What had made it worthwhile was Emma. Her little girl. Her baby.
‘Judy, I need your help.’ Noelle spoke quietly, but it might have been a shout from the way Judy looked up, startled, from the tin of cupcakes she was sliding from the oven.
She tacked on a bright smile nonetheless, placing the cupcakes atop the stove to cool. ‘Sure. Anything.’
‘You know what Robert’s been saying about me. You know none of it is true.’ Noelle spoke firmly, allowing no room for disagreement. ‘If anyone can vouch for me,
you
can.’
Judy had started lining another tin and now stood nervously fidgeting with a paper cupcake holder, her big marmalade cat, Tom-Tom, crouched at her feet as if expecting to be fed. From outside came the sounds of her sons splashing in the pool.
‘What exactly did you have in mind?’ she asked hesitantly.
‘Would you be willing to testify on my behalf?’
Her friend stared down at the fluted pink holder in her hands. She’d managed to iron out most of its pleats and was now nervously shredding it. ‘Oh, Noelle.’ She glanced up, her pale cheeks stamped with color. ‘I’d like to. Really, I would. But … I can’t.’ There was a loud splash outside, and she turned to yell out the open window, ‘Danny, remember what I said: Keep an eye on Junior!’ When she looked back at Noelle, her eyes were shimmering with tears. ‘I’m sorry. Truly, I am.’
Noelle began to tremble with outrage.
Wasn’t I trustworthy enough to leave your boys with? To drive Junior home from school?
Only the slenderest tether of restraint kept her from walking over there and slapping the thin blond woman in the World’s Greatest Chef apron, slapping her hard enough to knock her back against the wall.
Quietly she said, ‘I think you owe me an explanation at least.’
Judy’s expression hardened. ‘Look, I’m sorry for your troubles, but
we
still live here. Robert is our next-door neighbor. He and Blake play golf together at the club. You don’t know what you’re asking.’
Judy sounded angry, but there was something in her eyes.
Suddenly Noelle understood. ‘You’re scared of him, aren’t you?’
Her friend tossed aside the mangled cupcake holder. In the sunlight pouring through the sliding glass door, Noelle noticed for the first time that the hair on her upper lip was bleached. It stood out in a faint orangy fuzz.
‘I think you’d better leave,’ Judy said in a low, shaken voice. ‘The boys will be in any minute, and—and I have to get these cupcakes frosted.’
But it was more than fear of what Robert might do to her. Judy was acting downright furtive.
Full comprehension came swooping down like a bat from a chimney.
‘It was you, wasn’t it?’ Noelle rose to her feet. ‘It wasn’t much of a stretch to guess Jeanine’s part in it, but I couldn’t imagine who else would be rotten enough to say those awful things about me to the judge. Now I know.
You’re
the one who backed up his lies.’
Judy’s eyes cut away. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘Yes, you do. He got to you, didn’t he? Threatened you somehow.’
Her friend abruptly burst into tears. Snatching a paper towel from its spindled holder, she pressed it to her face. ‘I don’t have to listen to this,’ she whined childishly. ‘I could call the police and have you thrown out.’
‘But you won’t.’
Judy raised a tear-streaked face. Her eyes pleaded for mercy. But what mercy had Judy shown
her?
‘Please, Noelle, just leave. Now. Before the boys see you. If Blake knew you were here, he’d—’
‘What’s Blake got to do with it?’
‘Nothing. It’s just—’
‘He and Robert must be thick as thieves, all that time out on the golf course.’ Noelle advanced, both sickened and a tiny bit gratified to see Judy cower.
‘It wasn’t Blake’s fault. He didn’t want anything to do with it at first.’ Judy was sobbing openly now, holding the crumpled towel to her streaming eyes. ‘H-he just got a little overextended, that’s all. Everything was going to be fine, though. He’d talked to the bank about renegotiating his loan. They were going to take it up at their next board meeting. Just a formality, they said. Then—then suddenly everything wasn’t so fine.’
Noelle didn’t have to ask which bank. Robert sat on the board of Mercantile Trust. He’d have seen to it that they put the squeeze on Blake. She stared at the unfrosted cupcakes on the table, pale and spongy. Anger was seeping into her like icy seawater into porous rock. She could feel it swelling her veins, trickling down into her bones.
‘I see,’ she said.
‘You do?’ Judy eyed her with timid hopefulness.
‘I see exactly what I have to do.’
Noelle watched the blood drain from her neighbor’s face.
Good. Let her be afraid. It’s time I stopped playing the timid rabbit and let someone else take that role.
She thought of the line from
Godfather II: Keep your friends close … and your enemies closer.
‘I’m going to phone my lawyer and tell her to expect a call from you.’ She went on in a cool voice of authority. Marching over to the refrigerator, she scribbled Lacey’s number across the top of the to-do list. ‘You’re going to tell her everything you just told me. Then you’re going to give an affidavit refuting any earlier statements you’ve made.’
Judy, her eyes wide with panic, began edging away. Bumping up against a tin of cupcakes perched too close to the edge of the counter, she scarcely seemed to notice when it tipped to the floor. There was a hollow clatter, and cupcakes scattered like billiard balls across the pale orange tiles. One plopped into the cat’s water dish, which Tom-Tom darted over to investigate. Another was squashed under Judy’s heel as she took a jerky step back.
‘I can’t do that!’ Her voice was a hoarse rasp. ‘We’d lose everything! Blake’s business … this house
… everything.’
‘You’ll still have your children.’
Noelle bent to retrieve a cupcake and tossed it to her neighbor, who fumbled before catching it. She was amazed by her utter lack of sympathy.
‘Go ahead, call your lawyer!’ Judy shrieked. ‘You can’t force me to do anything I don’t want to.’
‘Oh, can’t I?’ Noelle remembered something from months ago: driving past Danny’s karate school late one night and seeing Judy’s dark green Suburban parked in the alley alongside it. It had struck her as odd, and now she took a wild stab. ‘Speaking of husbands, maybe
yours
would be interested to know you’re cheating on him.’
Judy went pale. ‘How did you—’ She caught herself, finishing weakly, ‘That’s a vicious lie. Blake would know it wasn’t true. Besides, you have no proof.’
‘Neither did you when you accused me of being drunk.’ Noelle was quick to remind her. ‘That’s the funny thing about rumors, isn’t it? They have a life of their own.’
Judy made her think of a tennis racket that had come unstrung: eyes wild and her neat blond hair in disarray where she’d raked her hands through it. A clump of squashed cupcake clung to her sneaker. ‘Robert was right about you,’ she hissed. ‘You
are
a bitch.’
Noelle gave her a long, level look. For the first time she saw clearly where she’d gone wrong. Not so much in trusting her neighbor as in having done no more than scratch the surface of her own life. She’d had no real friends in Ramsey Terrace. She’d
never
belonged here.
‘You don’t know the half of it.’ Noelle spun on her heel, tossing back over her shoulder, ‘I’ll tell my lawyer to expect your call.’
Noelle didn’t know what made her stop at Hank’s office on the way home. There was a time she’d have been too timid, too worried about bothering a busy doctor in the middle of the afternoon. But the person emerging from her old skin didn’t hesitate to walk in unannounced. And as luck would have it, she caught Hank just as he was leaving. An artist buddy in Schenectady had invited him to a gallery opening. When he asked if she’d like to come along, she didn’t hesitate to accept.
Minutes later they were winding their way up the ridge in his Toyota. For a long while Noelle didn’t speak. She merely stared out the window at the green hills rolling away on her right, and scrub trees blending into tall pines as they climbed in altitude. Wisely Hank didn’t attempt to engage her in conversation. He waited until she was ready.
‘I met with the court-appointed psychologist today,’ she said at last.
‘How did it go?’
‘Awful.’ She told him about Linda Hawkins’s visit, shuddering anew as she recounted the scene with Nana.
Hank absorbed it all with his usual unflappability. ‘Under the circumstances, I’d say you’re holding up extremely well.’ He looked concerned nonetheless.
‘Believe it or not, I’m beginning to feel as if I can cope.’ She didn’t mention her showdown with Judy. He’d been told just enough to be warned:
any further contact with this woman could be hazardous to your health.
‘That doesn’t surprise me.’
You hardly know me,
she wanted to protest. But that was the weird thing: she felt as if she’d known Hank Reynolds her whole life. ‘Tell me about
your
family,’ she said, suddenly eager to talk about anything
but
her own. ‘All I know is that you grew up in Kansas.’
He gave a wry chuckle, shaking his head with what appeared to be a mixture of fondness and regret. ‘As a kid I used to think the line “purple mountain’s majesty” was something made up, like the Emerald City. In Baxter Springs, when you looked up, it was at grain silos.’ They’d climbed high enough now to see the valley spread out below, with its cluster of toy buildings and shimmering lake nestled between two hills. ‘My folks still own the farm, but they lease it out now that Dad’s retired. Last time I visited, they were talking about selling it.’
‘Do you visit often?’
‘Not as often as I should,’ he said. ‘I get out there every Christmas, though.’ Casually he reached over and took her hand. In the late-afternoon sunlight that washed over them in dappled waves, he appeared as wholesome and straightforward as Kansas itself. ‘I’d love to take you there sometime. You’d like it. When it snows, it’s like a Currier and Ives Christmas card. You can almost hear the sleigh bells ringing.’
Noelle was acutely conscious of his warm fingers wrapped about hers. ‘I’d like that,’ she told him.
Someday … but not now.
She thought of Christmases when she was growing up, of the artificial tree Nana had erected every year with its sorry little pile of presents underneath. Her mother had always done her best to make it cheerful, but even she couldn’t make up for Noelle being an only child, or Nana being too old (or so she claimed) to bake fruitcakes no one would eat and pick up after a tree that shed. ‘Are you anything like your parents?’
‘I take after my dad, I guess,’ Hank said after a moment’s consideration. ‘He’s stubborn like me. Knows how to dig his heels in.’ He flashed her his naughty choirboy’s grin. ‘Except for one thing. Dad never really understood about my wanting to become a doctor.’
‘I thought it was the dream of every parent.’
He shrugged. ‘I think he saw it more as my rejecting his whole way of life.’ His hands tightened about the steering wheel. ‘For my twelfth birthday, my folks gave me a rifle, a twenty-two caliber Browning. I spent the whole summer learning to shoot tin cans off the fence.’
‘Were you a lousy shot?’
‘No, that was the trouble,’ he said. ‘I was actually pretty good at it. Dad must have thought so, too. He took me hunting come deer season. The day I shot my first and only buck, I hung the Browning up for good. I still have it, as a matter of fact. I keep it around as a reminder that some things are best left alone.’ He slowed as they passed a scenic overlook, where a bronze plaque had been erected in honor of the Revolutionary War hero General Louis W. Church, victorious over the British troops in the Battle of Sandy Creek. Wistfully he added, ‘I figured if I ever had kids of my own, I’d teach them a different way.’
‘I can see now why you were so unhappy about your wife’s not wanting kids.’ Suddenly curious, she asked, ‘Was that why you got divorced?’
‘Mainly, but there were other reasons.’ He hesitated before confiding, ‘I found out she was having an affair. With one of her grad students.’
‘Was she in love with him?’
‘The answer is yes.’ He shot her a glance. ‘And it wasn’t a he; it was a she.’
‘Oh, Hank.’ Noelle was momentarily speechless. All she could think of to say was, ‘It must have been quite a shock.’
Hank surprised her with a deep laugh. ‘It
was
a shock—to my male pride. It was quite a while before I could summon the courage to date again. I was sure it was something lacking in me, personally
…
not just the fact that I was a man.’
‘From what I’ve heard, it doesn’t work that way.’
‘Oh, I knew. Intellectually, that is. But it’s hard to be intellectual when your wife is sleeping with another woman.’
‘Would it have been any easier if her lover had been a man?’
‘I suppose not,’ he said. ‘The truth is, I hardly ever think about Kathryn anymore. If anything, I wish her well. She got what she wanted. We both did in a sense.’
They rounded a blind curve and a sweeping view of the valley beyond unfurled before her, one that was all too familiar yet somehow drastically altered. Her heart lurched. ‘Pull over!’ she cried.
Hank slowed at once and veered onto the graveled shoulder. Scrambling out of the car, Noelle gazed bleakly at the ravaged woodland below. The site for Cranberry Mall, stripped of its trees and leveled, looked even vaster than when she’d last seen it. A great raw gash amid the surrounding greenery. A year from now, if all went according to schedule, a minimetropolis would stand where deer had once roamed. High-end chain stores, food courts, sports and theater complexes. She recalled Robert’s arguing with her father that the mall would bring sorely needed jobs and tax revenue. To which Dad had responded that the increased traffic, inflated property values, and unwelcome tourists would more than make up for it.
She scarcely noticed when Hank slipped up alongside her and tucked an arm about her shoulders. ‘Mea culpa,’ he apologized. ‘I guess I wasn’t thinking when I chose this route.’