Least of all her father.
Is that really what you were expecting to find?
There are only a few e-mails between her parents—mostly references to job hunting and household paperwork. But there were plenty of e-mails Mom sent to friends that seem to indicate the marriage was as solid as ever.
I miss Hank, she wrote to Jaycee, one of her blogger friends, just a few days before she died. I can’t wait until he’s back home and things are back to normal. I hate being alone at night.
I do, too, Jaycee wrote back. I wish I had a Hank!
There was another e-mail, further back, sent to a neighbor asking for the recipe for the potato side dish she’d made for a dinner party the night before. Hank devoured it, in case you didn’t notice, Mom had written. I want to make it for dinner some night.
Recipe . . .
That reminds Beck.
One of the bloggers she met at the funeral had mentioned that Mom e-mailed her about the cheesecake Beck had brought over on Mother’s Day.
She doesn’t recall seeing anything about that in the files.
She goes back to May 12, Mother’s Day, and begins working her way forward through the sent mail, looking for the exchange.
That’s strange. It isn’t there.
She checks the received e-mails.
Not there, either.
It’s nothing earth-shattering, and yet . . .
It’s bothering her.
She can’t remember which of the bloggers even said it. So much of last Saturday’s service is a blur. There were so many people . . .
She sighs, rising from the kitchen table.
Maybe the e-mail was there, and she’s so delirious she just missed it. She needs a break, and it’s time to go back to the living room to check on Jordan again. He’s been asleep on the couch for over an hour now. She turned off the television and covered him with a blanket when she first found him like that.
Looking down at her sleeping nephew’s sweet face, she’s swept by an overwhelming sadness.
He may not remember Mom. Beck lost her maternal grandmother when she was his age; she doesn’t remember her at all. Mom used to try to jog her memory, showing her photos of her sitting on her grandmother’s lap as a little girl or holding hands with her at the zoo . . .
“Remember that day?” she’d ask.
Beck wanted to remember so badly . . .
But she just didn’t.
That bothered her mother.
“You loved her so much,” she told Beck, “and she was crazy about you and your brothers.”
Maybe so. But she died, and every trace of her disappeared from Beck’s mind.
That’s going to happen to Jordan, too. Everything Mom did for him, and with him . . .
He’ll only know about it because they’ll tell him stories and show him pictures. He won’t know, in his heart. He won’t remember.
He opens his eyes abruptly, as if sensing that she’s there. “Hi, Aunt Beck.”
“Hi, sweetie. Did you have a nice nap?”
He nods sleepily. “I dreamed about Grammy.”
“Really? What happened in your dream?”
“She was just laughing and laughing, and Grampy was giving me horsey rides on his back like he used to.”
She smiles, eyes suddenly swimming in tears. “That sounds like a really nice dream.”
“Yeah. It was happy. Do you think Grampy will play horsey again when he gets back?”
“Maybe not today,” she says. “But someday. Someday, I’m betting he will.”
In the past hour the sky above the bay has gone from deep blue to pale blue with patchy clouds to completely overcast. The air hangs heavy with humidity and the incessant rattling hum of locusts in the coastal grasses that sound to Elena like a perpetually shaking tambourine, further rattling her nerves.
Forcing down a final bite of the pecan pie Landry served for dessert, she fights the urge to jump up and excuse herself from the table . . .
Just as Landry did a short time ago, when she left to get the dessert and didn’t come back for so long that Elena finally went into the kitchen to see if she needed help. She wasn’t there, and a pair of pecan pies sat at the ready beside a stack of plates.
What, Elena wondered, was she up to?
It could have been innocent—maybe she was on the phone with her husband, or tending to some household chore . . .
But when Landry reappeared with a dessert tray, she neglected to make eye contact with anyone, and her hands were shaking so badly the stack of plates rattled.
Now Elena sips the sickeningly sweet tea, wishing it were laced with vodka, and wipes her soaked hairline with a napkin. The drenching heat is nearly as oppressive as the paranoia that’s fallen over the group like a storm cloud.
Why aren’t Landry’s kids going to be here tonight, as planned? Does she even have kids? A husband? Or did she stage this picture perfect bayside house right out of Southern Living? Is it filled with mere props, everything from the gallery of framed photographs in the dining room to the teenage bedrooms to the sneakers in the mudroom cubbies carefully positioned to make herself appear to be an ordinary mom, when in fact she’s . . .
“I hope y’all are going to have more of this pie, because I’ve got plenty,” she tells them, and Elena wonders if she might even be faking the accent.
Nobody wants more pie.
Or, when she offers, more sweet tea.
Nobody wants anything but to be someplace, anyplace, other than here.
Kay is quiet by nature but paler than the cloth napkin she’s twisting in her hands, and her pie has gone untouched.
Does she realize it’s a trap? Elena wonders. Or is she in on it? Is it a conspiracy?
Playing the role of charming hostess, Landry chatters brightly—too brightly—about the restaurant where she’s made a dinner reservation.
“And I hope y’all like seafood, because—” She breaks off to look out over the water as thunder rumbles in the distance. The sky has gone from milky to ominous black layers mounting along the horizon.
“It’s going to rain,” Kay says unnecessarily.
“It is.” Landry is on her feet. “We should go inside.”
Reluctant to go into the house with them, Elena points to the ceiling overhead, where the fan still rotates in a futile attempt to cool things down. “We won’t get wet here.”
“We will if it rains sideways. It’s blowing in across the water. Let’s go in.”
She doesn’t want to go in, dammit. That’s why they’re out there in the first place. Inside, she can’t escape quickly if she needs to.
But Kay, too, is already standing. “I’m going to lie down for a little while, if no one minds.”
“Are you feeling all right?” Elena asks her, and she shakes her head.
“The trip wore me out. I’m sorry.”
Poor Kay. She’s not here to blindside her. She’s here because she needs their friendship. She has no one else in the world.
Kay starts helping Landry gather up the plates and glasses, but Landry stops her.
“I’ll get that. You can relax in the living room, if you’d like—we have lots of books, if you feel like reading. Or maybe everyone needs a nap. I know y’all were up early.”
“I wouldn’t mind some downtime,” Kay says with a yawn.
“Same here.” Elena stands. “I’m wicked tired.”
Landry’s smile is stiff. “Sweet dreams, then!”
With narrowed eyes, Elena watches her scrape the crumbs off the plates.
Then she follows the others inside and up the stairs.
As Kay closes the bedroom door behind her, she can hear the rain already starting to fall, pattering on the low-pitched roof directly above her head.
Thunder rumbles,
this time much closer.
She sits on the edge of the bed, looking around the pretty bedroom—Landry’s daughter’s bedroom.
What would it be like, she wonders, to grow up living in a room like this, with a mom like Landry?
She hopes Addison knows how lucky she is. And Tucker, too—Landry’s son. She hopes they know they’re blessed with everything—the only thing—that really matters.
Not beautiful bedrooms in a lovely house in a charming southern town, but parents who are together, and love them.
Kay was hoping she’d have a chance to meet the kids, but they’re not home this weekend.
“It’s better this way,” Landry said, and Kay has to agree.
It wouldn’t be right, the kids being here. There’s too much tension in the house, and now—
A ringing phone interrupts the thought. Her cell, she realizes. It has to be Detective Burns, returning her call at last.
She checks caller ID and recognizes the 513 area code. Yes, she was right.
But of course she was. Her phone never rings. She doesn’t have a circle of friends and family, not like Meredith. Not like Landry.
There’s no one back in Indianapolis wondering how her Alabama weekend is going.
There will be no one to miss her when she’s gone for good—not there, anyway.
But these women—her online friends—will notice she’s gone. And of course, Meredith’s family will as well, when they receive their unexpected inheritance.
They’re all I have.
But all I ever wanted was a family, and now I finally have it. Someone will care that I lived. Someone will care when I die, like they cared when Meredith did. Someone will cry for me, will remember me.
She presses the Talk button, swallowing a lump in her throat.
“Hello?”
“Kay, this is Detective Burns calling from Cincinnati. I just got a message that you were trying to reach me earlier. You should have called the number I gave you. That’s my direct line. I don’t check this one very—”
“I’m sorry.” She presses a hand to her aching head. “I forgot about that. I’m traveling, and I don’t even know if I have it with me . . .”
“Where are you?”
“Alabama. At Landry Wells’s house. A bunch of us are here for the weekend. The reason I called was because I thought I spotted Jenna Coeur in the airport when I was catching my connecting flight back in Atlanta . . .”
“You thought you spotted her?”
“I was pretty sure, but now . . .”
“Kay,” Detective Burns says, “listen to me. It wasn’t her. You don’t have to worry about her. Not today, anyway.”
Six of One Is Not Always Half a Dozen of the Other
Today is September 22. The date looms large in my brain. It’s the anniversary of my preventative bilateral mastectomy.
Did I change my fate on that day?
I tried to. The decision to have the surgery was mine. The idea . . . mine. It was not the first suggestion of any surgeon, since the only evidence of cancer was small and contained. Lumpectomy was the preferred procedure.
Breast Preservation was a term I learned then and heard quite often in those early diagnosis days. As if saving breasts were the point here, the ultimate goal. As if just cutting out the cancer as carefully, neatly, and least intrusively as possible was the mission, and perhaps for some it is. I remember sitting with the first surgeon I consulted, thinking I was missing something because although saving breasts is intrinsically tied to saving a life for some, it wasn’t for me.
Even though my own grandmother had beaten the odds, I had heard plenty of horror stories about women who hadn’t. Women who were declared fine for many years, only to have the cancer come back with a vengeance. So in my mind, as I was told survival rates for those with mastectomy versus lumpectomy were basically the same, I knew I couldn’t do it. I had a husband and children who needed me.
Every person, every diagnosis of breast cancer, is unique. No two circumstances are ever the same and neither are the ways of approaching, dealing, and living with this disease. No one is right or wrong. Each moment is personal, and for me . . . I knew I couldn’t walk away after a lumpectomy and weeks of radiation feeling positive about my outcome, in spite of comparable statistics. I knew I’d question my choice everyday, worry I hadn’t done enough, harbor regret.
Ultimately, I guess it mattered more for the peace of mind it granted me, rather than better odds. I believe I had done all I could to stave off recurrence, knowing full well neither method was guaranteed, but now I wouldn’t second-guess myself, and that . . . was everything.
Did I change my fate that day? Who knows?
Do I miss my old, unaltered, presurgery physical self? Sometimes. But not the tiniest fraction as much as I’d miss seeing my kids from childhood through adulthood to parenthood, or growing old with the man I love. And in the end . . . what is more important than that?
— Excerpt from Landry’s blog, The Breast Cancer Diaries
Chapter 16
Landry’s cell phone rings as she loads the plates into the dishwasher. Startled, she drops one. It shatters on the stone floor.
“Dammit!” She looks up at the ceiling, wondering if the others heard it and are going to come down to investigate.
Hopefully the rain and thunder masked the sound.
Pulling out her phone, she sees that the caller is Bruce and hurriedly answers it.
“The flight came in,” he reports. “She wasn’t on it.”
“Okay.” Landry paces, keeping an eye on the stairs. There’s been no movement from above.
“I’m going to stay here and wait for the next flight from Atlanta.”
“Okay,” she says again, staring at the sheet of rain beyond the glass.
She’s probably supposed to feel relieved. But it would have been so much simpler—it would be over—if Jenna Coeur had just walked off the damned plane.
Now they’re trapped here in limbo, waiting, waiting . . .
“How about what I told you?” she whispers to Bruce, wandering into the living room with the phone. “About Tony Kerwin?”
“Look, there are definitely drugs, like succinylcholine or potassium chloride, that can simulate a heart attack and would be metabolized in the bloodstream to appear as chemicals that would normally appear in a human body. They wouldn’t show up in an autopsy.”
“So they could have been used on Tony, to make a murder look like accidental death.”
“Theoretically, yes. You’d have to be looking for an injection site on the body in order to catch something like that, and unless the medical examiner had reason to look for it . . .”
“He’d never see it.”
“That’s right. But don’t jump to conclusions, Landry. It wouldn’t be easy for the average person to pull off something like this.”
“Why not?”
“For one thing, you can’t use over-the-counter potassium chloride pills from a drugstore. You’d have to have a liquid form and inject it. But again . . .”
“You don’t think that’s what happened.”
“I really don’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because there are very few places where those drugs would even be found. Succinylcholine alone—SUX—is used in anesthesiology and it’s used along with liquid potassium chloride for—”
Hearing a creaking on the stairs, Landry freezes, and the rest of Bruce’s sentence is lost on her.
She holds her breath, poised, watching the steps, waiting for whomever it is to descend.
But nobody does.
“Landry?” Bruce is saying. “Are you there?”
“I’ll call you right back,” she blurts, and hangs up, eyes still on the vacant stairway.
May
be it was her imagination.
Or maybe someone is up there spying, eavesdropping.
Who is it? Kay, or Elena, or . . . someone else?
Walking into the police station, Sheri keeps a tight hold on the guitar pick in her hand. She’d wrapped it in plastic, just in case.
You never know.
There might be fingerprints.
Pen in hand, the desk sergeant looks up from whatever he’s working on. Official business, she hopes. Better not be a goddamned Sudoku puzzle when her husband’s murder remains unsolved . . .
“Can I help you?”
She clears her throat. “I’m Sheri Lorton . . .”
He nods.
“Roger Lorton’s wife.”
She waits for recognition.
He waits, utterly clueless.
Okay. He doesn’t know her.
This is a big city. People die—are killed—every day. Cases go unsolved forever.
She shouldn’t take it personally.
But how do you not?
Sheri rests her hands on the desk and leans in. “My husband was murdered last week. Walking our dog. Stabbed in cold blood on the sidewalk. I think I’ve found something that might be relevant to the detectives working on his case.”
He nods, picks up the phone on the desk. “I’ll get someone to help you, Mrs. Lorton. And . . . I’m sorry for your loss.”
Just days ago, shrouded in an opaque veil of anguish, she’d thought it didn’t matter to her—the investigation. Because nothing can bring him back.
Now, though her widowed heart will ache for the rest of her life, she knows that the healing will only begin when the person who stole her husband is found—and punished.
Slow and steady . . .
Slow and steady . . .
That’s the key, though impulse decrees the polar opposite approach.
Hurry!
Do it quickly!
Just get it over with!
No.
No, that would be dangerous. Now is not the time to make a mistake.
Slow . . .
Take out the knife, the one with the tortoiseshell handle.
Think about that long ago day by the pond, when a plain old rock turned out to be a ferocious snapping turtle.
The Perfect Stranger Page 32