The Neighbor's Secret

by L. Alison Heller

  Lena stood up, then sat back down. She pressed her lips together hard enough that they seemed to disappear and nodded several times to herself, as if coming to terms with a new reality.

  “Should we cancel tonight?” she asked finally.

  “Laurel insists on having the party. For her real friends, she says, and she claims to be over it, that she’s already dealt with it, which is obviously bullshit.”

  For the first time since Annie had arrived, Lena looked directly at her. Her brown eyes seared. It was Annie’s turn to look away.

  “Did you know my late husband Tim?” Lena said.

  Annie’s palms felt hot and itchy. She flattened them against the skirt of her silk caftan, which she didn’t deserve, should have never accepted. She was a parasite.

  “I worked for him,” she said. “He hired me right after college.”

  “How was he,” Lena said evenly, “as a boss?”

  Annie kept her eyes on the giant cottonwood tree. There was fluff trapped in its boughs, trembling in the wind, itching to snow down on the neighborhood.

  “Not the best,” she said.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

  By design, Annie did not remember much about her affair with Tim Meeker.

  They met in the interview. Annie had a little crush from the start.

  First, there was that voice, so gravelly and sexy, and he wanted to make her comfortable. He didn’t seem concerned about her proficiency in PowerPoint. He cared about her taste in music and books, where she wanted to travel.

  “I’ve been at your house before,” she admitted, and told him about the swim-team party. “Please tell your wife how lovely it was.”

  “She and I are basically separated,” he said. “Same house, different lives.”

  Tim’s habit was to go to the hotel bar next to their office after work. Annie didn’t remember when or why she started tagging along, sharing a scotch, but soon there were also steak dinners, nights at the hotel, outdoor concerts, weekends in the mountains.

  Lately, despite her best efforts, she’d been recalling more: the hazy thrill of secrecy from keeping things quiet at work, waking up in a hotel room, sun too bright and a splitting headache, walking the snowy streets of a mountain town arm in arm and laughing.

  He bought her a car, which seemed like proof of his generosity, or in hindsight, of the transactional nature to their relationship. They drank a lot.

  She could not remember anything about their time together without feeling a stifling heat of regret and shame and she didn’t want Laurel anywhere near that feeling.

  Tim Meeker had ultimately been as disposable as he’d wanted to make her.

  “I’m sorry,” Annie said to Lena now. “I’m so sorry.”

  “I’m sorry for you, Annie,” Lena said. “I wish I’d been there to protect you from him.”

  “He wrote me a check to go away.” Annie’s eyes welled. It still, after all this time, shocked a little, how stupidly hopeful she’d been when she slipped inside this house.

  “He wasn’t a good person.”

  “I need you to listen, Lena,” Annie said. “Please. What happened later that night was my fault. All of it.”

  FIFTEEN YEARS EARLIER

  Tim wanted Annie to know that she would not walk away empty-handed. He made her sit next to him, in that stupid desk chair, while he left a voicemail for HR: His assistant Annie would be leaving for greener pastures. He was authorizing a generous departure bonus to be issued to her immediately.

  “If you want a work reference,” Tim said to her, “just write one up and get it to Maureen. I’ll sign anything.”

  He leaned forward, pressed a cold hand to Annie’s bare knee. He forgot himself for a moment, and his index finger traced her patella. When a mocking peal of laughter slipped through the open window from outside, he stopped himself, turned the gesture into a brusque pat.

  Annie’s hand was on the doorknob when he said her name.

  “You should leave through the garage,” he said. “Take the back staircase down, then a left through the mudroom.”

  She stopped in the hall, balanced herself against the wall. The band returned from their break, and she staggered downstairs to the grind of guitar chords, the lead singer’s shouted count: One two three four—

  It was after she stepped into the garage, cold and fluorescently lit, and saw Tim Meeker’s little hunter-green two-seater that her numbness splintered, gave way to the warmth of rage.

  Annie tasted metal as she looked around the room at all the toys—the kayak, the skis, the bag of golf clubs with that stupid knit tassel hanging from it.

  She was just seventeen, you know what I mean

  She hoisted a club, cool and heavy, out of the bag. It took several swings to break the front headlights.

  Annie was half aware of the beat shifting underneath her. She paused to catch her breath.

  ’Cause you’re fine and you’re mine and you look so divine

  And then she walked around to the back of the car and smashed the brake lights, too.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

  Lena wanted to press her hand to Annie’s mouth.

  Stop talking.

  But Annie did not. She hugged a throw pillow to her chest and pulled its tassels as the words bled out of her.

  She was the reason, Annie said, that Bryce didn’t see Tim on the road. Lena must hate her. Lena watched Annie and realized that yes, she did. She hated Annie with a passion too consuming and fiery to be contained. The hatred was going to erupt and spill over both of them like molten lava, preserve them, charred, in this spot forever.

  And Annie would never know the real reason.

  Maybe if Annie could shut up for a moment, but no, she kept gushing out her truth, and it changed everything Lena knew. The facts that Lena had just now—after fifteen years—started to accept hadn’t been facts at all.

  Annie claimed she’d give anything to do that night over, she’d been close with Bryce in high school, and he was such a good person, he had deserved the future she had stolen from him.

  Aside from the therapist, Mike was the only person who knew. He was Annie’s best friend from college, always a little in love with her, always right there with her. They’d never even told Laurel’s grandparents.

  After Tim’s death, all of those stories came out about his DUIs, and Annie remembered the ones Tim had told about his own father. She supposed a part of her had been petrified for Laurel from the beginning.

  It was incredibly frustrating that Laurel didn’t understand how much better it would have been, to keep believing Mike was her biological father. You lied about the most important thing in my life, she had accused, and Annie couldn’t make her see that the lie had been a gift.

  Except—

  Annie stopped fiddling with the pillow and forced eye contact with Lena.

  Around them, suited caterers did the final preparations, lit the tea lights, placed the silver trays on the buffet tables.

  Annie had always craved a connection to Lena and Rachel. She’d insisted they live in Cottonwood to be close to them, which Tim’s large check had allowed them to afford. She used to walk past the Meekers’ house every day, try to catch a glimpse of either of them.

  She’d fantasized that they would see Laurel and just know.

  A year or two after the night of the accident, Annie sat in Deb Gallegos’s backyard as their daughters, bare-chested in swim diapers, splashed in an inflatable wading pool.

  Out of the corner of her eye, Annie saw Lena’s white SUV drive past. She noticed the absence of that familiar pounding in her ears. Her body wasn’t twitching to follow.

  She liked Cottonwood, she realized, she was happy here.

  It was beautiful, there were excellent schools and friendly neighbors. Their family could grow here, could pretend to be just another boringly comfortable unit until it felt like the truth.

  “Please say something.” Annie’s voice was plugged and nasal. “Do you want me to
tell Rachel? I can tell her that the accident wasn’t all her father’s fault.”

  “God, no,” Lena said.

  “I’m sorry,” Annie said. She started to cry again.

  Lena allowed herself a moment before she put her hand on the rough pillow, atop Annie’s fingers. Annie sniffled, glanced up.

  Lena could tell Annie everything. It was an appealing thought: the two of them carrying the burden together.

  But in Annie’s eyes, Lena saw a hint of something released.

  What good would it serve?

  From the street came the sound of a car door slamming. “Look at the balloons,” a voice said, “the balloons!”

  Don’t be selfish. Rachel’s voice in Lena’s head was unyielding: Give her this.

  “It was an accident,” Lena said. “It was all a horrible accident.”

  Annie’s exhale was shaky and relieved. She shut her eyes and pressed the tips of her fingers into them. Her shoulders slouched, then heaved.

  “We’re going to be fine, dear,” Lena said. The phrasing was an echo of something she’d heard before.

  Evan. She sounded like Rachel’s Evan, reaching through a dark, cold void, trying to manufacture a closeness from nothing.

  Lena gripped Annie’s hand a little too hard. “It’s all going to be fine.”

  CHAPTER SIXTY

  Jen, supine atop her bedspread, cold bathroom towel compress over her eyes, could hear the vacuum in the kitchen.

  At the gentle knock on the door, she lifted the compress. Paul hovered by the bed. “Abe is vacuuming up the glass,” he said worriedly.

  “I don’t trust him anymore.”

  Paul sat down next to her on the bed. “You just need a break.”

  “Colin has an ulcer and is barely returning my texts, Laurel has a rock through her window, Harper got slashed. The bodies keep piling up. And I just defend him.”

  “You love him.”

  It wasn’t love. It was ego or pride or something even more animal, gnawing, ugly, selfish. If this was love, Jen didn’t understand how the world kept spinning under the weight of it.

  “Well,” Paul said. “Abe’s cleaning up down there at his own insistence. I think he’s worried about you.”

  “He’s worried about his getting his computer monitor,” Jen said dryly.

  “He seems genuinely contrite and concerned.”

  Jen gave Paul an incredulous look.

  “I know, I know: I’m not here and I’m an idiot.” Paul’s voice was hurt. He was upset, still, about Jen’s accusations all of those months before over dinner.

  “You’re not a total idiot.” She tried to smile.

  “We talked for a long time. I don’t think he’s the vandal. Honestly, who even knows whether the conduct disorder label fits.”

  “Are you kidding?”

  “I’m not. He’s grown up a lot this year, Jen. He’s trying so hard, and if the diagnosis pins on his lack of remorse, well, let me tell you: he has buckets of remorse and self-doubt.”

  Jen searched Paul’s face.

  “Yes, it’s messed up that that’s good news, but welcome to our world. You do see the real him, Jen, that’s what I’m saying.”

  Maybe this was what co-parenting Abe required: together on a seesaw, trading off who was grounded and who held sky-high delusions. This time it was Paul up where the air was too thin.

  Jen sniffed. “You smell like airline coffee.”

  “My seatmate spilled it over me on the plane. I’m going to shower.”

  When she heard the water from the shower whoosh through the pipes, Jen sat up, scanned her phone for new texts.

  The last one she’d received was Colin’s lie, from early this morning. His reply to Jen’s desperate What’s the meeting about, any idea?

  IDK

  She imagined Colin waiting at the doctor’s office, hunched in pain, debating how to reply to the madwoman, and finally concluding that his best bet was to go around her.

  At what point had he seen the truth about them?

  CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE

  “Amazing party!”

  Everyone Annie had talked to in the past hour had said some version of this, and she hadn’t figured out how to respond.

  Thank you didn’t feel right: she’d had nothing to do with the planning. But I had nothing to do with it had sounded defensive.

  “Isn’t it?” Annie said now, and the new Cottonwood resident whose name Annie couldn’t remember smiled eagerly.

  There was another dip of silence between them.

  The food tent was crowded and steamy with body heat. People kept jostling past each other, and their voices blended in an angry aggressive hum that bounced off the canvas walls.

  Annie’s head felt like it had been split open with the effort of the conversation with Laurel, with coming clean to Lena. She could barely think, let alone manage small talk.

  But Lena had said it was all going to be fine, and Laurel was on the dance floor having what appeared to be the time of her life.

  So. It was probably all going to be fine?

  “Have you tried the ribs?” Annie said finally.

  The last person Annie had talked to, or maybe the person before that, had been going on and on about the ribs and their tamarind glaze.

  “Well no,” the woman said slowly, “because of the whole vegan thing that we just discussed.”

  “Right.” Annie smacked her forehead. “Of course.”

  No one else in her family seemed to have had trouble clicking into party mode.

  Mike was parked by the bar, laughing with Wade Jensen. Hank was on the sushi line for the fourth time, and Laurel was on the dance floor, in the middle of a crush of her smiling and laughing and shrieking girlfriends.

  Why did you think it was Bryce, Annie had asked.

  You have a giant photo of him with the family pictures, Laurel had said. She’d found out through an old yearbook that he’d been a runner. She’d stalked Nan Neary at the Kingdom School, too, although she’d been too shy to approach.

  Annie and Mike’s attempted explanations—that they had tried to give Laurel the best possible truth—were insufficient.

  Laurel would never forgive them, their relationship had been permanently damaged, probably. Perhaps, though, based on the dancing and the shrieking, Annie could hope there hadn’t been too much damage to Laurel? Could a truly traumatized person act so happy?

  But Laurel had been faking so much for months now, Annie realized with a shiver, and all alone.

  First thing tomorrow, Annie was calling a therapist.

  “I bet the ribs are great, though,” the new Cottonwood resident said helpfully. “All the food is amazing.”

  “Me too,” Annie said quickly, and while she had meant she also bet the ribs were amazing, she’d ruined the poor woman’s generous attempt to salvage the conversation.

  Through another awkward moment of silence, Annie labored to think of an appropriate question. Where was Janine?

  This woman deserved Janine.

  Second thing tomorrow, after the therapist call, Annie would ask Janine to track down this new resident, send along one of her welcome to the neighborhood emails with all the restaurants and hot spots.

  Janine probably had one just for vegans.

  Across the room, one of the Sandstone dads grabbed two mini lamb chops from a caterer’s tray. He caught Annie watching and raised one as if to say Cheers.

  She turned to the new resident, was about to ask whether she’d met Janine, but the woman was gone. Annie stood alone in the center of the crowded tent, unsure where to go.

  “Annie!”

  It was Priya, fresh and summery in a blue floral maxidress, her dark hair pulled into a high ponytail. With the hand that wasn’t holding a drink, she grabbed Annie’s arm.

  “This is insanity,” she said. “Follow me.”

  Holding the drink aloft like a beacon, Priya led them through the tent to the Moroccan Fantasy lounge area where Deb Gallegos sat
on a couch, an entire tray of appetizers on her lap. She waved cheerfully.

  “Have you been here the whole time?”

  “The trick,” Deb said, “is to catch the caterers as they come out the side door.” She handed a glass to Annie, who took it, sat down on the sofa, stretched out her legs.

  “You’re wearing flip-flops with your dress?” Priya sounded impressed.

  “I have gossip,” Deb sang. She rubbed her hands together with devilish glee. “Apparently, someone and the hot untouchable have been making out up here all spring.”

  “Up here?” Annie said.

  “They have a key to the gate somehow,” Deb said, “and they pass it around, because there’s apparently a clearing back there that’s very romantic. Annie, don’t look so uptight. They’re fourteen. They make out. That’s what they do.”

  “Lena gave Laurel a key,” Annie said wryly. “So that’s the how.”

  “Really?” Deb sounded almost impressed. “Laurel’s had quite a year of oat-sowing, hasn’t she? The question is—where is the hot untouchable? Is he here? Or—” Deb gripped Annie’s arm. “You don’t think it’s a she?”

  Priya frowned. “I doubt they’d be so dramatic about a same-sex relationship. This generation is so much less homophobic than we were.”

  “You never know, though. Annie, could you imagine: We could be in-laws! Think of the Thanksgiving dinners!”

  If Annie told Deb and Priya the truth right now, their heads would explode. They’d find out at some point and, after their shocked gossip, they’d be there for her. But she couldn’t handle that tonight.

  “Oooh,” Priya said. “Glow sticks.”

  It was getting dark and the DJ had thrown a box of them onto the dance floor. The kids scrambled to loop the flashes of neon around their necks and heads and wrists.

  “Mrs. Perley?”

  Annie turned her head toward the polite young voice. Colin hulked behind her sofa.

  She should be welcoming, but she only felt annoyed seeing him standing there in his ill-fitting seersucker suit with a stain on the lapel, pants tucked in those silly cowboy boots.