Hush Hush

by Lippman, Laura

  *

  “Three notes so far, but this was the first overtly cruel one?” Kitty asked with her instant, easy empathy. She had always been more like a big sister than an aunt.

  “Sandy nailed it from the first. He said that if someone had the power to approve of my behavior, they also had the power to disapprove. The second one creeped me out, but my eating habits are, thanks to the Beacon-Light, public record. As Crow said, that article was a blueprint for stalkers. That, and the coverage of the Epstein affair, when I went into premature labor after throwing an antique bedpan at someone’s head.”

  “Ah, yes. My gift to you. More fortuitous than I would have dreamed.”

  “You’ve always had a way of anticipating my needs better than I can.”

  Kitty nodded, but she was distracted today. Abstracted, to use that rare word that sounded like Baltimore malapropism but was actually proper English.

  “You okay, Kitty?” Tess asked and realized she seldom had cause to ask this question. Kitty was always okay, better than okay. Happy, stable, a rock. It had never occurred to Tess until this moment that no one, not even Kitty, could be happy all the time.

  “Stephen Dawes’s death—I don’t even know the man, but it’s clearly going to be at the center of our lives for a while. Melisandre called Tyner at seven or so. We weren’t even awake. Even before this horrible accident, the last few days have been exhausting. She’s exhausting. I hate the habit of calling women high-maintenance—as if they were cars or appliances. As if women, in general, require care in a way that men do not. But Melisandre Dawes is high-maintenance. Besides—she makes me feel short.”

  Tess recognized that her aunt was trying to divert the conversation with that little joke at the end.

  “You are short.”

  “But I never feel that way, ever. In my mind, I’m taller than you. So—what are you going to do about the notes?”

  “Well, I guess I’ll do my own security assessment on myself. We have a good alarm system, although I never have installed outdoor cameras. I also think it would be hard for someone to follow me now that I’m on guard. What I find unnerving are the places I can’t control. Day care, the part-time babysitters. I don’t want to tell them about the notes, though. It’s bad enough …”

  Her voice drifted off. She was unwilling to say the rest, but Kitty knew. Kitty understood.

  “You’re a good mom, Tess. Don’t let some crazy person convince you otherwise.”

  “I’m not as patient as I could be. The other day, Carla Scout took my phone out of my purse and pretended to make a call. She said, ‘Hello, hello, hello. What’s happening. Not AGAIN!’ And then she told her mysterious caller—‘I don’t like it.’” She dropped her voice almost to a whisper, although Carla Scout hadn’t been whispering. “‘I don’t like it when Mommy yells.’”

  “Well, that just shows how extraordinary a circumstance it is, Mommy yelling.”

  “Maybe,” Tess said, keen to believe this. “Maybe.”

  “You know, Tess, your own parents were a little overwhelmed when you were small. The house in Ten Hills—when they bought it, they knew they would need two incomes to keep it.”

  “I thought they bought a big house because they were going to have lots of kids.”

  “They were, but they hadn’t thought it through. Judith had to go back to work as quickly as possible after you were born. And your dad—I love my brother, he’s such a good man, Tess, but he didn’t lift a finger to help with you. That’s how it was. It’s part of the reason I never wanted kids. I remember reading Nora Ephron, writing about the women’s consciousness movement in the seventies, how it basically involved men agreeing to clear the dishes after dinner.”

  “Is the point that I have it so good?”

  “No, the point is that your mother yelled, too. Probably more than you even remember. And yet, you love her and you don’t dwell on those things.”

  “She hated messes so much,” Tess mused. “You know how she is about her own clothes. Everything perfect and matchy-matched. She wanted me to be the same, but I was a slob. Made her crazy.”

  “Have you ever thought about what your mother might have achieved if she had started at NSA even a decade later than she did? Or considered how her wardrobe was one of the few things she controlled back then?”

  Tess, to her chagrin, had not. She had never contemplated her mother’s side of anything.

  “Okay, okay, I am the poster girl for first world problems,” she said. “And the one thing I don’t have to worry about is billable hours. Assuming Melisandre gets charged and indicted, which sounded likely when I talked to Tyner. There’s a lot of legwork when he has a big criminal trial.”

  “Tyner’s not going to represent Melisandre. After all, he didn’t represent her last time. He just happened to be the only person she could reach on a Saturday morning.”

  Tess started to contradict, tell Kitty that Melisandre was insisting Tyner represent her, given that the insanity plea wasn’t part of the mix this time. But she didn’t want to give her aunt another reason to feel short.

  1:00 P.M.

  Felicia felt as if she were running up a flight of stairs in a skyscraper in which someone added another floor for every flight she ran. She could never make it to the top. Even if she made it to the top, Stephen would not be there. Stephen would never be there again. But if she stopped running, she would have to think about what her life was now, so she kept going. Move forward, do something, anything. Feed Joey. Make breakfast, even though Alanna was still asleep and Ruby had not yet returned from her sleepover. Every minute that Alanna slept, that Ruby lingered at her friend’s house, was one more minute of happiness for them. Felicia was glad, inside her own shock, that she wanted this for the girls. She was going to be their only parent now.

  She called her mother and stepfather, who said they would come as soon as possible. Felicia’s mother had lost her father as a teenager. She might be helpful to Alanna and Ruby, if they would allow her to be.

  Who would help Felicia?

  When the police had come to the door before sunrise, she knew. She knew. She willed herself not to break down, if only because she needed Joey to sleep a little longer. She could feel the officers judging her, noting her composure, and realized that she was probably a suspect. They led her through the events of the evening—where had she been, why did she wait so late to call? She told them about her night out, how she had fallen into bed at midnight, clothes still on, foggy even on two glasses of wine. She had checked on Joey, who was sleeping, but had not even bothered to knock on Alanna’s door. She remembered calling Melisandre at one or so, when she realized that Stephen was still not home. But she couldn’t leave. She just kept calling and texting him.

  They asked her if she needed help, if she had someone to call. She didn’t have anyone local to call, but she didn’t want to admit that. Her parents would be here later this afternoon. All she had to do was hold it together until then. And get through telling the girls.

  Keep moving. Keep moving. With Joey down for his nap, she made their bed—no, never theirs again, just hers—picked up the clothes she had dropped on the floor the night before. She had expected to find Stephen waiting up for her, perhaps a little pissed that she had gone out. Hoping he would be a little pissed. She was puzzled that he wasn’t home, but also buzzed, so she went to sleep. The wine rebounded on her, and she woke up at 1:00 A.M. with a dry mouth and a vague sense of things not being right. Stephen’s side of the bed was empty.

  Wide awake, if cotton-mouthed and cotton-headed, she called Stephen’s cell. It rang, but went to voice mail. Finally she broke down and called Melisandre, who was no help at all, seemed downright amused by Felicia’s predicament. Hours later, even as Felicia dialed 911, worst-case scenarios filling her head, she did not believe that the worst had happened. The whole point of imagining horrible things was that it prevented them from happening. Think of the worst thing you could ever imagine and it wouldn’t be.


  Yet it had. It had happened. Her husband was dead. She was a widow, with a young son, and two stepdaughters who couldn’t even be bothered to hate her. Except, of course, she would be their mother now. Stephen had said, back when the girls declined to be adopted, that he would go ahead and appoint Felicia as their guardian. He didn’t need the girls’ permission for that. The executor—had he ever replaced Ethan?—would oversee the girls’ inheritance, while Felicia would supervise Joey’s trust. The key thing, Stephen had said, was fairness. Everyone must be treated the same. Toward that end, Stephen had come up with a complicated bit of math, in which Felicia’s share, instead of being half the estate, was one-half minus one-third, because technically Joey’s share would be her share until he was eighteen. It had all been so speculative, almost laughable. Felicia had gotten dressed up and gone downtown with Stephen to discuss it with his lawyer, happily playing the game in which she was the scheming stepmother who would try to undercut the girls’ inheritance. She herself made no will—what did she have to leave anyone?—and Stephen had agreed that Joey’s guardians would be Felicia’s parents, still relatively fit in their sixties. After the meeting with the lawyer, they had enjoyed a long, flirty lunch at Petit Louis.

  She went to the safe in the closet to retrieve a copy of that will. It wasn’t there. Strange. She started going through his other files. Could it be at his office? She found Stephen’s old-fashioned Rolodex—he held on to a lot of old-fashioned things—plucked the lawyer’s card from it, and called him at his home.

  “Mr. Jacoby? This is Felicia Dawes. Do you remember me? You drew up my husband’s will.”

  “I remember our visit. But you know, Mrs. Dawes, I can’t speak to you about Stephen’s will without his permission.”

  “Of course.” This was her life for the foreseeable future. She was going to have this conversation over and over. On the phone to her mother, she had been too dazed to register it, but now she saw how it was going to be: She would have to tell people, all sorts of people, that her husband was dead. For how long? How many times would she have to say the words? Would it become easier or harder?

  She also was aware of an ugly sense of self-importance. It was such grave news, the biggest she would ever deliver. And she still needed to tell two teenage girls.

  “My husband died this morning. An accident.” To say he was killed, to speak of the police’s suspicions—that seemed tacky, salacious. Stephen wouldn’t want her to spread gossip. He was a proud man.

  “I’m so sorry, Mrs. Dawes. That’s horrible news. How are you doing? An accident—”

  “An accident,” she repeated with an emphasis that she hoped would shut down any inquiries. “So, of course, I need to know where the will is. Possibly a safe-deposit box, but I thought it would be here, in the house.”

  “Mrs. Dawes, I’m sorry, but—”

  “I know. I’m not your client. But how does this work? I don’t really know anything about our finances. We have a joint checking account, but Stephen paid the bills, and he had corporate accounts, which is where he kept a lot of his money, transferring sums every month. It’s awful, but I have to be able to pay our mortgage and buy groceries. I don’t want to be talking about this, but I have to.”

  “No, Mrs. Dawes. That’s not what I was going to say. Stephen never executed his will. There is no will. We had the discussions, yes, but there were some key issues he couldn’t decide.”

  “Key issues?”

  “He didn’t name a guardian for the girls.”

  “He intended for me—”

  “I’m sure he did. But with nothing set, a judge has to decide. I’m sure it will end up the same way, but custody, the distribution of the money—that’s now in a judge’s hands.”

  “Are our accounts frozen?”

  “The corporate ones will not be accessible. But I’m sure your lawyer will be able to get the estate to pay out living expenses, even while it’s in probate. And there will be Social Security, although not much, and I’m not sure when it starts.”

  “But—” She didn’t want to ask, but how could she not? This was about Joey, his life, his future. Focusing on the practical, the day-to-day, gave her purpose, blunted the grief. “Will I get any money at all beyond that?”

  “Typically under Maryland law, the estate is divided evenly between a surviving spouse and the children.”

  “So we each get a fourth?”

  “No, the spouse gets half, then the children split up the remaining half. Typically. I can’t swear to you how it will turn out.”

  Alanna came into the kitchen just then. Her incuriosity about her stepmother was ingrained at this point. Felicia could start singing “The Star-Spangled Banner” while sobbing and the girl wouldn’t look up. But she seemed particularly inside herself today, even for Alanna. She stared into the refrigerator.

  “Why is there never anything good to eat in this house?”

  Felicia was shocked at the thought that flitted across her mind just then, swift as a bug darting when the lights went on. You’re getting only a sixth. I’ll get a half and I’ll control Joey’s sixth. That’s two-thirds. She excused herself from her phone call, not caring that she was abrupt to the point of rudeness. Insensitivity was her right, at least for a little while.

  “Alanna? There’s something I have to tell you.”

  She faltered. There could be no pleasure in saying what she had to say, no matter how cruel the girl had been to her. At age five, Alanna had been told that her sister was dead, killed by her mother. Now she was seventeen and her father was dead. Killed by her mother. Not that the police had told Felicia that, but what else could have happened? Stephen never would have walked or fallen through those doors.

  “Alanna?”

  “Jesus, what?”

  1:30 P.M.

  Daisy’s dad made a big deal about listening to some show about the Beatles. It was funny about the dads—they always wanted you to listen to their music, educate you, while the moms wanted to hear what the girls thought was cool. Daisy’s dad lectured the girls on the Beatles between songs. Daisy and Ruby, the last girl in the car as she lived the farthest out, might have giggled over his earnestness if they hadn’t been exhausted from the usual sleepover antics.

  It had been a good party. Ruby, although not pretty or outgoing, was well liked by the other girls. They didn’t mind that she disapproved of certain things—texting boys, calling people out on Facebook. If anything, they seemed to respect her for her principles. The other girls longed for her approval, just as she had always longed for Alanna’s.

  Ruby wished she could throw a sleepover, too, but their new house was too far out. Not that the other parents would have objected. Other parents were always happy to do extra things for the Dawes girls. Too happy. Thank God she was only a year away from getting her license, and then she would get a car, just as Alanna had, or maybe take over Alanna’s car when she went to college. And given how few rules Alanna had to follow, Ruby would probably be allowed to do whatever she wanted, whenever. Even without a chronic migraine problem. Her dad was too lazy to discipline them and Felicia didn’t care. She pretended to care, but since Joey was born, the difference was obvious to Ruby. Joey was Felicia’s son. Alanna and Ruby were her husband’s children. Felicia was nice enough, especially to Ruby. She had no idea that Ruby was the one who had refused to allow Felicia to adopt them, that Alanna had gone along with her for once, not asking her reasons. Alanna probably figured that Ruby was entitled to her secrets, given how many secrets Alanna had.

  Only Ruby knew almost all of her sister’s secrets. She knew that Alanna had gone to Cherry Hill to find the boathouse—and gotten grounded for it. She knew that Alanna had a twenty-three-year-old boyfriend. She knew that Alanna was worried about getting pregnant, but was safe so far, based on the blank pregnancy tests in their shared bathroom. Not that Alanna was careless enough to throw them out in plain view. Ruby went through trash cans, too.

  It had been a relief
to have a night off from thinking about Alanna’s secrets, knowing she was at home, grounded and watching baby Joey. So many times Ruby had lain awake, worrying, because she knew Alanna had gone out to see her boyfriend. What kind of twenty-three-year-old man wanted to hang out with a teenager? Creepy. No, it was a nice break to giggle with Daisy in the backseat of her dad’s car, laughing at his detailed explanations about why the Beatles mattered. They laughed so hard that the back of his neck flushed and he started punching the radio buttons, saying, “Fine, we’ll listen to WBAL, then.” They rode in silence, letting the words roll over them, playing punch buggy.

  “Punch buggy,” Ruby said, jabbing Daisy’s upper arm. “Green.”

  “That wasn’t a Bug.”

  “It was a VW.”

  “It has to be a VW BUG,” Daisy said. Ruby knew this was true, but she was laughing too hard to say anything else.

  A familiar name jumped out of the radio: “… Stephen Dawes was found dead today in the Bolton Hill home he once shared with his wife …”

  What? No. It didn’t work that way. This is not the way the world ends. Wait, that was a line from a poem, or close to. But Ruby was fumbling toward something similar. This was wrong. You did not, while playing punch buggy on the Baltimore Beltway, hear that your father was dead. No, no, no, no. How had it happened the first time? But Ruby had been spared that memory. She remembered crying after the fact. Sadness throughout the house, a feeling so physically present that it was as if it were raining inside all the time. But she could not remember the actual moment she was told that her sister had died.

  How had this happened? It wasn’t supposed to happen. People were supposed to come to your house and tell you these things in soft, gentle voices, arms around your shoulders. Did Alanna know? Joey? But Joey was a baby. He would never know, never understand. He would just go through life as Ruby had, with a hole inside him, a hole through which everything leaked oh so slowly.