by Pamela Crane
‘Here, try this one.’
Accepting the pen, I noticed the writing on it: The Durham Hotel. A chic boutique hotel with a mid-century modern vibe.
‘Where’d you get this?’ I asked coolly.
‘No idea. It was in the drawer.’
‘Have you been here,’ I held up the pen, ‘to this hotel?’
He read the name, then shook his head. ‘No. I probably just picked it up somewhere.’
It couldn’t be a coincidence that Lane had a pen from the very same place Ben spent the last night of his life before coming home and killing himself. The only other person who knew where I was going that night was my mother. Had she told Lane? Had she followed me there after dropping the children off with Eileen?
I couldn’t think about this now. I had a home-wrecking whore to track down and a detective to deceive.
‘So what’s the plan for how to deal with Detective Meltzer?’ I asked. I imagined the two of us storming into the Durham Police Station, where Detective Meltzer undoubtedly ate lox and bagels, crumbs clinging to his mustache, while watching Adam Sandler movies on his iPhone.
‘I’ll make him an offer he can’t refuse,’ Lane said huskily, then narrowed his eyes and flicked his hand under his chin with Marlon Brando flair. I laughed, because after all these years he still didn’t know it was Al Pacino who said the line in The Godfather, and there was no chin-flicking flair when he said it.
‘You are going to misquote that line until you die, aren’t you?’
‘Yep,’ he said with a wink.
As I headed out the door, my phone rang with my mom’s Glamour Shots-esque image flashing across my cracked screen.
‘Hey, Mom.’
‘Hi, Harper.’ A din of background voices nearly drowned her out. ‘I’m down at the police station again.’
‘I thought they already talked to you about Ben?’
A short pause filled with noise. ‘It’s not about Ben. I’m being questioned about the murder of Michelle Hudson, and I need your help.’
Chapter 27
Harper
Some days I went hours before I remembered that I was a widow. Then it would come in a flash, Ben is dead, but there was his nose on Elise, there were his lips on Jackson. Other days, like today, it was the first thought that awakened me and the last thought that followed me into my dreams.
The moon smiled down on me, its crescent wide like the Cheshire cat’s. I wasn’t smiling back tonight. I had just spent the last three hours at the police station while Detective Meltzer pelted my mother with questions about her whereabouts the night of Ben’s death, the day of Michelle’s murder, what her relationship with Ben was like. I watched her fumble over her lies, saying that she had been watching her grandkids all evening. The kids had been given a tour of the police station and a cruiser by a friendly officer who felt bad for them when he saw them slumped in the corner of the waiting room amid two prostitutes arguing over which street corner belonged to whom. For the first hour, Elise and Jackson whined about going home. For the next two hours, they followed the young officer, oohing and ahhing, asking a bajillion questions until Elise decidedly told me she wanted to be a cop someday. A touch of irony, since her mother was a criminal.
I had graciously thanked that officer for entertaining my kids as I herded them out the door. At least they hadn’t been in the interrogation room to deny my mother’s statement.
That’s when the big news came out – during the interrogation – and that’s when I saw just how corrupt my husband had been. Losing his mother-in-law’s life savings in a bad investment. Then taking a large chunk of Lane’s savings too. Ruining his own family! No wonder my mother had hated him. It was a wonder Lane didn’t. Now my conversation with Lane made sense; I didn’t know Ben at all, a man capable of stealing from the people who loved him, from the people he was supposed to love back.
As the details were explained to me, Ben sold it as a promissory note investment, where Mom and Lane – and a handful of others whose names weren’t disclosed to me – could buy back some of the debt to save Ben’s investment company. Except it wasn’t Ben’s company per se; sure, he had helped start it with the CEO, Randolph Whitman, but he had no control over it or ownership. He simply didn’t want to have to start over, so he figured saving a sinking ship might work. It didn’t. Especially not when Randy ran off with all the money. Ben died the same night that Randy fled, gone in the wind. And now I was more confused than ever.
After dropping the kids off at home and putting them to bed, I needed to clear my head. So many worries rattled around up there in my skull. Only one place really gave me clarity – beneath the weeping willow tree in my former backyard.
In one hand I held the keys to my Hendricks Way house. In the other hand I held the leather diary containing my daughter’s darkness. What I had read disturbed me greatly. What eleven-year-old wrote such graphic depictions of blood and death? Enfolded between pages of friend drama and school pressures I discovered a horrifying account of a little boy named Frankie – I assumed he was named after the doll that they had made such a fuss about – murdered by his reflection. The reflection kept luring the little boy with gifts, but with every gift the boy accepted, he lost a bit of himself. First it was not eating, then it was seeing things. It sounded awfully reminiscent of Jackson. Finally, at the end of the story, the little boy disappeared into the mirror and became the reflection, stuck behind glass with no escape.
Elise had titled it The Boy in the Mirror, as if it were just a story, an Aesop’s fable, except evil and unhinged, like R.L. Stine on steroids. I had read the story again and again, hoping to uncover some deeper meaning within the images of darkness folding over each other. All I found was a child in great need of hugs and therapy. Just like Jackson.
I stood in the backyard of the house I had called home for years, now a vault holding memories and secrets. The air was unseasonably crisp for a late May evening, which felt good after the day’s pitiless heat. My skin yearned for the cold to clear my head, to sharpen my focus. I needed single-mindedness now more than ever as the police were beginning to ask questions I couldn’t answer. Well, perhaps couldn’t isn’t the right word. Shouldn’t.
Michelle Hudson, the only witness in my husband’s murder case, was dead. Did I know anything about that?
Of course not, I’d insisted. How tragic! She was such a nice old lady.
Unfortunately – yet fortunately for me – she hadn’t gotten a good look at the two – yes, two! – intruders who had broken into my house the night of Ben’s death. But the police now had a lead – and it most certainly was connected with Michelle Hudson’s death – and they were looking for two suspects.
I hope this can get us answers finally, I exclaimed.
The evidence they had found at Michelle Hudson’s house would tell everything soon.
Oh good!
Oh crap.
Evidence? What evidence? It was only a matter of time before the lies came undone. The truth had a way of doing that. If you just kept pulling on the end of the string, eventually the whole knotted ball unraveled. I could sense the time for goodbyes approaching, which brought me here. Home.
Sliding the key into the keyhole, I unlocked the back door and headed inside, inhaling the musty scent of unlived-in space. I paused at the antique nineteenth-century Victorian mirror, a gorgeous piece in an elegant oak frame with applique carved vines and flowers, which I had left hanging in the hallway as it was too heavy to move. The renters arriving next week needed mirrors too, didn’t they?
In the gray I looked younger than my thirty-eight years. I didn’t mind the threads of white hair beginning to pop up amid the red. Or even my thin dash of chaste lips. I’d never considered myself a great beauty, but I had always been happy with who I was. You can forgive a homely face when you have a good heart. But I had lost that, the thing that truly mattered. I could no longer look into my own eyes, they were two black holes that sucked in all light, all hope.
<
br /> It was strange how death took only a moment, but it changed everything forever.
I crept into the living room, careful not to disturb the dust. I didn’t want to wake the ghosts that lived here. I was surprised to see the sofa Ben had died on still here. I had insisted that the cleaning company dispose of it; who would want to keep such a deathbed? But for whatever reason, they had cleaned it and left it, along with it the harsh recall of seeing Ben’s dead body sprawled out across it. I sat in the place Ben had taken his last breath, tracing the bronze nailhead accents, my vision drifting back in time. A pool of blood flowered at my feet, rolling across the wood, seeping into the cracks between the boards. A swell of nausea churned in my stomach, and I jumped up and ran to the powder room.
Splashing water on my face helped abate the stomach sickness, but not the heart sickness. I stepped into the hallway, remembering all of the details Ben and I had put into our Hendricks Way home. I lived through art, decorating each room with passion and pain. The burgundy living room painted after I lost my baby so that my house bled along with my heart. Bone white furniture I’d bought when I vowed to start fresh and move forward, pure like snow. The memories were doomed to tarnish, but I would hold on to them as long as I could.
I headed upstairs for one last look. The bedroom was as I’d left it, our California king four-poster bedframe against the far wall. Curling up on the naked mattress, I inhaled the lingering scent of Ben’s cells. It wasn’t the cool patch of Egyptian cotton we had slept on, but he was still here. I could feel him.
Pulling my purse closer, I rummaged inside for the note Ben had left me, his last words. I hadn’t told Lane that I’d kept it. I was supposed to have destroyed it, the only tangible evidence of his suicide that existed. But I couldn’t part with it. It was all that was left of my husband, his last message to me. For some reason probably rooted in self-loathing, I wanted the reminder of what I had caused him to do. The guilt felt deserved, and it was mine to keep.
I skimmed the letter, then closed my eyes, allowing the exhaustion to suck me in. And as the edges dulled to black, I thought of that terrible night, the night Ben died and I was forced to live. The details of what I had seen, the truth I had discovered, clawed its way out … loosening the memory free, then rising …
***
The retirement neighborhood that Mom lived in was the quintessential place to grow old. Modest one-story brick homes, yard maintenance provided. With a community pool – No Kids Allowed! – a fitness center, and even a cute general store, it was more a village than a neighborhood.
Although Grandma loved visits with the kids, her neighbors, not so much. Any disruption to the quiet unsettled their fragile nerves. I glared at Elise and Jackson, both wandering off the front stoop of my mother’s house, and shot a warning.
‘No fighting, you two. Grandma is looking forward to your sleepover, so you best behave. Do you promise you’ll be respectful and listen to her?’ Threats didn’t mean much when they came from Grandma, but they knew I always meant business.
‘We promise,’ Elise moaned. ‘You’ve said this, like, a hundred times already.’
I shifted my eyes to Jackson. ‘And you?’
‘Fine,’ he said, drawing the ‘i’ out with annoyance.
Mom’s footsteps shuffled toward the door after the first knock, her cheery voice calling, ‘Coming!’
When she answered wearing a sweatshirt and jeans, I nearly choked on my shock. Mom never wore casual comfort; Mom was glitz and glamour. As a real estate agent she was driven by appearances – look like success and you’ll attract success, she had always told me.
‘Get in here and give your grandma a hug!’ she exclaimed, dragging the kids in and engulfing them in her arms.
‘I appreciate this, Mom. I’ll be back in the morning after breakfast to pick them up.’ I planted a quick kiss on Elise’s and Jackson’s heads, then turned to the door.
‘You won’t stay for a bit? I just put the kettle on for tea.’
‘I’m sorry, but I’ve gotta run. I’ll check in later, though.’
She grabbed my arm with a shaky but firm grip. ‘Is tonight date night? What’s on the agenda?’ she asked with a raised eyebrow, then sent the kids off to the kitchen for homemade chocolate chip cookies. ‘Go help yourselves to cookies while your mommy and I chat!’
She always spoke with such enthusiasm to the kids, even over the simplest things.
A moment later the din of Elise and Jackson fighting over the remote, followed by the headache-inducing sound effects of cartoons filled the small house.
‘So?’ Mom probed in the sweet-and-sour way she always used to bait me for information. ‘Do you have a special night planned for Ben?’
‘You could say that.’ Or I could say the truth, which was that Ben had a special night planned, but not with me. But I had a surprise of my own for him.
‘No need to lie to your mother.’ She possessed the unique ability to see through me. I spent my adolescence trying to mask my tells, but she had maternal X-ray vision. ‘You can be honest with me. I know you’re’ – she cupped her mouth and lowered her voice to a whisper – ‘having marriage troubles.’
‘Mom, we’re fine. We just need to figure some things out.’
‘Like how to keep his dick faithful?’
‘Mom! The kids!’
She waved off my protest. ‘Oh, they can’t hear anything over the racket of that television. I just wish you’d leave that man once and for all. I know what he’s doing behind your back. Lord knows after being married to your father I can sense such things, and you deserve better.’
‘I don’t want better. I want Ben. And we’re going to work things out. You’ll see.’
Mom’s lip curled down in a scowl. ‘Whatever you say, dear. Tell Ben I said hi. Or go to hell. Whichever suits you.’
‘Mom—’
‘Don’t defend him. I know what you’re doing, and you better not cut him any slack, Harper. That cheating bastard doesn’t deserve it. Neither does the homewrecker he’s sleeping with.’
I heaved a sigh. ‘What makes you so sure he’s cheating?’
Glancing at the beige carpet, she fluffed her hair, fiddled with her necklace, anything to avoid looking at me. ‘I wanted to tell you, honey, but I didn’t want to break your heart. A couple weeks ago I saw him … with a blonde tramp. I spotted them out at lunch when I was with a client.’
‘What? How could you not tell me?’
Mom rolled her eyes. ‘I didn’t want to say anything until I knew for certain. It was lunch and it could have been his secretary, for all I knew. Why cause drama if there wasn’t any? But I think all of these late nights “working,”’ – she air-quoted the word – ‘is proof enough of what he’s doing. I would know. Your father did it to me too.’
I sniffled back the pain threatening to leak from my eyes.
‘And what if it’s true, Mom? I don’t want to lose him. I’ve already lost so much. I don’t know what to do.’
Mom frowned at me, anger in the stern clench of her jaw. ‘I’ll tell you what you should do. You show that man no mercy.’
Chapter 28
Candace
Does it scare you that I watch you when you sleep?
Does it frighten you that I inhale you when you’re close?
Sometimes it terrifies me how intensely I feel about you.
There are three rules to successful stalking. One: Stay out of sight. Two: Be discreet. Three: Don’t drive a car that your stalkee would recognize. Apparently Noah hadn’t read the handbook, because he was breaking all three rules. But I would not be shaken by a man who didn’t even know how to properly stalk me.
I had just finished my afternoon laps in the pool, minus a few due to pregnancy fatigue, and had thrown on my coverup and sandals. The mailman had just made his rounds, and I couldn’t wait to open the package of custom baby onesies I had ordered online. Harper called them extravagant, I called them adorable.
The path al
ong the side of the house led to the driveway, where the mailman had left the package. I picked it up and headed toward the mailbox to grab the rest of the mail. Across the street an old man sat on his John Deere riding mower, zipping up and down his lawn wearing nothing but jeans, a cowboy hat, and his wrinkled skin for a shirt. Two doors down a Chihuahua yipped frantically at a car parked in front of the house. Something felt familiar about the car. A black sedan, strikingly similar to the one from the hair salon. Although it faced away from me, I could make out a silhouette in the front seat.
How blatantly suspicious.
I had just about enough of this crap, and I was fuming for a confrontation. Noah’s passive-aggressive threats were no match for the new me. The stalking, the text, now showing up at my house! Hell no. I had endured his fists, his anger, his fake apologies for years. No more! Since leaving him, I had found the fight within me, and I was finally ready to use it.
Tugging my coverup down to hide my bikinied rear end, I marched across the street toward the car, my sandals angrily flapping against the concrete. The suburban cowboy watched me storm past his freshly-mown lawn and lustily leered – yuck – and the dog ran to the corner of its yard nearest to me, still yipping, but stopped at the edge of the grass, as if held back by an invisible fence.
The sideview mirror was angled away from the driver’s face, and the sunlight streaking across his window sliced him into fragmented shadows. By the time I reached the bumper I was jogging, my sandals nearly sliding off my feet with each step as I clung to the mail with both hands. When I closed in on the back door of the car, he took off, his tires squealing, leaving a black patch of tread in their wake. The mail dropped to the sidewalk as I flipped him off with both hands.
‘Coward!’ I yelled at his blinking taillights as he took the turn off my street, blowing through the stop sign with barely a pause.
I stomped all the way back to the house, ready to call Noah to give him a piece of my mind. I wondered if he had changed his phone number, considering the text I received came from a blocked number. It wouldn’t matter; I still had his parents’ digits memorized. When I blew into the living room, slamming the front door behind me, a faint whimper echoed from the dining room. I peeked in and found Harper crying at the dining room table, a piece of paper soaked in tears beneath her elbows, and a bottle of wine with only a mouthful left swirling around the bottom. No wine glass? This was bad. It was hard to stay angry at a sobbing woman.