Half of What You Hear

by Kristyn Kusek Lewis

  “Hey,” I say, knocking as I enter. I just need to clear this up, I think. Just need to ask her real quick and move on.

  They are both reading. Max is at his messy desk, which is covered with books and papers, Star Wars figurines, half-completed LEGO projects. Livvie is lying on Max’s bed, her head nearly hanging off the side and her feet resting on the wall in front of her, the latest Sarah Weeks book in her hands.

  “Liv, can I talk to you for a sec?”

  “Huh?” she says, sitting up. I can’t tell if her cheeks are red because she’s been lying with her head nearly upside down or because she thinks she’s in trouble. Should she be in trouble?

  “Come here?” I say.

  She swings her legs around and stands. I close the door behind us after she’s joined me in the hall. “Did you make Brittany cry at school? Did something happen?”

  As soon as the words are out of my mouth, I see Cole coming up the stairs.

  She rolls her eyes toward the ceiling. “No, Mom. Of course not!” She glances from me to Cole and then back again.

  “I swear!” she says, her voice high and her eyes wide, the way they get when she’s lying. “There is nothing for you to worry about. Everything is fine at school.”

  “Okay,” I say, looking quickly at Cole. “But you’ll tell me, right? If there’s something you need to talk about? I’m here, you know, Liv.”

  “I know, Mom,” she says. “There’s nothing for you guys to worry about. Really.”

  “Okay,” I say. Cole nods.

  I twist the doorknob and open the door to Max’s room, where he’s turning back and forth in his chair, his book in his lap, seemingly oblivious. Is he, though?

  I close the door after Livvie escapes inside and then press my ear to it, listening to see if they’ll say anything telling.

  “What was that about?” Max says.

  “Nothing,” Livvie answers.

  “Nothing?” Max says.

  “Just some stupid stuff about that idiot crybaby Brittany.”

  They’re quiet then. I turn around to Cole.

  “Anything?” he mouths.

  I shake my head. I can hear the rustling pages of one of their books, the sound of Livvie clearing her throat. I want so badly to trust her, though a sinking feeling in my stomach tells me, loud and clear, that I should know better.

  Twenty-Three

  SUNDAY NIGHT

  DAHLIA’S

  “She waited on them at brunch.”

  “Who? Stephanie?”

  “Yeah. She said it was the whole family, all of them. The kids, too. She also said that Bess barely touched her food. She even made a face at her plate when Stephanie set it down.”

  “Made a face?”

  “Like she wasn’t pleased with it.”

  “Well, excuse me! Not good enough for her, huh?”

  “I guess not.”

  “You know what? I’ve heard the daughter’s a real terror.”

  “Her daughter? Who said that?”

  “Eva. She said she’s been picking on some of the girls at school.”

  “Well, that’s too bad. Maybe the girl’s just getting adjusted.”

  “That’s what I said. I didn’t want to tell Eva what I really thought, which is that her daughter is the one who’s always been the instigator of that sort of thing.”

  “‘My Brittany,’ you mean?”

  “Ha! Exactly! Maybe Eva’s just trying to shift the blame off her kid.”

  “Could be. Though you know Cole’s wife spends all that time with Susannah Lane. That says something to me about her.”

  “Have you met her, though? She’s perfectly nice.”

  “Maybe so, but then I saw her on the street that day, screaming at her daughter.”

  “Oh, I’d forgotten about that! Was it as bad as it sounded?”

  “I could hardly watch. I was so embarrassed for her! She just seemed kind of out of control.”

  “That’s not good.”

  “I know.”

  “If she’s willing to show all that in public . . .”

  “Ooh, good point! Very good point.”

  Twenty-Four

  Bess

  You must be kidding me.

  I look at the clock. It is eight fifteen in the morning. Eight fifteen! Even if she knows we’ve all been up since 6:00 a.m., Cole and the kids already off for the day, who bangs on someone’s door at eight fifteen in the morning?!

  “One minute!” I screech from upstairs, tying my robe around my wet body.

  Bang! Bang! Bang!

  “One minute!” I hurry down the steps, worrying for a split second that it’s Cole and the kids, that maybe something happened after they left the house a little while ago. But no, he has keys, so . . . And really, who else could it be?

  Bang, bang, bang!

  “One! Minute!” I scream again, though I’m just on the other side of the door. I don’t know how much longer I can take this.

  “What is it, Diane?” I say, the cold wind whooshing into the house as I throw open the door. We haven’t spoken since brunch the other day. I assume that’s what this is about.

  And then, I see it. Worse, I smell it.

  “Oh no!” I hurry past her, knocking into her side.

  “Elizabeth! You’re in your robe!” she yells after me. “Your hair is wet!”

  The wind is strong, so cold and raw that it feels like ice against my cheeks. It has forced the lids off our trash cans, which I asked Max to drag to the bottom of the driveway this morning before school, and now our garbage is strewn across the front lawn and is making its way across the street onto Diane and Bradley’s property.

  The crows, I realize. It’s like a scene straight out of Alfred Hitchcock. There must be a dozen of them, feasting on the innards of our garbage bin, which is turned on its side, one of our trash bags ripped open like a carcass, this morning’s coffee grounds and toast crusts spilling out of it along with the mountain of tissues that Max has been using on an early-winter cold.

  And the shrimp. That’s the smell. I’d made shrimp and grits last night, and now the crows are in heaven, poking at the pink, translucent shells like seagulls descending on a beach picnic. What had she told me to get . . . bungee cords? I will never hear the end of this.

  “Elizabeth!” she yells.

  Dammit! I hurry down the driveway, chasing after a crumpled wad of papers that’s blown out of the recycling bin.

  “Oh, dear!” Diane calls behind me. She is fully dressed, of course, in wool trousers and a turtleneck sweater, a glittering rhinestone pin fastened to the lapel of her coat. “Elizabeth!”

  I lunge for an empty black-bean can (evidence of last week’s Taco Tuesday) as it rolls toward the mailbox, then rise and turn to her. I know better than to think she’s actually going to help, or at least commiserate with me. She came over here not so much to alert me to the disaster in my front yard as to celebrate it. I can see it in her eyes. She’s like a child who’s just discovered the Christmas presents hidden under the bed.

  She starts down my front stairs. “Now, I’m sure I mentioned the crows to you, didn’t I?” she yells. “They’re scavengers! Horrid creatures!”

  “Takes one to know one,” I say under my breath, leaping to catch a piece of notebook paper decorated with Livvie’s handwriting in purple ink.

  “What?” Diane says, her flats clap-clapping against the asphalt.

  “Nothing.” I right the garbage bin and walk up the driveway to meet her. “Diane, I’m sorry, but I’m just going to have to leave some of this,” I say, looking around at the mess. “I have an appointment and I’m going to be late.”

  “Well, that’s too bad, isn’t it?” she says, a definitiveness in her voice that tells me she’s still angry about yesterday.

  “Diane,” I say. “Forgive me.” I muster a smile. “But I really have to go.”

  “Are you heading over to Esperanza?” she asks, her penciled-in eyebrows ticking up in a way that remind
s me of the Joker.

  “I am,” I say, starting past her. She grabs the sleeve of my robe.

  “Diane!” I pull away. She rarely touches me, one of the many ways I know how little she cares about me. I see her air-kiss people all over town, squeeze my poor kids into her chest, bear-hug my husband. With me, she doesn’t even fake it.

  “Elizabeth, before you go over there, we need to talk.”

  Ughhhhhhhh. “Diane, I know that you are not pleased with me about brunch yesterday and I know that your opinion of Susannah is not a positive one, but I’m writing this article, and I don’t know how to get it through to you that—”

  She puts out her hands, closing her eyes and shaking her head like I’ve just given her terrible news and she can’t tolerate hearing anything more.

  I sigh. “Diane, we’re just going to have to agree to disagree on this one.”

  She keeps her eyes closed. For such a long time that I start to wonder if what I said might actually be sinking in. Is this a sign of a compromise? Is she actually going to see things my way?

  “Please,” she says, finally looking at me, her whole body shivering in the cold.

  Please? Wow. It has to be the first time I’ve ever heard her say it to me.

  “Please, Elizabeth,” she says. “Just listen to me.”

  “Okay, but—”

  “Bradley got a phone call.”

  “A phone call?” I say, balling my fists into my sides as I shiver against the wind.

  “From Susannah.”

  “Oh,” I say. Oh. My mind starts whirring. I picture Susannah pleading into Bradley’s ear, pelting him with her sad nostalgia. That’s why Diane is acting so strange.

  “I know that you and I feel quite differently about Susannah Lane, Elizabeth,” she says. “But I have to tell you this, and I’m hoping it might sway your opinion. All I can ask is that you give it some consideration before you continue on with this story that you’re doing.”

  “Diane.” I have to stop her. “Listen. I know this is awkward, but I’ve made a commitment to the maga—”

  “Elizabeth!” she yells, reaching out and gripping my arms.

  I freeze.

  “Listen to me!” she yells.

  “Okay!” I say. Wow. “Okay.”

  “She called Bradley to tell him that she is considering turning her home into an inn.”

  “What?”

  “Or a resort of some kind,” she says, shaking her head helplessly. “She says she already has investors!”

  “But I can’t—” An inn? Esperanza?

  “Did you know about this, Elizabeth? Please, be honest with me. We have to do something,” she says, her voice racked with worry. “We can’t let her do this to us. It could ruin our business.”

  “I don’t . . . Of course I didn’t know about this! Are you sure that’s what she said?” Out of everything Susannah’s told me, she chose to leave this out? Why wouldn’t she tell me? And why would she call Bradley first? Something about this feels like a ploy . . .

  Diane wrings her hands, her eyes pinned on me like I should have an answer for her.

  “I don’t have any explanation for this,” I say. “I swear to you I didn’t know anything . . . But . . . actually . . . now that I think about it,” I say, realizing something, “she did tell me something in confidence.” I look at her, weighing whether to trust her. “She told me that she’s in financial trouble.”

  “She told Bradley that, too!” she says. “She told him Teddy left her with nothing.”

  “So she told him, then?”

  Diane nods. “Is it true?”

  “I don’t know what to believe anymore.” I shake my head. “She never said anything about a resort. . . .” And then I remember the other day, during our lunch up on the terrace, when she was asking me about what Cole and I plan to do with the inn, and how Greyhill has such potential. That’s the word she used, potential. Could she really?

  “Bradley just told me this morning. She called yesterday and he’s been up all night, worrying over it. He’s at the inn now, talking to Cole.”

  “Okay.” I start up the driveway, my confusion and anger building as the seconds pass and the news settles in. “I’m going to call Cole now. Don’t worry, Diane, we’ll figure it out.”

  “The inn is just so small, and Esperanza is so big . . . What if the investors are one of the big hotel chains? What worries me is that I can see how it might work, Elizabeth. Esperanza is beautiful. It’s perfectly suited to—”

  “Let’s try to think of the bright side, Diane.”

  “Bright side!” She throws her head back. “Really! What bright side?”

  “I don’t know. I really don’t. But let’s say Susannah goes through with this. The inn is entirely different. A totally different kind of thing. Maybe a resort would simply draw more people to the area, and maybe it could be good for us both?”

  She shakes her head violently, slicing her hands through the air. “No, no, no!” she says. “That would never work! It would draw business away, Elizabeth! It would squash us! I know you think you know everything, but we’ve been running this business for decades. Trust me on this!”

  “Diane, I don’t think I know . . .” I sigh. What’s the use? “Listen, after I call Cole, I’m going to go see Susannah.” I start toward the house.

  “Call one of us as soon as you finish with her!”

  “I will,” I say, turning on the stoop. “And, Diane, listen, Susannah says a lot of crazy things. A lot.”

  She nods like this reassures her.

  “This might just be one of them.”

  * * *

  As soon as I’m inside and have closed the door behind me, I sprint for my phone and race up the stairs to throw on some clothes.

  “Hey,” Cole says, answering halfway through the first ring.

  “I just talked to your mother.”

  He moans. “Esperanza?”

  “Yes,” I say. “I don’t know whether to believe Susannah, Cole, she says so much ridiculous shit, but like I told you, she says she’s broke. And the land isn’t selling . . .”

  “Dammit!” he says. “This isn’t good.”

  “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, though,” I say, tapping my hands nervously at my sides. “It could mean nothing, couldn’t it? It could just be Susannah being Susannah. Your mom said she told your dad she has investors. I find that hard to believe, Cole. I feel like I would’ve known, or someone would’ve known, if she’s had people in town to look at the property.”

  “She has had people in town, Bess,” he says. “That guy a few weeks ago?”

  “Yeah, but still. That was just to look at the land.”

  “I don’t know if that’s the case, Bess.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I just got a phone call from Eva.”

  “Eva? What does Eva have to do with anything?”

  “Susannah called the mayor’s office,” he says. “She insisted on talking to David himself. He told Eva that Susannah wanted information about permitting. About licenses and inspections, for turning her home into a hospitality business.”

  “Shit!”

  “Yeah.”

  “I don’t . . . ,” I say. “I don’t want to believe this quite yet.”

  “But, Bess . . .”

  “I feel like she might just be up to something. I’m going to go talk to her now. I’ll find out what’s up.”

  “Okay, but Bess, if what Eva said is true . . .”

  “Yeah?”

  “And if she already has investors . . . She may have been working on this for a while.”

  “Right,” I say. “And therefore, she’s been lying to me. Or at least, hasn’t been entirely truthful. You don’t think she’s been playing me somehow, do you?”

  “I don’t know,” he says. “But this could really hurt us, Bess.”

  “You honestly think so?” I say.

  “I do,” he says. “It could be a massive problem.” He s
ighs. “Listen . . . ,” he says, his voice taking on a darker tone.

  “What? What is it, Cole?” I say, my heart banging in my chest.

  “I haven’t wanted to say anything . . .”

  “What? What is it?”

  “The inn . . . ,” he starts. “I think we’re going to need to start making a bigger investment in the business if it’s going to be viable in the long run.”

  “Viable in the long . . . Cole, what are you talking about?” I sit down on the bed, grasping the edge like I’m steadying myself on a raft. “I saw all the financials before we signed everything! The inn is perfectly stable!”

  He takes another deep breath, and the sound of it—his worry, his frustration—is like sandpaper on my skin. I feel like I might throw up. “Now that I’ve been here a few months, Bess, I’m starting to see just how much work there is to do. Stuff my dad either never saw or decided to ignore. The building is so old, Bess. It’s not just cosmetic stuff that needs to be upgraded. The plumbing system is ancient, the HVAC is totally inefficient . . .” His voice trails off.

  “Why didn’t you tell me any of this?”

  “I was going to,” he says. “Soon. I’ve been trying to wrap my head around all of it. And, you know, we have some money saved. I just have the feeling that once we start fixing things . . .”

  “It might snowball,” I say.

  “Exactly.”

  I close my eyes, rubbing my forehead like I could wipe this away. I stand up and walk across the room.

  “Okay,” I say, shoving my feet into my shoes. “I’m going to go talk to her. I’m going to go figure this out.”

  Twenty-Five

  “Honey, we weren’t expecting you this early!” Cindy says as I enter the house.

  “Well, here I am.”

  She takes a step back. “Well, well,” she says. “Aren’t you full of spit and—”

  “Cindy,” I interrupt, peeking into the parlor off the hall for Susannah. Music’s playing. Billie Holiday, “I’ve Got My Love to Keep Me Warm.” “Forgive me, I don’t mean to take this out on you, but I just got some news.”

  “What is it?” she asks. “Is everything okay?”

  “I need to ask you something.”