“Hah!” Tara’s laugh was ugly. “As if he didn’t get what he wanted for the favor—my share of our parents’ business, the one our daddy started. It’s what he wanted all along. He’d love it if I’d just disappear. Forever. For all I know, he feels the same way about you.”
“That isn’t true.”
In the tightly coiled silence, Lauren could feel her blood pounding in her temples. “Where is this coming from, TeeRee?” she asked finally. “You came to us, remember? You suggested the buyout. Jeff even tried to talk you out of it. If I remember right, he said you should let this house go, that there’d always be the opportunity to buy another, but losing your share of the business Mama and Daddy built—” Lauren’s throat closed. She swallowed. “I don’t understand why you’re saying all these terrible things.”
Tara didn’t answer, and Lauren couldn’t interpret her expression. Maybe it was how your sister looked if she was sleeping with your husband and determined to deny it. “Talk to me,” she insisted. “Tell me the truth.”
No response.
Tara remained as still as a trapped mouse, staring into the distance, as if she hadn’t heard Lauren or had forgotten her presence, and in the moment Lauren had to observe Tara, she was struck anew at how utterly diminished Tara appeared. And an idea surfaced, that it wasn’t a stomach virus Tara was suffering from, but something much worse, something awful like cancer—of the breast, pancreas, bone. Panic broke through Lauren’s veins. She opened her hand, a plea, an appeal. “You’re really sick, aren’t you?”
“Oh, Jesus, Lauren, no. Just go.” She came at Lauren, taking one step, two, and the movement was hostile, menacing, as it was meant to be.
It shocked Lauren even as it confused and angered her. What game was this? “Let me tell you something, Tara. You aren’t taking my children. Do you understand? You and Jeff can have each other—”
“Are we back to that?” Tara laughed, a single, harsh syllable. “You’re insane.”
“Probably,” Lauren said. “But you’re not giving me anything else to blame for the irrational way you’re acting, so I want us to be clear that I’ll fight you and Jeff with everything I have in me. I will die before I let you take Drew and Kenzie away from me. Do you understand? I will make your and Jeff’s lives a living hell.”
“Go ahead.” Tara thrust up her chin, but her voice was oddly flat. “My life’s not worth shit nowadays anyway.”
Lauren was nonplussed. “Are you lying about being sick, then? I mean really sick. Are you? Please, tell me.”
“You don’t want to know, and you can believe me about that.” Tara’s stare was needle sharp and unrelenting.
Lauren felt pierced by it; she felt she might cry out from the pain of it.
“Go home, Lauren.” Tara repeated Jeff’s admonition.
“No,” Lauren said, brushing by her. “Not until I get my son.”
“You’ll only upset him. He doesn’t want to see you.”
Lauren wheeled. “Why are you doing this? I’m your sister. Why are you lying?”
“She isn’t lying, Mom.”
Lauren spun around. Drew was on the porch in his sock feet, a practice she frowned on. Noting it was automatic, as was registering that the jeans he had on, a pair she’d bought him just weeks ago, were already too short. She saw that his hair was rumpled, and she recognized the look on his face, the knotted corners of his mouth, the flash in his eyes that signified he was ready to do battle. His boundaries were drawn, and he dared her to cross them. Jeff, she thought. Jeff had poisoned Drew’s mind, too. “I don’t know what Dad told you—”
“He said you’re back on the Oxy.”
“I’m not, Drew. I promise.”
“C’mon, Mom! He said you told him you found it in the study, and you said you flushed it, but the way you’ve been acting, I don’t believe it. Like last night—what was that? You were outside passed out when the sprinklers were going. Dad said you didn’t even know your name. Then today you forgot Kenzie. You never used to do stuff like that, not until you got on dope. It’s your fault she got hurt.”
A sound came; Lauren felt it more than she heard it, the small, protesting cry that broke from her chest. She covered her mouth with her hands, taking a step toward Drew. She had the idea, and it was wrong, she knew it was, given the mutiny in his eyes, that she would comfort him, reassure him as if she were his BTA mother and not the person he now detested and for whom he had lost all respect. Or maybe she took the step toward him because—just as it had been with Kenzie—her body refused to register his antipathy for her, and when he said, “Stay away from me,” even though she’d almost expected to hear this very thing from him, she was stunned, and her ears rang as if he’d slapped her.
Nearby, the sound of a car door slamming exploded into the taut, wounding silence, and a bird cried, a harsh mockery of notes. A blue jay, Lauren thought incongruously. Why, when they were capable of producing a full-throated and lovely song, did blue jays seem to prefer making this more raucous noise? She’d never known. It was a mystery to her.
Lauren gathered herself; she straightened her spine. “You need to get your things and come home with me,” she said, addressing Drew, and she managed to summon at least the shadow of her customary authority. “Now,” she said when he didn’t move.
“I’m not letting you drive me anywhere when you’re trashed, Mom.”
Lauren thought of saying that her blood was being tested, that the result would prove she was drug-free. But that was only her word. He’d never accept it. He’d have it his way, no matter what she did anyway. They both knew it, knew she couldn’t bodily drag him off the porch and down the drive to the car. He was already an inch taller and outweighed her by forty pounds. He showed every sign of being as big a man as his dad. Drew’s size pleased her as did Kenzie’s slender, fine-boned stature and delicate beauty. Lauren realized she took credit for her children’s appearances; she felt validated by their good looks, their glowing health. She didn’t know if that was bad or good. She didn’t know if it was bad or good to feel that without her children, she might lose herself; she might even die.
“Lauren?” Tara spoke from behind her.
Her hand shot out. “Stay out of it,” she said without looking at her sister. She found Drew’s gaze again. “I’ll leave you here, since it’s what you want. But when Kenzie is released tomorrow and your dad brings her home, you’re coming home, too. Do you understand me?”
He didn’t answer, and it infuriated her, but it was useless to argue. Drew and Jeff and Tara had closed ranks against her. Even Kenzie had turned her back. They were acting in concert, shutting Lauren out. Her sense that this was true both heated her blood and chilled it.
She turned on her heel and went to her car. She would not let them see how deeply they had wounded her.
“I’m sorry,” Tara called after her, and her voice was plaintive, broken. It was very like the voice she had used when they were children and she wanted Lauren’s forgiveness for breaking some valued possession of Lauren’s, for ruining it.
Lauren paused outside her SUV and glanced back at her sister, wondering if she had lost Tara forever.
“It’s not anything you think,” she said. “As bad as that is, I almost wish it was, but it isn’t.”
Tara’s regret seemed genuine, as if she were truly convinced of Lauren’s misunderstanding, or else it was a trick, one more in the bag of them Tara and Jeff were holding. Still, something in Tara’s demeanor gave Lauren pause, and for a moment, she considered hashing it out with Tara, making her explain herself, but she was suddenly tired of it all, the drama, the riddles. Tired of trying to prove she wasn’t on anything. Tired of trying to sort out what was real and what wasn’t. The truth shouldn’t be so hard.
She set her foot on the Navigator’s running board, and thinking aloud, she addressed Tara. “You’ll bring Drew home to
morrow when Kenzie is released.” Lauren wasn’t asking. “We’re going to sit down and clear the air.”
“No, don’t argue,” she said when Tara opened her mouth. “We can’t go on this way. We’ll lose everything, our family. Is that what you want?”
Tara looked away, adding weight to Lauren’s unease, raising the fine hairs on her arms, the nape of her neck. She glanced toward Tara’s front porch, but Drew had disappeared.
“Don’t worry,” Tara said. “He’s not staying here. I told Jeff he can’t. It’s just not possible.”
“No, it isn’t,” Lauren agreed, and then she waited, unsure why, what she hoped for—a glimpse of the little girl she had mothered? But Tara’s eyes were empty in a way that alarmed Lauren even as she felt crushed with sorrow, and fighting the hot bite of tears, she turned from Tara, damned if she would let her sister see her cry.
It was almost dark when she pulled into her driveway. The only light came from the fixture mounted high on the garage, illuminating Drew’s basketball hoop, the apron of scuffed concrete in front of it. Lauren sat for a moment, listening to the engine tick as it cooled. Her hip ached, and she felt leaden with exhaustion. Curling her fingers over the steering wheel, she bent her head to her knuckled grip. Her eyes burned when she closed them. She thought of Annie.
What might have happened by now? Lauren found her phone, but her call went straight to Annie’s voice mail. Lauren didn’t leave a message.
She went into the house, flipping on the light in the mudroom, dropping her keys and purse on the chest, and when her purse tipped off the edge and fell to the floor, she left it there, intent on reaching the study. But even as she hunted through the litter on the desk and searched the drawers and the credenza and the contents of the wastebasket, she knew she wouldn’t find the permits or the contract, and she didn’t. Because Jeff was wrong. They were exactly where she had said, in a folder, in his briefcase.
She felt some measure of satisfaction, returning to the kitchen, and she thought of calling him, but something held her back. He would find them on his own if she waited, and no words from her would be necessary. He’d apologize. He never had trouble saying he was sorry. And in the end, she had more to be sorry for than he ever would.
Near ten o’clock, Lauren tried eating a bowl of Drew’s cereal, the Honey Nut Cheerios he loved, but after a few bites she poured what was left down the drain. She called the hospital, and when she told the nurse she was Mackenzie Wilder’s mother and that she was calling to check on her daughter, the nurse reported, briskly, that Kenzie was fine, that her father was taking wonderful care of her. It was the nurse’s emphasis on the single word father that defined for Lauren, in a way no torrent of words could, her every parental failure and shortcoming. What decent mother, one who professes to care deeply for her children the way Lauren did, forgets her own daughter, even for a moment?
Lauren set the landline receiver back on the base, and because she couldn’t rest, she paced through the house, twitching the drapes closed in the great room, pausing to glance again into the study. She went upstairs and looked into the children’s rooms. Kenzie’s room was tidy, but the floor in Drew’s room was strewn with his belongings. Lauren began gathering his dirty clothes, something she ordinarily didn’t do. She tossed socks and jeans, a pair of baggy shorts and a couple of T-shirts into the laundry basket. She held up a short-sleeve shirt by its collar, not recognizing it. It was soft, some kind of faux-silk blend; the pattern was a tropical wash of greens and blues, not Drew’s usual low-key style. She thought he must have bought it the last time they’d gone to the mall. She remembered he’d asked if he could take off on his own, meet her and Kenzie later. It occurred to her that he was taking longer to dress before school, too, and recently hadn’t Jeff told her he’d caught Drew shaving?
Lauren sat on the edge of Drew’s bed, sliding her palm over the shirt. She had no memory of him wearing it, but he must have. His scent rose out of the folds, a mix of Jeff’s purloined aftershave, overtones of growing boy, minty chewing gum, the faint tang of sun and sweat. Her son needed her, but she wasn’t there for him. If, on any given day recently, he had gone missing like Bo Laughlin, she doubted she would have been able to tell the police what he’d been wearing. She hadn’t been paying attention.
There’s this girl Drew likes? But her folks won’t let her go near him because of you. Kenzie’s accusation drifted into Lauren’s brain and hung there like smoke.
Lauren embarrassed her, Kenzie had said; Lauren made her and Drew sick.
Shame bent her over her knees, and then with its pulse hammering her temples, it sent her back downstairs to the bedroom she and Jeff shared. Crossing to the bathroom, she paused outside the door. She had avoided it until now, afraid she would find that more Oxy had appeared there. Afraid if it had, she would take it, down it like the elixir of hope, of deliverance and redemption it had become to her in the aftermath of the accident.
Margaret had insisted then that Lauren was brave. And months later, when the family confronted Lauren about the Oxy, Margaret was there, too, but while the rest of them—Jeff, Tara, Kenzie, and Drew—went on and on about how badly Lauren had wrecked their lives, Margaret stayed in the background. Only after the family left Lauren alone to consider their ultimatum, Get help, or we’ll take the children, did Margaret come forward, and again holding Lauren close, she’d whispered, “You’ll get through this.”
“How?” Lauren asked. “My family hates me.”
“No, they’re afraid for you. You’ve always been the strong one.”
“Not since I fell. I hurt, and my brain doesn’t work right, and I’m scared it never will again, scared all the time.”
“You raised Tara, for heaven’s sake. You ran your mother and father’s business. You were barely twenty. Do you remember?”
It was true. After her parents died, Lauren had done those things. But this was different, she told Margaret. “I can’t fight the pain alone anymore. I’m too tired.”
“You aren’t alone, sweet. I’m here, and I’ll be here to remind you every day, every hour if need be, of just how brave you are. All right?”
But it wasn’t all right, because Margaret wasn’t here. She had died of leukemia a few short weeks after Lauren’s intervention. Lauren hadn’t even known she was sick. At Margaret’s funeral, one of her sons had said she hadn’t wanted to worry Lauren. She had believed she would beat the disease anyway.
Lauren stood motionless in the bathroom doorway now, remembering.
So much for faith, for bravery and blind courage.
It was after midnight before she could make herself cross the threshold and enter the bathroom, and she was marginally relieved when she saw nothing incriminating or alarming there, not until she went into her closet and found the documents. The permits and contract for the Waller-Land job were on a shelf, slotted between a couple of her handbags, as if she’d tucked them there while hunting something to wear. Or maybe she had thought she would change purses? She picked up the papers, leafing through them, hands shaking, frowning, trying to remember. Three pages stapled together that she didn’t immediately recognize turned out to be an asbestos-notification form. Lauren carried the folder out of her closet and sat down on the edge of the Jacuzzi. Jeff had mentioned finding asbestos in the building. It meant the bid would have to be renegotiated, if it hadn’t been already. The presence of hazardous waste would add a substantial amount to their fee. Precautions would have to be taken; a proper means of disposal would need to be arranged. There were transportation issues. All of it was government regulated and subject to enforcement by law. It was a huge headache. Lauren knew this, but she didn’t remember this paperwork or any discussion about it. Yet flipping to the last page, she saw that she had signed the form along with a notary, someone named Elizabeth McQueen at Cornerstone Bank.
Lauren felt as if she were drowning. A sound raked her backbone, her ribs
, something like a howl of confusion, protest. She clenched her jaw against it.
From a distance, she heard the tinny sound of her cell phone ringing, and she thought of not answering. But what if it was Jeff, calling to tell her Kenzie had taken a turn for the worse? Or Tara, calling to say something terrible had happened to Drew?
But it wasn’t either of them.
Instead, it was Annie Beauchamp.
“Lauren,” she said in a small, quavering voice, “we found Bo.”
20
No one had to tell Annie it was over. She knew even before JT texted her. Come back to town, his message read. He hadn’t wanted her joining a search team in Cedar Cliff in the first place, but she had said it was either that or she’d go look for Bo alone. “You’re as hardheaded as your mama was,” JT had muttered. He’d gone with a different team, some guys Sheriff Neely knew who had dogs. Annie went with a group led by the sheriff.
It was before dawn and still dark enough that they were using flashlights to walk a heavily wooded area around ten miles north of Charlotte Meany’s house when Annie felt something go through her, a sensation of dread that was physical, like an electrical charge. It was sharp enough to stop her in her tracks and make her look around. The other team members were huddled in a knot, all looking back at her. Then her cell phone beeped with JT’s message, and reading it, she knew.
Sheriff Neely drove her back to Cedar Cliff in his patrol car. She was sure he had all the details, but he didn’t say much. None of the search-team members did. She doubted they wanted the responsibility of giving her the terrible news. Or maybe JT had asked them not to.
There were a half dozen or more people standing around the sheriff’s office when she arrived, but Annie had eyes only for JT. She knew the worst of it from his face, the ruin of his expression. She went to him, and his arms came around her. She pressed her face against him, smelling him, the bitter tang of his grief, the heavier musk of exhaustion and surrender that rose through the layers of his clothing, his flannel shirt and nylon jacket. She felt him rest his chin on the top of her head.
Crooked Little Lies Page 25
