by D. J. Palmer
“Teresa?”
“That was the name in the text. I’d never heard of her.”
“And?”
“And … and for a moment I thought it was a prank, some sick person who had seen Glen’s story on the news, knew all about him, looked up my phone number somehow, and was playing with my emotions for kicks. I imagined a group huddled around a phone, laughing at this poor woman they were taunting.”
“But it wasn’t a prank?”
“No. The texter sent a picture. Two pictures, actually.”
The first picture Nina described had been too small for her to see clearly, but with a touch of her finger she’d expanded it into a larger image, filling her phone’s display.
She saw Glen out at night, lit by a camera’s flash, standing in front of a bar or restaurant Nina did not recognize, dressed in clothes she did recognize. He had his arm draped around a young woman who was heavily made up, hoop earrings almost touching her shoulders, choker necklace in place, dressed for a night on the town in a short black skirt, calf-high leather boots, and a tight-fitting black top that showed off the swell of her breasts.
The woman’s strawberry-blond hair fell well past her shoulders, framing a slightly freckled face with enviable cheekbones, vibrant eyes, and a generous smile that was the early stage of a laugh. She radiated sexuality, lust. Glen had his head turned, his face pressed up against her cheek, his lips puckered, attached to her like a remora on a shark. Even though it was a frozen moment, Nina could still tell it was an intimate kiss, not a quick peck. Glen’s blue eyes shone with delight.
The second picture she received left no doubt about the sort of kisses they shared. Glen had his lips pressed firmly against Teresa’s, their mouths locked open, his hands squeezing her backside hard enough for Nina to see the strain put on his knuckles.
Almost two years later, she could recall the follow-up text message verbatim.
This girl is Teresa Mitchell. She’s my friend. Saw Glen’s picture on TV. Think he’s your husband. Knew him as Teresa’s boyfriend. They were in love. Didn’t know he was married. Took these photos when we were out together. Sorry for everything. Thought you deserved the truth.
Nina’s hands shook so fiercely, she could barely type a reply.
Where? Where were these taken? When?
The Muddy Moose Carson NH. Teresa works there. That’s where they met. Sorry to be the one to tell you. You have my sympathy. Good-bye.
Dr. Wilcox took in a sharp breath. “What did you do?”
“Well, that same night I sent the pictures to the police, of course, and gave them the number of the texter, because after all my husband was missing, and this woman, Teresa, could have had something to do with it. But I was worried, you know, afraid how much worse it would get.”
“Worse how?”
“We were about to become a living, breathing Dateline special. ‘Cheating husband vanishes. Was the grieving wife all an act?’ You get the idea.”
“Indeed. I’m guessing there’s more to this story.”
“Much more,” Nina said.
CHAPTER 10
Lunch.
Oh, the dreaded, dreaded half hour. Some people hate gym, or get stomach cramps before math, English, or Spanish, but no, not me. I love all those classes. I love school. Homework doesn’t bother me in the slightest. I don’t get knotted up over tests; I’m not a perfectionist like that. But I am abysmally miserable during lunch.
I should explain. Lunch is where the complicated social structure of middle school gets sorted out. Groups are defined mostly by where they eat: the football team has three tables; soccer has a few; drama and band each have their own section of our incredibly noisy cafeteria—and so on. According to our guidance counselor, all that BS we heard in grade school about being inclusive doesn’t apply in the dog-eat-dog world of middle school. Here, our friend groups form because of how we spend our time outside of school, in various clubs, sports, and whatnot, which is why the jocks and nerds mix like oil and water.
Up until midway through last year, my friend group was made up mainly of the lacrosse team, a mix of boys and girls who played the game (club in the fall, school team in the spring) and hung out together all year round. We went to each other’s houses for parties, swimming, goofing off on trampolines, that kind of stuff. Since this was my friend group, naturally we ate lunch together, or at least that’s what we did until I got the boot, and no, I don’t mean the kind you walk in.
I won’t bother naming all the names, because they don’t matter anymore. All except for two: Justin D’Abbraccio and Laura Abel. Justin is the cliché cute boy in school—star lacrosse player, drummer in the jazz band, alpine ski racer, floppy hair and dreamy green eyes. Laura Abel is the girl at the center of it all. She is an expert dresser, the gorgeous, all-American-blonde type, with a nose for sniffing out gossip the same way Daisy can locate a morsel of dropped food. She is the queen of conflict, starting fights or resolving them whenever she wants, and has a crucial opinion when it comes to picking sides. Basically, she is the person other kids turn to when they aren’t sure how to think or feel.
It’s Laura who gets invited to all the “cool” parties, Laura who wins the class elections, Laura who gets the most attention from the boys. Her social media posts are mandatory reads, always with an avalanche of comments decorated with colorful emojis. To get a comment back feels like being anointed with special powers, to be one of the chosen, even if your moment in the spotlight was as fleeting as a shooting star.
It’s not as if people don’t have a voice of their own, or they can’t make something happen without Laura’s involvement.
They just don’t want to.
Everything between Laura and me turned sour in June of last year, near the end of seventh grade. By that point, the police had put out word they were looking for Teresa Mitchell in connection to my dad’s disappearance, so everyone knew or at least suspected that he’d had an affair. They also knew (because Connor had said something to his friends and word travels fast in Seabury) that my mom and Mr. Fitch were going out to dinner together, meaning I had more than enough strikes to make me a social outcast. But to my ex-friends’ credit, they didn’t seem to care about my father’s secrets or my mom and a teacher at school who might or might not be becoming an item.
But Laura cared a whole heck of a lot that Justin D’Abbraccio was being extra nice to me on account of everything I’d gone through that year. You see, Laura and Justin were dating. Dating in middle school meant eating lunch together, texting each other constantly, and sending pictures and messages over whatever social media thingy was in fashion at the moment. It was basically a meaningless label that had tons of meaning, if that makes any sense.
Now imagine this—Justin started texting me and liking my posts. He also started hanging out by my locker, waiting for me to show up. It’s not like we were dating or anything. But his parents had split up the year before while Laura’s were still married, so maybe he felt compassion for me. Maybe he understood I was suffering, and, God forbid, wanted to ease my pain a little.
Laura didn’t care one tiny bit about Justin’s motives. She cared about competition and nothing more. I wasn’t as pretty or as well dressed as Laura Abel, but I was a heck of a lot better lacrosse player. Now, if I had Justin on my arm, it was easy to see how damaging that could have been to her social status. Which was why Laura went on the offensive. She started a campaign against me, backbiting, spreading rumors (“You won’t believe what Maggie Garrity said about you!”) and making sure people knew that if they hung out with me, they weren’t welcome in Laura’s circle anymore.
Well, it didn’t take long for bad to go to worse. One day I was poor Maggie Garrity, the girl whose world had been turned upside down, and the next I was a rat-fink bitch of the highest order. All of my lacrosse friends turned into frenemies. I started getting tagged in social media posts of parties I wasn’t invited to. Someone flagged me on Facebook for being inappropriate (FYI, I
wasn’t, and I don’t use Facebook anymore).
There was other bullying going on—like posts that went up on social media implying my father was a pedophile and may have abused me; a website listing that basically advertised a young girl looking for hot guys and included my mobile phone number. (FYI, I got a new phone number.)
None of this, not one of the attacks against me, got pinned on Laura, but trust me, she was behind it all. In the end, it didn’t really matter. Laura could be suspended or not; I could do all of the self-esteem-building stuff the guidance counselor recommended, read all of her pamphlets on how to deal with bullying—I’d still eat lunch alone.
It wasn’t like I could go clique jumping (really, that’s not a thing), and the other activities I was involved in (student council and newspaper club) I had picked because that’s what the lacrosse kids were doing, so those were now off-limits. I could have made waves with the principal, because bullying is such a big deal these days, but instead I played it down. The only thing I’d get by calling out my bullies would have been more bullying.
Justin quickly realized that his allegiance was with Laura, and just like that he acted like I didn’t exist. Which brought us to this point: me eating lunch alone with a stupid boot on my foot, my dad gone, and terrible Simon in my house.
There were two chairs between me and Jackson and Addie, or Jaddy as they were better known, a new school couple who were so in love I could have sat on Jackson’s lap and he wouldn’t have noticed me. I was stabbing a grape with my fork, imagining it was Simon on the receiving end, when a boy came over to my table.
I knew him, of course, because Seabury isn’t a big school and everyone knows everyone here. But if we’d exchanged a dozen words with each other over the years, I couldn’t have said what they were. Benjamin Odell was not an athlete, but he was a mathlete—one of the best math students in the school, in fact, though I didn’t know what class he was taking, because it was so much higher than everyone else’s level.
Ben was rail thin. Whatever muscle he had went to moving his limbs, not much more than that. To me, it looked as though his mother cut his short brown hair, or maybe he did it himself, because it was a little lopsided in the front. Somehow it was sweetly endearing, a throwback to grade school, when most of us didn’t realize what we actually looked like. He had a gap between his front teeth, and his wire-rimmed glasses seemed flimsy for such thick lenses.
“Can I sit here?” Ben said to me.
Ben was a rover during lunch period, a real rarity. He’d sometimes eat with the band kids (he played some instrument, I wasn’t sure which), sometimes it would be with the other mathletes, or sometimes, sin of all sins, he’d sit with whatever teacher was assigned lunch duty. Today he wanted to sit with me, and I couldn’t figure out why.
He brought his lunch from home, but I didn’t think he had an allergy like I did, because he was never in my nut-free classes in grade school. All us “nut cases,” as we affectionately called each other, were usually grouped together out of convenience.
I nodded my head toward the empty chair next to Jackson. Sit, I said without saying it, and down went Ben.
He organized his food: some kind of sandwich with mustard, a batch of baby carrots, a carton of milk, and a few cookies. I had a cheese sandwich, cut-up cucumbers, those grapes, and brownies Mom had baked. She did that from time to time.
“I’ve noticed you eat alone a lot,” he said.
Oh great, I thought. My social status has sunk so low that I’m getting sympathy from the class geek.
“It’s not a big school, Ben,” I said. “I’m pretty sure you know why.”
“Do you want to talk, or do you like to eat in silence?”
Ben was funny, not the haha kind, but the peculiar kind. He was nice enough, I guess, but all I really knew about him was that he was supposedly on the autism spectrum somewhere—like an Asperger’s kid, I think. Wherever he was on that spectrum, if in fact he was on it at all, it would have to have been on the super-duper-smart end of it.
“I can talk and eat,” I told him. “I’m multitalented that way.”
“I heard you moved,” he said. “How do you like your new house?” I was about to answer him, but Ben continued talking. “I moved last year. I hate my new house,” he said. “It’s smelly—like old cheese.”
And then Ben smiled, and when he did, something inside me opened up—a little door that had closed to people like him, people different from me. Maybe it was because of my circumstances, or it could be I’d developed more empathy, or perhaps I was feeling especially glum that day, or maybe it was his gap-toothed smile. Whatever it was, I suddenly found myself feeling incredibly glad that Benjamin Odell had decided to sit down next to me at lunch.
A smile came to my face as I thought about Laura Abel, Justin D’Abbraccio, and all those fake people who’d pretended to be my friends. I looked at Ben like he was crazy or something, and then a laugh came out of me.
And with that laugh, for the first time in a long time, I felt less alone.
CHAPTER 11
Nina, Ginny, and Susanna emerged from the barre fitness studio into a dry, perfectly temperate late-September afternoon, sweat-drenched and ready for post-workout lattes at nearby Pressed Café. It was Ginny who had gotten the trio into doing the ballet-inspired workouts to build up core strength and boost their increasingly sluggish metabolisms. And it was Ginny who would bemoan the pitfalls of getting older—sagging parts that shouldn’t sag, wrinkles that came and went like lines on an Etch-a-Sketch, battled away with creams and facials—while Susanna, far more pragmatic, would note that the grim by-product of never having another birthday meant saying sayonara to this life.
For what it was worth, Nina felt increasingly comfortable with the changes of aging. Her long dark hair, which could be wavy or straight depending on the humidity, still had plenty of body and only sporadic grays to pluck. Her lips were full, and the prominent nose she had wanted reduced in high school now seemed to fit her heart-shaped face perfectly fine. The creases around her brown eyes had grown deeper from stress, but Nina wasn’t about to erase them with Botox injections.
She was perhaps eight pounds over her ideal weight, but it was a soft eight. Her arms and legs were well-toned from the barre workouts, but more than those exercise classes, Nina gave Simon the credit for the recent boost in her self-esteem and comfort with her appearance, years be damned. His support and admiration, the love he gave so freely, made it possible for her to stop blaming herself for what Glen had done.
It was natural, her friends said (and Dr. Wilcox later confirmed), for Nina to experience feelings of self-doubt and inadequacy after Teresa appeared on the scene. As time went on and the wounds felt less fresh, Nina invented several intentionally cruel names for Glen’s paramour—Tarty Teresa and Strawberry Shortcake being two of her favorites, though these sobriquets she shared only with Ginny and Susanna. Nina often asked herself why Glen strayed. Was she not enough of a wife, mother, or lover to make him happy?
“Screw him,” had been Ginny’s response. “What an ass. You don’t deserve any of that.”
Of course Nina agreed; strongly, in fact. But it was one thing to agree, and quite another to believe. When Nina and Simon fell in love, those doubts she’d harbored about herself retreated like the tide, and a renewal of mind, body, and spirit came about, one that had made it possible to believe what her friends had been saying all along.
“It wasn’t you. It was him, wherever he may be. Dead or not. Lake or not.”
Screw him was right.
Now the ladies were sipping lattes and reliving a class that had had more pliés than The Nutcracker.
“The Heritage Commission had a meeting last night,” Susanna said, changing topics, and Nina caught a hint of trepidation in her voice. Susanna knew, as did Ginny, how Nina had once taken great pride in her numerous volunteer commitments, trying as they might have been. She had been “that woman”—the one who morphed from devoted mom to ded
icated volunteer without missing a step. Nina pinned the Busy Badge to her chest like some medal of honor, and wouldn’t have traded it for anything in the world. But Glen’s disappearance had changed everything. In the aftermath, it had become impossible to stay involved, and so she had simply jettisoned her commitments, Heritage Commission included, but took with her feelings of guilt for backing away.
“Stephanie Abel was there, talking as always.”
Nina failed to stifle a groan. She knew all about Stephanie Abel, long before Maggie had had her dealings with Stephanie’s daughter, Laura.
“Let me guess,” Nina said, stirring frothy milk with her spoon. “She’s finally realized what a terrible child she’s raised.”
Nina wanted to escalate Maggie’s bullying plight to the superintendent if need be, but had bowed to her daughter’s wishes to stay out of it.
“No, and no,” Susanna said, eyeing Ginny warily—How much to share? said the look.
“Don’t handle me with kid gloves,” said Nina. “I’m a big girl.”
“She was talking about you and Simon,” said Susanna. “How it was inappropriate for you to be living together so soon after Glen—you know.”
“Cheated on me, then vanished or drowned? We can use the words, it’s okay.”
“Yes, that,” Susanna said.
“Don’t give that bitch any brain cycles,” Ginny chimed in. “She’s not worth it.”
“No, she’s not,” Nina agreed. “But I don’t need any of that getting back to Maggie. She’s had a hard enough time with Laura Abel as it is.”
“Actually, Stephanie mentioned something about Maggie eating alone during lunch period and how your choices were going to alienate her even more.”
“My choices?” Nina said, aghast. “Does she have any clue it was her bratty kid who caused all the problems in the first place?”
“I’m sure she’s in denial,” said Ginny.
“Of course she is,” Nina said with disgust.
She contemplated ways to engage Stephanie Abel, thinking the best way to put an end to her gossiping was to plant a boot on her throat, when her cell phone rang. It wasn’t a number Nina recognized. She answered, half expecting a robocall, but in fact, the caller was a real live human being, one who worked in Human Resources at The Davis Family Center, a support services organization specializing in family matters.