by Shari Lapena
Robert saunters toward the back of the yard. If she’s watching from inside the house, she will be able to see him there; she can’t see him on the patio unless she’s outside in her own backyard.
He hears the unmistakable sound behind him of the door sliding open next door, and stops. He knows that no one from the street can see them here; they have all the privacy they need. He turns around and lifts his eyes over the fence at Becky’s house. She’s standing there, in the doorway, staring at him. He walks slowly back along the fence toward her.
She looks awful. Her usually silky blond hair is lank, and she’s not wearing any makeup. He wonders how he ever could have slept with her. She looks as if she’s aged over the last couple of weeks.
She stays in the open door, watching him, her posture rigid. He can’t read her expression. Perhaps he has misread her all along. For a moment, he feels a stab of annoyance at her. He smiles. And then she gives a tentative smile back, her face dimples, and he remembers why he briefly found her attractive.
“Becky,” he says, in that way he knows she likes. Masculine but purring, seductive.
She steps slowly out of the door and toward him as if he is drawing her to him with an invisible string. It’s ridiculously easy with her. It always was.
He quirks his mouth up on one side, tilts his head at her. “Come here,” he says, and she does. She comes right up to him at the fence, the way she used to.
“Becky,” he says, when she’s close. There’s not twelve inches separating their faces. “I’ve missed you.” She closes her eyes, as if she doesn’t want to look at him. Why? Does she think he’s a killer? He sees a tear start to form at the corner of one of her eyes.
“Are you okay?” he asks softly.
Her eyes flutter open and she shakes her head. “No,” she says, her voice sounding choked.
He waits.
“They think you killed Amanda,” she says, her voice a whisper.
He knows that; he wants to know what she thinks. “I know. But I didn’t kill her, Becky. You know that, don’t you?”
“Of course! I know you didn’t kill her!” She’s more animated now, almost angry, on his behalf. “You wouldn’t be capable of it. I told them that.” She frowns. “I don’t think they believed me, though.”
“Oh, well, you know, they’re cops,” he says. “They always think the husband did it.”
“They know about us,” she says.
The way she says us makes him want to cringe, but he’s careful not to show it.
“I know.”
“I’m sorry. I had to tell them.”
“It’s okay. I told them, too. It’s okay, Becky.”
“I wouldn’t have said anything, but they knew already.”
“What?”
“Someone saw me coming out of your house in the middle of the night, the weekend Amanda disappeared.”
“Who?” His attention is focused more sharply on her now. Who was watching his house in the middle of the night? He’d simply assumed Becky had blurted out the fact that they’d slept together to the police.
“I don’t know, the detectives wouldn’t tell me.” She looks at him, her face blotchy with recent tears and lined by anxiety. “I’m afraid it will get out,” she says, her voice trembling. “I think my fingerprints are in your bedroom. They took my prints at the police station. I don’t know what to tell my husband.”
She looks at him imploringly, as if he can solve this problem for her. He can’t help her. He’s barely paying attention to her; he’s wondering who saw her leaving his place late at night.
“What if the police talk to him?” She looks at him with big, wet eyes.
That’s your problem, he thinks. “Becky, what did you tell the detectives, exactly?”
“Just that we had drinks sometimes, that we talked over the fence, that we slept together the one time in August when Amanda was away, and again that Saturday night the weekend she disappeared. And that there was no way you could have hurt her.”
He nods reassuringly. “Did you tell them that I suspected that Amanda was having an affair?”
“No, of course not. I’m not stupid.”
“Good. Don’t tell them that. Because it’s not true. I don’t know why I said that.”
She seems taken aback. “Oh.”
He wants to make sure she understands. “I never thought Amanda was seeing someone else. Not until the Sunday night when I talked to Caroline. You’ve got that, right? You’ll remember that?” She might even be a little frightened of him now. Good.
“Sure,” she says.
He nods, doesn’t give her the quirky smile. “Take care of yourself, Becky.”
FOURTEEN
Olivia is working in the upstairs office that afternoon when she hears the doorbell ring. She wonders if it’s the detectives, broadening their enquiries. She hastens down the stairs to the front door. But it isn’t the two detectives standing there; it’s a woman she’s never seen before. She’s older, maybe close to sixty, with a plump figure. Her wide face is lined, her blond hair is tidy, and she’s wearing a pale lipstick. Olivia is about to politely say, “No, thank you,” and shut the door, annoyed about the intrusion, when the woman says, “I’m not trying to sell anything,” and smiles warmly.
Olivia hesitates.
“My name is Carmine,” the woman says in a friendly tone.
The name sounds familiar, but Olivia can’t place it. “Yes?”
“I’m sorry to bother you, but I just moved in and my house was broken into recently. I’m going around the neighborhood telling people to keep their eyes open.”
Olivia’s heart instantly begins to pound. “That’s awful,” she says, attempting a suitably sympathetic expression. “Did they take much?”
“No, he didn’t take anything.”
“Oh, that’s good,” Olivia says. “No harm done then.” She wants to slam the door in the woman’s face, but she doesn’t dare be rude to her.
“I wouldn’t say no harm done,” the woman answers. “The kid snooped through my house. And not just mine—apparently he broke into other houses as well, and hacked into people’s computers.”
“Oh, my,” Olivia says, taken aback by the woman’s abruptness. “Have they caught who did it?” She hopes her face and voice are what this woman would expect in the circumstances. She’s so distressed that she can’t tell.
“No. But I got an anonymous letter about it. Apparently it was a teenage boy, and his mother wrote this letter of apology. But I don’t know who she is.”
She holds up the letter. The letter that Olivia wrote and printed and stuck through this woman’s mail slot. Has she figured it out? Does she know it was Raleigh? Is that why she’s really here? To confront her? Olivia doesn’t know how to react, what to say. This woman wouldn’t even be here if Olivia hadn’t written that letter. The woman looks at her, studying her carefully.
“Are you all right?” she asks.
“Yes, I’m fine,” Olivia says, flushing. “I’m sorry, I’ve been ill recently,” she lies, “and I’m still not completely well.”
“Oh, then I’m sorry to bother you with this,” the woman says, looking at her closely.
“I was resting when you rang the doorbell.”
“Sorry,” the woman says sympathetically. But she doesn’t go away. Instead she says, “I see you’ve got a basketball hoop in your driveway.”
Olivia is rattled and just wants this nosy woman to go away. She really does feel ill and flushed, as if she might faint. But she doesn’t want it to seem as if this conversation is upsetting her. In her confusion, she wonders why the woman is mentioning the basketball hoop. And then she realizes.
“Yes.” It’s all she can think of to say.
“Teenagers?” she asks.
Olivia looks back at her now, her eyes meeti
ng the other woman’s. And it’s like there is an unspoken communication between them—the woman is asking her if it was her son who broke into her house and whether she is the one who wrote the letter. The bloody awful nerve of this woman, standing on her doorstep! “Yes. There are lots of teenagers around here.”
“Teenagers can be so difficult,” the woman says.
“Do you have children?” Olivia asks.
The woman nods. “Three. All grown up now and moved away. One of them was a real handful.”
Olivia hesitates, on the brink of inviting the woman inside, but then she remembers Paul, and the lawyer, and most of all Raleigh. She can’t admit anything to this woman. Olivia must hold her ground.
“I have one, a boy,” Olivia says, rallying. “I’ve been very lucky. I’ve never had any problems with him,” she lies, “at least not so far. I’m very proud of him.”
“You’re very fortunate,” the woman says a little coldly.
This woman must know—or suspect by now—that it’s her son who broke into her house, and that she’s the mortified woman who wrote the letter. Olivia feels sick to her stomach and wants urgently to be done with this conversation. “Yes, I know,” Olivia says. “I really must go. Good-bye.” She closes the door and hurries upstairs, where she runs to the bathroom and throws up her lunch into the toilet bowl. Tears come to her eyes, as they always do when she throws up. But as she remains hovering over the bowl, the tears come in earnest. She has really messed things up. She feels fear and anger in equal measure. This woman is onto her. She has to be. What will happen to Raleigh now? That woman can’t prove anything, can she? But Olivia doesn’t want Paul or Raleigh—especially not Paul—knowing that she sent those letters. So she can’t tell them about that woman’s visit to their house, obviously, either.
Olivia slowly gets to her feet and rinses her mouth out at the sink. She looks at herself in the mirror—she looks terrible. Unable to deal with this on her own, she calls Glenda and asks her to come over. Glenda arrives about fifteen minutes later, her short auburn hair windblown and her face lined with concern.
“What’s the matter?” she asks, as she steps inside.
Olivia knows what she looks like. She looks like she just threw up. She looks distraught. But if there’s anyone she can trust with this, it’s Glenda. She can tell Glenda, but not her own husband. What does that say about her marriage? Olivia thinks fleetingly. But there’s nothing really wrong with her marriage, she tells herself; this is a special circumstance. She normally doesn’t keep anything from Paul, and he doesn’t keep anything from her—it’s just this one thing—that she now wishes she had never done. But she also doesn’t want Paul to find out. She wonders if she should simply tell him, or not. That’s what Glenda’s for—emotional support, and to advise her on what to do next.
“Glenda,” she begins, “something terrible has happened.”
Glenda’s face falls, as if she thinks someone has died. “What is it?”
Olivia leads her into the kitchen and then turns and faces her. “I did such a stupid thing, with those letters,” she says.
“Oh,” Glenda says, in obvious relief. “I thought there’d been an accident or something.”
“No,” Olivia says.
“Don’t worry so much about the letters,” Glenda says. “It’ll blow over. Nobody’s going to find out it was Raleigh.”
“I think someone already has.”
They sit down and Olivia tells her about Carmine. “She must be the one who lives next door to Zoe,” Olivia says. “Remember Zoe talking about it at book club?”
Glenda bites her lip, thinking. “She didn’t actually accuse you of writing the letter, did she?” Glenda asks.
“Not in so many words,” Olivia admits. “But I could tell what she was thinking from the way she was looking at me.” She looks at Glenda in misery. “I wish I could hide my feelings better, but you know what I’m like. She could tell I was upset, and why would I be, unless it was my son who broke into her house?” She props her elbows on the kitchen table and holds her head in her hands. She thinks about how it all started, just a few days ago, her and Paul grilling Raleigh about it in this very kitchen. “If I hadn’t written those damn letters, she would never even have known he was there. Paul is going to be furious at me.”
“It’s not really your fault,” Glenda says, trying to soothe her. “You didn’t do anything wrong. Raleigh’s the one who broke in. You acted out of a sense of decency. You were trying to do the right thing.”
“And it blew up in my face,” Olivia replies bitterly.
“Paul will understand.”
“No, he won’t. And Raleigh won’t either.”
“But you put those letters through the slots on Sunday night. You didn’t see the lawyer till Monday. It’s not as if you sent the letters after the lawyer said not to.”
“No. But I knew Paul didn’t like the idea. And I probably should have confessed to it right then, in the lawyer’s office, but I didn’t. At least this would all be out in the open, and I could go back to the lawyer and ask him what to do.”
“You can still ask the lawyer what to do. But you’ll have to come clean with Paul first. You’ll have to tell him.”
“I know,” Olivia says miserably. “What a mess. And I’m so worried about Raleigh. Why did he do it? Why would he want to snoop around other people’s houses?”
Glenda shakes her head helplessly. “I don’t know.”
“I suggested to Paul last night that maybe we should send Raleigh to a therapist. He told me I was overreacting, that it was just a phase. He’s not in favor of it—in fact, he was quite adamant about it.” It was the first real argument they’d had in years. The second one will be tonight, when she tells him about the letters.
“That’s the worst thing about being a parent,” Glenda says, “not knowing if you’re doing the right thing, whether you should step in or step back. Our parents just ignored us. Maybe that was better.”
“I know,” Olivia sighs.
Glenda gives her an uneasy glance and then looks away. “I worry about Adam, all the time. Ever since he started drinking. It’s not like Keith and I are problem drinkers.”
“It’s the kids he hangs out with,” Olivia ventures.
“He didn’t use to hang out with those kids. He used to be more sporty and academic. Now his grades are slipping and he’s missing practice. And he’s become so moody and insolent. Frankly, he’s awful to be around.”
Olivia can hear the strain in Glenda’s voice. They all sound strained these days when they’re talking about their kids. It didn’t use to be this way. They used to sit around the wading pool, chatting and laughing, serene in the expectations that their kids would be bright and beautiful and untroubled. Parents always seem to have overly optimistic visions of their kids’ talents and futures when they’re toddlers, Olivia thinks—maybe that’s how they manage to keep going.
Finally Glenda gets up to leave. “Not the way we thought it would be, is it?”
* * *
—
Glenda walks home thoughtfully. Everyone warns you that the teen years will be tough, but she wasn’t expecting anything like what she’s dealing with. She thinks about her own problems. Her son . . . What will become of him? She finds herself brushing away sudden tears. What will become of all of them?
She thinks back to the night before. A year ago, Adam would have been out at some kind of sports practice or game. She and Keith might have lingered over supper, had another glass of wine, and talked. That’s something they don’t do anymore. She doesn’t buy wine very often at all anymore, because she doesn’t want Adam to see them drinking. Is that why she stopped buying it, or was she afraid that Adam might sneak some of it himself? Probably both.
She and Keith don’t talk much anymore. At home, things are strained. Oddly, she and Keith only seem
like themselves when they’re out of the house, with other people. She thinks back to the previous Friday night when she and Keith had gone to the Sharpes’ for dinner. Maybe they’d overdone the drinking a bit themselves that night—letting themselves off the leash because Adam wasn’t there to see them, and they’d only had to walk to the next street to get home.
Olivia and Paul had been in good spirits. They hadn’t known then that their son was out breaking into houses. Olivia had made an excellent roast, and Glenda had drunk her wine and watched her still very handsome husband laughing with Paul, the two of them remembering some of the funny things that had happened over the years. It had been a great evening, like old times. If only they could turn back the clock.
FIFTEEN
Olivia waits until supper is cleaned up and Raleigh is in his room, plugged into his laptop with his headphones on, ostensibly doing homework. Paul is in the living room, glancing through the newspaper.
She stands quietly for a moment, watching him. She has to tell him.
She sits down near him on the sofa. Paul looks up from the paper. “We need to talk,” Olivia says quietly.
Instantly a look of concern crosses his face. She doesn’t usually start with this kind of opening. It sounds ominous. It is ominous.
“What’s wrong?” he asks, also with a lowered voice.
“There’s something I have to tell you, and you’re not going to like it.” Now he looks alarmed. He waits, his eyes focused on her, alert. She says, “I don’t want Raleigh to hear this until we decide what we’re going to tell him.”
“For Christ’s sake, Olivia, what is it? You’re scaring me.”
She takes a deep breath and says, “Last weekend, before we saw the lawyer, I wrote letters of apology to the people that live in the houses Raleigh broke into.”
He looks back at her, incredulous. “But you didn’t send them,” he says emphatically.