Half of What You Hear

by Kristyn Kusek Lewis

  “Nothing?”

  “Nothing,” she repeats through her tears. “Zero. I left New York, Bess, because I had no other choice. I had my clothes, the furniture, a little bit of money that was left in our bank account, and that truck. He had stipulated in his will that everything else was to be given away or sold. The apartment, the house in the country, all of it—gone.”

  “But why would he do that?” I say. “That is so . . .”

  “Cruel?” she says, her sobs growing heavier. “Believe me, I’ve tried to figure it out. Why he would do it, how I couldn’t have seen . . .” She reaches for another tissue. “Bess, I’m selling the land because I have no other choice. Along with the house and the little bit of money I have, which is going to run out before too long, the land is it. I won’t be able to pay Cindy much longer, not unless I start selling things. And I think she’s starting to catch on.”

  “I see,” I say. “I never would have . . .”

  “No, you wouldn’t have,” she says. “That’s just the thing. Everyone thinks they know everything there is to know about me. Everyone thinks I’m this horrible, out-of-touch bitch up on the hill. The truth is, I’m just trying to keep my head above water.”

  “Susannah, I’m so—”

  “Don’t,” she says.

  I nod.

  “The reason I agreed to do this story with you, Bess, was that I thought the publicity would be good for the land. It has to sell.”

  “I get it,” I say. “Believe me, I do.”

  “So will you help me, then?” she says. “Write something that will make people come. Make it wonderful. It’s been eight months, Bess, and we can’t find a single buyer. I’m starting to think I’m going to have to do something else. This house . . .” She waves her hand around like a hostess introducing the prizes on a game show. “It takes a lot of money to run a place like this.”

  I nod. My head is reeling from the past hour with her.

  “Can I ask you something?” she says, crumpling her tissue in her hands.

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Do you think this is karma, Bess? Is it the world’s way of getting back at me for all the horrible things I’ve done? Those things I told you?”

  “Susannah, no,” I say, an uneasy tingle on my skin at the mention of her revenge schemes. “It won’t help you to blame yourself. Nobody deserves to be treated the way he treated you.”

  “That’s right,” she says, and for the first time since I’ve known her, she looks old. Worn out, weary. “Nobody does. Nobody, it seems, except me.”

  Seventeen

  MONDAY AFTERNOON

  LAZY DOG NEWS & BOOKS

  “Who was that who just walked out of here?”

  “Somebody staying at the inn. From Virginia Beach, I guess.”

  “Speaking of the inn!”

  “What?”

  “I heard that Martha Brown saw Cole and his wife having it out the other night.”

  “Really?”

  “Mm-hmm. I didn’t talk to her directly, but from what I heard, they were screaming at each other on the sidewalk, right in the middle of town! And she heard the wife say something about Eva.”

  “Eva?”

  “Yup.”

  “Didn’t Eva and Cole date back when they were kids?”

  “They sure did.”

  “You know, now that I think about it . . . When was this?”

  “Over the weekend.”

  “Wait . . . We had dinner at the Herringbone on Friday. I saw Cole and Bess sitting at the bar.”

  “Did they look happy?”

  “Sure. She seemed to be doing most of the talking.”

  “I’ll tell you what, I don’t know what Cole’s type is now that he’s grown, but she’s nothing at all like Eva. Doesn’t seem to be, at least.”

  “You don’t think Cole and Eva . . .”

  “No, I don’t think Cole would . . . But Eva, on the other hand . . .”

  “Oh, no way! The mayor’s wife? She loves that husband of hers.”

  “Come on! What she loves is being the mayor’s wife.”

  “Well, I read Eva’s blog, and it looks to me like she is perfectly happy. She’s got a nice little life. I don’t think she’d screw that up.”

  “Yeah, but . . .”

  “What?”

  “I guess I just see it differently. I read Eva’s blog, too, and nobody’s life is that perfect.”

  “I don’t know. If anyone’s messing around, I might put it more on Cole.”

  “Really? Why?”

  “I shouldn’t say anything.”

  “Oh, come on.”

  “I heard that the reason Cole and Bess moved back here is that they don’t have any money. She’s a real spender, I guess. Or was.”

  “Huh. Now that’s interesting.”

  “Isn’t it? And you know, I was thinking, maybe that’s why she’s spending all that time with Susannah Lane.”

  “You think she wants in on Susannah’s money? Trying to get herself written into the will?”

  “I mean, if what people are saying is true, it would make sense.”

  “Yes, it sure would, wouldn’t it?”

  Eighteen

  Bess

  “If that came in a brighter color, it would already be in my closet,” Carol says, looking at me over the top of her leopard-print reading glasses from her spot behind her vintage cash register, where she’s twirling a pencil in her hand and marking up a stack of invoices on the counter in front of her.

  “It’s pretty,” I say, checking the price tag on a soft gray cashmere cardigan before I release it from my grip. I turn to the rack behind me. Carol’s shop feels like the well-appointed bedroom of an adored older sister, warm and feminine, with scented candles perfuming the air, but somehow I can’t relax. I’m not looking for anything in particular, just came in to kill time this afternoon before I meet the kids.

  I ran around town all day like a second-string Nancy Drew, trying to dig up information about Henrietta, whom I can’t seem to get out of my mind since my last meeting with Susannah. The more time passes since that meeting, the more I think how odd it is that she segued from crazy revenge stories about the women who tried to seduce Teddy into this whole thing about my father-in-law and Henrietta. I know it’s probably my imagination getting the best of me (too much time on my hands, my mother would say), but it makes me wonder about how Henrietta died . . . And then how she threw in the fact that she’s broke, to boot? Every time I think of it, I feel a pang of sadness for her. She’s just so complicated, so difficult, so eccentric . . . I don’t know what to make of her, and after everything that happened to me in Washington, I’m scared of trusting her too quickly. How this will all play into the actual story I need to write, I don’t know, but I’m feeling the pressure. I don’t want to leave a single stone unturned. I want this to be perfect.

  I went to the library today to research, which proved incredibly frustrating. Aside from a short, three-sentence obituary, I couldn’t find a single news story about Henrietta’s death. I don’t know what I expected to find—some buried article revealing Susannah’s true nature, some missive explaining it all—but I do think it’s strange that when I asked the librarian why there wasn’t anything in the old Greyhill Times about the incident, she looked at me as if I’d asked her to exhume Henrietta’s body from the little graveyard near her family home where she’s apparently buried alongside her parents.

  I’m starting to realize that there are certain things people talk about in Greyhill and certain things they don’t, and Henrietta Martin, all these years later, appears to be on the don’t list, no matter what those women might have said to me back at the Barkers’ Halloween party. When I stopped at William’s after the library, I asked him why he thought this was. “It’s just not good manners, Bess,” he explained. “Nobody wants to admit that anything bad could ever happen in Greyhill, even if the something bad happened fifty years ago.”

  * * *


  “You okay?” Carol says.

  “What?”

  “You’re just slapping those hangers together like they’ve offended you,” she says.

  “Oh, I am?” I say, pulling my hand away from the rack like it’s just burned me. “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize.” I turn and run my finger along the embroidery on a white blouse. “I badly need to upgrade my wardrobe,” I say. “I don’t know what to wear for my life around here.” Now that I no longer need work clothes, I think.

  “That would look nice on you,” she says, nodding her forehead toward the white blouse.

  “I don’t know,” I say, looking down at my uniform of navy sweater and jeans. “I feel so . . .” I shrug. “It might have something to do with all this time I’m spending with Susannah. Her outfits . . .” I shake my head. “I wish you could see. She had on these shoes the other day . . . little embroidered slipper things that she said she got in Casablanca in the seventies.”

  “And I bet they’re worth more than everything in here put together,” Carol says, stepping down from her perch and coming around the register.

  Good point, I think. Why doesn’t Susannah sell some of her couture items, too, if she’s so desperate?

  “How’s that going, anyway?” Carol asks.

  “Fine,” I say, weighing whether to say more. “You know, to be honest, I quite like her. She’s really funny, and deeper than I think anyone gives her credit for. She’s actually been through a lot.” I watch Carol’s expression to see how she’ll react.

  “Oh, yeah,” Carol laughs. “Must have been difficult, being married to a gazillionaire. I’d take that tough life.”

  “You’d be surprised,” I say, running my hand down the side of a long blue skirt.

  “What do you mean?” she says.

  “Just that looks can be deceiving,” I say.

  “Seems pretty straightforward to me,” she says. “Superrich, born with a silver spoon . . .”

  “Yeah, but . . .” I bite my lip. “Do you know her?”

  “No, not really.” She shrugs. “I did feel bad for her after the accident. But, you know, my neighbor said she had that coming.”

  “What do you mean, had it coming? She lost control of her car.”

  “I still don’t believe that.”

  “Carol, she told me herself that’s what happened.”

  “Okay, okay. Suit yourself,” she says, straightening a pile of sweaters on a table. “Hey, Eva was in here earlier. She said she ran into you guys last weekend.”

  “Uh-huh,” I say, turning away from her. I don’t need her to see the residual anger on my face, the evidence of Eva’s effect on me like a fading bruise.

  “I guess she and Mindy were having a big night, huh?” She laughs. “She said she barely got out of bed the next day.”

  “Doesn’t surprise me,” I mutter.

  “You know, though . . . ,” Carol says, leaning against the rack of clothing I’m pretending to be more interested in than I actually am. “It’s good for Mindy to blow off some steam, after everything she’s been through.”

  “What do you mean?” I say.

  “You don’t know?” she says.

  I shrug. “Nope.”

  Her eyes dart to the door, and then she takes a step toward me. “She found out that Greg was sleeping with someone else.”

  “How terrible,” I say, feeling suddenly guilty about how I’d discounted Mindy as an oblivious ditz. “How many kids do they have?”

  “Three,” she says. “Three under six.”

  “Was it recent? The party was just—”

  “Oh, noooo,” Carol says. “It was last year.”

  “Oh,” I say. “So she stayed, obviously? They’re working it out?”

  “Well, of course she stayed,” Carol whispers.

  “What do you mean of course?”

  Carol looks surprised. “Where else would she go?”

  “Right . . . ,” I say, thinking that it’s a funny way to look at it. I try to work it out in my head: I suppose if you marry someone from town, and you have always lived in town, and your families are all in town . . . “God, how did he think he’d get away with it, in a place as small as this?” I say before I can stop myself.

  “Exactly,” Carol says. “And you’ll die when I tell you who it was.”

  “I don’t need to know,” I say, though the truth is, I very much want to know.

  “Dahlia.”

  “Like, from Dahlia’s, Dahlia?” I say, thinking of the restaurant’s stunning owner. “But she’s so . . .”

  “I know!” Carol says.

  “And he’s so . . .”

  “I know!”

  “Wow,” I say.

  “A bunch of guys used to have a monthly poker night there, and I guess Greg tended to stick around at the end of the night and hang out with her. Mindy figured it out once she heard from the other wives that their husbands got home at a reasonable hour, and Greg did not. She caught him herself. Drove over there in the middle of the night and found them in a very compromising position behind the bar.”

  “Oh, yuck,” I say, wincing at the mental picture. “I don’t need to hear any more.”

  Carol laughs. “Makes you think twice about wanting to eat a burger at the bar there, doesn’t it?”

  “Yes,” I say. “Are you guys close?”

  “Me and Mindy?” she asks. “I used to babysit her. I’ve known her my whole life.”

  “Right,” I say, thinking also that this is another prime example of why I’m never going to be able to confide in any of the women I’ve met in Greyhill so far—except, it seems, oddly enough, Susannah. Everyone else talks so much, I think, remembering how Eva and Mindy went on and on about Whitney the other night. It’s like a competitive sport.

  “Well, I’m glad Mindy got out and had some fun,” Carol says. “She deserves it for putting up with that asshole.”

  “I guess so,” I say, lifting a green dress from a rack.

  “Why don’t you try that?” Carol says. “The color would be great on you.”

  “Hmmm,” I say, looking at the dress and considering whether a gathered waist is a good move for me right now. “Why not?” I take the dress and start toward the dressing room in the back of the store.

  “Hey,” Carol says suddenly.

  “Huh?”

  She points toward the storefront window. “Isn’t that your daughter?”

  “What?”

  I weave around a rack of clothes and look out the picture window in the front of the store. Sure enough, there is Livvie, walking with a group of girls from school, all of them moving together in one skipping, giggling blob. “Aww,” I say, my heart swelling at the sight of her having a good time. Take that, Eva and Mindy, I think, remembering how they accused Livvie of being a bully. There’s Lauren, of course, easy to spot because of her cautious gait, and Brittany (hmph) behind them, with three other girls I don’t recognize. “Yes, that’s Livvie,” I say. “She asked if she and some friends could walk down to William’s together after school today. I’m supposed to meet her and her brother at the inn at four thirty.”

  “It doesn’t look like they’re going to William’s,” Carol laughs, as we watch the girls pass by the front door of the coffee shop.

  “Wait,” I say. “Where are they . . . ?”

  Livvie’s friend Lauren is walking slightly in front of her, and before I know what I’m seeing, Livvie is reaching out, grabbing for Lauren’s ponytail. At first I think it’s a friendly tug, two kids kidding around. Lauren laughs as her head dips back.

  But then—I can’t believe what I’m seeing—Livvie suddenly lets go, but she’s not laughing. She has that intense, almost pained look on her face that she gets when she’s working on a challenging homework assignment. She glances back at Brittany, as if to make sure she’s watching, and then she grasps the handle on the back of Lauren’s backpack and jerks it. Hard.

  Lauren falls backward onto the sidewalk, her feet splaying o
ut in front of her like an ice-skater who’s just flubbed a landing.

  Lauren’s not laughing anymore. She’s hurt. But Livvie—

  No. No, no, no, no, no.

  Livvie is. Livvie is laughing. Even louder now. So loud, in fact, that I can hear it as clearly as if it was the tinny melody of an ice-cream truck coming down the street. The other girls start laughing, too. Brittany is howling, clapping her hands—no, applauding. My heart starts to thrum. My mouth goes dry.

  I watch as Livvie steps over Lauren. She steps over her friend and keeps walking, laughing. Brittany catches up to Livvie, taking a little hop-step. And then Livvie circles her arm into Brittany’s and keeps walking. She doesn’t even look back.

  I do. My eyes dart back to Lauren. She is struggling to get up, her heavy backpack weighing her down. Her hair is falling in front of her face. She’s brushing dirt off the side of her leg. A woman walking out of William’s stops, her paper coffee cup in her hand. She stoops down and Lauren shields her face, trying to make herself disappear. I know that feeling. I know that feeling exactly. The woman looks down the street at Livvie and the other girls, screams something after them.

  Livvie is still laughing.

  “I can’t—” I drop the dress and race out of the store and across the street, careening past a Volvo station wagon that stops short when the driver sees me.

  “Livvie!” I scream. “Olivia Warner, you stop right there!”

  Lauren is up on her feet. “Lauren, honey!” I stretch my arms out to her. The girl turns and scrambles away in the other direction. Her face is splotched with pink. There are tears streaming down her face.

  A vision pops into my head. The cafeteria at the Oak Hill School. “That is so disgusting. You are so disgusting.”

  Livvie isn’t moving now. Or laughing. She stands frozen, her face pale.

  “Olivia Warner, I can’t believe what I just saw!” I wail, my voice warbling with rage. The other girls stand behind her, but their expressions are amused, and it’s that very fact—their incongruous reaction—that makes it clear: I know who these girls are, this type. They love this. They are pleased by this, deliciously so. But Livvie . . .