The Neighbor's Secret

by L. Alison Heller

  (Dear Senator: Attached please find my thoughts on a Criminal Justice Reform bill. Xoxo, Jen.)

  “Mom, the doorbell just rang.”

  “Maybe it’s the police,” her mother said excitedly, “with news that they caught him.”

  “Abe met a friend at the basketball court. I’m pretty sure it’s her.”

  “A friend.” Her mother’s voice had become sugary. “Well, good for him.”

  “He’s had friends before.” Jen felt immediately defensive.

  “Of course he has, honey.” Her mother’s voice was an unctuous syrup. Jen was grateful to hang up and answer the door.

  “There’s good news and bad news,” Jen said to Laurel Perley.

  “I can take it,” Laurel said. She smiled, mouth full of braces.

  “Colin won’t be here with the pizza until later, but we have some of those amazing cookies from Breadman’s? Or I could run out for something?”

  “Oh gosh, no,” Laurel said. She followed Jen into the kitchen. “Any kind of fruit would be great. But only if you have it already.”

  Jen regarded Laurel. Whenever she thought about the morass of disordered eating, she was relieved to not have a girl. Not that boys were immune, but they didn’t seem as targeted by a barrage of objectifying and confusing images: to be strong and sexy and muscled and waiflike and body-positive, a stance that was communicated by wearing crop tops.

  “I’m not, like, scared of calories or anything,” Laurel said quickly. “I’m just mindful about how I fuel.”

  “You’re really committed to running, huh?” Jen said.

  “My dad ran”—Laurel shrugged—“so…”

  “That’s so sweet,” Jen said. “I bet he loves training with you.”

  “Does Abe’s school go up to high school?” Laurel had blurted this, shifted her weight against the kitchen counter.

  “Yep. There’s a tenth grader there now.”

  “It sounds amazing. The head teacher—”

  “Nan Smalls?”

  “Is she, like, a visionary?”

  “She’s kind,” Jen said. “She cares a lot about the kids and the school.” And is very generous with psalms, if that happens to be your thing.

  “I’d love to see it. Maybe I could go with you, and just, like, pick up Abe one day.”

  “Definitely,” Jen said. “It’s very small though, certainly not for everyone. I’d be happy to talk to your mom.”

  “She won’t go for it,” Laurel said sourly. “She thinks our school district is like the best in the country. Which it’s obviously not.”

  “It’s very highly regarded,” Jen said, because it was true and because neighborhood mom code required her to Never Denigrate Another Parent’s Opinion. “Go on up to Abe’s room,” she said quickly, to stave off further discussion. “I’ll bring some fruit and popcorn.”

  As she collected the snacks on a tray and climbed the stairs, Jen felt slightly guilty for ever suspecting Laurel Perley of being the vandal. Laurel was a complete improvement over Harper French, who had not only never offered to help Jen in the kitchen, but had once sent her on a wild-goose chase to three different markets for dill-pickle-flavored potato chips.

  “Laurel.” Jen heard Abe’s yell down the hall. “You can’t duck the whole time. You have to aim at something.”

  Jen bristled. If you didn’t know Abe, that might sound rude and bossy. But Laurel must know Abe, because she laughed.

  “I suck at this,” she said amiably.

  “You’re not that bad,” Abe offered. “Do you feel ready? We have one goal: defeating Holla123.”

  “Who’s that?”

  Jen held her breath. She burst into the room before he could explain it was a nine-year-old. “Snacks!”

  Laurel and Abe sat side by side in front of the monitor. Abe was being a graceful host and had given Laurel the remaining beanbag chair and his favorite headphones.

  Would a sociopath share like that, Scofield? No, he would not.

  Jen put the popcorn down on the floor between them.

  “Thanks, Mrs. Chun-Pagano.” Jen was relieved to see Laurel grab a handful of popcorn. “Who’s Holla123?”

  “Our mortal enemy,” Abe said, mercifully stopping before providing a colorful explanation of why Holla123, homeschooled third grader, needed to be vanquished. “We will rain down terrors on him.”

  “Okay then,” Laurel said.

  “All right?” Jen said. “I guess I’ll go get some work done.” Since Laurel Perley had been coming over, Jen had finished the leatherback-turtle study and was halfway through the monarch butterflies. Her notes were organized, and all felt right with the world.

  “Thank you, Mrs. Chun-Pagano,” Laurel said. “Abe, thank your mother.”

  “Thanks, Mom.”

  The vandal had been quiet, and as a consequence, so was the Scofield voice in Jen’s head. She shut the door behind them.

  Walking back down the hall, Jen heard laughter. She smiled to herself, and the simplicity of it struck her: all it really took was a new friend.

  People talked, before the body was found, about their friendship. Intense, was the consensus. Mercifully brief.

  If anyone knows the exact nature of what happened between the two of them, no one’s talking about that.

  We only know that it was unhealthy. A toxic combination that shouldn’t have been allowed.

  Where were the parents? people whispered. How did they miss the red flags?

  Obviously, they’ve forgotten how sneaky teenagers can be.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  They cornered Annie at book club. She was alone at the food table, had just sliced off a gooey hunk of Brie and was trying to slide it from the knife to her plate.

  “We’re having a friend-tervention,” Deb Gallegos said. Priya gave Annie a small sympathetic smile.

  “Now?” Annie said. Across the room, people were starting to settle in their seats for the discussion.

  “You’re out of control. You dragged Sierra from third period?”

  “Oh,” Annie said. “That was months ago.”

  “Well I only just learned about it,” Deb said, “so humor me, Annie, by explaining why you yanked my daughter from class to pump her for information about her best friend. You’re the school counselor. Aren’t you there to, you know, to support all of the kids?”

  “Only part-time,” Annie joked weakly. “There’s a reason I’m second-in-command.”

  Deb’s mouth tightened.

  “I’m so sorry,” Annie said. “I was way out of line. Did I freak out Sierra?”

  “Only about your mental state.”

  “It’s not that we don’t understand your worry,” Priya said. “Fall Fest was very disturbing. But it was also forever ago.”

  “When does this end?” Deb pressed. “You’ll get a job at the high school? You’ll go to every party, wait to jump in and body-block Laurel from drinking too much or making out with someone?”

  “I’m over Fall Fest,” Annie said. She caught the skeptical glance between the two of them. “Really.”

  Deb folded her arms across her chest. “Can I offer some advice? From a mom with a little more, you know, crow’s-feet?”

  Annie managed a nod.

  “If you’re a safe harbor, your kids will volunteer things. But if you insist on being supercop, they’ll run in the other direction.”

  Priya nodded. “That’s so, so true.”

  “Since Fall Fest, we’re watching them so carefully,” Deb continued. “We’d have seen any signs of monkey biz.”

  “We got you, Annie,” Priya said. With a sweep of her hand, she gestured to the other women. “We all do.”

  Annie nodded. “I know.”

  Deb’s face softened. “Okay, friend?” She reached out a hand and squeezed Annie’s arm.

  “He’s getting away with it!” Janine’s voice was a shriek from across the room.

  “Okay,” Annie said.

  * * *

 
“He’s getting away with it,” Janine shouted. Her short blond curls were frizzed with outrage. “It kills me.”

  Lena agreed that the Monster Next Door didn’t look innocent. One of his wives had vanished without a trace. Another had died after a fall in the kitchen.

  Throughout the book, the obsessed retired detective explained how suspicious it all was: the life-insurance policies bought beforehand, the power-washer rental, the internet searches for dissolving acid, and so on. (There was always an obsessed retired detective in these stories. Thankfully, Lena’s local police force seemed to have a much healthier work/life balance.)

  “He’s probably eating spaghetti and meatballs right now,” Janine continued, “watching Jeopardy!”

  “That’s an oddly specific picture, Janine.”

  “I mean he’s just living his life. People like that don’t have a conscience.”

  “What do you mean, people like that?” Harriet said.

  Lena realized her hands had gripped onto her kneecaps. She relaxed them, folded them neatly in her lap.

  “People who think laws don’t apply to them,” Janine said. “Criminals.”

  “Some people snap in the moment,” Jen said.

  “Not buying it,” Janine said. “There’s a line that decent people don’t cross.”

  “Hard disagree,” Jen said. “People are complicated. Morality is relative.”

  “I’m not convinced he did it,” Harriet said. “Based on the chart.”

  “What chart?”

  Harriet held up her legal pad, on which she’d drawn a complex series of boxes. “His actions on the night of the first would-be murder.” With her pen, she pointed between two boxes. “With seven minutes between his convenience-store run and the time of death, I don’t think he could have done it.”

  “You made a chart, Harriet?”

  “There were so many facts, and I needed to keep them straight. I mapped out the second would-be murder as well.”

  Deb balled a fist and held it in front of her mouth, pretended to cough the word obsessive.

  “You don’t need that to know whether he did it,” Janine said. “He did. And he got off scot-free.”

  Lena had been in her forties—a baby—when the accident happened, but she had acted like her life was over. What second acts might have been possible if she’d had a different mindset? If she hadn’t entombed herself in the silence?

  Suddenly breathless and itchy, she walked away from the discussion and over to Deb’s kitchen window. She switched the latch, cranked it open, inhaled the cool air.

  “Move over.”

  Lena shifted over to make room for Annie, who settled next to her.

  “Deb and Priya just told me I’m an awful parent,” she said. “And bad at my job. And they’re one hundred percent right.”

  “They don’t really believe that,” Lena said loyally.

  “I used to feel balanced,” Annie said. “All I do is worry now, search through Laurel’s pockets. I never find anything, yet I can’t stop. What’s the cure for constant worry?”

  “Having fun?”

  “Right,” Annie said. “We’re not dead yet. Let’s do something frivolous. Like … we could go to that new wine bar everyone’s talking about?”

  “We can do better than that,” Lena said.

  “Yeah, that’s lame. We could—I don’t know, there’s that spa in the mountains that everyone talks about? River Rock something?” Annie’s voice was skeptical. “I hate strangers touching me, though.”

  “Think bigger,” Lena said.

  If you looked at it one way, she was as much of a victim as anyone else. Starting with that last party, Lena’s whole life had been stolen from her, due to events beyond her control.

  “Bigger than the spa?” Annie turned to face Lena, one eyebrow arched. “You don’t seem like the Vegas type, Lena.”

  Lena could see it as if it were already happening right there on her patio: Candles lining the stone wall. A table piled with food. The jangle of pop music. Kids running and laughing and dancing in the purple dusk, Laurel in the center, twirling around on the dance floor.

  “What then?” Annie said. “I can tell you have something specific in mind.”

  Lena breathed in the cool night air. Her pulse sped up like something illegal had hit her bloodstream. The Perleys needed fun.

  Don’t pretend this is for them, Rachel scoffed.

  Damn the guilt. Lena had sacrificed enough.

  “I’m throwing Laurel a graduation party,” Lena said.

  APRIL

  To: “The Best Book Club in the World”

  From: proudmamabooklover3@hmail.com

  Bonjour! Bring a smock and your creativity to this month’s meeting, ladies!

  The book: THE ARTIST’S LOVER

  Suzanne Valadon. Her face may be recognizable, but her story has remained largely untold. The subject of Toulouse-Lautrec’s THE HANGOVER and, for a time, his lover, Suzanne was ahead of her time, a single mother, an artist in her own right, a rule breaker to rival them all.*

  THE ARTIST’S LOVER, a “meticulously researched,” “lyrical” “tour through artist colony France,” tells Suzanne’s story, through her eyes.

  April in Paris, ladies! Who can resist? Be there (MY house again, hooray!) or be square!!!

  *She painted male nudes, y’all!

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  Any interest?

  Jen’s former colleague from the Bay Area had emailed her a link to a registration form for an academic conference in Atlanta. Five days in June. International Ethology and Animal Aggression.

  She was interested.

  Jen from Before would’ve been on the conference’s faculty, putting final touches on her paper. Jen from Now could barely picture how to pack for five days, but was still grateful to feel that new-school-supply rush of excitement while reading about the various panels.

  Someone was making a ruckus in the kitchen. Drawers and cabinets opened and slammed shut. “Everything okay in there?” she shouted.

  “Just me,” Colin said. “Looking for popcorn.” He leaned in the doorway to the dining room.

  “In the garage,” Jen said. “Nice shirt.”

  She’d offered him first dibs on a bag of Paul’s clothes heading to donation. In true hipster fashion, he’d swooned over everything—the stained pink seersucker suit and the ugly bold-print shirts. He wore the worst one now—a spectacularly loud red button-down stamped with fish and pineapples, which Jen remembered from a costume party years ago.

  But there was something off with Colin. He smiled with effort and his shoulders hunched forward.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Just a little pain here.” Colin tried to straighten himself up, winced, pressed a hand into his side. “Dr. Internet says it might be an ulcer.”

  “You need to see a real doctor.”

  “It’s the end of the semester. Too much work.”

  “Take some days off. We’ll manage, and I’ll ask people here for the name of someone good.”

  “Thank you.” He eased himself down in the chair. “I’ve been meaning to ask you: Who is Harper?”

  Jen felt a precipitous drop in her stomach. “Harper was a girl in Abe’s class at Foothills.” Her voice sounded too prim.

  “Okay.” His fingers worried the top button of Paul’s old shirt. “They didn’t get in a knife fight, did they? Abe said something to that effect the other day.”

  “What did he say?”

  “It was strong language. ‘Cross me and I’ll cut you like Harper,’ something like that? With anyone else, I would be worried, but I know Abe has that dry sense of humor. He was joking, right?”

  It would be impossible for Jen to adequately communicate what Foothills had been like—the months of terror and bullying that had resulted in the Harper French stabbing. If she told Colin now, the story would be about Abe Pagano’s irrepressible violent streak.

  More than Dr. Shapiro or even Paul, Colin had be
come a touchstone for Jen. He talked about Abe in a way that made the challenges seem manageable, a mere part of Abe, rather than what defined him.

  He was the necessary counterpoint to the Scofield voice. And he was real. There was no point in even telling Colin, Jen decided. It was ancient history and irrelevant.

  “He was joking,” Jen said.

  “Right.” Colin chuckled, then winced. “I figured a stabbing would have come up.” He braced himself against the table and hoisted himself up.

  “We’re getting you a doctor’s appointment,” Jen called after him as he hobbled away. The thought of doing so made her feel slightly better about the lie.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  It was a gorgeous April morning and Annie was reclined on a chaise in Lena’s backyard with a breeze ruffling her hair. The grass glittered in the sunlight. An insistent chickadee sounded its two-note chirp.

  Across from her, Lena and Laurel leaned toward each other, passed binders back and forth, talked about party decorations and food and the cake. Annie closed her eyes, lifted her face to the sun, saw a sepia-toned image dance across her eyelids.

  A lawn full of people in pashminas and linen suits.

  “Mom.”

  Annie opened her eyes.

  Lena and Laurel were both looking at her.

  “Your dresses arrive tomorrow,” Lena said, and from her tone it was clear she was repeating the information. With her dark-framed glasses and white button-down shirt, Lena looked very professional. “We’ll find a time for you to try it on?”

  “Can’t wait.”

  “You were saying something about the dance floor,” Laurel said.

  “I always put it there,” Lena said in a brisk voice. Party planning had infused her with a formidable energy that both impressed Annie and made her want to hide in the bushes.

  Watching the lawn from the cisterna plum, branches tickling her arms.

  The party planning was making memories come back to Annie in pieces, bits of fuselage washed to shore. She busied herself with rolling up her pants legs, exposing her pale shins to the sun.