Saturday, 10:30 a.m.
Meredith hadn’t come up for air in five minutes, and the shouting had drawn the attention of all the neighbors. It reminded Olivia of Leyna’s performance ten years earlier, when she’d attacked her and Richard with all that bullshit about Adam. The last thing Olivia wanted was another Clarke in her front yard and the neighborhood taking an interest in her family.
The Kims had been the first to notice Meredith screaming at Richard. Nari, Daniel, and their six-year-old twins, June and James, were packing their Honda Pilot when Meredith launched out of her house bellowing that Richard was a moron. For several minutes, the Kims had watched, until Meredith switched to more colorful synonyms for moron, at which point Daniel ushered the kids inside for another load, and Nari crossed the street to stand beside Olivia on the porch.
Serena and Frank Silvestri emerged next, Frank shirtless in athletic shorts with his stainless-steel water bottle and Serena in a jersey lounge set with her glass of white wine. It was ten thirty in the morning, but Olivia tried not to judge. Of all the neighbors, Serena Silvestri wore her curiosity most openly, peering over the rim of her glass with something close to delight.
Olivia caught glimpses of Thea at the window, watching too, and Dominic, who stood a safe distance away, as he always did. He didn’t seem to notice her watching him, so her gaze lingered. He’d always been such a handsome boy and so much stronger than Adam. Always her rock. Adam’s too. Now, years of burying his grief so she wouldn’t see it had etched premature lines in his face. Seeing that pain grew quickly uncomfortable and she looked away.
She looked for Rocky. Where was he? Meredith’s shouting would’ve provided the cover for a private conversation. Not that she’d be able to have one now that Nari was standing only a couple of feet from her.
On the edge of the Durans’ driveway, Meredith had transitioned from a lecture on the stupidity of using power tools on a red-flag day to one on Goose crapping in her yard.
“My garden is not your dog’s toilet,” she said, voice rasping from all the shouting. If her throat got sore enough, maybe she’d go back inside and play with her paints, and Olivia could avoid seeing her again for another few months. “If you and your wife can’t control your dog, then perhaps you should buy him diapers.”
Where was Goose, anyway? He seemed to be missing. The French bulldog mix had been a rescue from Greenville after the Dixie Fire burned through the town, and Olivia worried that he would take off one day in search of a home and a family that were no longer there.
Richard was trying to keep calm, but Olivia heard the stress in his voice. “A person’s character can be easily measured by how she treats animals,” he said.
“And a moron’s character can be easily measured by how often he lets his dog crap in his neighbor’s yard.”
Olivia felt her body tense. The shouting reminded her too much of her parents toward the end. They’d died in a car accident a month before their divorce would’ve been final. Olivia was an adult living in another state, so she never knew what had brought them together that last time or why her father was drunk when he got behind the wheel. Had they planned one last scotch-fortified dinner to discuss the division of assets? Or had they celebrated a reconciliation with too much champagne?
Olivia hoped it wasn’t the latter. She liked to picture her mom resolute at the end. She hoped her dad hadn’t been able to sway her with one more lie about how his latest lover meant nothing to him.
Nari took a long drink from her tumbler of green juice. In the heat, condensation beaded the glass. She whispered, “Think she’s got much more left in her?”
“Meredith always has more in her.”
Nari rolled the cup between her palms, popping the tiny beads of liquid.
“At least Richard’s handling it well enough.” She took another long drink, finishing it. She looked down at her empty glass with obvious disappointment. “Got any kale?”
Nari had once run a juice and smoothie shop. That was after she’d tended bar and taught yoga but before she’d signed up for paralegal courses. Nari bored easily. After the twins were born, she’d settled into remote work as a medical transcriptionist, though she still checked the online job boards weekly. In the twenty years Olivia had known her, only three things had held her interest: her children, her shakes, and her decoupage. When she’d first knocked on new neighbor Olivia’s door, Nari had carried a decoupaged basket nearly as big as she was, loaded with seasonal fruit, her greeting a breezy “Where’s your blender?”
“I might have spinach,” Olivia said now.
But neither left the porch. There were two kinds of people on the street: Those who’d moved in after the kids went missing—the Millers, the Silvestris—and those who were there that night. The latter Meredith had always blamed for not being able to change what happened and for siding with Olivia in their feud.
Richard had spent years trying to convince Olivia they should move. He’d come home with flyers from houses that were newer, bigger, and more elegantly appointed. “This neighborhood is toxic,” he’d say, and Olivia would accept the flyers and tell him she’d think about it. Then she would bury them in the garbage. When he pushed her on the subject, she would point to the ticks on the walls that marked Adam’s height or the bedroom with the always-closed door, no furniture in it but boxes of stuffed animals, textbooks, and academic trophies crammed in the closet.
Richard would look at her with sympathy then, but at least it wasn’t the pity he would’ve shown had she told him the truth.
If we leave, how will Adam find his way home?
But was this still home?
“We’re taking the kids to Daniel’s parents’ house for the weekend,” Nari said. “You got someplace to go?”
“We’re fine here.” In the twenty years she’d lived at Ridgepoint, a wildfire had come close only once, burning to the edge of the highway a mile to the south.
“You sure?”
“I’m sure.”
With everyone’s attention on Meredith and Richard, Olivia considered pulling Nari aside and telling her about Richard’s cheating. But, like so many times before, she kept silent. She told herself it was to protect Thea, but really, Olivia didn’t want Nari to look at her the way her childhood neighbors had looked at her own mother. She wouldn’t let Richard cast her as a woman to be pitied.
“You want us to take Thea?” Nari asked.
When Olivia’s gaze darted to the window, Thea ducked out of sight.
“She’s been complaining of a sore throat. Probably nothing, but I’d like to keep an eye on it.”
The lie was easier than telling Nari she didn’t trust her to take care of Thea. It wasn’t personal. She loved Nari, but she didn’t trust anyone outside the family with her daughter.
“Consider it, at least. There’s a dark energy around the neighborhood today.”
Olivia didn’t argue. She felt it too. Ellie Byrd’s disappearance had set everyone on edge, her most of all.
Nari rolled her empty cup in her hands, expression unusually serious. “I feel like something bad is about to happen.”
Olivia’s friend had fancied herself a psychic ever since she found her stolen bike in a creek after having a “vision” of running water. The vision had involved a faucet emptying into a sink, but, Nari claimed, such things were often hard to interpret.
Olivia had never asked Nari the obvious question: If she was truly psychic, how had she not known Adam would disappear? And why had Nari never gotten a vision as to where he might be? Every time Nari mentioned that missing bike, Olivia wanted to stick a wadded sock in her mouth.
Still, Olivia scanned the tree line. Where was Rocky? And her dog?
When she pulled her gaze away, she caught Meredith staring. The other woman strode toward her, eyes chilly.
“Where’s Leyna?”
“She’s your daughter.”
“She was with your son.”
Grief swelled, anger too, and she was too exhausted to hold the words back. She fired, knowing she would draw blood. “Seems after what happened with Grace, you would’ve learned to keep a close eye on your remaining daughter.”
Meredith’s jaw tightened, but she didn’t flinch—Meredith Clarke wasn’t the type to show weakness like that. Beside Olivia, Nari sucked in a quick breath, then hissed her name in shocked accusation. Even Richard gaped, his forehead knitting in obvious surprise.
Though Olivia knew she shouldn’t have spoken the words, she didn’t regret them. Not a bit. She felt a loosening in her chest, as if their release had made more room there. Meredith knew something about Adam’s disappearance that she had kept secret for sixteen years, and because of that, Olivia would never apologize to her for anything.
Never.
Meredith pulled her shoulders back, her posture rigid, and Olivia sensed her composure required great effort. She waited for the other woman to fire back her own retort, but her lips compressed into a thin line and she remained quiet. The wind keened and the heat clawed, and a minute more passed. Yet still Meredith said nothing.
Somehow, her silence was worse than anything she might’ve said. Just as she’d no doubt intended.