by Darby Kane
The wardrobe specifications had been a request from Aaron early in their marriage. After suffering through a difficult childhood, complete with the loss of both parents, he insisted a family look a certain way to the outside world. For his wife—if only on the exterior and to others—to come off as put together and project a certain image at all times. For them to have a weekly housekeeping service and meal delivery for the times when neither of them wanted to cook. For anyone watching to see success.
She chalked up the request to his idealized view of family. One different from what he’d known. It was as if he believed if he had all the outside trappings, from the big house to the perfect wife, the rest would fall in line. No one could question or destroy it. She understood because she’d maneuvered her way through a dysfunctional upbringing and knew the things you grabbed on to to survive weren’t always rational.
At the beginning of their marriage the Aaron-imposed public dress code, while sometimes annoying, wasn’t a problem. It blended in with what she needed to wear to the office. That changed when they moved and she left her job, but his requirements for that dream of perfection never dimmed.
Now he couldn’t play that game. Thanks to her.
Today she complied on her terms. She picked the perfect outfit to stand outside on the long driveway that twisted its way up to her sprawling ranch house at the top of the hill. Hair styled and a light touch of makeup. Ready to fake mourn.
The gardeners deserved the credit for the pristine lawn and intricately shaped bushes. Her contribution amounted to writing a check for their services every month. Growing up, her father viewed mowing as a man’s job, convinced she’d hurt herself. The lectures about what was and wasn’t her place blurred into a humming sound in her head. His stern and disapproving voice. The way he screamed Jesus at her mother so often that Lila didn’t realize it wasn’t part of her mother’s actual name until she got older. Right around the time the whispering about her parents started.
A buzzing vibrated in her brain now. The memories itched and scratched, desperate to break through the invisible barrier she slammed into place to shut them out. She did what she always did to survive. Blocked and refocused, this time on the warm sun. It beamed down, breaking through the lingering chill.
She touched the top button of the silk cardigan draped over her shoulders and looked at the straight edge where the grass met the pavement. The line, too perfect, called out for flowers. A splash of color amid the sea of brown. Brown house siding on top of brown stone. Brown shutters with a darker brown front door.
Aaron had bought the property without her input about four years ago. She’d stayed behind in North Carolina to clean up before their move north. He’d gone up for a quick meeting about his new teaching job and called her, shouting about a bargain. One with old plumbing and wiring so unpredictable that it prevented them from plugging in more than two lights in the living room at the same time during the first few months they lived there.
He’d already signed the offer by the time he called. Of course he had. Still in those earlier days, flush with a sense of hopefulness and a naïve optimism about how they could do better than their parents and forge a path, she didn’t recognize his move for what it was—a complete dismissal of her opinion. Treating her as an afterthought.
She was wiser now. More jaded but open to the truth about the minimal role she played in his thinking and in his life.
She refocused again, this time on that razor edge of green, and thought about pink. Aaron would hate the change. He viewed pink as a direct blow to his masculinity. So pink flowers in spring it would be.
After a quick scan of the quiet suburban cul-de-sac, she took the cell phone out of her pocket and checked for messages. Nothing waited for her.
Unexpected, but it was still early.
She wandered down to the mailbox. After Aaron ran over the last one during a bad ice storm in March, he’d picked out one shaped like a duck as the replacement. He joked about how great it would be if it made a noise. Spent the afternoon he bought it walking around the house and scaring the crap out of her by yelling, “Quack!” She had no idea why he found that funny or what the duck meant to him, but then many things Aaron did and said were a mystery to her.
A sign hung off the duck’s belly, taunting her. THE PAYNE’S. Block letters of a name she never informally or formally agreed to take. Ridgefield was the last piece of who she’d been before. She clung to it even as she said yes to a marriage to someone as broken as she was.
Her refusal to capitulate on this one thing dropped a wedge in the center of her marriage. Her last stand led to the spousal fight that refused to die over the years.
Then there was the apostrophe. She’d dared to question if one should be there and he’d kicked the sign, shattering the bolt. The force of the blow knocked the left side from its hook and sent it swinging with a screeching sound of metal scraping against metal.
She’d left the unwanted sign hanging there ever since. Crooked. Half-broken and off center. It struck her as the perfect metaphor for their marriage.
“Lila?”
The singsongy voice made Lila cringe. She managed to plaster on a smile by the time she turned to face her seemingly ever-present neighbor. “Hello.”
Cassie Zimmer. Every sentence she uttered ended on a tonal upswing as if she were asking an unending series of questions instead of just talking. She smiled without ceasing. That alone made Lila want to slap her. She didn’t, of course, but the temptation hovered right there.
From the day they moved in, Cassie had been that neighbor. She brought cookies on her welcome to the neighborhood visit then overstayed by walking around the living room, asking an endless line of personal questions disguised as get-to-know-you talk while she peeked at every unpacked possession. Lila had mentally put Cassie on the intolerable list she kept in her head, and Cassie had never worked her way off it again.
She was a one-woman neighborhood watch. Never mind that no one asked her to step up and take the position. Worse, it was as if Cassie sensed those rare occasions when Lila stepped outside for a moment of fresh air during the day and pounced, mindless chirpy greeting ready.
To be fair, Cassie likely was fine. Probably not all that offensive. Maybe even a decent neighbor because she’d be the first one to jump on 911 if she spied someone walking down the street whom she didn’t know. But Lila valued privacy and personal space, and Cassie had only a passing acquaintance with either.
“Are you thinking about doing some gardening?” Cassie winced. “Maybe not the best idea. You’re a bit out of season.”
Small talk. Lila’s least favorite thing.
“We need some color out here.” “We” meaning her. She liked color. What Aaron wanted didn’t really matter anymore.
Cassie fidgeted with the broken sign under the mailbox, as if simply rehanging it would fix the household’s problems.
“The bolt is cracked.”
“Hmm?” Cassie’s head shot up. “What?”
Lila refused to find a more descriptive way to say it. “No bolt.”
Cassie’s eyes widened. “Oh. I wonder what happened to it.”
Aaron had. But enough chatting. “I should head back inside.”
Lila didn’t get two steps before Cassie wound up again. “You look nice. Are you working today?”
“Today and every day.” Last week one of Aaron’s fellow teachers dropped something off at the house and joked about her barely working and then tried to cover with some drivel about her not needing to work. His grating nasal voice still rang in her ears. Her employment was one of those pressure points that made Lila grind her back teeth together. Leave it to Cassie to locate the exposed nerve then jump up and down on it. “But yes, I need to do some research.”
“It must be so interesting to check out all those different houses. Peek inside and see what’s really happening in there.”
She had to feel the conversation drag, right? Lila couldn’t imagine Cassie di
dn’t hear it . . . or see the attempt to escape back up the driveway and into the house.
The anxiety Lila wrestled with for decades trickled in. Her control skimmed along the far edge, but soon it would crack. Then the race and swirl would begin inside her. That need to be away from people. To speak, but only on her terms.
When she decided to be “on,” that was fine. She’d practiced the skill of pretending to be comfortable while the flight instinct kicked into high gear inside of her. She’d lower her voice, slow it down to sound more in control. Concentrate so that her hands wouldn’t shake.
But now was not one of the times for which she could win an acting award. Stress after stress piled up. She no longer had the reserves to act like everyone expected her to act.
She pulled the cell out of her pocket to stare at it again. Avoidance often helped, but still no calls. No viable excuse to transport her to somewhere else.
Why hadn’t the call come yet? What was taking so long?
“I guess you’re on the phone all the time.” Cassie let the comment sit there, but when Lila didn’t respond, Cassie rushed to fill the quiet. “Being a real estate agent, I mean. You’re usually on call, right?”
“It does feel that way.”
She got to work as much as she wanted. He gave that to her . . . or so Aaron claimed. He went to work, taught math to hormonal high schoolers who viewed calculus as a punishment, and she stayed home.
Some women in town once cornered her while getting coffee, those who enjoyed small talk and big gossip, told her in their voices, dripping with jealousy, how lucky she was to have a husband like Aaron. As if playing the role of pretty little wife were a gift and not a life sentence of boredom.
“Do you want to come over—”
The crunching sound of tires on gravel drowned out what sounded like an unwanted invitation for coffee. Lila had never been so happy for visitors. Never been happy about guests—period—until now.
She recognized the black sedan that said all of my self-esteem is bundled up in an inflated monthly car payment. Brent Little, Aaron’s golfing buddy, best friend, and the principal of the high school, slipped out. He wore a navy suit, looking every inch the guy who was on the hunt to find a girlfriend to replace the wife who’d left him after sixteen bumpy years of unhappy marriage.
He’d sported that put-together, exercised-to-exhaustion, fake-tanned outer shell for the last two years. Girlfriends would come and go, impressed by the flash and then, Lila assumed, horrified by the single-digit bank balance of a man paying alimony and child support under court order for a family living two states away.
Lila smiled, this time a genuine one because Brent trumped Cassie as the preferred companion. “Shouldn’t you be sending kids to detention and hiding in the faculty lounge at this time of day?”
Despite her light tone, Brent’s expression didn’t change. Eyebrows drawn together and mouth flattened into a thin line. His usual sunny smile gone and his steps halting instead of the rushing gait that carried him down the school hallways.
Finally. This was it. She’d been waiting all morning for a visit. She hadn’t expected it to be from him, but whatever.
He stopped in front of Lila, sparing only a glance in Cassie’s direction before he spoke. “Is Aaron home?”
Lila felt something inside her fall. That wasn’t right. That’s not what he should be saying. “Why would he be home?”
“He didn’t come to work. I’ve looked everywhere. He didn’t call in sick, and when I didn’t hear from you . . .”
Not possible.
“Wait a second.” She took a deep breath as she tried to maneuver through the questions bombarding her brain. “I got up and he was gone, as usual. He’s at the school.”
Because that’s what they did. She stayed up at night to read or watch television. He went for a run in the early morning and fixed his breakfast, all without having to dodge her, because she only got up when he was about to walk out the door. The system worked for them. That was the schedule . . . until today.
“Look for his car.” She couldn’t believe she had to be so specific to get this part done, but fine.
A strangled sound escaped Brent’s throat. “I’ve been calling him for almost two hours without success.”
“His car is there.” Lila knew that was true.
Brent shook his head. “Where?”
By the field behind the football stadium where he coached field hockey. That’s exactly where it had to be because that’s where she put it a few hours ago while their part of the world still was plunged in darkness.
She forced her brain to stay focused. “At school.”
She understood some confusion. That was to be expected. He usually parked the SUV in an assigned spot by the school’s back door. Far right. First row. Aaron viewed the close-in spot as some sort of badge of honor. But that’s not where they’d find it today, and they should have found it by now.
“Lila, listen to me.” Brent put a hand on her forearm and gave it a gentle squeeze. “He’s not there. He never came to school today.”
This was ridiculous. How hard could it be to find a vehicle with a body in it?
“I don’t get it.” She choked the words out over the unexpected ball of anxiety clogging her throat.
“It’s probably nothing. A minor accident.” Cassie’s voice didn’t go up at the end of that sentence. “I can call . . .”
Cassie’s panicked voice faded until all Lila heard was the rush of blood as it drained from her body.
“There’s an explanation.” She said the line, hoping to mentally grab on and believe it, but no.
“Yes.” Cassie nodded in full helpful-neighbor mode. “Of course.”
“He might have needed a day off from the kids.” Brent let out a fake laugh that sounded more nervous than sincere. “I’m tempted some days.”
All the words and reassurances blended in Lila’s head. Brent alternated between rubbing her arm and patting it. Cassie’s voice finally registered as she talked on that call. Lila heard a few whispered words. “Police” and “missing” popped out.
Missing. Missing. Missing.
The truth body slammed her, leaving her chest heaving as she struggled for breath. The call she’d been waiting for would never come because Aaron’s car wasn’t in the lot or by the field. There wasn’t a car to find. Despite all her careful planning, he was gone.
She had to find Aaron before he found her.
Chapter Four
AT THIS TIME OF YEAR, THE WEATHER IN THE AREA IN AND around Ithaca balanced the thin line between fall and early winter. Temperatures dropped. Sweaters and sturdier shoes made an appearance. This part of New York, surrounded by the Finger Lakes and shoved right up against Cayuga Lake, defined “bucolic.” Trees awash in vibrant color. Waterfalls and hiking trails. Lush gardens and lots of places with “gorge” in the name.
A city with a small town buzz that expanded and contracted when the area’s three schools—Cornell University, Ithaca College, and Tompkins Cortland Community College—filled and emptied as the seasons turned. A place where people enjoyed a mix of the outdoors and scholarly discussions. The favorite local pastimes included boating, coffee, and insisting no intelligent person would live in New York City for more than a few years without bolting.
Lila transplanted to a neighborhood outside of Ithaca after meeting Aaron in North Carolina eight years ago and beginning their marriage less than a year later. For Aaron, the move north was a welcome return home, or near it. He’d grown up a bit farther to the east, in Central New York.
The area looked and felt the same to Lila, but the good people of New York knew the geographical boundary puzzle like a secret handshake. Central New York was not Upstate New York. Neither had much in common other than a shared state government with downstate.
Lila stood in Aaron’s empty school parking space and stared at the crowd of tress surrounding the one-story redbrick building and the athletic fields in the distance. H
er gaze skipped over the vehicles, most some shade of blue or red, to the far end of the lot. She scanned the fields and saw kids out running and playing some sort of sports. Not one sign of Aaron’s SUV or a hint of screams as someone peeked inside the window at his still body.
Trying to end this mess, she’d insisted Brent come in by the back entrance to the school grounds. That he drive around, just in case Aaron was outside for an impromptu practice or getting some air. That was the excuse. It gave her a few minutes of silence as she traced a finger down the inside of the car window and tried to make this morning’s events make sense.
She focused on the exact spot where she’d parked his SUV hours ago. Lights off, drifting over divots and bumpy grass at less than five miles per hour. Well before sunrise. Maneuvering around security cameras.
She’d planned it all, and somehow it still failed.
Leave it to Aaron to piss her off even in death.
Bells rang inside the building. A second later, the chaotic burst of talking and laughter seeped through the school walls and floated out to them. Lila focused on the faded white lines and the number twenty-seven printed in the parking spot. Aaron’s number.
“Lila?”
Brent’s voice broke through the clanging silence in her head. Cassie had volunteered to stay behind to watch in case Aaron wandered home. Brent mentioned the police and questions. Lila heard the words, but they bounced off her, refusing to settle in.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
No. Absolutely not. “Where’s his car?” The question flipped over in her head until it slipped out.
“He’s probably out on a ride somewhere, clearing his head or laughing at us for not trusting he’d be fine. Just enjoying the day, and then he’ll come back and apologize.”
Wrong answer. Brent didn’t know how wrong that was. He couldn’t know, but she did. If Aaron showed up—if that bastard was alive—his anger would destroy everything in its path, especially her.