“Interesting name.”
“Steve Wozniak cofounded Apple in 1976,” Dustin says, nuzzling his nose in his dog’s tiny back. “He created the first programmable universal remote, so yeah, we have him to thank for that.”
“Cool. I did not know that.” Dustin proceeds with a micro-lecture on the birth of personal computing, while I take in Leah’s foyer. Her house is a center-hall colonial, an exact replica of our own, built by the same developer during the World War II boom that turned Washington from a sleepy town into a city. But whereas our house has maintained what I like to consider its shabby-chic charm, Leah’s has been blinged out.
“Is that Allie? C’mon in!” Someone yells from the living room, interrupting Dustin mid-monologue.
“Guess I should go in.” I hold up the book.
I enter Leah’s living room, shelter-magazine ready with buttery yellow walls, white sofas, and gleaming mahogany end tables. Symmetry reigns here, and I am askew, especially tonight, after the visit from the police.
Daisy embraces me in a warm hug.
“Everybody read the book?” I ask.
Daisy rolls her eyes. “Couldn’t get past chapter 1, but don’t tell anyone. I had a situation with Gabriella this week. Her mom found some prescription pills in her backpack and automatically assumed they were mine. She showed up guns blazing.”
“Oh no!” Heather shakes her head in disbelief. She’s wearing a Marine Corps Marathon T-shirt over running tights, but not a hair is out of place on her blond bob, the default hairdo of the neighborhood.
“And then I told Trip, which I was apparently not supposed to do, and he confronted Gabriella, and I became the bad guy.” She winced. “Forget this book, I should write a book about stepparenting a teen. I’d call it This Wasn’t My First Choice, Either.” She lets out a shrill laugh. “Kidding, of course. I love Gabriella to bits.”
Daisy turns her attention to me. “Now, Allie.” She puts both her hands on my shoulders and squeezes. “The question is, how are you holding up, sweetie?”
In an instant, I am sure Leah told her about Rob Avery and what happened in the bathroom. Fury rises in me. “Where’s Leah?”
“She’s in the kitchen.”
I leave the room and find Leah buzzing around the kitchen in yoga pants and a cropped sweatshirt that most teenagers wouldn’t dare wear.
“Allie, honey! How are you holding up?” She hugs me. “I’ve been thinking about you all day. I called a friend of mine from law school who’s a public defender. Want to know what she said?”
“Not really. You told Daisy, didn’t you?”
Unfazed, Leah points at a bottle of white wine on the counter. “Can you open that for me?”
I grab the bottle and unscrew the cap.
“Leah, did you tell Daisy?”
Leah stops what she’s doing. “I had to. Please don’t hate me! She came in here saying that someone had told her that you had been making out with Rob Avery the night he was killed, and I said, no way, no how.” Leah opens a can of smoked almonds and pours them into a bowl. “That is not what happened.”
“She said I was making out?” I am trying to picture what Daisy could have seen that night.
“Well, maybe not those exact words. She said she heard someone else say that.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know.” Leah stops her busywork and stands with her hands on her hips. “That’s not the point. The point is, I said that son of a bitch forced himself on you.” She hands me the bowl of almonds. “That’s all. Nothing else. I didn’t tell her about him calling you a cock tease or the whole Tinder thing, don’t worry.” She tilts her head to one side. “Do you hate me?”
“No, I don’t hate you.” But I can barely contain my composure. “I just don’t like the whole neighborhood talking about this.”
“I know, I get it. But trust me, it’s better if they know the truth, right? I mean, with the investigation, it’s all going to come out. I used to work in PR.”
I frown. “I thought you used to be a lawyer.”
She waves away the question. “That was before. It’s better to get ahead of things.” She picks up the tray with the glasses. “Grab the wine, will you?”
I follow Leah into the living room like an automaton. Daisy’s sitting on one of two white damask sofas that flank a roaring fire. The rest of the group—Heather, Janelle, and Pam—is seated and chatting about rumors that the school art teacher is leaving.
Leah hands me a wineglass—really a bowl on a stem—with Why limit happy to an hour? etched on the side. I take a deep sip, then another.
Leah clears her throat and claps her hands together three times like a kindergarten teacher. “Okay, people, this is a book club. So stop chatting”—she pauses for dramatic effect—“and start drinking.”
Everyone laughs. I watch Leah as she passes the wine around. Heather catches my eye and offers a bittersweet smile. I don’t know if she is being her usual simpering self or if she knows, too.
Something about the conversation in the kitchen is bugging me. Something Leah said, which I cannot put my finger on.
I lean back into the soft, white cushions and will myself to relax. Leah has been nothing but a good friend. Not every time someone talks about you are they trying to hurt you, I tell myself.
“No, seriously, enough with the chitchat,” Daisy says. “Let’s discuss Disheveled. Janelle? I know you’ve got some opinions.”
Heather titters.
“Well, I hated this,” says Janelle. “Do we really need another novel about how hard it is to be alive in America in the twenty-first century?”
“Big surprise,” Pam mutters. “You only like books about the Holocaust. Or slavery.”
“At least they have something to really complain about.” Janelle sips her wine. “This is the worst kind of self-indulgent garbage.”
People start chiming in. I scan my memory for some salient detail from the book that I can contribute to the discussion, but all I can think about is who knows what about me and Rob Avery. Was it one of these women who told Daisy we were making out at the party?
I grab the bottle and fill my glass again.
“I’m sorry,” Pam says. “Are we just going to ignore the elephant in the room?”
The energy seems to shift.
“I mean, hello!” Pam continues. “A man was murdered in our neighborhood.”
“I heard he was drugged,” Janelle says. “A friend of a friend works at the county pathologist’s.”
“What?” Heather gasps. “Drugged? What in the world does that even mean?”
“I think,” Janelle says, “it means someone drugged him, Heather. And those drugs killed him.”
And the conversation is off and running. I pull further into myself, focusing on the terrible manicure Sharon gave me, until something Daisy says catches my attention.
“—most certainly was not a good guy. He may have looked the part, but he did some shitty things. And I mean really shitty.”
The room falls silent. I straighten up, on high alert.
“What the hell are you talking about, Daisy?” Pam asks.
“Let’s just say he got drunk at my party and assaulted one of the moms in the neighborhood.”
A collective gasp erupts.
“When?” Janelle demands.
“At my party. Saturday night.”
“Right before he died?” Janelle asks.
I glare at Daisy, trying to silence her with my eyes. She stares straight ahead, impervious, her blond curls like a halo around her head. This is happening at warp speed, right in front of me. I thought they’d at least have the decency to talk behind my back. I look at Leah, who seems shocked.
“Is the poor woman okay?” Heather asks.
“Who was it? We need names, now.” Pam leans forward in her chair like a puppy panting for a treat.
“No names,” Leah says. I shoot her a grateful look.
“How do you know about this, Daisy
?” Janelle asks.
“I just do.” Daisy pops an almond in her mouth, pleased with herself.
Panic rises within me. I do not know what to do. I don’t want to say a word or move a muscle, afraid my voice or my body might betray me. I am certain the truth is written on my face, were anyone to bother to look over at me. But all eyes are on Daisy. I pray for someone to steer the conversation back to the book.
“Do the police know this?” Heather asks.
“Lisa Bratt,” Janelle says. “She was a hot mess Saturday night. I saw her puking in the azaleas.”
Leah shakes her head. “Stop guessing, Janelle.”
“Wait, Leah knows? How does Leah know?” She pivots toward Daisy. “Is it Karen Pearce? I saw her yelling at someone.”
“You heard Leah,” Daisy says. “You can stop guessing, because we’re not telling.”
“C’mon, Daisy. Seriously. Do the police know?” Pam asks. “Because maybe the husband, I don’t know, got angry and attacked Rob. I mean, my husband would go ballistic if someone assaulted me.”
“Did he hit on you, Leah? When you first moved here? Before you and David got together?” Janelle asks. “I feel like he hit on all the divorced moms.”
“That poor girl,” Pam says. “What’s her name? Tenley?”
“And now she’s going to hear that her dead father was a rapist,” Heather says.
I can’t take it anymore. “No one’s accusing anyone of rape.” All eyes turn to me. I put my wineglass on the table and misjudge the edge. It tumbles. I manage to catch it, but not before the wine splashes on the rug. “Oh, shit!”
I fall to my knees and dab at the stain with a few pink-and-green napkins that read: Today’s Forecast: 100% Chance of Wine.
“Don’t worry.” Leah runs out of the room. In a moment, she is back with a moist rag, kneeling beside me and dabbing the rug. “It’s white wine. Do you have any idea how much wine this rug has absorbed over the years? Its blood-alcohol level would get it arrested.”
A scattering of nervous laughter fills the room.
I scoot back out of Leah’s way. Little bits of the paper napkin I used have wedged into the carpet like specks of green-and-pink confetti. I’ve made things worse. “I should go. I need to get home.”
“Don’t go,” Leah says, standing up. “You’re upset.”
“We’re on your side, Allie,” Daisy says. “No one blames you for what Rob Avery did.”
“Oh my god.” Heather’s voice reverberates in the room. “It was you? Are you all right?”
I shove my book into my bag.
“Is this you and Rob?” Janelle passes her phone to me. I take it from her as Leah and Heather crowd over my shoulder to peer at the small screen.
It’s the same photo the detective showed me—with Rob and me almost touching foreheads in Daisy’s kitchen Saturday night. I scroll down and see it has been posted on the Eastbrook Neighborhood Facebook page.
There are dozens of comments nested below.
I toss the phone onto the coffee table with a clang. I’m halfway to the front door when someone, maybe Pam, calls after me, “We won’t tell anyone.”
I twist and pull on the front door locks. The door won’t budge. Leah reaches from behind me and pulls it open for me.
“Allie, please don’t be upset. We want to support you. We all have our own stories—hashtag MeToo, right?”
I push past her, desperate to fill my lungs with cool air. It’s not until I am across the street, inside my own house, with the door shut and locked, that I remember what Leah said in the kitchen that’s been bugging me.
She told me she had been discreet when she’d talked to Daisy—that she did not share that Rob had told me to stay off Tinder.
But I’m sure that I never mentioned anything about Tinder to Leah.
15
“A-B-C-D-E-F-G, gummy bears are chasing me,” Cole sings as he moves his toothbrush to the other side of his mouth. To my chagrin, Cole is not only wide awake when I return from book club, he’s taken every single item of clothing he owns and strewn them around his room.
But I’m too jittery to clean. All I can think about is what happened at Leah’s. The way the women reacted to the news reminded me of watching a cigarette that’s tossed into the woods and ignites a raging wildfire.
And the embarrassing way I ran out of there.
Mark is prone in front of the TV downstairs, an inning away from unconsciousness. If I had known that, while I was at book club, he would plant himself on the couch while Cole destroyed the upstairs, I might not have gone. And he wonders why I don’t want another child.
“One is red, one is blue, one is peeing on my shoe.”
“Keep brushing,” I say, trying to keep the edge out of my voice. I don’t want to take out my irritation with Mark on Cole. “Not just singing.”
Cole spits into the sink and then attacks his bottom teeth with gusto. The dentist told Cole that he needed to brush for the entirety of the ABC song, or “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.”
“Now I’m running for my life, ’cause the green one has a knife.”
Cole spits again.
“Very good.” I hand him a towel to wipe his mouth. Volcanic impatience is bubbling just under the surface of my skin, ready to erupt. But I can’t let it show. Cole is like a wild animal this way; if he sniffs out my desire to leave, it will trigger an intense clinginess in him. If I want a drama-free exit, I will need to be super affectionate, so that it is he who pushes me away. It’s a lot like dating, I realize.
An image of that photo and all those comments on the Eastbrook Facebook page spring to mind, and I cringe. The whole neighborhood is talking about it. How long can what happened to me stay a secret?
But more than that, my image is now forever linked to a murder. The internet never forgets.
“Mommy, you be the mommy ocelot, and I’ll be the baby ocelot.”
“Great idea.” I wince at my own sarcasm and take a deep breath. “Now let’s get our jammers on.” Hands on his bony little shoulders, I guide Cole out of the bathroom and toward the bedroom.
The whole evening has left me unmoored. I know that Leah and Daisy do care about me, but I feel so exposed, naked even. I hope Mark is still awake, because we need to talk. And not just about his not putting Cole to bed. All of this has unearthed long-ago feelings I thought I had cordoned off in my heart. Memories and experiences that I hoped I had moved on from and that I would never have to revisit.
There have been moments over the years when I was tempted to tell Mark about what happened in high school, but I never had the guts. Right after we moved from San Francisco to Chicago, I bumped into someone from back home at a farmers’ market, someone who was at Overton the same time I was. My body was swollen with Cole—not just my belly but my ankles, even my face. I was only days from giving birth, although I didn’t know that at the time. But that’s why I did not turn and run. That evening, I almost told Mark about what happened at Overton. When I hesitated, he told me, “I don’t care about your past; it’s your future that I’m interested in.”
At the time, it seemed like the most romantic thing anyone could say to me.
Cole climbs onto his bed, where I am sitting. At first, I cannot believe what I am seeing, but my son is wearing a T-shirt with the word Overton splayed across the chest.
Seeing the name of the school is a slap across my face. Bracing, accusatory. It’s the mocking laugh of the other girls, the snide smiles of the boys. It’s everything I’ve run away from.
“Cole, where did you get that?” My voice trembles.
“I found it.”
“Take it off.” I begin yanking his arms through the sleeves.
“Why? I like it!”
“Where did you get this? It’s not ours.” I struggle to sound even-keeled, even though inside my thoughts are swirling. Someone’s been here. In my house.
“I found it in the laundry.”
“Cole, tell the truth, where d
id you get this?”
Tears spring to his eyes. “I am telling the truth! You never believe me!” he wails.
“Okay, okay, honey. I believe you.” He collapses, sobbing, onto my shoulder. There has to be a reasonable explanation. Maybe Mark bought it. Maybe it came in the mail, and he didn’t tell me. Maybe the school mails these out to alumni.
I am itching to get downstairs and ask Mark, but first things first.
“How about bumblebee pajamas?” I ask. “You haven’t worn those in a while.”
Cole nods, eyes downcast. Once he’s changed, I snuggle beside him in bed and read There’s a Nightmare in My Closet. Cole recites the words from memory. Then we read Pinkalicious, twice, my legs twitching the whole time. When we’re done, I kiss Cole on the forehead, kiss Giraffe on his neck, and start to stand up.
“Scratchy my backy,” Cole says.
I lie down beside my son, tracing my fingers back and forth between the little boy’s shoulder blades a little too fast. I do it because this is the kind of thing my mother never did. Since I don’t really have a role model on which to base my parenting style, I’ve developed a modus operandi: do the opposite of what Sharon did. From downstairs, a roar from the television drifts up.
I watch for the steady rise and fall of Cole’s small body, which means that he is finally asleep. Through the bare window, the white moon glows against the purple-black sky. The days are shorter. We haven’t bought curtains yet, or to be precise, we haven’t bought curtain rods yet. The curtains are sitting in a box in the attic. I wonder if we will ever put them up. Maybe we’ll move out of this house twenty years from now when Cole graduates from college, with the curtains still sitting in the attic.
Finally, Cole is asleep. I can’t get downstairs fast enough, and I am disappointed to see that Mark is dozing on the sofa, short, gasping snores escaping from his open mouth.
“Mark,” I whisper in a loud voice. “Mark, you awake?”
He opens his eyes groggily. “What’s up?”
I hold up the T-shirt. “Did you buy this shirt?”
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