Authors: Alison Gaylin
“I didn’t.”
“Oh please.”
“I did
not
!”
“Your lie hurt Carol Wentz more than you ever could have imagined. It led to an obsession that probably killed her.” Brenna glared at her. “Time doesn’t heal wounds, Gayle. Sometimes, it infects them.”
Gayle’s eyes were watering. Brenna cast a quick glance at Morasco, who was looking at her in such a way, she couldn’t tell whether it was admiration or shock or fear or a blend of all three. “Why did you tell Carol that Nelson and Lydia were having an affair?”
Gayle swallowed, visibly. When she spoke, it was very quietly, between her teeth. “Because they were.”
“Oh now,
come on
.”
“Lydia told me. She said it had started one night, when he’d given her a ride home from the train station. They stopped and had a drink and the wine got the best of them. It was supposed to be just a fling, she said, but it kept . . . happening.” She cleared her throat. “By the time she told me, it had become very serious—overwhelmingly serious,
too serious for her
. Lyddie knew she should end it, but she didn’t know how.”
“Lydia Neff . . . and Nelson.”
“I told her she could do a lot better than him,” Gayle said. “But Lyddie told me . . . they could talk to each other.”
Brenna stared at her.
Everybody needs that one person . . .
“It sounded to me like he’d gotten obsessed with her, though,” Gayle said. “Lyddie was a mess. I didn’t want to get involved. Why would I? I told Carol for one reason: to help Lydia. I told her so that Nelson would have to let Lydia go.”
Brenna said nothing. She just watched her, this woman whom she’d figured for a crisis queen, shallow to the bone. For a few moments, she flashed on Gayle eleven years ago, with her frosty pink lipstick and her popped collar, the two Range Rovers in the driveway, one black, one white, so gleaming-new you expected bows on them.
“Every morning, Lyddie goes there to meditate by the fountain. She’s a very spiritual woman, you know . . .”
And Brenna had thought,
One of those.
One of those people like Roger Wright the developer. One of those shiny people who never wanted for anything, raised under glass so that pain never touched them . . .
Gayle swiped a tear from her face. In a few seconds’ time, she seemed to have aged ten years, all that shine and smugness melting away. “There is a lot of anger in Nelson Wentz,” she said.
Brenna was starting to believe her.
Gayle started toward the door, then stopped, turned. “If you want to talk about wounds,” she said, her voice still shaking, “I suggest you talk to your client. I imagine he knows a hell of a lot more about them than I do.”
B
renna and Morasco walked to their cars without saying a word. Once they reached her Sienna, she leaned against it, facing him, Gayle’s words swirling through her head.
Gayle wasn’t a crisis queen. Her friend had told her about an affair she’d begun—an affair she was trapped in and couldn’t leave. An affair with Nelson Wentz.
There is a lot of anger in Nelson Wentz
.
“You okay?” Morasco said.
“Just because I remember everything, it doesn’t mean I’m right about everything.” She looked at him. “Correct?”
“You’re honest. You expect other people to be the same. That’s a
good
quality.”
“You sound like my shrink,” she said. “Well, this shrink I went to fourteen years ago, actually. I don’t see anybody now . . .”
“I questioned Nelson Wentz when I was working Iris’s disappearance, Brenna. He told me he and Lydia had never had an affair. I believed him, too. Okay?”
“So we’re both gullible.”
“Hey,” he said. “At least you’re not alone.”
She felt herself smiling a little. “I still don’t think he’s a murderer. Does that make me extra-gullible?”
“Maybe.”
“Am I alone?” Brenna said, and then a switch went off in her head, and again she
was
alone, in her kitchen the previous night after Maya had gone to sleep, looking through Nelson’s folders and then remembering the missing page of the police report . . . “Remember when I asked you if Chief Griffin ever interviewed Nelson?”
“Yeah. I told you no.”
“Were you telling me the truth?”
He frowned at her. “I talked to Nelson in his own driveway. He said he’d barely ever spoken to Iris. He said he hadn’t had an affair with Lydia—it was just a very close friendship. I promised to keep it between us, and it didn’t go beyond that.”
“So he wasn’t John Doe?”
Morasco frowned. “John Doe?”
“Page 22. Well, it was page 22 eleven years ago. Now the first page of the Theresa Koppelson interview is page 22 and . . .”
Morasco was staring at Brenna as if she’d suddenly burst into Greek opera.
“You have no idea what I’m talking about.”
He shook his head.
“Something from the Neff police file. I transcribed the interview from memory. I’ll e-mail it to you later.”
“Okay.” He looked into her eyes, gave her a small, sad smile.
“What?”
“Brenna,” he said. “Do you ever feel like you’re a better person than everybody else? Not just smarter. But more genuinely good?”
“No.”
“Well, you should.” He touched her arm, so lightly she could barely feel it. He didn’t say anything more, but the gesture, the utter gentleness of it . . .
Don’t look at me like that, Detective Nick Morasco. Do not look at me like that because I will remember and it will hurt.
They stood there, staring at each other for a drawn-out moment. Until finally, Morasco spoke. “There must be a better way of making a living than this.”
Brenna blinked. “Huh?”
Morasco said it again, with an accent—an effete lockjaw. “My Jack Paar impersonation,” he explained after.
They both forced themselves to laugh.
B
renna arrived home at six twenty-five—maybe twenty minutes late at the most, but she knew Maya would be angry. “It’s hostile you know,” Maya had once said of Brenna’s lateness. She’d said it on June 20, to be exact, when Brenna had met Maya for brunch at the Cowgirl Hall of Fame at ten forty-two rather than ten-thirty—and all Brenna could think at the time was,
Hostile? Where did she get that word?
—and then, in the middle of their eggs Benedict, Maya had said, “Faith is
never
late,” which had struck Brenna as pretty hostile right there, and so she’d pointed that out, and then the two of them had spent the rest of the meal in icy silence.
Brenna expected the cold stare tonight. She’d texted Maya an apology but hadn’t heard back—of course.
And once Brenna opened the door to her apartment, she was greeted, not by Maya at all, but by her backpack, sitting on the kitchen table like a bulky centerpiece. “Maya!” Brenna called out. No answer. She noticed a Post-it on her computer screen:
CHECK YOUR E-MAIL
TNT
P.S. Buy an iPhone.
She started to turn the computer on, but realized Trent’s e-mail would have to wait till later because from here, Brenna noticed that there was another backpack next to Maya’s. She moved closer, put her hand on it. A black JanSport. Completely unfamiliar.
“Maya?”
She heard a man’s voice. “You really are so good,” the voice said, and then, “Where did you learn?” Brenna moved toward Maya’s bedroom, she could tell the voice was coming from behind the door—a deep, young voice.
You look so pretty, Clee-bee
. Brenna gritted her teeth. Knocked. “Maya?”
The door opened, and there was her daughter, flush-faced and with that crooked, embarrassed smile—so young and so old at the same time. “Hi, Mom,” she said. “I was just working on my art project.”
Brenna peered past her daughter, at the source of the deep voice, sitting cross-legged on her bed . . .
“Hi, Mrs. Rappaport. My name is . . .”
“Miles,” said Brenna.
“That’s right.”
“It’s Spector. Not Rappaport.”
The smile dropped away. “Uh . . . Sorry.”
Brenna heard herself say, “What are you doing here?”
Maya cleared her throat. “Mom. I told you. We’re working on an—”
“Art project,” Brenna said. “I know . . .” She closed her eyes for a moment, counted quickly in her mind from twenty to sixty-four, shutting the memory out of her head—
September 8, 1981
,
the cold metal chair on her bare legs and the smell of pine soap on the wood-planked floors of the gym at City Island Elementary. Brenna sitting in morning meeting like a ghost. First day of sixth grade. First school day without Clea. The principal talks about a fundraising drive for underprivileged youth in the South Bronx, and Brenna feels eyes all over her. Cold, staring eyes. Aaron Spiegel right behind her whispering to Katie Johnson. Brenna doesn’t want to hear, but still she strains to listen . . .
“. . . Talk about total sluts! My brother Steve said she was humping the whole football team at George Washington.”
“Gross!”
“Clea-mydia. That’s what Steve calls her. I bet she’s one of those runaway hookers now.”
Brenna bit her lip.
“Maybe she’s doing pornos.”
“Mom?”
“I’m sorry, Miles, but you need to leave. It’s getting awfully late, and Maya’s got homework to do.”
“Mom. This
is
my homework.”
“Maya.” Brenna took a breath. “Please.”
“That’s okay. Bye, Ms. Spector. Bye, Maya.” Miles got off the bed. It wasn’t until Miles passed her that she noticed he actually
was
carrying an artist’s notebook and a set of pencils.
Nice prop
.
After Miles left, Brenna turned to Maya, and for several seconds, they stood staring at each other, saying nothing.
Finally, Maya said, “Should I order pizza?”
“What the hell is going on in your brain?”
Maya stared at her. “Chinese?”
Brenna closed her eyes for a moment. “Can I talk to you?” she said. “Please?”
Maya followed her to the kitchen table. After they both sat down, Brenna said, “I don’t want to see you get hurt.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Yes you do. Just yesterday, Miles broke your heart, and today he’s in your room? Number one, he doesn’t deserve you. Number two, it’s totally unacceptable to have a boy on your bed with the door closed.”
“I wasn’t . . . I mean . . . Mom . . .” She sighed heavily. “What part of ‘We were working on an art project’ don’t you understand?”
“Grandma used to tell Clea, don’t sell yourself short. Only be with boys who deserve you, and who will show you respect. And Clea rolled her eyes at her. Just like you’re rolling your eyes at me right now.”
“I’m not Clea.”
“No, you’re not. Clea waited till she was fifteen before she started acting up.”
“
That isn’t fair!
”
“Life isn’t fair,” said Brenna. “He was all over that girl last night, Maya. Do you really think
that little of yourself
?”
Maya was staring fire at her. Fire and bullets, the arms crossed over the chest, the face bright red, the jaw thrust so far forward, it looked as if it hurt, but that didn’t matter. Feelings didn’t matter. This was life.
“Do you understand me, Maya, because I swear if this happens again, I’ll take the lock off your door.”
Maya pivoted away from the table, stormed down the hall.
“Don’t you walk away from me!” Brenna said, her own mother’s voice coming out of her mouth, Clea’s feet stomping away . . .
Brenna heard more footsteps, and then Maya was back, an artist’s notebook in her hands. Her whole body trembled, and when she spoke, her voice shook, too. “Miles and I are partners in art class. I didn’t pick him as my partner. The teacher assigned it. We were doing homework.” She slammed the notebook on the table in front of Brenna. “I was telling the truth.”
On the notebook was a detailed sketch of a bearded young man with a slight, mysterious smile, light glinting off his eyes.
Miles
. Brenna turned the page. Another detailed rendering. Miles, contemplative, in profile. On the next page was a slightly different angle, the beginnings of a sketch—just the basic lines, but it was the same pose, the same boy, the same background on all three drawings: the headboard of Maya’s bed. Brenna looked up at her.
“I’m not Clea.”
“Oh Maya. I’m sorry . . .” She closed her eyes. “It isn’t you. I’m having trouble believing that anyone is telling the truth today. It’s this client of mine. I just found out he lied to me about something very important.”
Brenna heard the slam of Maya’s bedroom door, and when she opened her eyes, the girl was gone. Brenna looked down at Maya’s sketch—a likeness of the boy she used to love and now hated, of course she hated him. Brenna didn’t need to
teach
her to hate him . . . A perfect likeness. “You’re very talented,” Brenna said to no one.
Then she ordered pizza, walked over to her desk, and turned on the computer. She called up her e-mail—a new one from Trent, one titled “Subaru 411.” She was about to open it when an IM from Jim flashed on her screen:
You okay?
Brenna sighed.
Sure. Why?
You were so abrupt last night.
I was just tired
, Brenna typed. For several seconds, she stared at the words without sending them, the previous night swirling through her mind, start to finish. Brenna deleted the sentence. In its place, she typed:
I lied
.
About what?
Being okay.
Do you want to tell me about it?
Brenna exhaled hard, her eyes starting to blur.
It’s hard. Not being able to move on.
No answer for three, four, five seconds. Then:
From me?
Yes.