A Smile as Sweet as Poison

by Helena Maeve

  Hazel wished she could have left that detail buried in the dusty vaults of memory.

  “So do you.”

  “I know.” Penelope slid her cell into the Hermès bag dangling from her forearm. “We heard you were in California.”

  Or you would’ve stayed the hell away? Hazel bit back the retort. “My brother had a baby.”

  “I heard. Congratulations.”

  “Thanks.”

  Wind swept through the trees, combing back the leaves of the climbing rose and shaking off a few loose petals. The utter stillness of the grounds was unnerving. Hazel folded her arms across her chest and feigned a shudder. “I should go back inside. Cold out here—”

  “You understand that Malcolm’s money is what’s keeping your family afloat, don’t you?” Penelope asked. She would’ve had to lob a brick at Hazel’s skull to be any blunter.

  There was, Hazel knew, no diplomatic way to say go to hell and take your husband with you, so she kept her mouth shut. She’d sort of promised not to raise a ruckus and she could well imagine that her mother was watching from the house.

  Penelope negotiated the three low steps that separated gazebo from flagstone path at a slow, leisurely pace. She ignored the bee buzzing at the buckle of her massive handbag. “I guess what I mean is…if you make trouble, it’s your parents who’ll suffer.”

  “Why would I make trouble?”

  Blue eyes met hers. She could’ve sworn Penelope’s irises were brown. God knew they’d spent a lot of time looking at each other while trying to navigate Malcolm’s mood swings.

  “Don’t play the fool with me,” Penelope warned. “I know what you are. I know what you told people after you dropped out… Poor little Hazel couldn’t hack it in college, so she blames everybody for her absent backbone.”

  Hazel stiffened when she reached up, but Penelope only brushed a stray curl behind her ear, fingertips lingering in a gentle, creeping caress.

  “I could’ve forgiven that, you know—we all thought you weren’t strong enough back then—but you broke his heart. He pined for months. Even now, there are nights I’ll come downstairs and find him in the living room, your pretty little face splashed all over the flatscreen,” Penelope’s voice had dropped so low it was barely audible—a song stripped of all harmony save for the steady thump of the bass line. “Do you have any idea how that makes me feel?”

  “Pen?”

  Malcolm’s voice had them both whirling around—Penelope with a perfect, smile in place, Hazel nursing a gut-punch.

  He looked from one to the other, expression unreadable. “Dinner’s ready.”

  “Then we should head in.” Penelope looped her arm around Hazel’s and spurred them into motion. “We were just catching up,” she told Malcolm. “I’m so sorry we kept everyone waiting. Make it up to you later?”

  Hazel’s skin prickled at what sounded like a private whisper between husband and wife, but she couldn’t turn away without pulling free of Penelope’s hold—and they both knew she wouldn’t do that.

  “You know you will,” Malcolm said, low and intimate, and leaned in to kiss Penelope square on the lips.

  We’ve been here before.

  In another house not so different from this one, with the swell of Penelope’s breast flush against her upper arm and the scent of Malcolm’s cologne wrapped around them both, they’d stood like this, limbs entwined against any forces that might threaten to tear them asunder.

  It was a lifetime ago and a heartbeat away. Hazel shuddered.

  Malcolm peeled free with a sigh, cupping his wife’s cheeks with both hands. For a breathless moment, Hazel half suspected he’d kiss her, too, and wondered if that would be enough of a wake-up call to have her wrench free of Penelope’s hold. But much to her chagrin, he seemed to think better of the impulse and didn’t follow through.

  As Penelope relinquished her hand, Hazel found herself trailing behind them into the dining room.

  Her mother’s table was a point of pride. Whenever Christmas or Thanksgiving rolled around—or even for less illustrious occasions, such as Hazel’s birthday—there was always a generous spread to be had at Mrs. Whitley’s. The centerpieces tonight were a trio of pink and white roses, baby’s breath, and fragrant mint leaves clumped together in small, Pottery Barn-bought ceramic vases. Between them lay platters of potato salad, grilled tomatoes and eggplant, summer greens in a variety of combinations each more vibrant than the last, and, naturally, a still-steaming porterhouse tenderloin already sliced and served on a bed of lettuce.

  “A lot, isn’t it?” Rhonda murmured, coming up behind Hazel. Her tread was so soft that Hazel hadn’t even heard her approach. “We could feed a regiment. Come sit by me.”

  There were empty chairs on either side of the table, but at Rhonda’s request, Hazel took the one closest to her father’s seat, leaving the one next to Malcolm unoccupied.

  “How’s Bea?” she forced herself to ask. Get it together, Whitley.

  “Oh, she’s sleeping,” Rhonda reported. “I have this—” She waved her wrist to show off what Hazel had first mistaken for a watch. “Lets me know if she wakes up. Sort of a portable baby monitor.”

  Hazel mustered a smile. “Very cool.”

  “Isn’t it? Buddy got it for me. I don’t know why he worries. She eats, she sleeps… If this is how it’s going to be for the next eighteen years, I’m going to side-eye those parenting books so hard.”

  “Can’t believe everything you read,” Malcolm observed over the rose bouquet. “So many lies out there.”

  Before Rhonda could reply, Mrs. Whitley spoke up, “Penny, darling, could you pass the salad bowl to my son before he topples his wine glass? Manners, Buddy.”

  “Ain’t my fault there’s a million and one things on this table,” he groused.

  “Well, I think it’s lovely, Mrs. Whitley,” Penelope said, fluttering her lashes.

  “Oh, it’s Doug and Winifred,” Hazel’s father scoffed. “You’re among friends here. And besides, we don’t stand on formality in this house.”

  The white table cloth and good china told a different story, but Hazel bit her tongue against making the point. Four voices were already competing over the generous spread. She reached for her wine with an unsteady hand, eager for the fog only alcohol could provide, and found that Malcolm was watching her over the table.

  “Rough day?”

  After all this time and everything he’d put her through, his voice still triggered a tight clenching between her legs. It still made her want to sink to her knees, supplicant.

  Hazel grasped the glass by the stem and stayed where she was. “You have no idea.”

  “Sorry to hear that.” Nonchalantly, he speared a slice of tenderloin steak and slid it onto his wife’s plate. “How’s California?”

  Everyone seemed eager to ask that question in Dunby, as though California wasn’t just another state in the union, but a whole different planet. Repetition makes perfect. Hazel mimed a shrug. “Sunny. Hot. Lazy.” Everything a born and bred Missourian could want to hear.

  “So you like it there?”

  From the corner of her eye, Hazel noticed that Penelope had abandoned sucking up to her husband’s new business partner to listen in on the interrogation. “What’s not to like?”

  “You must not follow their politics.” Mr. Whitley wolfed down a tomato slice.

  The indictment was by no means rare, but it stung all the same. Before Hazel could think of a reply, though, Malcolm struck again.

  “Oh, I’ll bet it’s not the politics that matter but the people. Are you seeing anyone?”

  Taken aback, Hazel didn’t know how to respond. It was blunt to the point of rudeness. What was it her father had said? That they were among friends here?

  “She is,” Rhonda piped up in her stead.

  All eyes turned to her, including Hazel’s.

  “What?” She had the good grace to hitch up her shoulders but she didn’t back down. “I read between the lines of Sad
ie’s latest status update…”

  “You didn’t mention anything about a boyfriend to us,” Mrs. Whitley chided, balancing fork and knife at a perfect ninety-degree angle.

  Hazel’s face blazed hot. “No, I didn’t.”

  “Well?” her father prompted. “Since you didn’t think to invite him to meet us, what’s he like?” His bushy, graying eyebrows were arched in a perfect imitation of interest. The last time he’d exhibited any sort of curiosity about Hazel’s life, she’d been leaving for college.

  Fell off the pedestal after that. Stopped being Daddy’s little girl. The ensuing shift into cool indifference had been swift and irrevocable.

  He wasn’t the only one watching her expectantly. Seated next to his wife, Buddy had paused mid-chew, evidently engrossed. Penelope and Malcolm were poised like a pair of beautiful gods peering down at a middling worshipper, she dark and willowy, Malcolm built like a man who could erect a house with his bare hands. Glee hovered in his gray-blue gaze.

  The image of wolves circling prey flashed through Hazel’s thoughts, startlingly vivid.

  “They,” she replied.

  Mr. Whitley frowned. “What’s that?”

  “You should be asking what they’re like.”

  “You’re seeing more than one man?” Rhonda gasped, more baffled than belligerent in her tone.

  Hazel held up two fingers. Her eyes never strayed from Malcolm’s. She wanted to know what he made of that revelation, even now, when his opinion shouldn’t have counted. Even when her parents sat at either end of their sumptuously laden table, quaking under the impact of this latest bombshell.

  The last time they’d hosted Hazel for supper, she’d informed them that she had dropped out of college and wasn’t going back.

  The scrape of Mrs. Whitley’s knife against the bottom of her plate had been the only sign of her displeasure then. It was the same now.

  “I see.” Mr. Whitley cleared his throat. “So, Malcolm, about those permits. What deadline are we looking at?”

  Her parents would do their utmost to keep up appearances, but Hazel wasn’t surprised to find Malcolm’s focus lingering, his expression almost fond. “A couple of months would be the conservative estimate,” he replied. “But you never know… Dunby seems full of surprises.”

  Hazel suppressed a shiver. On a whim, she shot a glance to Penelope—once a friend, then a rival, then that oh-so-popular brand of acolyte who knew her innermost thoughts and used them against her that had been all the rage in their toxic little group back in college. Sure enough, Penelope looked as if she’d been made to chew glass. Her blue eyes were blazing, a vein twitching under her unblemished, so-pale-it-was-almost-translucent skin.

  Two can play this game, frenemy. And I still remember how.

  Shame churning in her gut, Hazel swallowed another sip of wine.

  Chapter Thirteen

  It wasn’t a dream.

  The sight of lacy curtains and Missouri Princess trophies jam-packed on the dresser brought reality crashing through the last lingering embers of sleep. Hazel groaned and rolled away from the window.

  At first she thought it a product of her imagination, but the figure in the rocking chair was well and truly flesh. Hazel sat up so fast that she barely avoided knocking into the headboard.

  “Mom! What the fuck?”

  “Language,” Mrs. Whitley warned, her voice clipped.

  Hazel ignored her. “You scared me! What are you even doing in here?” She felt all of sixteen years old again and clamoring for privacy she’d never been granted. If her mother hadn’t been badgering Hazel’s teachers with questions about her progress when she’d run into them at church, then she’d gone through Hazel’s diary, rooting her deepest, darkest secrets that way.

  But that time had passed. Hazel had moved out, carved out a life on her own merits. She dragged both hands through her hair. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but you look like something out of a horror movie sitting there, watching me sleep…” Or take it the wrong way. See if I care.

  Daylight had begun slanting through the south facing windows, lengthening Mrs. Whitley’s shadow against the wall. It took Hazel a moment to realize her mother was still wearing last night’s ensemble with the square neckline and the silver brooch.

  “Have you been to bed?” Hazel asked, bemused.

  Mrs. Whitley shook her head. “Couldn’t sleep.”

  “Why?”

  “Oh Hazel… Where did I go wrong? I tried to raise you right. I—I did the same things with you and Buddy, but he came out right and you…”

  Hazel tipped back against the headboard, pinned there by the tremor in her mother’s voice. “And me what?”

  Mrs. Whitley rubbed a wrinkled fingertip to the corner of her eye, rallying. When she spoke again, her tone firmed, consonants growing sharper with intent, “I’ve spoken with your father and he agrees that you should move back home.”

  Amusement and fury resumed hostilities in Hazel’s ribcage. Disbelief won out. “You’re kidding.”

  “We think it’s for the best. California is not suitable for you. Your mental state—”

  “Is fine,” Hazel snapped. “I have a life there, friends. I can’t just pack up and leave.”

  “You mean your two men?”

  The sharp question cut Hazel off. “So that’s what this is about.”

  Mrs. Whitley rose so fast that the rocking chair swayed back, smacking the wall with a dull thump. “Of course that’s what it’s about! You’re wasting yourself on people who care nothing about you. You’ve lost your sense of self, of pride… I don’t even know why you’d bring that up over dinner, unless it was to spite me—”

  “You asked!”

  “Lower your voice,” her mother shot back.

  Hazel huffed out a mirthless laugh and kicked off her covers. “You know what? I don’t care what you think. I’m not moving back here, to live under your boot until Daddy can sell me off to some local psycho.”

  “How dare you speak to me like— Where do you think you’re going?”

  “To get ready for the christening,” Hazel volleyed over her shoulder. “The sooner I’m done with that, the sooner I’ll be out of your hair and you can go back to giving Malcolm Pryce a tongue bath.”

  Her mother scoffed, “Oh, spare me theatrics. Just because he dumped you doesn’t mean he’s not a good man.”

  Nearly across the threshold, Hazel felt air turn to soup in her lungs. Her legs threatened to buckle, but she locked her knees, she remained upright. “You don’t know.”

  “For God’s sake,” Mrs. Whitley groused. “Don’t mumble. You know how I hate it when you—”

  Hazel swiveled on a heel, the room spinning around her. “You don’t know what he’s done.” He fooled you, too. And if that was possible, then maybe the problem didn’t lie with Hazel for lingering under his spell for almost three years.

  Slowly, the puzzle pieces aligned. Her father’s efforts to accommodate their guests. Her mother’s lavish dinner. Even Rhonda and Buddy making nice when they were exhausted and juggling life with their firstborn. Everyone played by Malcolm’s tune. It wasn’t just Hazel, too weak or too stupid to realize that she was being used.

  The walls recovered their vertical slant, the tangled bed sheets made up their own, inoffensive patterns. Light caught on the sharp points of the trophies and fractured into colorful beams as it ricocheted onto the ceiling.

  And Hazel’s mother stood in the center of it all, her eyebrows furrowed. “What are you talking about?”

  “Malcolm didn’t dump me,” Hazel told her. “I left.” Both him and the college, and the future she’d been groomed for, all gone in one fell swoop. It had been her first act of rebellion and on a good day, Hazel credited it with saving her life.

  Looking back, she wondered where she’d misplaced her regrets. Her heart didn’t ache for might-have-beens anymore. She had seen Malcolm and Penelope last night. That could have been me, twisted up in knots trying to keep h
im happy. The thought was wearying, comical.

  She had made the better choice.

  Hazel scored her thumbnail into the grooves of the doorjamb, trying to adjust to this startling new sense of lightness. When she pushed away from the wall, she was smiling.

  “Hazel?”

  Her name was neither carrot nor stick. The overwhelming power her mother had once had over her withered like a dying weed.

  “Hazel, come back here,” Mrs. Whitley demanded. “We’re not finished!”

  Yes, we are. The bathroom door closed with a click, cutting off her mother’s protests. She was no longer the all-knowing, all-seeing authority figure that had so long cultivated panic in Hazel’s heart. She had finally fallen off that precarious pedestal and the way down was steep and bumpy.

  * * * *

  “Beautiful ceremony,” Hazel told her sister-in-law as they sat in the kitchen of the house she shared with Buddy. The late August heat streamed through the open windows with the buzz of hornets and the chirping of birds.

  On the stove, a cast iron kettle gurgled on low heat.

  Rhonda flashed her a smile. “It was, wasn’t it? And Bea barely made a peep…”

  “She looked like she was sleeping for most of the sermon,” Hazel noted, stretching over the table to grab another cupcake. Rhonda was a baking wiz and her kitchen always smelled like sugar and cocoa powder.

  “Oh, believe me, I wanted to join her. But she’s the only one who can get away with it.” Rhonda gave her daughter a little shake, enough to rock her in her afternoon nap without rousing her. “Listen, about last night—”

  “I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable.”

  “It’s not that.”

  Hazel bit into the cookie. Chocolate chip and hazelnut—to die for. “Oh?”

  “Buddy thinks you said what you said just to shock your parents… Is it true, though? About that…those two men you’re seeing.”

  Gossip was the lifeblood of small towns and Dunby was no exception. Hazel rested her elbows on the kitchen table and nodded. Word had already got round town that Mrs. Whitley’s daughter had grown up to be a woman of loose moral character. The damage was done.