I flinched. “Don’t you ever say that. There was never any picking. She’s my wife. And you’re—”
She slammed the door behind her.
* * *
And so I waited. She would get her revenge, of course. She would flood another toilet or spray-paint something on a wall—maybe on the outside of my house. She would send me a picture or show up naked in my kitchen one morning, slicing a bagel with a carving knife. Bring it on, I thought. She was bound to screw up, to get the attention of others.
“Maybe you should call the police,” Jacob Fitch said. “Or I can. I’ve got an old friend who’s a retired detective. I could pay him a visit, run some hypotheticals past him to get the lay of the land.”
I added up that cost in my head—visit to a friend, lunch on my dime. “If you think that’s necessary.”
“Don’t you? And, man. I think I’d watch out, if I were you.”
“I’m getting out of there,” I told him. I hadn’t worked out the specifics, but I understood it needed to happen.
His laugh was wistful. “How soon?”
But I’d miscalculated. I saw that the minute Danielle came through the front door on the night of the dance. Only Kelsey could be responsible for those tears. I’d been wary of their friendship all along, but I thought there was a line she wouldn’t cross, a hallowed ground of friendship.
I didn’t tell Jacob Fitch about the rumor Kelsey had started about Danielle, or how that discovery had made me read back through the feed on MLHS Stories, my eyes burning with each new post. Forget what the experts say about kids today being just like kids of previous generations—it’s simply not true. That was where I found, dated two days after her naked swim in my pool, this post: Where a sophomore hottie has sex with her 37yo neighbor and wants more. It had been sitting there for weeks, presumably seen by all the account’s followers. The entire student body at Miles Landers must have gagged over it; Liz must have seen it, too, which explained her growing distance, the suspicious look she gave me at each turn.
I’d begun to question how much good Jacob Fitch was doing me anyway, now that I’d thrown the money his way. It was like talking to a therapist; it had been good to unburden myself, but somewhere between his office and The Palms, that relief always dissipated. What could a lawyer do in the real world, the next time Kelsey Jorgensen struck?
* * *
I didn’t want to tell him, either, about the card I was holding. This had come to me late at night, an idea so diabolical that it was finally a match for Kelsey. I asked her to meet me one afternoon in an empty house in Phase 3, where I knew no one would overhear our conversation.
I’d brought a basket of wine and cheese with me, tucking a note in the raffia between two bottles. Happy holidays from the McGinnises. If anyone asked, it was my alibi.
I was waiting in the kitchen when she entered, looking around the cavernous emptiness of the house. Work would be finished by Christmas; the owners would take up residency January 1.
She shivered in her short black dress and knee-high black boots. “Why is it so cold in here?”
“Heat’s not on yet.”
“Why are we here, then?”
I gestured to the basket on the counter. “I was hoping you could deliver this to your parents. It’s from Liz and me.”
She glared at me. “Seriously?”
“And I thought we could have a little talk.”
She narrowed her eyes. We hadn’t spoken since she’d stormed out of my office, since before she’d started the rumor about Danielle.
“Here’s the thing,” I told her. “I’ve been afraid of you. I’ve been afraid of what you might do to me. Maybe you would accuse me of something, and then I’d be known as this rapist or a pedophile. And I figured that would be the worst thing.”
She folded her arms across her chest. “I could call rape right now. I could scream and people would come running.”
“You could,” I said evenly. “But then after what you did to Danielle, I realized that I could take it. I could fight it. But my daughter? She’s just a kid.”
She didn’t bother to deny anything. “She’s your stepdaughter. And she’s not a kid.”
I kept going, as if she hadn’t spoken. “So, I figured that two could play at this game. I have a story of my own ready.”
She laughed. “You’re going to say I raped you?”
“No. I’m going to say you confided in me. You kept coming to my office after school just to talk, and then one day you finally told me that your father has been molesting you, and I knew I had to report it.”
Her mouth went slack. “That’s sick.”
“Authorities take those sorts of accusations very seriously.”
“But it’s not true. And you don’t have any proof!”
“No, of course not. But it’ll take a while for it all to get sorted out. In the meantime, I’ll probably get hauled in for questioning. And that’s bad, yes, but I’ve had time to get used to the idea. I’ve been making other plans, anyway. But your poor father, Kelsey. Think of him. This would destroy him—even the suggestion of it. He’s a lawyer, right? Job, gone. Your poor mother. Trust, gone. Marriage, gone. Believe me, I know how easily that can happen.” I hadn’t meant to say the last part—it just slipped out.
“You wouldn’t do that to me.”
“But I would, if that’s what I had to do. If you post something on social media, if you hurt my daughter or my wife, if you do something to hurt me one more time, that would be it.”
“No one would ever believe it. Not for a minute.”
I nodded. “That may be true, Kelsey. But I’ve been getting some legal advice of my own, so I have an understanding of just how bad it would be for your father. Poor man. He’d probably make bail after a night in jail, but the community would crucify him. Imagine what the papers would say. Imagine the jokes on social media. Even if he’s cleared—years later, when the investigation is finally closed—there will always be that question, won’t there? Did he or didn’t he?”
She was trembling, her irises moving frantically, as if she couldn’t figure out where to look. It was the first time I’d ever unsettled her. And I’d unsettled myself, too. It was terrifying to actually play the trump card. Terrifying and sickening—Tim Jorgensen didn’t seem like father of the year, but his only real crime, as far as I knew, was being far too permissive in his parenting.
“I hate you,” she whispered.
“I understand, Kelsey. But that won’t stop me.”
She practically ran to the front door, forgetting the basket of wine.
* * *
I actually thought, for a delirious, happy moment, that it might work. That we might be rid of Kelsey for good. Oh, I still had another plan, in the form of two job interviews scheduled for the beginning of January. If one of them panned out, I’d be faced with giving Liz the inverse of the speech I’d given her last spring, when I brought her to The Palms for the first time.
But I figured at the very least, I’d bought myself some time.
What I didn’t expect was that Kelsey would burn down the fucking house.
JUNE 19, 2015
6:32 P.M.
LIZ
When we backed out of the driveway, I saw them immediately—our neighbors were now circled in a clump under one of the palm trees in front of the Mesbahs’ house. All of their heads turned at once. Deanna took a step forward uncertainly and stopped.
Only Fran was on her side of the street, the sunlight catching her unruly curls and the silver spokes of Elijah’s wheelchair. I rolled down my window and leaned across Danielle’s lap.
“Liz, my God. What happened?” Fran asked. Elijah’s wheelchair was between us, and in it he sat wide-eyed and alert.
“There was an accident with Kelsey Jorgense
n,” I told her. “I don’t know how it happened, but she fell in the pool.”
“Dear Lord. I saw her earlier today, just wandering around in front of your house. I wondered what she was doing.”
“We’re going to the hospital now. Will you—tell the others?”
“You mean the vultures? Sure.”
And then I pressed down on the gas, gunning the engine through the winding streets of The Palms while Danielle clutched the door handle, leaning in to the turns. I remembered Phil’s explanation for why there were no straight lines in the community, how it made for an interesting streetscape and a sense of seclusion and privacy.
Phil. However irrational, it would be nice to lay this blame at his feet. At the very least, he’d brought us here in the first place, almost a year to the day. No matter what, he should have been here to see us out.
We turned to the west, the sun an angry orb sinking lower in the sky. I half expected to see the ambulance in front of us, just around the corner. Stupid, of course—we’d lost time bandaging my foot and then more time as I’d looked through Hannah’s cell phone. It felt as though my car understood the rush and was propelled forward by sheer adrenaline. I had to brake hard to stop myself from taking the curves too fast.
Halfway to the freeway there was a turnout in one of the driveways leading to a ranch, and I slowed down, then came to a stop. Here the land was a brown-brown, the result of a drought that seemed endless. White stalks of weeds cropped up here and there, impervious. In the spring, this had been a pretty drive, green as far as the eye could see, the white wind turbines on the distant Altamont as lovely as children’s pinwheels. Now, only a few days into the official grip of summer, the hills were a rolling brown, and in the rearview mirror, only a single windmill turned listlessly on the horizon.
Danielle gaped at me. “Why’d you stop?”
“Because you’re going to tell me the truth. What was the surprise? What were you going to do to Kelsey?”
“What do you mean?”
All I had to do was stare at her, and she caved.
DECEMBER 2014
LIZ
On the first days of our winter break, Danielle and I finally decorated the tree, which was considerably flattened on one side from leaning against the back of the house, and we’d baked a dozen different kinds of treats, working mostly in silence side by side.
That last week at school had been difficult for Danielle, I knew—anonymous notes had been passed to her in class, a used tampon placed in her PE locker. The Gay-Straight Alliance had taken up Danielle’s cause, actively campaigning against hate speech. Well-meaning students had conducted class visits preaching tolerance and calling for a stop to the shaming. Although the message was a good one, it kept implicitly reflecting back on Danielle and the crush she didn’t have on Kelsey Jorgensen.
All she needed was two weeks off, I figured. In January, the silly rumor from Winter Formal would be yesterday’s news, replaced by some new drama. That was the way scandals worked in the adult world, too. Politicians banked on our short memories.
In the meantime, she’d struck up a friendship with Hannah Bergland, who’d brought over some of her mom’s homemade peanut brittle. The two of them ate the entire plateful watching a movie in our den.
Allie and Mom arrived the Tuesday before Christmas. The previous day, Allie had flown to SoCal, renting a car at the airport and reversing the route in the morning with Mom for their trip north. I’d been waiting for them all afternoon, calculating the time it would take for them to get off the plane, visit the bathroom, retrieve luggage, pick up the rental car and follow the route prescribed by GPS all the way to our front door.
I was already halfway down the sidewalk when Allie stepped out of the rented white Hyundai.
“What is this place, Xanadu?” she called.
“Wasn’t that an island?”
“No idea,” she admitted, collapsing into my hug. “I refuse to watch movies everyone else insists I must watch.”
“God, you’re skinny,” I commented, pulling back. Allie’s hip bones had dug into my hips with the ferocity of her hug. “Don’t they feed you in Chicago? Isn’t that the home of the deep dish pizza?”
“She’s too skinny. I said the same thing,” Mom said, opening the passenger door. I came around the side of the car to help her, but not before she’d already found the curb with her foot.
Allie grinned. “I’m going to take Mom with me every time I travel from now on. Priority seating for the plane, plus we got to ride around in one of those little carts with the driver honking at everyone to get out of our way. It was great, wasn’t it, Mom?”
“Not so much for me,” Mom said. She gripped my arm tightly as we headed up the walkway.
“Where’s your cane?” I asked. “Didn’t you bring it?”
“And let everyone know I’m blind?” she sniffed. Over her head, Allie and I rolled our eyes. Mom’s ever-present dark glasses, perched on her nose day and night, were as obvious as any white cane, and a lot less practical for getting around.
“Don’t worry. I packed it in her suitcase when she wasn’t looking,” Allie said. She’d thrown open the trunk and was stacking bags on the curb.
“Grandma! Aunt Allie!” Danielle ran out of the house in her socks. Allie grabbed her in a tight hug and rocked her side to side.
“When did you get taller than me?” Allie demanded, holding her back for a closer look.
Mom reached a hand, feeling the air around herself as if she were looking for something. “Where’s Phil?”
Allie glanced at me quickly, and I shook my head, meaning that nothing was settled, that things were just as bad as I’d hinted. Worse, if you considered that we were no longer talking, and that twice in the past week, Phil hadn’t come to bed at all. I’d found him asleep on the couch in the den when I went downstairs.
“He’s over at his office. I’ll take you there later, on the grand tour.”
“The grand tour,” Allie repeated. “Mom, you remember that show, right? Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous?”
“‘Champagne wishes and caviar dreams,’” Mom said, not missing a beat.
It felt like the first time I’d laughed in months.
* * *
Danielle carted suitcases—to the downstairs suite for Mom, furnished with the full-sized bed that had come from our house in Livermore, and to an upstairs room I’d hastily thrown together for Allie, complete with a blow-up mattress and an old IKEA nightstand retrieved from the stack of furniture in the garage.
“Holy wow,” Allie commented, entering the house. “There really is an echo.”
“What does it look like?” Mom asked.
Allie jumped in before I could say anything. “Well, there’s lots of beige. Or is that not the right word? Neutral, then. It’s very...neutral. Also, huge. If you moved this place to Chicago, you could rent it for about nine thousand a month.”
“So, cheaper than here,” I commented.
Allie laughed. “Touché.”
I had coffee and pumpkin bread waiting in the kitchen, which Allie pronounced “bigger than my entire apartment.”
I fetched the creamer from the refrigerator. “Mom? Can I pour you a cup?”
Mom was feeling her way around the kitchen, bumping against the bar stools, opening drawers and cabinets. She ran her hands over the granite counters. “It’s beautiful, Liz. Such a beautiful home.”
I thanked her, then busied myself with the mundane details of plates and napkins, cups and saucers. It was beautiful, but that had little to do with me. And I’d come to think of it as an ugly beauty, contradicting itself over and over, too expensive, too cold—impossible to love.
* * *
Outside, Allie pulled off her socks and boots and insisted on putting her feet in the pool. The a
utomated cover was in place, but I rolled it back so she could get up to her calves, her jeans bunched high on her legs. “I can’t believe it’s so warm,” she said. “Can we go swimming later?”
“If you want. I haven’t been in for a month.” Phil had put the cover up after Thanksgiving, and we hadn’t bothered to move it since.
“Not me,” Mom said. I’d held her arm, walking her between the house and the pool several times, so she could get a sense of the distance. She’d been a vigorous swimmer when she was younger. There were even pictures of her as a teenager with her dark hair in one of those old rubber swimming caps, festooned with dozens of white petals. Blind, she worried that she wouldn’t be able to find the edge, that she would become entangled in something beneath the surface of the water, that she would lose a sense of which direction was up.
“It’s cold out here, anyway,” she announced. “I think I’ll head inside.”
“It’s fifty-five degrees,” Allie said. “This is like late spring in Chicago.”
We did throw on heavier coats for the walk around the exterior of The Palms. Mom insisted she didn’t need her cane, so Allie and I each took an arm and the three of us walked close together, laughing at how out of sync we were, like kids in a six-legged race.
Phil was finishing up in his office when we arrived, and he hugged Allie and Mom as if everything were fine. Allie looked between the two of us and back at me. I’d been vague in our weekly phone calls—stress, problems, fighting, as if our biggest issues were over who was going to do the dishes and whose turn it was to take out the trash.
Phil shut down his computer, waiting until the screen went black to leave his desk. “I was just about to lock up and check out the progress on a few homes in Phase 3 on my way. Would you ladies like to join me?”
I looked at Allie, who shrugged.
But Mom smiled; she was charmed by Phil’s accent, the formal, almost courtly way he treated her. “Of course.”
He locked the door behind us and took Mom’s arm, walking her through the clubhouse toward the main exit.
The Drowning Girls Page 20