Half of What You Hear

by Kristyn Kusek Lewis

  She nods, businesslike, clearly suspicious of my attitude. “Shoot.”

  “What do you know about Susannah turning this place into a resort?”

  “Ohhhhh,” she says, taking another step back. “That.”

  “Uh-huh,” I say, a hand on my hip. Now I officially feel like I’ve been duped. “That.”

  She looks at me for a moment, clearly weighing her words. “All I can tell you is that she’s hard up, Bess. Worse than she lets on. Desperate times, desperate measures. She hasn’t said anything to you because she didn’t want you to take it the wrong way.”

  “Right,” I say. The whole drive over, Cole’s statement about my having blinders on when it comes to Susannah rang in my ears. “Well, I’ve officially taken it the wrong way.” I start down the hall, and Cindy hurries behind me. “Where is she?”

  “She’s just down here,” she says, giving me a look that feels like a warning as she slides open the pocket door that separates the foyer from the ballroom. “And, listen,” she says, lowering her voice. “She’s gotten into something today.”

  “Gotten into . . . ?” I step into the room, and I gasp.

  “Good morning!” she says, as sunny and sweet as a kindergarten teacher welcoming her students to class. She’s wearing a lilac taffeta ball gown and a starched men’s oxford shirt, diamond earrings the size of golf balls dangling from her ears. She is bent at the waist, leaning over a gold cane dining chair. On the chair is a painter’s palette, and there is a paintbrush in her hand. Lemony-green paint splatters dot her freckled chest.

  I walk across the Persian rug that covers most of the parquet floor. On the fading damask wallpaper, between two floor-to-ceiling windows dressed in heavy blue silk drapes, are the beginnings of a mural. It is not good. It looks like the sort of well-intentioned gloppy student art you might see on a cinder-block wall in a high school. There, it would seem cheery and fitting, almost folksy. But here, in this grand room . . . There are bushy green trees, the leaves made up of bubbly loops, and a winding brown stripe that I think is meant to be a dirt road. And . . . Wait a second . . . I squint, trying to make out a little red rectangle, four black circles for wheels, one of them gone rogue.

  “Is that—?” I point to it.

  “My truck!” she says, giggling. “Isn’t it funny?” She stands back, marveling at her work. “If my mother could see me now!”

  The front of the truck is flat—a thin red line pressed against one of the brown trees, the trunk dark in the middle because the paint is still wet. Little specks of red paint fan out from the truck, the way a cartoonist might draw sweat flying off someone’s forehead. Is it meant to be blood? I wonder.

  “I don’t know if funny is the word I’d use,” I say, turning to Cindy in the doorway. She gives me a helpless look.

  “Years ago, Teddy got me a bunch of blank canvases for Valentine’s Day,” Susannah says, dipping her brush into a bold green and then drawing a line across the foreground of her picture with a flourish. Grass. The paint is too thick. It starts oozing onto the baseboards. “I’d taken a painting class the summer before, out in East Hampton, where I had very lonely weekdays, with Teddy in the city working.” Her voice sounds loose and loopy. Did she take something? Is she drunk?

  “I know I’m not very good,” she says, shrugging. I nod, chewing my lip as I notice that a thick swath of blue paint—a stripe of sky—is dripping into the tree line. She swirls a big yellow orb above the smashed truck, and the edge of her brush catches in one of the red splatters, sending an orange streak through the yellow paint. “But this morning I woke up early—so early, before the sun came up. I’d had a dream about Teddy. We were walking in the woods together. Up by the Cliffs?” She points toward one of the windows with her brush, as if we could see the spot from here. “We were walking there, Teddy and I, so strange . . . ,” she says, seeming to puzzle at the thought. “And it was such a real dream. You know the kind? Where even when you’re waking up, you’re in this funny in-between, not sure where you are and whether it really happened?”

  I nod, watching her brush move across the wall, a wobbly line dripping onto the floor because she is looking at me instead of at what she’s doing.

  “So I woke up very sad, missing him. Despite everything, I miss him, Bess. And I remembered how painting made me feel. Calm and happy. Teddy—he was a monster, I’ve told you all that, but he could be sweet when he wanted to, that was part of his ruse. He hung my canvases all over our summer house. He acted like my little pictures could rival the work of the greats.”

  “I see,” I say.

  “So what’s got you all . . .” She swirls her paintbrush in a circle in the air, as if she’s outlining my face.

  I swallow against the sour taste in my mouth.

  She cocks her head at me. “Something’s wrong.”

  “Yeah,” I say. “Something’s wrong.”

  She laughs hesitantly. “Well, are you going to tell me what it is? What’s got you so worked up?”

  I gesture toward the mural. “Susannah, what are your guests going to think about this? Or is it for their benefit?”

  “My guests?” She narrows her eyes at me.

  “Will your investors like it? Have you been courting some of the big hotel chains? I have to say, this doesn’t look very Marriott to me. Not sure this will fly if you sell to Hilton or Hyatt.”

  “Mmmm,” she says, her smile flattening out. “Well, I see you haven’t lost your sense of humor, at least.” She turns to the doorway. “Cindy, we’re good.”

  “You sure?” Cindy says, her eyes on me.

  “Well, you could turn that music up,” Susannah calls to her. She waits until we’re alone to continue. “I was going to tell you, Bess. Of course I was going to tell you.”

  “When?” The inside of my mouth feels tacky, like I’ve eaten glue.

  “Today, actually.”

  “Really?” I say. “You expect me to believe that?”

  “Well, yes,” she says.

  “Susannah, I’m not sure I believe anything you’ve told me now.”

  She laughs and rolls her eyes. “Oh, don’t be so dramatic!”

  I turn away from her. I need to collect myself. And I want her to feel how disappointed I am. “On the way over here,” I say, my eyes on the view out the window, “I was thinking about what I might say to you, how I might approach this.” I turn back to face her. “The first question I have is, why? Let’s start there.”

  “You know why, Bess,” she says, dropping her paintbrush in the crystal bowl she has balanced on the chair. “I have no other choice.”

  “Really?” I say, my eyes darting to the gleaming diamonds hanging from her ears. “No other choice?”

  “Did you think I was lying to you when I told you that Teddy didn’t leave me with anything?”

  “As far as I’m concerned, you could be lying to me about everything.”

  She sucks in her lips.

  “Why did you call my father-in-law and tell him? What was your reasoning there?”

  “So is that how you found out?” she asks.

  I take a deep breath to calm my nerves. “What I want to know is why I didn’t find out from you.”

  “Bess,” she starts, and when she folds her arms over her chest, I see how her hands are shaking. “I have no one to depend on. You realize that, right, after everything we’ve talked about?”

  “Of course I do,” I say. “But I had also thought that after everything we’ve talked about, that we’d built a certain level of trust. Do you know how many times I’ve stuck up for you over the past few weeks, Susannah? How many times I’ve told my husband how misunderstood you are, and that I’m going to use this article to help you? I told you things about what it’s been like for me here that I haven’t shared with anyone. I opened up to you, and although, I’ll be honest, I wasn’t entirely sure I should, I had confidence in you. I thought we were becoming friends.”

  She turns away and, unbelievably, pick
s up her paintbrush and starts painting again. Little brown flecks on the dirt road. Mud.

  “Hey!” I say, willing her to respond. “Do you hear me, Susannah? Did you hear anything I just said to you?”

  She whips around. “You think your life is hard because you’re new here, Bess? Give me a break. You have no idea what it’s like to be me! You have no right to judge me!”

  “This decision you’ve made could destroy my family’s business, Susannah,” I say, my stomach churning, thinking of what Cole told me earlier.

  “I’m sure you’ll be fine,” she says. “You’re overreacting. What my people and I are talking about is quite different from your quaint sidewalk inn. We’re thinking high-end resort. A beautiful spa by the gardens. Cooking classes. The land—that’s not selling, let me repeat that again so you hear me—could be a golf course.”

  I close my eyes, trying to will my anger from exploding out of me like the air in an overinflated balloon. “Susannah,” I say, my heart racing. “You’re not listening to me.”

  “I hear you loud and clear.”

  “I don’t think you do,” I say. I pause, weighing whether to say what I’d thought of on the drive over. “I could use this article in a different way,” I say. “You wrote a gossip column, Susannah. You know. I could reframe the whole story.”

  She starts to laugh. “Are you threatening me?”

  I feel my cheeks start to burn, angry heat cascading up the back of my neck, prickling behind my ears and into my scalp. “I could do it, you know . . . ,” I say.

  “Oh, I know you could,” she says. “I heard the way you spoke about the First Lady.”

  My throat starts to tighten. “Good, then.” I choke out a laugh, though nothing about what she’s said is funny. “Then you know what I’m capable of.”

  I see the subtle way she gnaws at her lip, how her chest is rising and falling under the bodice of her ridiculous dress. Suddenly I see a flash of the lonely little girl she says she was, and for a second, I feel pity. No, I tell myself. Don’t let her—

  “You want to know why I told Bradley first?” she says, walking across the room to a curved settee next to a window. She flops down, her hand gripping the upholstered arm of the piece like she needs to steady herself. “Because he owes me.”

  “Owes you?” I say.

  “Yes!” she says, the word coming out in a breathy gasp. Suddenly, she starts to sob, the cries coming out in angry huffs. She reaches into the front of her gown and pulls out a crumpled tissue. “He owes me everything!”

  “Susannah,” I say, telling myself to stay calm, to not let her crazy start to affect my ability to stand my ground. “What do you mean?”

  She looks at me, her eyes like two blue disks rimmed in red, her mascara trailing down her cheeks like soot.

  “He is the only person in Greyhill who could help me, Bess, and he hasn’t. Like I’ve told you, he could easily do it! All he would have to do is start talking, Bess. But he won’t do that, will he?”

  “You can’t expect one person to turn things around for you, Susannah. You have to steer your own ship.”

  “You have no idea what you’re talking about!” she screams, startling me so much that I take a step back. “Listen to me!”

  “Okay,” I say, waving a hand in acknowledgment. “I’m listening.”

  “I thought he might help me now because of how I helped him when Henrietta died.”

  “When Henrietta . . .” I shake my head, not understanding. “What are you talking about?”

  “All these years, everyone has whispered . . . Susannah Lane was involved in Henrietta’s death! Why else would she run off? And what did Bradley do? Nothing! He let everyone assume the worst! I came back here with my tail between my legs, with nothing, begging for a second chance at my life. Hoping I could right what had gone wrong. But he is just like everyone else, treating me like a pariah. Listen to me,” she says, pushing herself to the edge of the seat. “And listen closely. You think your father-in-law is so wonderful? So righteous and kind? He was with me when Henrietta died, Bess. We were arguing about her. I knew about the two of them and I couldn’t stand to be made a fool any longer, not by the two people I’d trusted most. You can say a lot of things about me, Bess. I have enough faults that if you stacked them one by one, they would reach the top of the Empire State Building. But if there is one thing I know about myself, it’s that I am loyal. One hundred percent. It is my greatest quality and my biggest handicap. It’s what kept me with Teddy, and it’s what made me cover for Bradley.”

  “Cover for—”

  “When she died, I could have told my father the whole story. The sheriff was in his office, I was in the hall just outside. I could have told him how I’d confronted her and Bradley, and how she stormed off. I started after her, but Bradley screamed at me and grabbed my arm. He threatened me. He told me that if I went after her, I would regret it.”

  “I don’t . . . ,” I start. “I don’t know if I can believe—”

  “Oh, believe it!” she spits. “I kept his name out of it! I didn’t say a word! Now, I don’t know what happened to her. I don’t know if she had drunk too much and slipped, or if she was angry and . . .” She shakes her head. “But Bradley went after her, ostensibly to help her, and I never saw my best friend again.” She leans forward. “Let me repeat that,” she says. “He went after her, and I never saw my best friend again!”

  “I don’t believe you,” I say. Not Bradley. “I don’t believe you anymore.”

  “Oh, I covered for him!” she says, her eyes two angry slits. “I never said a word about him, even when her father was here, day after day, begging my father to look into her death! Mr. Martin wouldn’t let up, Bess. And he was right, it didn’t make sense. How could she stumble and fall off a mountain path she’d been walking her whole life?”

  “Then why didn’t you say anything?” I ask, looking for holes in her story.

  “I’ve been asking myself that question my entire life,” she says. “And so . . . to get back to your initial question about what I plan to do with this place: My family may have had more than everyone else in Greyhill, but we were small town–wealthy. There wasn’t some giant nest egg. I have this house and the land. A few things from my marriage.” Her lip starts to tremble again. “Bradley knows all this, Bess. He knows how my reputation has taken the fall for his. He’s left me no choice but to be resourceful, and if the one idea I’ve come up with that might work happens to hurt him a little in the process . . .” She shrugs. “Well . . .”

  “But, Susannah,” I say. “I still don’t . . .”

  “You don’t believe me?”

  I clear my throat. There’s no reasoning with her. “I know that getting revenge isn’t going to change how you feel about yourself, Susannah. It’s not going to make things better. You’re just going to hurt people in the process. You’re going to hurt me.”

  She smiles. “You don’t have it in you to see that your wonderful father-in-law might not be so wonderful after all.”

  “No,” I say, my anger ratcheting up again. “I don’t.”

  “Well, then, how about this: When I came back here a year ago, the first thing I did was contact Bradley. I asked for his help. I knew that selling the land wasn’t going to go over well, and I knew that he could help me soften the blow around town. But he refused, he said he didn’t want anything to do with me. I assume I can blame your mother-in-law for that. So I told him that I could go another way . . . that I could start talking about my dear old friend Henrietta, maybe even to the press . . .”

  “Susannah—”

  “You know what’s funny, Bess?” she says. “This summer, when I lost control of my truck and it hit that tree? It was the damnedest thing.” She shifts in her seat, inching herself up. “Now, I might have been imagining it—after all, my brain had just been shaken in my skull like one of those Magic Eight Balls. But I was able to lift my head up just a little bit from my position on the steering wheel, j
ust enough to see a sliver of the reflection in my driver’s-side mirror. . . . I remember the car, Bess.”

  “The car?” I say. “What car? You told me you lost control of your truck.”

  “There was another car,” she says. “It was a goldish color. Sort of a goldish beige . . .”

  Bradley’s car, I think.

  “He was trying to scare me, Bess.” She nods her head slowly. “He didn’t think he’d run me off the road, but he was trying to scare me.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” I say, my heart pounding in my chest. “If you know Bradley at all, you know how insane that sounds.”

  She purses her lips, making a clucking tsk-tsk sound. “You know what?”

  “What?” I ask.

  “The beauty of being so desperate at my age is that nothing scares me anymore. I have nothing to lose. He can’t scare me.” She laughs. “So when you see him today—because I’m sure you will, resourceful little bee that you are—ask him about what I’ve told you, and tell him that I’m not afraid of him anymore. Make sure you say that, Bess. Tell him I’m not afraid. Tell him that he should’ve seen this coming. Tell him it’s my turn.”

  Twenty-Six

  “I’m going to call Noelle and tell her I’m not going to write the story,” I say to Cole, standing with him on our back patio later that night.

  “I just can’t believe she would actually concoct this whole ridiculous scheme,” he says, taking a swig of the whiskey he poured the minute he stormed through the door from work. “I can’t believe she would actually implicate my father . . . She basically accused him of murdering Henrietta, and then threatening her, too. It’s ludicrous!”

  “Well, she didn’t say that outright, but . . .” I meet his eyes. “Yes, more or less. What did your dad say when you told him?”

  “Honestly, he shrugged it off. He said it didn’t surprise him, coming from her. But he’s apoplectic about the hotel thing.”

  I nod. I’d called Cole as soon as I left Esperanza, right from the parking pad behind Susannah’s house. I didn’t care if she saw me. I didn’t care if she heard me.