CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN
After hearing Annie’s story, Lena felt a tempest within her. “Are you sure he’s dead?”
“I stared at him for a while,” Annie said. “He was face down in the water. Aren’t you going to call the police?”
Lena understood the need to stop and think first, to coax Annie inside to her usual spot on the sofa, dab a wet washcloth to her face, fold a chenille throw over her lap and boil the water for a mug of tea, text Mike that, as it turned out, Annie had been here all along, helping clean, and might be a little while still.
“What do I tell the police?” Annie wondered aloud. “Do you think they’ll arrest me right away?”
“It sounds like self-defense,” Lena said. “But if they’re involved, Annie, the news of it will be everywhere, and out of your control, regardless of whether you’re around to protect Laurel from it.”
Annie considered that. Her fingers stroked the throw tucked around her lap.
“I’m sure no one was on the trails,” Lena said, “but did anyone see you leave the party?”
“Maybe Jen?”
“She wouldn’t say anything,” Lena said.
“How do you know? I was awful to her.”
“Just a feeling.”
Annie made a sound between a gasp and a laugh. “Oh my god, how will I explain it to Laurel?”
“You won’t,” Lena said. “What is there to explain?”
Neither one of them verbalized the thought that passed between them: Who would ever know?
It was all so clean, Lena marveled. Annie didn’t even know to be grateful for how clean it was.
Lena moved right next to Annie on the sofa, faced her, took Annie’s hands—slightly thawed—in her own.
“It can be surprisingly easy,” Lena lied, “if you let it.”
FIFTEEN YEARS EARLIER, 1:45 A.M.
Lena palmed her keys, opened the door.
Tim’s car had been parked at an awkward angle in the darkened garage. The windshield was cracked and torn in two spots. Its edges peeled up like it was made of a flimsy plastic. Rachel sat upright in the driver’s seat.
Lena ran through the shards of glass that covered the garage floor, flung open the car’s front door, and touched Rachel’s arm, which was cold and clammy. “What happened?”
Lena moved Rachel’s heavy limbs, tried to assess damage. The splotches of blood on the skirt of Rachel’s dress seemed to be from a wound on her palm. The cut didn’t appear deep.
“What happened?” Lena pressed both of her hands against Rachel’s cheeks, forced eye contact.
Rachel’s lids squeezed shut. Lena pinched her bare upper arm, and they flew back open.
“I don’t know.” Rachel sounded genuinely perplexed. Her breath was sour and hot. “I feel really sick.”
“But the windshield…” Lena’s voice screeched out of her. “What hit it?”
“Don’t know.”
“Tell me where you went, Rachel. At least tell me that.”
Lena’s headlights were the only illumination on Canyon Road. Her grip on the wheel was tight and dry and she drove slowly, scanned the blue grama grass on the roadside.
She got out of the car after she felt the bump underneath her car, bent down to look at a blue sneaker planted upright in the middle of the road.
The wind died down, diminished to a gentle rustle that waved through the tall grass as if beckoning Lena closer.
He’d landed mostly on his back, the leg with the shoeless foot stretched toward the road, the other tucked under him at an awful angle.
His face was unblemished but for a golf-ball-sized crater collapsed in the middle of his forehead. The hair on the side of his head was soaked with blood and matted with tiny seed heads. There was a spread of darkness under him. Lena couldn’t tell where he ended and the earth began.
She kneeled, pressed two fingers lightly against his exposed wrist, and averted her eyes from his, which were open and vacant. His skin was soft and a bit warm, but she felt no pulse other than a beat deep within her.
You could hide him, Lena.
Quickly, hide the body so no one finds out.
But her legs were running to the Nessels’ house and she was knocking and ringing the bell.
When Harriet came stumbling to the door in her nightshirt, Lena’s voice was an unfamiliar shriek. You need to call 911.
“What happened,” Harriet demanded.
It wasn’t a decision. It wasn’t thought-out. It was something essential that clicked together within Lena.
It was Tim. The lie felt true as it spilled out of her mouth. It was Tim.
She waited for questions, a challenge, but Harriet nodded gravely, wrapped her arms around her chest.
At home, she had to assume that there wasn’t much time.
Lena moved the car’s seat and mirrors back to Tim’s setting. She wiped its interior with hand towels, which she threw in the washing machine along with dirty napkins from the party.
She coaxed Rachel upstairs, stepped her out of the rest of the bloody dress and forced her into the shower. She bandaged the cut on her hand, used pillows to prop her in her bed.
She threw the dress on the logs with the gauze and the blood and the wrappers, lit the outdoor fireplace, watched the fire jump as it consumed it all.
There were so many mistakes, too many.
But when the police knocked, they didn’t focus on them.
Lena led them to Tim’s study, let her shock unspool as she told them how she had woken up, seen his car, and raced down the hill. Seen that poor boy, that poor boy, that poor innocent child—
The tall officer had tears in his eyes. He jerked his gaze away from Lena’s; she saw the clench of his jaw.
Lena’s last memory of her husband was him propped between the officers’ shoulders, messily objecting to being escorted out of the house, his eyes justifiably confused.
On her way upstairs to check on Rachel, Lena caught her reflection in the dark window.
What had she just done, with barely a thought, by the strength of something deep and ancient?
There were a million things that could go wrong, but Lena decided to stay focused on the details, not the big picture, no thoughts about the boy—oh god, the boy—or his parents, his parents, how she’d been on her way to Gary’s—
Stay focused.
When she received the early-morning call about Tim’s death, Lena’s first reaction was that this removed an entire set of complications.
Rachel presented a problem: she was hysterical, insistent on confessing. The girl could hardly sit still long enough for Lena to make her understand that coming clean would be an empty gesture.
It would be a pointless sacrifice, Lena scolded, completely self-indulgent. What made sense was to piece together the evening, determine who might know something, and then consider their options.
Bryce had invited Rachel to the party, Rachel said, and after Lena shut the door to her room, Rachel had slipped to the dark garage, driven herself down the hill in Tim’s car. It dawned on Rachel too late that she didn’t belong there.
It was older kids and they ignored her. She’d hung on the side, watched them play beer pong, gathered the courage to play two rounds, said goodbye to no one, walked to her car alone.
No one saw me, Rachel insisted. No one ever sees me.
Thank your lucky stars if that’s true, Lena snapped.
After months of nervous silence, Lena began to finally understand that those four hours were hers alone.
But in Lena’s mind, the two names will forever be fused: Bryce Neary and Rachel Meeker.
How many times will she be overcome at the thought of their young lives intersecting: passing each other at a playground, on the riverbank searching for clams, the invisible line connecting them: she will kill you, she will kill you, she will kill you.
And I will cover it up.
THE DAILY POST
August 5
The body of a Juniper County man was found in a creek by hikers at 3 P.M. on Sunday, August 8th.
According to County Coroner Gomez, David Ratzen, 25, a.k.a. Colin Williams, was discovered in a creek below the Lynx Hollow hiking trail. Mr. Ratzen had been reported missing on June 11th, after he failed to pick up a paycheck from the Kingdom School, where he was an employee. He was also a first-year graduate student in the master’s program at The Seminary of the Foothills, focusing on religious musical studies and education.
He was last seen on June 1, when he was a guest at a party in Cottonwood Estates, the subdivision that abuts Lynx Hollow trail. His car was later found on a deserted side road at the southeastern border of the neighborhood.
Since his disappearance, Ratzen has been the subject of an ongoing police investigation. The sheriff had been in communication with at least two Texas district attorneys in regards to outstanding warrants for Ratzen on charges of indecency with a child by contact and exposure, stemming from Ratzen’s employment at Music Beats Academy and Harker County Middle School’s theater department. “It’s a complex situation, to say the least,” a spokesperson said. “This guy was clearly on the run.”
Ratzen was declared dead at 3:30 P.M. on Sunday. His body was sent to the medical examiner for an autopsy to determine the exact cause of death. No foul play is suspected.
“I think it’s a sad but necessary reminder,” the spokesperson said. “We tend to get casual with nature, to think of the trails as our backyards, but precaution—proper footwear, knowledge of the weather—can be the difference between life and death.”
Jen Chun-Pagano knocked on my door today. She was selling raffle tickets for the Kingdom School. Before I could invite her in for tea, she launched right into her sales spiel—they were hiring a consultant and writing a charter school petition and putting together a board of trustees. From now on, everything would be by the book.
I bought twenty dollars’ worth of tickets, and Jen handed me the receipt with a big smile that faded when I asked how she and Abe were doing, in light of the article in last week’s paper.
I’ll never forgive myself, she told me, for bringing him into our neighborhood. I was totally fooled.
Don’t be silly, I said. No one blames you.
Jen’s eyes flashed with gratefulness, and I suppose I took that as an invitation to further connect on the issue.
Have you seen Annie? I gestured across the street toward their house, which was as quiet as it had been all summer. I’m a little worried.
I saw her walking with Lena once or twice, Jen said, but I was rushing somewhere and didn’t stop to chat.
I leaned closer to her, wondered if she could sense the way my heartbeat had accelerated. “I think they were together at the party, Annie and Colin. I saw them—”
“Harriet,” Jen said. “Stop.”
I stopped.
Her face went through a range of emotions, and I saw, even in the afternoon shadows, that her eyes were pink and puffy.
“I’m sorry to be abrupt,” she said. “And I understand the desire to speculate, but you must have imagined seeing them together.” Her voice was ragged. “Everyone needs to move on.”
I looked behind Jen, to our neighborhood, bathed in sunshine. Just uphill on Red Fox Lane, a group of children took turns jumping a skateboard over a ramp they’d set up.
I hadn’t seen many kids out since the accident, and their laughter, the hiss and scrape of wheels on pavement, seemed a harbinger. People were starting to feel safe again.
I chose to see the value of Jen’s point.
Everyone needed to move on.
AUGUST
To: “The Best Book Club in the World”
From: proudmamabooklover3@hmail.com
To my dearest book club sisters:
It is with heavy heart that I resign my post as book club president. In the best interests of the group, I wanted to excuse myself ASAP so a new, more suitable leadership can take over. If I haven’t yet apologized to you individually, I will.
Acting as your president has been one of my life’s great honors. I know the book club will continue to thrive. I will miss it more than you can imagine.
Your Former President,
Janine
P.S. If I can make one last recommendation, it would be that, in light of recent events, we should switch the Tolstoy for something upbeat and positive. I have humbly attached a list of more suitable titles.
SEPTEMBER
To: “The Best Book Club in the World”
From: proudmamabooklover3@hmail.com
Hello ladies! What a deluge of love I’ve received! The letters, the visits, the baked goods (thank you, Lena!!!! Yum! Yum!)!
What choice do I have but to heed your passionate demands and return as president? So: there will be no changing of the guard. In fact, my first order of business will be to AMEND the BYLAWS to allow for LIFETIME APPOINTMENTS! MONARCHY, ANYONE????
(Kidding, kidding, hahahahahahaha
)
The book: THE LITTLE MAGIC BOOKSTORE by Wendy Nolan
I personally found this charming escapist tale about the power of stories to be JUST what the doctor ordered. (And it’s not like Anna Karenina is going anywhere but SPOILER ALERT: the ending would be a little too much right now.)
The place: Harriet Nessel’s house, 8854 Dakota Way.
The time: 7:00 p.m.
To bring: Anything, nothing. Let’s get through this one, ladies. Onward and upward!!!
Your Devoted Book Club President EMPRESS,
Janine