"Let's stay together as a family," John said. "There's no telling what people have heard about their family or ours. It's best to say nothing, and stick together."
"What would they say about our family, John?" Dianna asked incredulously. "The whole thing is old news that was blown way out of proportion based on the memories of what, something Lucy thinks she saw when she was ten….twelve? We need to keep that in mind."
"I don't care how you need to rationalize this thing, Dianna. I have nothing good to say about that man, so don't look to me for a pleasant conversation today," John replied.
Both John and Dianna opened their car doors at the same time and exited. Lucy sat in the vacuum left by her parents and stared at her sleeping sister. Her mind was processing the fact that Dianna had just struck the first blow in a battle meant to punish her for not following strict orders and disregarding the conversation she had accidentally overheard the night before the suicide.
She ignored her mother's dire warning not to bring it up again, or she would regret it. Dianna was a calculating type of person, and because Lucy was not, it always caught her off guard when her mom seemed to be three steps ahead of where she was currently operating. What did her memory of seeing Anne and Finn's dad have to do with her sister still dating him at twenty-one, and Mark killing himself less than a week ago? Surely, her mother did not believe she could hang those sins on Lucy's innocent confession of a traumatic childhood experience. Anne began to stir in her seat, and Lucy touched her leg gently.
"We're here Anne, there are a lot of people parked already, so we should probably go in and get a seat," Lucy said softly. "Mom and Dad are waiting under the walkway for us."
Anne sat up slowly and looked sheepishly around the parking lot. There were so many cars. She couldn't imagine who all these people were and if they would know about her. She looked for Alex's car too; he said he would be here for her today.
"I'm scared Lucy, what if someone comes up to me and gets pissed off and yells," Anne said. "What about Charlotte?"
" No one is going to yell at you here," Lucy said, comfortingly. " Funerals are off-limits in a way, the expectation is everyone is respectful, just stick with us and you will be fine."
Lucy thought about Charlotte and felt her heart tug in two different directions. She did not have any words for Anne concerning Charlotte. In all the years since she had seen her sister in the backyard with Mark, she had repressed the scant possibility that Anne was the girl that made Charlotte feel like a nobody. Charlotte had been cherished support to Lucy through the years, when her relationship with Dianna had felt blocked, and dead.
But Anne, this was her sister, flesh of her flesh, the one she had wanted as a best friend for all times. There was no way to choose between these two types of loves, and if she had to today, she would stand with her sister and pray that Charlotte would one day understand, and be able to forgive her.
"Let's go, Anne. I won't leave you, no matter what," Lucy said, and she meant it, taking her sister's hand as they met up with their parents.
The four of them walked slowly into the sanctuary and found a place to sit, several rows back from Charlotte and Finn. Lucy nudged her mom, gesturing that she wanted them to all go and say hello before the ceremony started, but Dianna firmly shook her head no, Anne began to cry, and Lucy knew better than to ask her dad.
Looking around the ample space, she saw several familiar neighbors and classmates, all anxiously surveying the room, just the same as she was. Lucy stood up and made her way to the front of the church. There was a small line of people waiting to speak to Finn and Charlotte, but not so many that Lucy did not catch Finn's eye before he looked away. A small drop of sweat rolled down her back and into the band of her underwear. He was still angry. She could not go back and sit down now without it being awkward, so she stood there, rehearsing what she would say to Charlotte and blanking on anything plausible to say to Finn.
Quicker than she liked, it was Lucy's turn to give her condolences. The second that she saw Charlotte, everything she had planned to say, sounded like absolute garbage.
Charlotte's hair was pulled back in a French braid that made the sides of her face look like they were being stretched back tight, like a rubber band. Her eyes were sunken in, and underneath them, thick layers of beige foundation sat on top of thin dark bags. Her mouth, painted bright red, looked enormous so that even if you were across the room, she would seem as if she was smiling at you. Lucy was not even sure she recognized her until Charlotte, called her by name.
"There is my Lucy girl," Charlotte said too loudly, pulling Lucy's hands, so she fell forward into a forced, gripping hug. "Thank you for coming today, it means so much to us both."
Lucy was speechless, so she gave her best smile and reached down for a better hug and kissed Charlotte on the top of her head. Finn stood up and walked away before Lucy had a chance to speak to him, leaving her alone and wondering what to do next.
She watched him walk briskly out of the sanctuary and then caught sight of her dad wildly motioning for her to come to sit back down. She agreed, this was probably a good idea. As soon as she sat back in the pew, a sinking feeling about Finn started to build. Why was he still not talking to her, and how long would it last? She was shocked to see how physically distraught Charlotte had been, so perhaps there was no way to relate to what Finn was going through. It might take more time than she anticipated for things to settle down between them. Still, she had a feeling, call it intuition, that something else was going on and that the something else, was nothing good.
The service was beautiful and tragic all at the same time. Nothing was said to infer that there had been any reason Mark would have wanted to end his own life, and countless people shared stories of who he was and what he had meant to them. Anne cried a lot, but so did many others, and Dianna seemed to relax as her family blended namelessly in with all the others in attendance.
Lucy watched Finn throughout the entire service, but he did not cry or even look back to see if she was looking at him. He and Charlotte held hands when they stood and sang and lit candles together in front of Mark's urn. When the service ended, Dianna positioned the family in line to offer their condolences.
"You have got to be kidding me," John whispered. "They do not want to see us, Dianna, you can bet your fancy underwear on that."
"For once, John, can you just go along to get along," Dianna growled through her teeth. "My God, her husband -his dad, Mark, our neighbor, is dead!"
John looked disgusted but took his place in line, followed by Lucy, then Dianna, and reluctantly Anne. There were so many people which made things worse because the wait gave lots of time to consider all the reasons to get out of line. John planned to shake both their hands and be done with it. He considered hugging Charlotte if the urge struck him, but doubted he would. Lucy had no idea what she was going to do once she was standing in front of Finn. Dianna was going to lay it on thick with Charlotte and feel her out, paving the way for a quick and painless interaction for Anne, and Anne was thinking about nothing but why Alex had not shown up to the funeral.
That morning she and Alex had fought. After the news about Mark, Anne had told Alex a half-truth about their relationship, making it seem like a stupid teenage crush that had gone too far and ended years ago. Alex, of course, was angry that she had kept it from him and irritated that a guy she had slept with had been living right next door to her parents without him ever knowing. Anne, not having much energy left to deal with Alex's ego, dismissed his feelings by saying that he was the one making a huge deal out of nothing and that it was just like him to be selfish when she needed him most. Alex had seen right through this toxic diversion and verbalized he didn't know if he could trust her anymore. He had promised to come to the funeral, but the funeral was over, and he was not there.
Anne so lost in thought about why Alex had not shown up for her, hardly noticed the line was moving forward until she was standing directly in front of both Finn and C
harlotte.
9
Charlotte
Charlotte looked closely at Anne's face, all grown up, and slightly swollen from all the crying.
She could not help but think back to when they had first moved in, next door to her family. She and Lucy had wandered over, eventually wanting to escape the drudgery of moving boxes and empty rooms. Lucy had been an open book right away, a bit awkward but sweetly endearing, helpful, and gracious. However, Anne had been very different.
She didn't take much at face value and wanted to know right away, why Charlotte didn't work in the summer if she wasn't calling herself a stay at home mom. She wasn't interested in baking cookies or playing down in the woods with Finn and Lucy, but she did love looking at Charlotte's dad's old history books. When Anne visited, she would lay on the floor for hours, turning the pages slowly because she knew they could tear, and she was trying hard not to mess anything up. Sometimes, Anne would show Charlotte something of interest to her, but mostly, she enjoyed the books all by herself. And then one day she was older and stopped coming.
If Charlotte had known it had been Anne that Mark was seeing, she would have killed him. The thought of that alarmed her, as she stood in a sanctuary, feet away from her dead husband's ashes. If Charlotte had known it was Anne, she might have been less hurt, not because Anne was not beautiful and smart and all the things that a man would want in a woman, but because she was just barely a woman. All this time, Charlotte had imagined that Mark had been having an affair with a glamorous businesswoman, someone with a better education than she. Someone who made more money than she, who had more life experience than she, someone who had traveled around the world and back with culture and pizzazz, made him feel better than she could.
Meanwhile, Anne was always going to be the older little girl from next door in Charlotte's mind. The detectives had mentioned the affair had started when she was seventeen. Charlotte felt a twinge of responsibility for Anne being victimized by her late husband, at such an impressionable age, almost Finn's age, to be exact.
The confusion surrounding Mark's involvement with an underage girl dissolved as Charlotte allowed herself to think about Mark's parents. She had listened countless times to Mark complain about his father's wandering eye, and a string of instances with his babysitters until his mother left them both. No, she was not responsible for what had happened to Anne, although she deeply regretted not being able to stop it. Anne had obviously moved on and was starting a new chapter in her life. She was pregnant and having a baby with another man.
None of it mattered now, but for Finn and Lucy's sake, she wished Lucy could have been honest with him about what she had seen a long time ago.
"Hi Anne, thank you for coming today," Charlotte said gracefully.
Anne starred at Charlotte horrified; it was as if her eyes and cheeks had sunken down low on her face, and her nose and painted-on lips were the only features that had stayed in place.
"We are so sorry for your loss, Charlotte," Dianna said, reaching back to pull along her oldest daughter, who stood speechless, gawking at Charlotte.
Finn took his mom's hand and turned her protectively toward him. Charlotte allowed herself to be pulled away without protest.
"Did you get to talk with Lucy today?" she asked him quietly, squeezing his hand and taking a break from the endless line of people waiting to speak with them.
"Yeah, I just did, told her thanks for coming," he said. "I hugged her too."
Charlotte smiled and let out a tiny breath of air, thankful her son had taken a small step to mend the gaping hole in the relationship with his best friend. It would take time, but they had nothing but time, at sixteen. Charlotte, on the other hand, at forty-five, felt like time had played a cruel trick on her. She took a large gulp of warm, bottled water and buckled down for round two with the long line of people whose faces she would never remember.
10
The Lie
As the paramedics readied themselves in Charlotte's front yard, Dianna watched as police cars continued to turn down the road that led to her cul-de-sac.
How many officers do you need for a situation like this, she wondered? Charlotte was lying down in the back of an ambulance, but Finn would not leave Lucy. Dianna watched Lucy, holding him, talking with him, trying desperately to get him to drink sprite. She had no idea where John was right now. The last time she saw her husband, a cop, was asking him about his relationship with Mark. That should be an interesting conversation; she smirked internally.
Dianna thought back to what Lucy had told her about Anne cutting the grass for Mark and Charlotte all those summers ago and how Lucy claimed she saw him touching her. She couldn't remember precisely what Lucy had said she witnessed, but whatever it was, it had upset her enough to blab it to John.
Everything always got worse when John was involved. If he hadn't needed to make such a royal ass of himself in every area of his life, she wouldn't be standing in her front lawn, waiting to be interviewed by a police officer about her dead next-door neighbor. There was absolutely no reason to believe Anne's name would come up in any of this. She was safe in her apartment, hopefully, blissfully unaware anything was wrong.
"M'am, I'm going to need you to come with me please," said an officer, jolting Dianna out of her state of rampant self-absorption.
"Of course, where do you want me to go?" Dianna asked, compliantly.
"Let's go back into your house, the kitchen table works well for me," he said.
Dianna followed the middle age officer back across their well-lit front yard, glancing up, just in time to see Mark coming out of his front door in a body bag. Finn suddenly broke free from Lucy and ran, screaming, to meet his dad's lifeless body. Charlotte, heavily sedated, tried to get out of the ambulance to console her son, but swiftly fell to her knees and had to be carried and set down beside Finn's shaking body.
Dianna stood there, horrified, unable to turn away, watching the broken family, all of them laying in a pile on the ground. And then, Lucy, her youngest daughter, emerged from the ambulance, her arms full of blankets, wrapping them around Finn and Charlotte -enveloping them in her love. Dianna gasped out loud and covered her mouth, her hands slightly trembling.
"M'am, I need you to come with me please," he said again to Dianna, who slowly blinked, nodded her head and followed the officer robotically back into her own home.
He spent quite a while going through Dianna's phone, which she thought was odd until the officer asked her how long she had known about the affair between Anne and Mark.
Dianna was caught entirely off guard by this question but smart enough to know that blatantly lying to the police was not a good idea. They currently had access to all her text messages and could probably answer that question without her help, so she decided the less she said, the better, she admitted to knowing for some time.
Dianna quickly deduced that her idiot husband had taken the high road and confessed everything he knew to the police. He admitted to just recently learning about the affair from their younger daughter. She had confided hearing a conversation between herself and Anne, coupled with what she witnessed as a young girl in their backyard.
The officer informed her that John had admitted to threatening Mark with a shotgun, but had not shot him with said gun. Dianna listened very carefully and planned to create moral loopholes for herself and Anne if she needed them.
"I wish my husband had talked to me first before going over to their house with a shotgun," Dianna said. "You know how physical men can get, whereas women tend to think more emotionally when we get upset."
"Did your husband come home with any signs of a physical struggle after he had the incident with Mr. Smith tonight?" The police officer asked.
Dianna had not known Lucy had told John about the conversation she had overheard between her and Anne, much less that John had gone over to talk with Mark, but lying to save herself came naturally to Dianna. She responded readily, making up a story where she got to rewrite events
and be someone she was not.
"No, he was very calm when he left the house to speak with Mark initially, of course, I did not know he was going to go around to the storage shed and pick up his shotgun," said Dianna. "And, he seemed relieved, almost at peace when he returned home, so what happened in that house is beyond me."
The police officer looked at Dianna for a minute and then wrote something down on a yellow legal notepad beside the name -Dianna/neighbor.
"What happened in that house is that your husband told Mark that your youngest daughter, Lucy, heard you and your older daughter, Anne, talking about her affair with Mark, and that triggered her to remember something she saw as a kid. I'm sure he had some choice words for Mr. Smith."
Dianna swallowed, took a small pause, and then began writing additional erroneous chapters as evidence to support her make-believe story, and persona.
"Lucy saw Anne and Mark kissing when she was a kid, who knows how old she was or when it happened, it was a long time ago. She never told us about it until today, and she feels incredibly guilty because, of course, we would have acted on that information and never condoned the relationship. What my daughter does as a twenty-one-year-old woman, of course, I cannot control. John flew off the handle and confronted Mark about the relationship. It seems that Mark lacked good judgment in general, and it must have been the guilt that drove him to suicide tonight after finding out his secret was out. I don't know."
This time the police officer wrote nothing down but flipped the notepad back to look at initial notes he had taken.
"Thanks, Dianna, I have statements from you, your husband, and Lucy. Odd that none of them match," he said, standing up from the table. The officer sighed and left the kitchen to see what else needed his attention.
The Truth Lucy Spoke (The Truth Turned Upside Down Book 2) Page 5