Live to Tell Page 23

  “She said you wouldn’t get her a coat.”

  Oh please. Daddy’s girl strikes again.

  “It’s August,” Marin points out. “I really think it could have waited another day.”

  “Caroline was worried it would be gone. They only had one in her size.”

  She sighs. “Look, I wasn’t feeling well in that store. I had to get out of there. I told her we’ll go back, and—”

  “Shh, it’s okay.” He pats her shoulder, then steps away from the bed, loosening his tie. “No big deal. I told Caroline to call the store and arrange to have the coat sent over.”

  “Yeah? I bet I know who’s going to bring it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She has a crush on one of the guys who works there.”

  Garvey’s eyes narrow. “She has a crush on a store clerk?”

  “Turns out he’s her friend’s brother, but at first I thought…”

  “What?” he prompts when she trails off.

  “You know what I thought. I saw him, and he had dark hair and dark eyes and he was in his early twenties, and—”

  “Stop.” Garvey strides over to the bedroom door, closes it, and turns to face her. “Are you going to spend the rest of our lives doing this to yourself?”

  Doing this to me, is what he should have said, because that’s really what he’s worried about. Garvey has always taken pride in his ability to compartmentalize his life.

  “I can’t help it,” she tells him now. “I can’t just pretend he never existed. How can you?”

  “Keep your voice down, please.” He casts a glance at the closed door. “Do you really think I’m that coldhearted, Marin? Of course he existed. He still exists, somewhere.”

  “You don’t know that. You couldn’t find him fourteen years ago, when you tried.”

  “That doesn’t mean he isn’t out there. And wherever he is, I’m sure he’s thankful to us.”

  “For abandoning him?”

  “We did what we had to do—for his sake.”

  “No, Garvey. For our own sakes,” she hisses, and turns away.

  For your sake, really.

  She would never have given up her child, if not for Garvey. He talked her into it in the first place—and he made her follow through in the end, when she wavered, holding the baby in her arms.

  Garvey never did. Never even touched him.

  Maybe that’s why Marin’s the one who can’t forget.

  And maybe that’s why Garvey was able to put the whole trauma behind him years ago, as effectively as if he had packed their son into a trunk and buried him somewhere.

  “Your daughter is very bright, Mrs. Walsh, and very imaginative. I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you that.”

  “It’s always nice to hear,” Lauren tells Dr. Prentiss. She keeps her voice down, conscious of the open door to the waiting room, where Sadie’s now settled in a chair with Highlights and a grape lollipop.

  “Sadie is experiencing some anxiety, as you and Dr. Rogel have discussed.” Dr. Prentiss indicates the manila file folder on the desk between them.

  “Is it directly related to the divorce?”

  “It’s hard to say, but possibly. She seems reluctant to speak about her father at all.”

  Should she tell Dr. Prentiss about Nick?

  What if Dr. Prentiss decides she, Lauren, is making mountains out of molehills—or worse? What if she blames Sadie’s problems on her?

  But wouldn’t it be negligent for Lauren not to mention that Nick is—or at least was—more or less missing in action?

  She forces herself to look up at the woman, who seems to be waiting for her to elaborate.

  “My ex-husband hasn’t been around much lately, and…” Tread carefully, Lauren. “Um, did Sadie mention what happened this past weekend?”

  Dr. Prentiss skirts the question with one of her own. “Why don’t you tell me?”

  “Nick had been on vacation for a week and he was supposed to be back Sunday to have a visitation with the kids. He never showed up. We didn’t hear from him until yesterday, and he wasn’t very…apologetic, I guess, is the word. In fact, he didn’t bother to call—and that’s out of character, so… I mean, he just sent a text message.”

  Dr. Prentiss nods.

  “So Sadie didn’t say anything about that?” Lauren asks.

  “Not specifically, no.”

  “What did she say, then?”

  The doctor glances at her notes as though she doesn’t remember, though she just saw Sadie a few minutes ago. “She’s shown an excessive attachment to certain belongings.”

  “Right. Dr. Rogel said that’s common in…” Just go ahead and say it. “…in children of divorce.”

  “Your daughter feels quite vulnerable and threatened at home.”

  “Threatened?”

  “She’s convinced that you or her sister are going to come into her room and take away her toys.”

  “What? I mean, we have been getting rid of old things—clutter—for a tag sale, but nothing of Sadie’s. I wouldn’t take away anything of hers. Especially lately, with the way she’s been acting. I didn’t even let the cleaning ladies go into her room today. Didn’t she tell you that?” Aware that she sounds defensive, Lauren can’t seem to help herself.

  “Sadie told me that someone was there, though, while she was gone. You might want to talk to your cleaning ladies again,” Dr. Prentiss suggests, “to make sure they understand how important it is not to violate your daughter’s private space. A few dust bunnies won’t kill her.”

  “I know that,” Lauren murmurs, deciding she doesn’t like Dr. Prentiss, who seems to have her pegged as one of those fussy women who need everything perfect—which couldn’t be farther from the truth.

  “Really,” she says, “the cleaning ladies weren’t in Sadie’s room while we were gone today. Or if they were, Sadie would have no way of knowing about it. We haven’t even been home since this morning.”

  “No, it happened yesterday. Not today.”

  “The cleaning ladies weren’t there yesterday. They were there today. They come on Tuesdays.”

  “Someone was there yesterday, Mommy.”

  Lauren turns to see Sadie in the doorway.

  “Oh, sweetie…” She gets up and hurries toward her daughter.

  “Someone was there! In my room! I set a trap so I would know.”

  A trap. Lauren remembers how Sadie examined an invisible something—a trap?—in the doorway of her room before she was willing to leave this morning.

  She has an active imagination, but still…

  “Maybe it was your brother or sister or even me,” she tells Sadie, her thoughts whirling. “I go into your room all the time, to put away your laundry and open your blinds and—”

  “It wasn’t you or Lucy or Ryan! It was when we were all out. I set the trap before we left, and I checked it when we got back. Someone was there.”

  What if she’s right? What if someone really was there?

  Come on…this is crazy. You’re overreacting.

  “What kind of trap was it, Sadie?”

  “It was an invisible piece of fishing wire. I taped it across the doorway. And when I looked, it was all unstuck. That means someone walked through the door.”

  Lauren and Dr. Prentiss exchange a glance.

  She wants me to say something, Lauren realizes. But what am I supposed to say? That Sadie’s on to something? That someone really might have been there?

  Absolutely not, she decides, remembering Lucy’s frightened reaction back at the pool, when Lauren admitted her own vulnerability.

  “That’s a really smart idea for a trap,” Lauren says gently, “but I think maybe the tape fell off the door, because really, no one was in the house while we were gone yesterday.”

  Obviously, that was the wrong thing to say, because her daughter immediately opens her mouth—to protest, cry, scream.

  Dr. Prentiss cuts her off. “How about if when you get home, you an
d your mom can check everything out and make sure it’s all just the way you left it?”

  It will be, Lauren tells herself. Of course it will.

  But it’s all so creepily coincidental. What if something strange is going on at home…all around them? Something to do with Nick?

  “I have an idea, Sadie,” Dr. Prentiss goes on. “Maybe you can get your crayons and color some signs to put on your door and Mom will help you hang them up.”

  “What kind of signs?”

  “You know—‘Sadie’s Room. Keep Out.’”

  “I don’t know how to spell that.”

  “I bet your mom will help you, right, Mom?”

  “Sure, Sadie.” Lauren pushes stray strands of hair back from her daughter’s worried face. “We’ll go home and make some signs, okay?”

  Sadie shrugs grudgingly. “You don’t believe me.”

  Lauren glances at Dr. Prentiss, who nods slightly.

  “I believe you, Sadie,” Lauren tells her daughter.

  “You do?”

  She nods. Who knows? Maybe I do.

  Elsa’s cell phone rings just as she passes the Rhode Island border into Connecticut, creeping along at about ten miles an hour.

  That’s got to be Brett, looking for her. Thanks to rush hour traffic, the reverse trip is taking twice as long as this morning’s drive to Boston.

  She grabs the phone from the passenger’s seat and glances at the caller ID window. Sure enough, her husband is at home. He’s wondering why she’s not.

  Should she answer the call?

  No. She’ll be there soon enough. Let him worry for another fifteen minutes. That’ll give her a chance to figure out what she’s going to tell him.

  It isn’t as if she hasn’t had a few hours to come up with something. But she’s spent the time going over every detail of the meeting with Mike, analyzing everything they said, trying to figure out whether…

  It seems crazy, but…

  Was he hiding something when he told her there’s been nothing new?

  It doesn’t make sense that he’d lie, yet something didn’t ring true.

  Maybe it wasn’t about Jeremy—not directly, anyway. What if he has, as Elsa requested, broken past the barrier of sealed records? What if he’s picked up the trail of the shadowy woman who wanted to put the past behind her?

  By the time she reaches her driveway, Elsa is no closer to knowing what to tell Brett. She takes her time getting out of the car, and pauses in front of the flowerbeds to check on the impatiens. Today, the plants are standing straight and tall, with bright red blossoms.

  Again, Elsa wonders if that’s a sign.

  But how many times over the past fourteen years has she looked for signs—and found them?

  A cardinal sitting in a branch outside the window for days on end, a phone ringing with no one on the other end of the line, a chance meeting with someone also named Jeremy…

  With fleeting hope, she’s interpreted all those incidents, and countless others, to mean her son is still alive.

  This is no different, she tells herself. As she told Mike, she needs closure. And that’s all she can expect.

  Reluctantly, Elsa goes inside to face her husband.

  “Lauren! Long time no see!”

  She turns to see Janet Wasserman pushing a grocery cart around the aisle, and her heart sinks.

  “Hi, Janet.” She should have known better than to shop at the A & P, convenient or not. But after what happened in the doctor’s office, she was in no hurry to go back to the empty—hopefully empty, anyway—house, and deal, too, with Nick’s disappearance. She just needed to prolong it all a little longer. To lose herself in something mundane.

  “And Sadie, Sadie, little lady…look at what a big girl you’ve turned into!” Janet leans over to give her a hug.

  Sadie stiffens and takes a step closer to Lauren.

  “She’s shy,” Lauren feels obligated to explain. Shy, and still a little traumatized from her appointment with Dr. Prentiss.

  “Well, I don’t blame her. It’s been ages since she’s seen me. She probably doesn’t even know who I am. I’m Ian’s mommy, sweetheart. He’s your brother Ryan’s friend.”

  No response from Sadie.

  “Oh, thanks for having Ryan stay for dinner the other night,” Lauren tells Janet.

  “Anytime—he’s never any trouble, and he was so appreciative. You should have seen him gobble down the steak and shrimp.”

  “I can just imagine,” Lauren murmurs.

  “We enjoy having him around. You know how much I love to cook, and I’m always glad to help out.”

  Maybe it’s just me, Lauren thinks. But something about Janet’s tone—and her words—is rubbing Lauren the wrong way.

  It’s as if she assumes she’s providing Ryan with something his own mother can’t give him: an expensive, home-cooked, sit-down family dinner.

  I can do that for him, too, Lauren wants to tell her.

  But the truth is, she can’t. She just checked out the prices on steaks and seafood, and wound up throwing chicken into the cart instead. Which she’ll be lucky to get onto the grill before it goes bad since she, unlike Janet Wasserman, doesn’t particularly love to cook. And there’s no getting around the fact that there’s an empty chair at family dinners in the Walsh home these days.

  So…you win, Janet.

  “I hear you dropped off a carload for the tag sale yesterday.”

  “Oh—Ryan told you?”

  “No, Alana Fleming did. I’m on the committee.”

  Of course you are.

  “Well…” Lauren checks her watch. “I’ve got to get moving. I need to pick up Ryan and Lucy at the pool before it rains and get home to make dinner.”

  “Why don’t you all come over to our house for dinner? We can catch up…would you like that, Sadie? We have our very own swimming pool. Wouldn’t that be fun?”

  Sadie shakes her head no.

  “That’s really nice of you, Janet,” Lauren says quickly, “but not tonight. It’s supposed to rain, and it’s been a long day so…maybe some other time.”

  “Definitely. I’ll give you a call. And again, if there’s anything I can do to help out with Ryan—or the other children—you know I’m always here for you.”

  “Thank you. I appreciate it. And you know I’m always here for you, too,” Lauren can’t resist adding.

  “Er—of course.”

  Mercifully, Janet makes small talk for only another minute or two, then pushes her cart on past.

  As much as she’d suddenly love to get out of here, Lauren lingers on the aisle, not wanting to catch up to her again.

  “You know what, Sadie? I think you’re a big enough girl to try some new foods, don’t you?”

  “I don’t like them.”

  “What don’t you like?”

  “New foods.”

  Lauren sighs inwardly. She can’t help but remember the time she and Nick had discovered a stash of rancid meat and spoiled dairy in the hidden compartment in Sadie’s closet. She should probably check it again, just to make sure.

  “You know, Ryan and Lucy like to try new foods. Don’t you want to be a big girl like they are?”

  “Ryan isn’t a big girl.”

  Despite everything, Lauren can’t help but laugh. And it feels good. So good—so normal—that she wonders, for a moment, if everything is okay after all.

  “Oooh, SpongeBob!” Sadie picks up a box of fruit snacks and points to the cartoon character. “Can we get them?”

  “No”—Lauren takes them out of her hands and puts them back on the shelf—“but we can get these.” She picks up the store brand.

  “I don’t want those.”

  “They have seven fruit juices,” Lauren informs her—wondering if that’s even true.

  Once he got on his health kick, Nick wasn’t a big fan of these gummy fruity treats, telling Lauren they’re probably full of chemicals.

  “Or,” she tells Sadie, “how about if we get some w
ater-melon and peaches on the produce aisle instead?”

  “I want SpongeBob.”

  About to remind her daughter that it’s silly to pay a dollar extra for a cartoon image—which is what she said in the previous aisle, where Sadie begged for Shrek toothpaste—Lauren thinks better of it. Whose fault is it that Sadie’s watched too much television this summer?

  Poor kid—she has enough problems. Why not indulge her in SpongeBob, just this once?

  Too bad you already said no.

  Changing a no to a yes is something that Lauren and Nick vowed never to do as parents.

  Then again, Nick’s not even here. And why is he the only one who gets to break vows?

  Everything must be okay, Lauren tells herself, because I’m back to feeling annoyed with Nick, instead of worried about him.

  Somehow, that thought seems rational enough to hold on to for the time being.

  “Okay,” she decides, “we’ll get SpongeBob.”

  “Thank you, Mommy!” Sadie rushes back to grab the box.

  “You’re quite the pushover, aren’t you, Mommy?”

  Hearing the male voice behind her, Lauren turns to see Sam Henning.

  “Oh…hi!” She wants to ask him what he’s doing there, but that’s a silly question, considering that he’s holding a plastic shopping basket.

  “How are you?” she asks instead—which also sounds like a silly question, considering she just saw him at the pool.

  “I’m great. How are you?” Somehow, the question is less silly coming from him.

  “I’m…you know. Wondering why I ended up with a cartful of groceries when I just came in to get a couple of things.”

  “And I’m wondering,” he says in return, “what it means that we keep running into each other.”

  “It means there’s only one supermarket and one public pool in town. Unless you’re following me around?”

  Oh Lord, why did I have to say such a stupid thing? Does he know I was just kidding? Please let him know I was just kidding.

  Lauren is relieved when he grins.

  “Who knows? Maybe I am following you around. I can think of worse ways to spend a summer day.”

  “Mommy, can I get these, too?” Sadie pops up again, carrying a bag of Chips Ahoy! “They’re irresistibly delicious.”