunted. The word appeared in Annie’s mind, and she could understand how that might be. She knew what it was like, having to fight to hold yourself together. “I’m glad,” Annie said and left it at that.
“Is it true they closed down the command post?”
“It costs a lot of money to run something like that. Anyway, people have to get on with their lives.”
“I suppose I can understand that, but I meant what I said yesterday about helping you. You can’t give up, you know? Because sometimes, even when everything looks really hopeless, it can work out. If you just give it . . .” Lauren didn’t finish.
But she didn’t need to. Annie knew what she meant, that you could never give up when a horrible nightmare involved someone you loved. You couldn’t go home from that. You couldn’t just take up your life. “Thank you,” Annie said when she could speak. “I’m trying to find the dog.” She picked up the list of area veterinarians she had made. “The one with blue eyes you described.”
“Any luck?” Lauren asked, setting down her purse.
“I’ve gotten about a quarter of the way through. Some of the practices have blue-eyed dogs as patients, but so far, none of the owners are white-haired women.”
“Want to tear the list in half?” Lauren pulled her cell phone from her purse. “We’ll split the vets that are left, get through them in no time.”
The surge of Annie’s gratitude caught her off guard. She covered her face with her hands, and when she could, she looked up at Lauren. Their eyes locked and what passed between them was visceral, as physical as the warmest of handshakes, as tender as an embrace.
17
Her arm hung over the side of the mattress, fingertips dipping toward the floor. That’s what wakened Lauren early on Thursday morning. The weight of her arm, throbbing and dead with sleep. Her head, too, hung over the bedside, and she pulled it back, along with her arm, curling into herself, turtle-like. Awareness rose, gritty and harsh. Dry. Her mouth was dry, her tongue a stone. And she hurt. Everywhere. As if she’d been battered. Was she dreaming? Ill? Tentatively, she straightened her knees, almost moaning with the effort.
Her feet—what was on her feet?
Her eyes hitched open. She sat up, heedless of how the room tilted, a ship in a rough sea, and flung away the bed linen, staring at her feet in some mix of alarm and dread and utter disbelief. Mud caked her toes; it clung to her bare soles, along with odd bits of leaves and grass. There was mud smeared on the sheets. And her shirt, the one she’d worn yesterday. She still had it on. Where were her jeans? Maneuvering carefully, she stood up, loosening a jolt of pain so raw, she almost cried out. Tears stung her eyes, and her hand fell to her hip, the one she’d smashed in her fall from the church bell tower. What had she done to herself?
She took a step, and the room swam in her vision, making her wobble. She groped for a handhold and found the nightstand’s edge. She thought of calling for help, but then bit her lip. It was barely six according to the clock. Besides, she knew what any member of her family would think if they were to catch her in this sorry shape. But it wasn’t true; it couldn’t be true.
She hadn’t taken Oxy.
Had she?
Reaching the bathroom, she flipped on the light, and when she saw them, the four tablets in the small plastic sleeve, sitting in plain vie
w on the vanity, she whimpered, shutting her eyes against them. But they were still there when she looked again, mocking and ruthless. Accusatory.
She snatched up the packet, spilled the tabs across her palm, turned them over with the tip of her index finger. They were yellow 40s, the same as before, but this time she didn’t remember anything about getting them. She didn’t have so much as the vestige of a dream to go on. Closing her fist around them, she brought them to her chest, squeezing her eyes shut, trying to find her breath or sense—or the way to wake up now, please—and she jumped violently when Jeff said her name.
“Lauren?”
She peered at him, trying to read his expression, seeing clearly that he knew. “I—I’m so sorry. I don’t know what happened.” She looked away, fighting tears, an urge to fall to her knees. Possibly she would beg, if begging would make a difference. She would do whatever it took. The thoughts, her terror, tumbled hollowly through her mind. My children . . .
“What do you remember? The last thing.”
His tone was neutral, not expressive of any emotion she could name. She wanted to answer him properly, and she thought hard, raising a jumble of impressions from yesterday: the detectives, Willis and Cosgrove, seated in those ridiculous pink chairs in her unused living room, asking her questions about Bo Laughlin. Annie Beauchamp’s eyes, aching with loss when she spoke of the car accident that had taken her mother . . . Madeleine Finch’s idea to do a fund-raiser to collect money for a reward for information leading to Bo’s whereabouts . . .
. . . her SUV that she had believed to her core was stolen, that had turned out not to be stolen after all.
Lauren groped her way to the Jacuzzi and sat on its wide edge.
“I came home with dinner, and you weren’t here. The kids said they hadn’t seen you, and you hadn’t called. When I tried your cell, you didn’t answer. I filled up your voice mail. You never responded. I thought about calling the cops, but I knew you wouldn’t want that. It would only piss you off—after yesterday. I mean, you seemed pretty shook up that the detectives came to the house, you know? And then the way that sheriff was looking at you . . .”
Crooked Little Lies Page 20
