She wondered if she should just announce that she was going back to the Stricklands. But of course, they didn’t want her any more than her father and Tish did. At least Nicole didn’t. And apparently Nicole, in Casey’s absence, had garnered the deciding vote as to what happened in their house. Violet tried not to think about the void in her life where Nicole had once been, how much harder this situation was without someone to talk to about it all. The two people she used to talk to—her mother and her best friend—had both, for reasons she couldn’t comprehend, left her.
She stood there, eavesdropping in her father’s hallway, and wished not only for her mother to come home, but to have a place where she belonged again. A place where she could walk right in and not feel like she needed to apologize for having done so. A place where she could call out, “I’m home!” and mean it. She’d had that just days ago, but already it felt like years. Tears pricked her eyes, and she swallowed hard against them.
The baby stopped fussing, and Violet leaned in to hear better. “I can’t keep taking her to school and picking her up,” Tish whined. “It’s throwing off our whole routine, Ally.” Violet bristled at her stepmother’s use of this endearment. Ally was a girl’s name, not something you called a grown man. “So unless you plan to start getting to work late and leaving early, we’re going to have to come up with some sort of arrangement,” Tish continued. Violet wished her dad would tell Tish she was being a bitch, that this was his daughter and this was the least he could do.
Instead her father used his soothing tone when he responded, the one he probably used to talk clients off ledges and negotiate deals for millions of dollars. “I spoke to that detective this morning, and he says it’ll be just a few days more. That’s all. Then they’ll release the house and she can go back.” But go back with whom? Violet wondered. She couldn’t stay in the house all alone. Could she?
The baby began to fuss again, and Violet used the noise distraction as an opportunity to take a quick peek around the door frame, just in time to see Tish thrust the crying infant into her father’s arms like a punishment for telling her what she didn’t want to hear. Violet ducked back out of sight. Between the protesting baby and her father pacing the den trying to calm it, Violet couldn’t hear what was said next. But she was pretty sure she’d heard him use the word grandmother. Which didn’t make sense considering her father’s mother had died before Violet was born, and her mother’s mother wasn’t around. Never had been.
Her mother had explained that there’d been a falling out long ago and that they were better off without that woman in their life. When Violet had been in elementary school, they used to have Grandparent Day, and all the grandparents would come to school and do fun things. Her mother let her miss school on that day, taking her to the movies or shopping or something so she didn’t have to see what she didn’t have. They would finish the day with brownie sundaes with lots of whipped cream and loads of hot fudge. Violet had always looked forward to Grandparent Day, but not for the same reason the other kids did.
Her stomach rumbled at the thought of a brownie sundae. There were no sweets in her father’s house, because Tish didn’t believe in sugar. She wanted to tell her mother that; she wanted to hear what her mother would say about someone who doesn’t believe in sugar, like God, or Santa Claus. She wanted to tell her mother lots of things. She wanted her mother, period.
Instead her stepmother came storming out of the den, startling Violet as she rounded the corner and caught Violet standing there. Tish opened her mouth to say something, then let out a shriek of frustration that rivaled her infant daughter’s and stormed off down the hall. Violet’s father came around the corner to see what had happened, watching his wife’s retreating back as he continued to bounce the unhappy baby. He looked bewildered and as unhappy as the infant, but Violet made no effort to say something consoling.
In his arms, the baby—her half sister—stopped fussing when she saw Violet, pressing her lips together and blowing air through them loudly, like a greeting. Violet reached up and the baby reached out. Her father’s new daughter didn’t know that his other daughter was not welcome there. Her father released the baby into her arms, and Violet held her close, inhaling Sienna’s baby scent, feeling her soft squishiness.
She’d tried to help Tish with the kids when she was there and not doing homework. She’d tried to make them glad to have her around, but they’d seemed not to notice, choosing instead to be aggravated. Tish visibly bristled whenever Violet entered a room. It was like she wanted to erase Violet’s existence entirely. Sometimes she wondered if Tish wanted an apology from her for living at all, for being the one part of her husband’s past that Tish could not take away.
“I’ve called your grandmother,” her father said. “She’s going to come and stay with you. It’ll make things easier. You’ll be close to your school again and . . .” His eyes trailed off in the direction his wife had gone. He looked back at Violet. “It’ll be better,” he added.
She could see the pain and exhaustion in his eyes. It was her fault he looked this way, her fault his happy family life was ruined. Violet resolved to do whatever she could to make him not look that way anymore. Tish couldn’t erase Violet’s existence, but Violet could—at least as far as this house was concerned.
She had just one question for her father, one thing she needed to clear up first. “Who’s my grandmother?”
Bess
After her self-defense class, she got trapped in a bathroom stall, listening to the chatter of the other ladies—mostly from her neighborhood or Nicole’s school—milling around, gossiping instead of going home or wherever. Sharon, Bess knew, was going to Weight Watchers; Laura was to meet with her therapist; Brenda had a dentist appointment. Everyone had a schedule to keep, but Norah’s arrest had thrown off all sense of normalcy.
Bess crouched in the stall, willing them to just leave already, her knees pulled to her chin, the last beads of sweat from the class snaking their way down her chest and back. She understood the irony of hiding after a self-defense class, shrinking back when she should be empowered. But the class taught her to defend herself from physical attackers. There was no defense against a group of women hungry for gossip.
Even as her muscles began to cramp and protest her unnatural position, the ladies lingered, wanting to talk, to dish, to discuss their theories about Norah and what had happened. They blamed, they judged, they condemned. They spoke about Norah like she was a piece of refuse, when once they’d all admired her. Norah had been, there was no doubt, the coolest woman in the neighborhood, aloof and successful and gorgeous, mysteriously content with her daughter and her home, never seeming to need a man. Of course, they snickered outside the stall where Bess hid, now they all knew why.
If the women discovered Bess, they’d corner her, ask questions, probe for what she knew. Though she knew more than most, Bess didn’t want to divulge anything. It wasn’t her place. She was uncomfortable talking about Norah, a woman who was once her best friend, a coveted position Bess sensed they all still envied even though the friendship had ended years ago.
This was the thing people did not tell you about when you got married and had kids: how important your female friends would become. You thought your friendships in grade school or college were important, but they paled in comparison to the friendships you would form with other mothers. No one told you how you would need them to talk to, to process with, to understand what your husband and kids could not. No one understood the release that would come from laughing till you cried with another person who knew you, understood you, accepted you. No one would tell you how hard that person would be to find.
For a long time, Norah had been that person. And then she wasn’t.
When the women’s voices faded, Bess uncurled herself and exited the stall, looking left to right first to make sure the coast was really clear. She walked across the tile and stopped in front of the mirror, studying her reflection as the scent of sweat and deodorant and pe
rfume swirled around her head, vapor trails of the departed women. She took in the image that met her in the mirror and thought about what Norah had been accused of, the way that success they’d all envied had come to her. Bess inhaled deeply, exhaled deeply, and looked straight into her own eyes. She looked, and did not blink.
At dinner, her husband, Steve, was downright chatty. Bess could feel the tension in the air, but he seemed oblivious, or just in denial about what had happened, what was happening still. Bess studied Casey’s profile as she robotically speared and chewed her food. She seemed to be eating normally, so it probably wasn’t an eating disorder. Bess tried to take comfort in that as Steve held court. He asked the girls about their days, told a mildly interesting story about a coworker, and was, for a moment, a glimpse of his charming self. He even listened to Bess explain what she did in self-defense class and did a good job feigning interest. She did not mention hiding in the stall after class to avoid talking about Norah. But Norah came up anyway. Steve did, at least, wait until after the girls had disappeared back into their rooms.
Once upon a time, it had been punishment to send them to their rooms, now it was punishment to ask them to come out of them. Bess would go crazy being trapped in such a small space for hours at a time. She needed to be outdoors, her hands in the dirt, her nose filled with the smell of growing green things. She needed to look up and see the clouds, feel the breeze kiss her cheeks. She glanced out the back window at her garden shed, the one Steve had let her purchase and design for Mother’s Day last year. She’d long since stopped hoping he’d know what to do for her. She’d just started doing it for herself, then thanking the girls for getting her just what she had wanted as they accepted her gratitude while trying to pretend they knew what she was talking about.
She kept her eyes on the shed as Steve inquired about “her friend.” That was how he referred to Norah, as though she had become a stranger when they’d spent holidays together, gone on vacation together, drunk countless glasses of wine in this very kitchen. Norah didn’t have much family, so she and Violet had become part of theirs, for a time.
“I don’t know anything new,” she answered him, her voice so mechanical she sounded like a robot even to herself. For some unexplainable—not to mention inconvenient—reason, she felt her throat tighten, the warning prick of tears behind her eyes. She steeled herself, thought of what her instructor called fight mode. You could’ve chosen flight, but you’ve chosen fight. Now it’s time to dig in. How many times had she heard that phrase?
She dug in.
“Huh,” he said. “That surprises me, with the way you women talk.” He chuckled, sounding like the stuffed shirt he had become. “It’s all anyone can talk about in my office.” He picked up his plate and carried it to the sink without being asked. She watched in stunned surprise as he turned on the spigot and began to rinse it. “It’s got people speculating,” he said. She watched his back, his shoulder blades moving underneath his white shirt, gone wrinkled and dank from a day of meetings and stress, as he rinsed the plate off and placed it in the dishwasher.
“I’m sure there’re men in this town who should be worried,” she said. It was just an observation, but she knew he would take it as a veiled threat.
He turned to face her. “Not me,” he said, looking like a man caught red-handed. “I swear.”
She looked at him coolly, narrowed her eyes as if she were deciding whether to believe him or not. She let him squirm for a moment because she could and this is what their marriage had become, weird moments of delighting in each other’s torment. She let him squirm, but she knew that though Steve Strickland was a lot of things, a patron of escorts was not one of them. She did their finances, ran checks and double checks, had tricks beyond what Steve probably thought her capable of to know what he was up to. She knew more about his finances than he did. She’d know if he ever paid for sex. She’d know, and she’d have a solid reason to end their marriage. He hadn’t given her a good reason in a few years, but she was waiting. The next time would be the last one. She would be done.
“I know,” she said.
“OK, good.” He laughed nervously. “Wouldn’t want you thinking the wrong thing,” he said.
But that wasn’t the problem, she thought as she took the spot he had vacated behind the sink to finish cleaning up. It wasn’t that she was thinking the wrong thing. It was that she was thinking the right one. She knew her husband very well, knew more than he was aware of. But he didn’t know her at all. She wasn’t sure that he ever had.
He’d been the Ferris Bueller of their high school, the charismatic, popular guy who could start a whole trend by accident. Once he’d worn mismatched socks because the power was out in his house that morning and he’d been unable to see what he was doing. For months afterward, the other guys at school wore mismatched socks, looking to Steve for affirmation that they were doing it right, hanging on the nod they received in response like a kiss on the ring.
And she’d been the Sloane to his Ferris, caught in his orbit, made valid by his arm around her as they sauntered down the hall. Like Sloane, she’d gazed adoringly at him and thought, He’s going to marry me. Back then, she’d thought that would be all she’d ever need. That was her endgame, her purpose for living. She would be complete when she took his name, could call herself his wife. But of course, that hadn’t been true. How many girls had been just like her, thinking marriage would somehow make their lives—make them—make sense? The change in names had not changed her. And it hadn’t changed him. It wasn’t until after they were married that she’d realized that all those times he’d walked with his arm around her shoulder, he’d been looking at everything else but her.
Steve Strickland had had numerous flings since then. They were never serious enough to be called affairs; he didn’t care about those women any more than he cared about Bess. Steve loved women because he wanted—he needed—to be idolized, to be revered. He’d been faithful to her in high school because he’d gotten that need met by his popularity. But when he entered the wider world and was no longer the big fish in the small pond, the guy who could get the prom date changed because of his sister’s wedding, he’d started seeking out other means to get it, to feel that rush of adoration again.
She knew this about him without him ever offering it as explanation. Spend a lifetime studying someone, and you absorb their emotions, their reactions, their thoughts—no words needed. She knew about his conquests, and he knew she knew. She’d caught him more than once. But she’d forgiven him every time because she’d felt she had no choice but to. They had children, and she could not bear to harm them by taking their father from them. She’d seen the statistics, heard the stories. One of their old friends had gotten divorced, and the next year their teenage daughter had gotten pregnant.
And then there was the matter of money, of supporting herself. She’d quit college in order to work full-time and put him through school. But after the girls had come along, they’d agreed she’d stay home and put all her focus into them. When she had time, the only work she did was in her own garden; she’d had no opportunity for a job that would draw a decent paycheck, no visible means of supporting herself long-term. And Steve, with the help of all his golf buddies (half of which seemed to be lawyers), would’ve found a way to play dirty, to cut her off as close as he could, to make sure she paid for divorcing the likes of him. If she ruined his reputation, he would ruin her.
She could not risk being a poor single mother, selling this beautiful home they’d built together. So each time she caught him, she accepted his tearful apology, his guilty gifts, his few days of doing more around the house and being more attentive. She got herself a massage, took a few days off from cooking, planned a fancy vacation he’d never have said yes to otherwise. And called it enough. For now. And when the other women told her how lucky she was to be taking fancy vacations and getting massages and having a husband who would watch the kids, she would just smile and agree with them. Then she would keep
on doing what she’d always done. Not because it was right, but because it was simpler.
She’d admired Norah’s resilience, her bravery, her ability to make single parenting look easy. “I don’t have whatever it is you have,” she’d said to her more than once.
“You do. You just don’t know it,” Norah would say. “But I hope I’m there when you figure it out,” she’d always add, then wink. But Norah wasn’t there anymore, and Bess hadn’t figured it out. Not yet. Finished with the dishes, she dried her hands on a towel and stared at her garden shed a moment longer before going to see if the girls needed anything, to tell them she was there if they did.
Nico
September 30
The man placed the coffee in front of him, his face open, friendly, as he did so. That would change soon. Nico looked down at the mug that said “World’s Greatest Husband” and tried not to feel exposed. He might’ve been just a dumb jock who had barely gotten through high school English, but his adult self knew what irony was. He had to refrain from sliding the mug back in the man’s direction, telling him there must be some mistake. Instead he took a sip.
The man sat down across from him and pushed the sugar bowl toward Nico, his eyebrows raised in question. Nico shook his head. He took it black; he’d had to learn to. There were too many times on a case when you just needed caffeine, no time to fool with adding things to it. You learned to accept whatever was in the Styrofoam cups they passed out.
The man across from him, though, had not learned this. Nico watched as he liberally spooned sugar into his mug, then doused it with cream, too. Nico had come to think of this as effeminate, even though it wasn’t, of course. But it said things about a man, about his choices.
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