Crooked Little Lies (33 page)

He would hate it
, she thought.

She was sweeping her front stoop on the next afternoon when she heard a car, an SUV, stop in the driveway. She looked up, and her eyes connected with Lauren’s through the windshield, and the moment spun out as fragile and delicate as handblown glass. Annie couldn’t move. She watched Lauren get out of the car, and when she leaned through the driver’s-side window toward the passenger seat, she saw the other woman. Their voices carried on the breeze.

“I can’t,”
said the woman.

“You wanted to come”
and
“It’s the right thing,”
said Lauren.

And now Annie realized the passenger was Tara Tate, Lauren’s sister.

Annie didn’t know what to do. She turned to go into the house; then clutching the broomstick, she thought,
no
, she wouldn’t run from them like a scared rabbit.

Tara got out of the car and met Lauren in front of it. Lauren kept her glance on Annie as she approached, but Tara watched her feet, shuffling along as if she were old.

“Can we talk, please?” Lauren asked, pausing at the foot of the steps.

“How did you know where I live?”

“Your address is in the book.”

Annie looked off, down the street.

“Tara asked if I’d bring her to you,” Lauren said.

“Why isn’t she in jail like your husband?” Annie asked as if she didn’t know. As Cosgrove had explained, being complicit in a crime wasn’t necessarily illegal.

Tara looked up now. “I wish I were.”

Annie thought she would feel the same if their positions were reversed.

“I’m so sorry,” Tara said, “and I know it means nothing, changes nothing, but I wanted to tell you anyway.” Her words dissolved, and for a long misshapen moment, there was only the sound of her breath, ragged with the attempt to quiet her tears.

They rimmed her chin, fell onto her crossed arms. Tara seemed unaware of them.

Annie said, “Detective Cosgrove told me you tried to save him.”

Tara swiped at her eyes as if they made her mad. “I wish I’d done more.”

“What? Like reported it?” Annie asked sharply.

“Yes,” Tara answered.

A car passed in the street. There was a honk; the driver waved. Annie didn’t wave back. She looked at Tara. “Did Bo—did he say anything?” She hated how her voice broke. How it sounded as if she were pleading. She pressed her fist to her mouth.

A sound burst from Tara’s chest, liquid and hurt.

“Tell me,” Annie said.

“He wanted help, that was all. He wanted someone to help him.” Tara half turned as if to leave, staggering slightly.

Lauren steadied her.

Annie wiped furiously at her eyes.

“I know it doesn’t matter,” Tara said, “that it’s no comfort to you or Bo’s dad, but I will never forgive myself.”

Annie had nothing, no words.

“If there were a way to undo it—” Tara’s voice slipped.

Lauren pulled her closer.

Moments of silence ticked past, hot and bright as sparks.

Annie looked at Lauren. “I heard about your husband.”

Lauren’s mouth flattened, and there was a look of forbidding in her eyes. The subject was off-limits.
Taboo.
The word came into Annie’s mind.

She set the broom against the porch post, meaning to go into the house, to close the door in their faces, but instead, she turned back. “How could you?” Walking to the edge of the stoop, she addressed Tara. “If you’d shot an animal, some varmint, you’d have had the decency to bury it.” Annie clamped her jaw.

“Greg is back. He got here late last night. He’s been charged. You heard, didn’t you?”

Lauren offered this as a consolation prize. What did she want? Thanks? A reward?

“He and Jeff will be punished,” Lauren said. “At least Detective Cosgrove told me they wouldn’t just get off.”

Another consolation prize, Annie thought. She wondered if Lauren wanted her husband to pay for what he’d done. What must her and her children’s lives be like now, with their dad jailed and facing a whole laundry list of federal charges, including bank fraud? The media had dubbed him Bernie Madoff Junior, as if it were funny. But some folks around town, who were as mad as JT, called him a lot worse. A goddamn liar, a fucking thief. They said he was a coward. He’d been respected as a businessman, a neighbor, and a father, and deeply admired for the care he’d taken of Lauren throughout her long ordeal. Now they felt betrayed.

Annie looked at Lauren. “Nothing will bring Bo back,” she said.

“No,” Lauren answered.

“I always felt as if something terrible would happen to him.” Annie felt compelled to say it.

“Your mind goes to the most horrible places,” Lauren said. “It isn’t your fault,” she added.

It was what Annie’s mother would have said, and it touched the painful crux of it, the bruised heart of Annie’s grief. She looked away.

“You did everything you could for Bo.” Lauren spoke so softly, as if she and Annie were alone, and there was nothing between them but the connection of the heart they had shared when they met. “It was his choice to live the way he did, to put himself at risk. He wanted to be independent. He wanted to be free, and you gave him that. You gave him his dignity.”

Annie didn’t answer; she couldn’t. It was everything she needed to hear and couldn’t yet believe, from the most unlikely source. “I’m going inside now,” she said.

“Thank you,” Tara said, and Annie nodded.

Down that same long tunnel in her mind, where there was sadness for the others who had been impacted by this senseless tragedy: Lauren’s children, poor Madeleine and Charlotte Meany, other innocent and mostly innocent bystanders, there was also hope. Annie hoped things would work out for Tara; she hoped Lauren and her children would be all right, and going into the house, she thought how strange and surprising it was that she could feel as bad for them as she did for herself.

30

A
nnie was kinder to me than I deserve,” Tara said.

They had stopped by her house after leaving Annie’s so Tara could pack some clothes, her toothbrush, the basics of what she’d need to stay with Lauren a few days. Neither of them wanted to be by themselves. Lauren wasn’t sure which one of them needed the other one more. She put the socks and underwear Tara brought her into Tara’s quilted tote. “It was brave what you did, facing Annie. I’m proud of you for it.”

“If I were her, I think I would want to rip out my guts.”

Lauren zipped the tote closed. “Come on, girlfriend. Let’s go home.”

Drew was at the island, eating a bowl of Honey Nut Cheerios. He greeted his aunt, but all he said to Lauren was, “When are you going to the store? There’s nothing to eat.”

“Soon,” Lauren said.

Tara hefted her tote and went upstairs. Within moments, there was the sound of water rushing through the pipes.

Lauren asked Drew where Kenzie was, and he muttered something rude that included the words
tutu
,
fruitcake
, and
bedroom
. She stowed the milk and cereal, ridiculously pleased by his surly attitude for how it reminded her of ordinary times.

It was the week between Christmas and New Year’s when the four of them held a family meeting, Tara included.

“We have to decide what to do about stuff,” Lauren said.

“What stuff?” Drew asked.

“School. You can’t keep doing the classwork at home forever. We have to decide if you want to start the next semester here. I know it hasn’t been easy, and with Dad’s trial coming up, there may be more publicity.”

Lauren had been twice to the county jail to see Jeff. The first time she’d taken Kenzie at her request. It was awful. Lauren had expected Jeff to be angry. Instead, he’d been apathetic, disheveled, unshaven. His hair was sleep-matted on one side. There were deep creases on his face. Kenzie kept giving Lauren worried looks.
What is the matter with him?
She had cried when they left, and Lauren had lain awake that night, wondering which one was the real Jeff. Was it the strong, vital, confident man she remembered marrying, or had the weak, broken, defeated man been lurking in his shadow all these years? The next visiting day, Lauren went alone and told Jeff she was filing for divorce.

“I don’t blame you,” he said. “For any of it,” he added.

He had asked her not to come back again, not to let the children come. “It’s too hard, seeing you. I can’t take it.”

I . . . I . . . I . . .
She had hardened her jaw to keep from saying it.

She’d been driving home when the quote from Thoreau that Bo had written in his notebook surfaced in her mind, the one that read:
The path of least resistance leads to crooked rivers and crooked men.
And crooked lies, she had thought. Thoreau might have added lies to the list. She had thought of all that Jeff’s deceit had taken from her and the children, but by far the worst of the consequences would be his to bear. He was so twisted up inside, who knew if he would ever find his way back, if he would ever have any decent sort of life again. But as her father used to say, you make your bed one decision at a time.

“So, what do you think?” Lauren divided her glance now between Kenzie and Drew.

“We could live at the farm,” Tara said. “People there might not know so much about what happened.”

“Or we can stay here,” Lauren said. She only thought that was possible because Suzanne and Pat had asked her to consider it.

They had come the day before Thanksgiving, loaded down with a boxed turkey dinner that included all the trimmings. Lauren had been touched to tears. She and Tara made coffee; the four of them sat down. At first, the conversation had been uncomfortable, and the worst moment came when Suzanne and Pat confessed that Jeff had approached them and their husbands about the bogus real estate investment, too. They had declined because they knew it was a scam. Lauren squirmed inside. It was everything she could do to remain seated. Finally, she apologized.

But neither of the women wanted her offering of remorse. She wasn’t responsible, they said.

And it was somehow in all of that awkwardness and humiliation that a connection, however tenuous, was reestablished, and they’d been building on it ever since. Suzanne, especially, kept in touch, calling and dropping by, so consistently that Lauren finally began to believe her when she said their friendship meant the world to her. One day she made Lauren come out and walk the jogging trail through the neighborhood, something they’d done regularly in Lauren’s previous life. She had reminded Lauren then of her divorce seven years ago, how horrible it was, how she had dragged around.

“For months,” she said. “Do you remember? You didn’t let me go. You stayed right in that cesspool with me, slogging through it. Now it’s my turn. Let me help you.” She took Lauren’s hand and squeezed it. Lauren squeezed back, and something warm and light rose inside her. It had been a long time since she’d felt it, but she thought it might be hope.

Now, addressing Kenzie and Drew, she said, “Aunt Tara and I have talked about opening an antiques shop.”

“I thought you had to sell everything,” Drew said.

“Maybe,” Lauren said. It depended on what her lawyer advised, whether filing bankruptcy was the logical thing to do. Regardless, she was taking every step she could to protect her assets. “But if we sell the farm instead of moving there, and if Aunt Tara sells her house, we think we’d have enough money to keep our house here and to buy inventory for the shop. It would be like your grandpa Freddie’s shop.”

“We thought of a name,” Tara said. “Freddie Tate’s, Too.”

Kenzie said she liked it, and after a beat, she added, “I don’t want to miss ballet,” and tears came into her eyes.

“I don’t want people thinking I’m a wuss like Jeff,” Drew said.

Jeff?
Lauren exchanged a look with Tara, who shrugged.

“Are you saying you want to stay here?” Lauren asked him.

“Me, too,” Kenzie said. “Drew and I talked about it. If we move, everyone’ll think it’s because we’re scammers, too, and we’re not.
We
didn’t do anything, and we’re not responsible for what Jeff did.”

Lauren’s throat tightened. She felt Tara’s hand rest lightly on her knee, as if to reassure her, to say
See, I told you they’d be all right.
It was a start, Lauren thought, a beginning they could work with.

“You’re sure?” Lauren looked from Kenzie back to Drew, and when they nodded, she said, “Okay, then. Looks like we’re staying.”

“Aunt Tara, too?” Kenzie asked.

“If it’s okay with you guys,” Tara said.

“We’ll have two moms,” Kenzie said and grinned as if the notion made her happy.

“Some family,” Drew said.

“Girls rule,” Kenzie said.

“We’ll see about that, dork.” Drew grabbed Kenzie’s arm, and when she twisted away, he chased after her. The sound of their footsteps pounded up the stairs. Something fell, a door slammed. There were two shouts of laughter, precious,
like heaven
, Lauren thought.

“I should send them outside,” she said, but she didn’t move.