Crooked Little Lies (6 page)

Jeff started to say something, but she asked him to hold on. “I need to lock up.” She turned the key, gave the knob a jiggle.

“Your sister’s going to do what she wants,” he said when Lauren came back on the line, and she knew more from his tone than his words that he was through talking about Tara.

Lauren might have been annoyed at him. She might have ignored his obvious dismissal and pushed the subject. But more discussion meant taking the chance that she’d blurt out something she shouldn’t. Jeff wasn’t long on patience when it came to Tara’s issues anyway. He thought Lauren tended to put Tara and her needs ahead of his and their children’s—even her own needs. It was a perennial complaint, a bone of contention they fought over on occasion. But Jeff hadn’t been in the picture when her mother and father were killed in a car accident in France, where they went annually to buy inventory for the shop. Lauren had come of age by then, but Tara had still been a minor and at risk of being farmed out, a ward of the state.

It still scared Lauren all these years later to think how close she’d come to losing Tara. Even though she’d dropped out of TCU, where she was pursuing a degree in fine arts, and returned home, demonstrating her commitment, her maturity, and her willingness to shoulder the responsibility of caring for her little sister, it hadn’t been enough to satisfy Child Protective Services. Not until Margaret stepped in as Lauren’s advocate. She talked to a family-court judge, one whose wife she’d saved, and she used that on the judge, twisting his legal arm without apology. After that, once the papers were signed and Lauren was given guardianship, with Margaret’s continued moral support and advice, Lauren had finished raising Tara the best she could.

And here was something else that Lauren knew that Jeff didn’t seem aware of: when it came to parenting, guilt was part of the package. And whether Jeff agreed or approved of it, Lauren felt she was as much Tara’s mother as she was her sister. She felt responsible for Tara’s shortcomings; she felt it was her fault in some way that Tara couldn’t form a lasting relationship and couldn’t handle her money. And the thing was, she didn’t know how to stop, how to unfeel those feelings that only seemed to grow thicker, becoming even more stubbornly entrenched as time went on.

She started the Navigator.

Jeff asked what her plans were, and she said she was going home, adding that she was tired.

“Why are you there anyway, wearing yourself out?” he asked. “You didn’t need to go in at all this weekend. I told you I had it covered.”

Lauren felt a jolt of surprise. He sounded almost angry, the way he had in the early days following her release from the hospital when he’d followed her around, hovering and clucking like a mother hen. A psychologist she’d seen while in rehab had said it was normal behavior for a primary caregiver, especially one like Jeff, who took his responsibility so seriously. That mood had passed, though, once Lauren was stable again and more her old self. “I’m fine, Jeff. Everyone gets tired.”

The noise he made suggested she wasn’t everyone. “Go home, okay?” he said. “Get some rest.”

She said she would and then drove to Cornerstone Bank instead. It was after-hours, and the suburban business center where the bank was located was nearly deserted when she pulled into a space in front of the building. She sat a moment, studying the image of her SUV in the plate-glass window, trying to picture the office inside and the face of the bank official she and Jeff would have spoken to about opening an account. Nothing came.

But maybe that was because she’d never been inside. The bank could have sent the message by mistake. Or someone using their name could have opened the account. Lauren straightened, mind leaping. She should have realized—considered the possibility of identity theft. Didn’t it happen all the time?

She drove home, only subliminally aware of the sky and landscape as they receded into dusk and of the oncoming headlights that flashed by her like small moons. Leaving the SUV in the driveway, she walked quickly through the house, flipping on lights as she went, to dispel the evening gloom. In the study, she sat at the desk, waking the computer, and after she found the e-mail from Cornerstone Bank, she clicked on the link it offered, where she was prompted for a password.
Carter2000
. She typed in Drew’s middle name and birth year, their standard password, and received an error message. Her breath hitched. She tried Kenzie’s middle name and birth year and then her own, with the same result. None of the alternatives worked. So—

Sitting back, she thought for a moment, then found her way to the bank’s main web page. She would call them, get to the bottom of this. By now, her pulse was tapping so quickly and loudly, she could hear it in her ears. Thoughts collided in her head: that it was unnerving to discover someone had stolen your name, that Jeff would be so pissed. There was a mounting excitement, too, as she dialed customer service, that she could handle this crisis, that she
was
handling it. Her call went through, the line rang, and that’s when she saw it—the folder on the desk, with a page poking out, one that had the Cornerstone Bank logo on it. She’d set her purse down on the file, she realized, ending the call. Looking through the thin sheaf of documents, copies of the originals, she saw that she and Jeff had, indeed, opened an account there. In mid-September, around six weeks ago, according to the date. There was her signature.

Lauren returned the papers to the folder and nudged it to the far corner. Tears threatened, and she pressed her fingertips to her eyes, stopping them. She wouldn’t cry, wouldn’t beat herself up.
It’ll get better. You’re on the right track. Recovery is never a straight line.
Everything her physical therapist and half a dozen nurses had said to encourage her ran through her mind.
Relax
, they’d said . . .

Who knew? Maybe now that she’d seen the paperwork, if she could relax, the memory would come back to her, hopefully by the time Jeff mentioned it. If it didn’t, she could fake that she knew. She’d done that before, feeling terrible for it. Feeling more scared and separated from her family than ever. But when she told them how her brain blinked off and on, or when she couldn’t manage to hide it, Jeff, the kids, and Tara—they all looked at her with such pity. They looked at her as if she were a ticking bomb and they were just waiting to see when and how horribly she would go off.

It was dark and she was exhausted by the time she ate the leftover mac and cheese she found in the refrigerator, heating it up in the microwave, standing at the sink. She took a hot shower, hoping she would sleep, craving it. But it didn’t happen, and toward midnight, she got up, and going into the bathroom, she flung open the medicine cabinet, pattered her fingers along the shelves, scattering the collection of bottles, a thermometer, the Band-Aids, hunting for it, the small plastic sleeve that contained the six Oxy tablets. Of course they were gone; she knew it. What an idiot she’d been to toss them. Jesus Christ, what had she been thinking?

She searched the bookshelves in the study, took things out of the cabinets in the kitchen; she hunted through drawers, but it was useless. If she’d hidden more Oxy, she didn’t know where it could be. Back in the bedroom, she sat on the bed’s edge, head in her hands, trying to sort out what was worse: imagining you’d done a thing you hadn’t, or doing a thing and not remembering? After a while, she lay back, crooked her elbow over her eyes, and surprisingly, she slept.

The next morning, on waking, she was glad for whatever it was, act of bravery or stupidity, that had prompted her to flush the dope she’d stumbled across. She felt pleased with herself for once, as if she’d won a contest or gotten something over on herself. She ate the toast she made, tossing the crumbs outside to the birds when she finished, then went into the study to look again at the bank forms.

Her mood wavered, but no. She wouldn’t sit here and brood. Instead, she drove out to Fishers’, where she bought Swiss chard, sweet potatoes, Brussels sprouts, pears and apples, and the first of the fall tomatoes plus three pumpkins to carve into jack-o’-lanterns, and on the way home, she told herself she was fine. All she had to do was to hold on to this, her sense of routine, of what was usual and ordinary. All she had to do was stop scaring herself.

Drew was home first that Sunday, and when he lifted the lid of a red-handled foam cooler to show her the body of the five-pound smallmouth bass he’d caught early that morning, she looked into its fishy eye, and she was glad for it, for the project she and Drew would undertake together in getting it to the dinner table. She didn’t even object to the fishy, river smell rising off the slick iridescence of its scales. She got out the big cutting board and found the boning knife. Drew filled a bowl with ice water to drop the fillets into once they were cut, and they took everything outside.

“I tried to call Dad, to tell him.” About catching the fish, Drew meant. He set down the bowl of water and knelt beside Lauren on the deck. “He’ll freak when he hears.” He took a bite out of the apple he’d pulled out of the sack Lauren had left on the kitchen counter. “I even tried Aunt Tara, but she didn’t pick up, either.”

“Huh.” Lauren had tried calling Tara, too, and she’d texted her without success. They hadn’t been in touch since early Saturday. Her silence was vaguely disquieting. Lauren had sent her a message to that effect early this morning:
Hey, just give me a word so I know ur ok. Jeff said u might be having 2nd thoughts???
She made a deep cut behind the fish’s gills. “Do you see how I’m doing this?” she asked Drew.

“Let me do it.” He set down his apple core.

She looked at him. “Can you?”

He took the knife. “Sure. Who do you think cleans the fish me and Dad catch?” He flashed a look at her, and then he said, “I guess you weren’t around when I learned. You were still out of it probably.”

She looked away. Did Drew mean out-of-it hurt or out-of-it doped? But what difference did it make? The thing was, for whatever period of time it had taken her to come back to some semblance of normalcy, the better part of a year at least, she’d been absent—first physically, then mentally, and in that time, her children and her husband had done things together, shared experiences she’d never know about. She listened to their talk about them, like now, and she felt hurt, ashamed, and resentful. Some twisted combination. It was wrong. She knew they’d gone through hell, too. Drew had told her that back in September, in a hard, unforgiving voice. Six weeks into the school year, when his grades kept him from playing football for the high school JV team, to his and Jeff’s everlasting embarrassment, he’d blamed Lauren for it. It was her fault, the chaos she’d caused in their lives. How was he supposed to concentrate with all the drama going on?

He made a slit along the fish’s dorsal fin, then slid his fingers into the opening, feeling for the backbone. Intent on his work, he said, “Man, I wish Dad could have been there when I hooked this baby.”

She shifted her glance, afraid if she continued to watch, she’d caution him about cutting himself. “He’ll be sorry when he hears.”

“We didn’t catch shit—sorry, I mean squat—the last time we went out.” His sideways grin was quick, abashed.

And so endearing Lauren wanted to ruffle his hair, cup his cheek, but the moment felt so fragile to her—that sudden grin, his apparent ease rocketed her back to the days before the accident when they’d been close. She couldn’t bear it if he flinched.

A half hour later, Drew was upstairs, hopefully finishing his homework, when Kenzie came home. Hearing the car, Lauren left the laundry room, where she was folding clothes, and went out onto the porch. The girls climbed out of the backseat, and after they hugged, Amanda got into the front beside her mom. Suzanne waved and Lauren did, too, and their eyes connected, but the moment was brief and wary. Lauren ought to be used to it by now, the loss of Suzanne’s friendship, but every time their paths crossed, it cut her heart open. They’d shared so much, helped each other out so often; they’d laughed and cried and celebrated together . . . but what good was it, grieving for what was so clearly lost?

“Hi, Mommy.” Kenzie came up the steps, smiling. Her smile was beautiful, or it would be when the braces came off. Jeff was only half kidding every time he said by the time that happened, they’d have sunk enough money into Kenzie’s mouth that they should be able to slap four wheels on it and take it for a drive. The orthodontia was just one more huge expense on the list that was growing as quickly as the kids.

Lauren took Kenzie’s pink tote from her and slung it over her shoulder, smoothing her daughter’s silky dark hair back from her face. “Did you have fun? How was the ballet?”

“Sublime.” Kenzie’s second love, after ballet, was language. In school, vocabulary was a favorite subject. “I want to dance like that.”

“It’s hard work.” Lauren led the way into the house.

“I know. I have to want it more than anything else.” Kenzie repeated what Lauren had said so many times.

She wasn’t sure she liked the idea of Kenzie loving something that much. Passion was never easy; it wasn’t a joy every moment. She’d thought when Kenzie asked for ballet lessons in first grade, it was only because Amanda wanted them, but when Amanda quit to join the pep squad, Kenzie stayed with it. She attended classes three times a week now, and they had recently bought her first pair of toe shoes. Kenzie was over the moon.