by Sophie Gunn
She hardly felt a moment of nostalgia.
Well, okay, maybe a moment when she opened the cabinet and saw a stash of pennies she’d left years ago, still wrapped in a square of her mother’s flowered quilting fabric.
She let herself out the front door, settled Meghan in her stroller, and made her way past Tay, who was nailing in a post on the fence. “Nice to have met you.”
“Likewise,” he said.
Annie went a few more steps, then stopped. She turned the stroller and went back to Tay. “So, what’s really up with this?” Annie asked, motioning to the fence.
“Nothing. What’s really up with you sneaking into your sister’s house?”
A flash of guilt, then anger, then an emotion she knew even better, especially when Lizzie was involved: jealousy. She gets the house and Tommy still loves her and now she gets this gorgeous, dream-come-true fix-it man to watch over her. The blackness rose inside Annie like a stain. She had thought it was gone, with the money making her feel lighter, but it was still there, ready to come out at the slightest provocation.
She hated herself for it, but she couldn’t control it.
She glanced back at the house, at the porch swing, where Lizzie and Tommy had sat years ago when they were kids, swinging softly while Annie watched from the darkness inside. That was before Lizzie took over the house and the chains had started squeaking from neglect. Back when they were kids, Annie had wanted Tommy so badly, she might have done anything to get him. But she hadn’t had to do anything. Lizzie had done it for her by dumping him for Ethan. And Annie had been there to scoop him up.
Making her forever the rebound girl.
She hated being the rebound girl. Lizzie screwed up so much, and she still got the house and Mom and Dad’s help with Paige and even that little piece of Tommy’s heart that Annie could never touch. Tommy went running to her whenever she called. She went running to him whenever she needed a man’s help.
At least the money in the basement was all hers.
She tried to shake the ugly feelings that were building inside her. She knew they were ugly. She hated them as much as she hated Lizzie—no. She didn’t hate Lizzie. Not exactly. She just needed some sleep, some time away from Meghan, something to give her the strength to stop giving in to the blackness. She thought that the money had been the thing that was all hers, but the euphoria over finding it hadn’t lasted.
Tay was watching her closely. He didn’t say anything.
Her own nastiness repulsed her. How could she ever raise a child when she was so black inside? She felt sick, but the last thing she wanted was to seem weak. “I wasn’t sneaking,” she said as forcefully as she could.
He tilted his head to the side. “Okay.”
“My husband is a cop, so don’t mess with Lizzie.” She was aware that she was trying to get everyone, including herself, clear about whose side she was on.
I am on Lizzie’s side. She really was, deep down. If only she could remember that. Why was it so hard to remember that?
“Officer Wynne. Met him awhile back. Met his gun. Suitably impressed.”
“Good.”
“Good.”
Hell, she wanted the best for Lizzie. She wasn’t pure evil. She just had been having a hard time lately and she couldn’t fight the black thoughts away. If only Meghan could sleep through the night just once, Annie wouldn’t feel so ragged all the time. If only her two teeth weren’t coming in at once, making her so sour and fussy. Annie wanted to do something nice for Lizzie to make up for her bad thoughts, but who had the time or energy?
Tay had gone back to wrestling with some rusty nails in the fence.
If she could get Lizzie and him together, maybe Lizzie would stop calling Tommy every time she stubbed her toe. Maybe Tommy would stop running to her every time she had a hangnail.
Maybe, this could be the nice thing she’d do for Lizzie: help her get this man.
Judy Roth’s curtains parted across the way.
Annie waved and called, “Hi, Mrs. Roth, just threatening Lizzie’s stalker!”
He smiled and waved, too.
She turned back to Tay. “My husband will check you out, you know.”
He shrugged. “I have no secrets.” He looked at her more closely, then said, “How about you? Do you have any secrets?”
Annie’s body went cold. Tay was looking at her as if he knew about the money. He glanced at the house, then back at her.
How could he know? She was losing it. She really had to figure out what to do with the money and then do it. She had an insane desire to tell him about the money, to come clean. This guy, of all people, could understand making a mistake. His life obviously wasn’t going all that well for him to end up here, fixing Lizzie’s fence.
But just as she was about to tell him, Judy Roth came out of her house and headed straight for them. She walked slowly and uncertainly.
“So you’re for real?” she asked Tay. “Just a free fix-it guy.”
“Aren’t we all for real?” he asked.
“No. Not all of us. Some of us are fakes. Liars. Criminals.” She pulled Meghan’s stroller closer.
“Which one of us would that be?” he asked.
Despite herself, Annie laughed. Laughed like she hadn’t in a long, long time. Meghan started laughing, too, a baby chuckle from deep down in her belly. Heh, heh, heh… Her eyes shone up at her mother. Heh, heh, heh… Her stroller shook.
Tay looked at the baby with a man’s confusion, as if he was wondering who was working the remote.
“I like you, Tay,” Annie said, keeping an eye on Judy’s slow progress. “You have an edge. You’re a little odd, but it’s refreshing. We don’t get many out-of-the-ordinary people in Galton. Everyone here just walks the straight and narrow.”
“I doubt that,” he said. “I don’t think that you do, anyway.”
She hesitated, then raced forward with her idea before she could think too much about it. Judy Roth was almost at Lizzie’s gate, and she had to hurry. Maybe this wasn’t the right thing to do—just like taking the money—but she was going to do it anyway. Because she felt like being reckless. Because she wanted her husband back—all of him. Because she wanted her childhood home to look nice again. Because getting Lizzie and this beautiful man together might be the best thing that ever happened to Lizzie, and she did want good things to happen for her sister, despite her out-of-control emotions. “What are you doing for dinner tomorrow night?”
Surprise was clear on his face. “Avoiding husbands with guns?”
Judy stepped uncertainly onto the sidewalk.
“Oh, for heaven’s sakes. I don’t mean it like that. Come by. Lizzie and Paige will be there. They always come for Friday night dinner. Tommy’s a master with the grill. The season’s over, but he won’t stop till the tank is done. You’d be doing us a favor if he could grill one more burger. He could be out there in the snow if we don’t empty that tank.” She got a scrap of paper from her purse and scribbled her address. “Just so we can check you out properly.”
“I don’t know if that’s such a good idea,” he said. He looked at the paper she’d handed him, then looked at her again as if it had confirmed something that he already suspected. He chewed his lower lip thoughtfully.
What? Did he see that she lived in the wrong part of town?
Judy had finally reached them. “Hello, Mrs. Roth,” they both said.
“Hello, dear! Hello, Tay!” Judy sang. “Can’t miss a chance to see the baby.”
Annie smiled, but hurried on with their conversation in a soft voice. “Why isn’t it a good idea?”
Judy Roth bent over Meghan’s stroller. She started cooing and making faces at her. Meghan kept her eyes on her mother, as if uncertain whether this woman meant harm.
“I don’t think Lizzie wants me around,” he said. “I’m just finishing up here, then leaving.”
“Lizzie doesn’t always know what she wants,” Annie said. She turned to Mrs. Roth and said, “We have
to go.”
“Good-bye, little love,” Mrs. Roth cooed to Meghan.
“Guess you forgot that sweater,” Tay said as Annie walked away.
She ignored him and hurried down the street and down the hill toward home as if she hadn’t heard. She was going to do this for Lizzie, to prove to herself that she wasn’t a bad sister.
Wasn’t a bad person.
Despite what she felt inside.
CHAPTER
21
Lizzie asked the receptionist at 25th Century Realty to please tell Jill Kennedy she had a delivery of a mochaccino latte skinny caramel from the Last Chance diner.
The receptionist looked at Lizzie’s empty hands with skepticism, but she called back to Jill.
While she waited, Lizzie poked around the reception area. Jill’s office was even gaudier than Lizzie remembered, with shiny wooden floors covered in second-rate Oriental rugs, fresh lilies everywhere, gassing up the place with their fumes. The upholstered chairs huddled together in exclusive cliques. It gave Lizzie a certain amount of pleasure to note that they were modern fakes, nowhere close to the quality of the chairs in her own living room that she and Annie and her mother had assembled over years of eagle-eyed thrift-shop antiquing.
A surprised Jill Kennedy appeared from the back in a black pencil skirt, shimmery silk top, and three-inch heels. “Hey, where’s my coffee?”
“Drank it. It was delicious. Thanks.”
Jill said, “C’mon back.” She yanked her down the hallway.
The receptionist glared after them.
“She doesn’t like it when anyone has any fun,” Jill said.
“As usual, you look perfect,” Lizzie said to Jill. They made their way down the long corridor, portraits of gray-haired white men staring down at them from gilded frames. Lizzie adjusted her server’s uniform. Her soft-soled white sneakers squished on the plush hall runner. Perfectly coiffed heads popped up from desks, then went back down with snarky smiles. Guess she looked like the client from hell to these folks. “So, what do you think we can find me and my six kids in a double-wide?” she asked as loudly as she could. “Don’t you have some waste dump sites that are contaminated enough for us to afford something nice?” Galton was a college town composed of two kinds of people—those who worked at a professional level for Galton University and those who served them: that is, the townies.
Jill Kennedy and 25th Century Realty specialized in the former. “Shhhh!” Jill urged.
They got to Jill’s office, not much more than a glorified cubicle. “Okay, you never come and see me at work. You must have slept with him,” Jill said, sounding hopeful. She sat behind her desk and sucked on a straw stuck into one of her expensive iced coffees.
“No. Now listen. I need good advice this time. I don’t want to have hiked up that damn hill for nothing.”
“Well, it’ll help you reduce that ass.” Jill smiled.
Lizzie picked up a crystal paperweight in the shape of a house. “Tay told me his story.” She recounted the story of the accident to Jill. She left out the part about the money. She felt like that was between the two of them. “And I felt this incredible connection to him. Like I had something to offer him, and not sex—just, you know, connection. A warm kitchen. So I invited him in for coffee.” She paused. “And he said no.”
Jill sat forward. “He said no? Maybe he thought it was going to be the same coffee you serve at the diner.”
“Don’t joke. This isn’t funny. He couldn’t get away from me fast enough. He just wanted me to know how screwed up he was and why it wasn’t me it was him and blah blah blah. Oh, God, I’ll never, ever find a decent man, will I?”
Jill clicked her pencil against her desk, ignoring her furiously blinking phone. “He’s damaged goods. It’s not your fault,” Jill said. “Men are like that.”
“I know, I know. But I felt like we had a connection, but he won’t connect.”
“Okay, okay, let’s think this through. You want to connect? You’re sure?”
“Yes. No. I don’t know. We sort of kissed, also. Before. In Lucifer’s.”
“Sort of? Chrissie said it was totally hot.”
“Oh, God. Chrissie told everyone! Why didn’t you say something?”
“I was waiting for you to fess up,” Jill admitted. “Took you long enough.”
“It was hot,” Lizzie admitted. “At first. But then he stopped. And I was a puddle of jelly and he was gone—just vacant, as if he wasn’t even there. And that’s what happened again with our conversation. He let it all out and told me everything and I wanted to reach out to him, and invite him in, and he pulled back like I was a leper.”
“He’s a man,” Jill said. “That’s what they do.” Jill sipped some more of her coffee concoction.
She looked as if she was going to say more, but she didn’t.
“Or it’s me,” Lizzie went on.
“You know, I take that back. Maybe it is your fault.”
Lizzie’s eyes went wide. “Why? What do you know? Help me out here.”
“Because you did to him exactly what he did to you. You opened your soul and wished for a handyman, and when he responded, you pushed him away. Then he told you his deepest, darkest secrets, and when you invited him in, he ran. Maybe he’s just like you—can’t abide kindness.”
“So what do I do?”
“You tell him your deepest, darkest secrets, but then, don’t push him away. Break the cycle. Accept the offer.”
“I don’t have any deep, dark secrets.”
“Sure you do. We all do. In fact, I’ve been meaning to tell you something,” Jill said.
Lizzie’s mind was contemplating what Jill had said about charity. Were she and Tay so similar that they couldn’t get close? Lizzie cut Jill off. “I already told him about getting pregnant with Paige and about Ethan coming.”
Jill looked irritated. She sucked from her coffee drink, her lips tight. Lizzie had missed something, but she couldn’t figure it out now. She had to figure Tay out.
“Tell him about us,” Jill said.
“Us?”
“The Enemy Club.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. Because then, he’ll see you’re not so perfect. I know I used to hate you for being so damn perfect.”
“But I was never perfect.”
“I know that now. But c’mon, when we were kids, it was all about trying to pretend to be the best, to show no fear or flaw or difference. I think you’re still clinging a little to that.”
“Me? What about you?”
“Well, okay, me, maybe. But I’m not trying to lure in a man right now. Look, Liz, he can’t forgive himself and there you are with your house and your kid looking all strong and righteous. You were wronged, and you made the best of it. Maybe that pisses him off, keeps him away.”
“I don’t think he’s pissed off exactly,” Lizzie pointed out.
“Oh, yeah, right. That was me,” Jill said.
“You?” What was Jill talking about?
The receptionist’s voice came through on the line. “Jill, your ten o’clock is here.”
Lizzie stood.
“Tell him that you’re not perfect,” Jill said as she walked Lizzie out. “Show a little weakness. Give him space to get in.”
“I don’t know,” Lizzie said.
“Ask Georgia, then. And Nina. I promise. This will be the only time in our existence that all three of us agree on anything.”
Georgia had a discreet office off the side of her enormous Tudor house. Lizzie walked past the Guarded by Brinks sign and carefully up the middle of the long driveway that turned a circle at the top. She didn’t want to set off any alarms. The yard was perfectly tended, not a leaf out of place. Georgia’s formidable stone house matched the stone campus buildings across the street, making the line between the campus and the town blurry.
Just as she neared the front door, a black BMW SUV pulled into the drive, sped past the front door, and stopped by the offi
ce side of the house.
One of Georgia’s patients?
Lizzie realized that she was intruding. She ducked behind a bush by the front door, holding her breath, waiting for the sirens to start wailing. Georgia was famous for her hair-trigger security system. For fun, Galton students sometimes threw beer bottles just to set it off.
Mercifully, no siren sounded.
A woman got out of the car, a girl really, a Galton U. bumper sticker on the back of her car. She had glossy, pin-straight black hair that reached all the way to her butt. She strode to the office door at the side of the house without so much as a glance around, her hair swinging behind her, and disappeared inside.
Now what?
Lizzie stepped clear of the bush. She didn’t want to intrude on something as private as a therapy appointment with Galton’s number one shrink. She was already wondering what was wrong with the girl in the BMW. What could be wrong when you owned a car like that and went to one of the country’s best schools? That girl had no idea how lucky she was.
Change of plans. Lizzie had started to scribble a note for Georgia to call her on the back of a Wegmans receipt she found at the bottom of her purse, when she heard the siren of a police car.
Oh, hell.
She considered ducking back behind the bush, but that was obviously what had tripped the silent alarm in the first place. She finished the note and dropped it through the mail slot, then calmly walked down the driveway just as Tommy’s cruiser pulled up.
He stopped and rolled down the window. “You?”
Georgia’s front door opened. Lizzie waved. “Hi, neighbor. Just leaving you a note. Call me!” She turned back to Tommy. “I didn’t hear an alarm.”
“She switched to silent. All those beer bottles.” Tommy got out of the cruiser. “You okay?” he called to Georgia.
“Fine,” she answered sheepishly. “I’ll call you,” she called to Lizzie.
“I still have to report this,” Tommy said.
“Bill me. I have a patient,” Georgia said, shutting her door behind her.