“She’s fine, Mom,” Cole says. “But Bess is going to take her home.”
“What happened?” she says.
“Eva’s daughter took her up to the Cliffs,” I say, as matter-of-factly as I can muster. I’m aware I’m speaking a little louder than I should, but I can barely contain my anger. I need to get out of here. “She was just going to hold her at the ledge, apparently,” I say. “To scare her.”
“Eva’s daughter?” Diane says. “What? Why on earth? I thought she was such a sweet girl!”
“I know,” I say. “Imagine that.”
“But Olivia!” Her hand flies to the scarf at her neck. “She’s okay?”
“A little rattled, but she’s fine.”
“Bess, did I just hear you say . . . ?” Susannah says, appearing beside me. “Is Livvie okay?”
I close my eyes. Oh no.
She’s smiling at us, and I can tell from the moment I look at her that her apparent concern has nothing to do with Livvie. This is about putting on a show. “She’s fine, Susannah.” Now move along and get out of here.
“Oh, thank God!” she says, putting a hand to her cheek.
Diane is standing behind me, but I can feel her presence like an approaching storm. She takes a step forward, so close to me that she is practically hovering over my shoulder. “You stay away from my family,” she says through gritted teeth. My only comfort, in this moment, is knowing that my mother-in-law would never lose her composure in public, not even now.
Susannah eases in closer to us, seeming to glide over like she’s dancing, like this is fun, casual chitchat. “Or what, Diane?” she says, smiling and leaning in so close that I can smell her lemony perfume. She pauses and looks up onto the porch, where Bradley is leaning against the banister, a stern expression on his face like he’s physically guarding the property. “Oh, hey, Bradley!” She wiggles her fingers, then looks back at Diane.
I notice that a hush has fallen over the crowd.
“Susannah,” I whisper. “Whatever it is you want to say? Now is not the time.”
“Bess, I’m not doing a damn thing,” she says, all the while looking at Diane. “Not a damn thing but finally, finally, getting my life back.”
“What on earth is that supposed to mean?” Diane says.
Susannah looks back at Bradley and smiles. “I warned you, Bradley!” she says, the smile on her face like she’s teasing him.
Oh God, I think, noticing how she looks around to make sure she has the crowd’s attention. What is she doing?
Bradley just stares back at her, hands in his pockets, like she’s no more a nuisance than a fly buzzing around him.
“I know you think you’re untouchable, Bradley Warner, but I have proof! Trucks don’t just crash themselves! And you know I’m a good driver! You were the one who taught me to drive, after all, and on Whippoorwill, that very road! Was that supposed to mean something, Bradley? Running me off right there?”
Oh my God. My throat feels like it’s swelling shut. I glance around the crowd. People are whispering, their eyes on Susannah and Bradley, waiting to see what will happen next.
Diane suddenly takes a step toward her. “You have some nerve!” she screams, her voice shaking. “To accuse my husband of such a thing! After everything you’ve—”
Cole appears behind her. “Mom,” he says, gently grabbing her arm. “Come on, let’s go inside. No good can come of this.”
For all of our benefit, she agrees. She turns and follows him, and I watch as they meet Bradley at the top of the steps and go inside. I want to follow, but I can’t. I need to manage this, to make this stop.
I turn back to Susannah. “My goodness!” she says to me, gasping like we’ve just escaped something together. She reaches out for my arm like I’m on her side, and I jerk it away. Her eyes widen.
“What are you trying to do?” I whisper. Much of the crowd is politely moving on, but I can feel a few lingering stares.
“Those Warners!” she exclaims, looking around like she’s talking to the crowd. “You’re going to thank me one day, Bess,” she says, shuffling a step closer to me. “Let me tell you, you’re going to—”
“Susannah, stop,” I say, taking a step away from her. “I don’t want to hear it.” And then I say the thing that I know will hurt her most. “I have to go, Susannah. My family is waiting for me.”
Twenty-Nine
I press my finger against the sticker on her door. It came inside the shoebox with the new sneakers we bought before the first day of school. It’s a cartoon character shaped like a peach, wearing pink high-top sneakers and purple sunglasses shaped like stars. LIFE’S A PEACH!, it reads in bubble letters above its head.
I knew this day was coming, I knew she’d eventually grow up. I just hoped that as we edged toward it, I’d be able to put it off somehow, like her adolescence was a tennis ball that I could hit back over the net whenever it got close to me.
I twist the knob in my hand.
“Livvie?” I say, knocking on the door as I ease it open. “Livvie, honey, we have to talk about this sometime.”
Last night when we got home, she was too hysterical to reason with. I tried to talk through it with her, to understand her point of view and address whatever culpability she might have had in the whole thing, but she was too far gone, bawling, her back heaving under my hand while she lay facedown on her bed. Something in that moment propelled me right back to when I was her age, my teenage grief bubbling up like a latent virus that had never really left me. And so I let her be. It was seven thirty when I left her room. Forty minutes later, when I went to check on her, she was sound asleep on top of her covers, her cheeks still mottled from crying.
“Livvie?”
She is wide awake, staring at the ceiling, the light from the window across the room streaming over her in ribbons. She glowers at me, looking not quite angry but more like she does when she is sick: drained, morose. She turns toward the wall, her mattress squeaking underneath her as she turns away from me, curling herself up into a snail shell under the covers.
“Do you remember that game we used to play at dinner?” I say, sitting on the edge of the bed and resting my hand on her hip. She doesn’t move. Her eyes stay pinned to the wall in front of her like she’s in a trance.
“Two truths and a lie?” I say. “I’d read about it in a parenting magazine. Sometimes it was the only way Dad and I could get you and your brother to tell us anything detailed about your school day.”
A flash of recognition passes over her face, the slightest twitch in her eyes. “Remember Max?” I say, attempting the lighthearted tactic I thought up earlier. “He always tried to trick us by telling three lies. Remember how crazy they were? He’d say that he learned how to fly in science, something like that . . .”
“Yeah,” she says, and shifts her weight, her hands in a prayer pose under her cheek. “But a lot of times when we played it, you were on the phone, calling from work.”
“That’s true,” I say, feeling the slight like a punch to the gut. I lean closer to her, wanting to run my hand along her hair, and she jerks away, startling me. I can’t touch her now?
“So . . .” I pause, swallowing against the lump in my throat. “I’m going to tell you three truths.” I wait for her to protest, but she doesn’t. “First, when I was your age, I was teased constantly, mostly because my family didn’t have money. Second, I know how much it hurts when someone betrays you, especially someone you thought was a friend.”
“Are you talking about Anna?” she says suddenly.
“Anna?” I say, repeating the name of the coworker who killed my career. “Honey, how did you know—”
“Of course I knew who she was, Mom,” she says. “Everyone knew.”
“Yes, honey,” I say, “I’m talking about Anna,” though the truth is, I was thinking of Susannah, too.
“And . . . the third truth: I know this move hasn’t been easy for you, honey. I know it’s hard to find your place in a new t
own. Believe me, I know.”
She flops over on her back, looking at me like I’ve offended her. “You have no idea!”
Shit.
She sighs and rubs her fingers in a frustrated circle just above her temples, the same way her father does when he’s irritated.
“You have no idea!”
“Then, honey, tell me. I can’t understand what you’re going through—I can’t help if you don’t talk to me.”
She glares up at the ceiling. Seconds pass, then minutes.
“I have to ask you something, Livvie,” I finally say. “Max said that those girls did what they did yesterday as . . . well, as retaliation. I hate that it happened to you, Livvie. If I could take it away, I would, but I have to ask you about it. You know I have to.”
“I know!” she says, her voice suddenly thick. “I know!”
“Honey, what do you mean, you know?” I say.
“I mean, I don’t need you to tell me that what I did was wrong. I know!” She starts to cry.
“Livvie,” I say, “you have to help me out here. What do you mean, what you did?”
“I just thought . . . You have no idea how bad Brittany was, Mom! The things she would say! Even about you!” she says. “She said that I was just like you—that I wasn’t going to have any friends here because nobody could ever trust me. She used to follow me around in the halls at school, holding her phone up to my ear, playing the YouTube of you on those tapes.”
“What?” I say, feeling my anger start to ratchet. Tick-tick-tick, like the whistle on a teakettle. I take a deep breath.
“She said that because I am your daughter and because I’m new here, she’d make sure to ‘protect’ everyone from me. And when I started hanging out with Lauren, it didn’t help because they just don’t like her or whatever.” She shakes her head like she wants to will it all away. “I just thought . . .”
Tears start to roll down her cheeks. I reach out to brush them away. This time, she doesn’t stop me.
“I just thought . . .” She gulps. “After the kids were mean to me in DC, and then Brittany started with everything . . . I thought if I was more aggressive . . . if I showed them I couldn’t be bossed around . . .”
“I get it, honey,” I say, motioning for her to sit up. “I really do.”
She sits, and I wrap my arms around her. I rock her gently from side to side, the way I did when she was younger. “Here’s what I want to tell you,” I say. “And I want to be totally honest with you. Life is going to get messy. Things are sometimes not going to go your way. Sometimes, you’ll feel like nothing is going your way. And people—even well-meaning ones—are going to disappoint you. But the only thing you can control is yourself.” I feel my voice start to break, realizing how much I need to follow my own advice.
“Mom?” she says. “Are you okay?”
I wipe a tear from my cheek. “It’s really true, Liv. You just have to do your best, stand up for what you know is right, and forget about the rest. The less time you spend worrying about whatever Brittany is going to throw at you—”
“I know,” she says. “I know it’s not worth it. And I knew I wasn’t getting anywhere, acting the way I did.” She starts to cry again. “I felt awful, Mommy.” I keep holding her tightly, hooking my chin over her shoulder. “What am I going to do on Monday? What am I going to do when I see her?”
“It will be hard, I know,” I say, thinking of what happened yesterday—the scene on the Cliffs with Livvie, Susannah’s accusation in front of the inn—and the past few weeks . . . “But all you can do is be yourself, Liv. Stand up for yourself if you need to. Ignore her if you need to. But don’t change who you are because of her, Liv. Promise me you won’t do that.”
* * *
A while later, when I come downstairs, I am startled to discover Diane sitting at the kitchen table.
“Is she okay?” she says, her hands cupping a mug of tea.
“She will be,” I say. “I hope.” I pull out the chair across from her and sit down.
“Cole and Max just left for William’s,” she says. “They said they’re going to pick up peanut-butter cookies for Livvie.”
I smile. “That’s nice.”
“I told them to get you something, too.”
I cock my head to the side, wrinkling my brow at her.
She looks at me quickly and then back down at her hands. “You’re an excellent mother, Elizabeth,” she says, as if she’s speaking to her teacup. “I’m twelve years too late in telling you that.”
I nod, stunned by the words I hear coming out of her mouth. “Thank you, Diane.”
“I see everything you do for those kids. I see how you care for my son. I know that this move is a difficult transition, and I should have done more to help you. I remember being new here once, too, and I remember what it was like, trying to find my way in and make this place feel like somewhere I belonged.”
“Diane, I—”
“No need to say anything.” She stops me, her eyes finally meeting mine. “But I owe you an apology.”
“Accepted,” I say.
“I also want to apologize for how I reacted to your writing the story.”
“Diane, you don’t have to. I’m not going to file the article. Not after everything that’s happened. You were definitely right about her.”
“Well, I don’t know about that, actually,” she says.
“What do you mean?” I say, not sure I’ve heard her right.
“I might have been unfair,” she says, wiping her hand across her mouth like she is thinking something through. “You know, nobody’s entirely good or bad.”
“Okay,” I say, nodding slowly.
“Even her.” She shifts in her seat, tapping her fingertips against the side of her mug, and I get the sense she’s weighing whether to say something more.
“What is it, Diane?” I say.
Her eyes flit toward the ceiling. “Is Livvie . . . ?”
“I don’t think she’s coming down anytime soon,” I say. “She was falling asleep again when I left her.”
“Okay.” She takes a breath. “I need to talk to you about something, Elizabeth. I should have explained it several weeks ago, but my pride . . .” She shakes her head. “Sometimes I let it get the best of me.”
“What is it?”
She pushes her teacup to the side and clasps her hands on the table, a grave expression on her face like we’re sitting across from each other at a conference table and she’s about to tell me I’ve lost my job. “Elizabeth . . .” She clears her throat. “When I first came to Greyhill, your father-in-law was a different man. He was . . .” She twists her lips to the side, trying to find the right word. “He was . . . between us . . . a little broken.”
“Broken?” I say.
“By what had happened here, with Henrietta.” She glances at me quickly, as if she’s peeking to check my reaction to the name. She pauses again to sip her tea.
“You’re going to have to explain more,” I say, thinking of Susannah’s claim that he’d run after Henrietta right before she died.
“The thing is, Elizabeth, Susannah’s coming back here has dredged up the most painful memories of Bradley’s life.”
I curl my fingers into my hands. “Most painful?” I say. “What do you mean?”
“After he and I settled here, he explained what had happened with Henrietta,” she says. “How he and Susannah were the last people who saw her before she died. What he went through was horrible,” she says, her fingers tracing the wood grain on the table. “He and Henrietta, well . . . they were in love, Elizabeth, that’s the only way to put it, but Susannah couldn’t have that. I don’t know what sort of lies she’s been spoon-feeding you, but she was intensely jealous of Henrietta. She was the one who was drunk and crazy that night.”
“She told me that Bradley was the last one who saw her.”
“Just Bradley?” she says, her voice rising. “So she made it sound like . . . ?”
&nbs
p; “She was implicating him? Yes.”
“You didn’t believe her, of course?”
“No,” I say. “I couldn’t imagine Bradley doing anything to hurt someone. But, Diane, I’ll be honest. I still wonder what actually happened. I’ve been wondering.”
“They both saw her wander off. She was angry. Susannah had been harassing her about Bradley. And then what everyone says happened, happened. She fell or slipped or . . .” She shakes her head. “Anyway, my point is that Susannah has been a thorn in our sides for decades.”
“Decades?” I say, the aftertaste from the coffee I drank earlier starting to sour in my mouth. “What do you mean?”
“She has been sending us letters for years. To the inn, to our home . . . And the phone calls! We had to change our phone number once, Bess. She was incessant.”
“But why?” I say, alarmed. I want to believe her, especially after the incidents over the past few days, but Diane is . . . Diane. “What did she want?”
“Bradley,” she says. “She’s never been able to let go.”
“Are you sure?” I say, my mouth dropping open. “I mean, she talks about him. She talks about him a lot. But I didn’t think . . .”
“Honestly, Elizabeth, when you first told me you were doing that story, I thought she had somehow rigged it.”
“You did?” I say, remembering Susannah telling me about the vengeful ways she would retaliate against women in New York when they got too close to her husband.
“Yes,” she says, looking resigned. “Our only saving grace during all these years was that she never visited Greyhill. Her relationship with her parents was—”
“I’ve heard.”
“They were strange people. When they died, we thought she might come back. At least for their funerals. We braced ourselves for it. Bradley couldn’t sleep. But she didn’t. I was surprised, until we got a phone call from her husband.”
“Her husband?” I say. “You mean . . . ?”
She nods. “Teddy Lane himself. He called Bradley’s office. I’ll never forget it. Cole must have been at Georgetown by then. Teddy made it sound as if he thought Bradley and Susannah were having some sort of long-distance affair, and he told Bradley to stay away from her. Which was absolutely no problem, of course, and it also explained why we never saw them in Greyhill.”
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