A Gala Event (20 page)

Seth arrived in thirty seconds. “Wow, that was fast,” Lori said. “You're the fiancé?”

Seth extended his hand. “I'm Seth Chapin. My family lives just over the hill there, but I've got an office in one of Meg's outbuildings here—that's where she called me.”

“I wish I could say I remembered your name, but I never really spent much time hanging out in Granford. Where's my brother?”

Meg stepped in. “Everybody, please sit down. Aaron's not far away, Lori, but I was hoping we'd have a chance to talk with you. You said he'd written to you?”

Lori gave her a dirty look, then sat reluctantly. “Yeah, but he didn't say much, just gave his release date. He didn't ask for anything, but he said he thought I should know he was out. I might've had like five letters from him all the time he's been in jail.”

“Were you two close when you were growing up?” Meg asked. “There's only a few years between you.”

“He was the bratty little kid for most of my life, and then he was the druggy little kid, and then he was in prison. Doesn't make for a warm and wonderful relationship, you know?”

“Are you married, Lori?” Seth asked. “You have any kids of your own now?”

“Married, yes, more than once, but not right now. One kid, who doesn't talk to me. Why does it matter to you? Hey, you never explained how you connected with Aaron. What are you, some kind of missionaries or do-gooders?” Lori's head swiveled back and forth between Seth and Meg.

The woman's behavior was verging on rude, Meg thought, although being sat down by two strangers and more or less interrogated could upset anyone. Why had Lori even bothered to come to Granford if she was so uninterested? “No, neither,” she answered. “Here's what happened.” Meg outlined the events at the Historical Society, and Gail's attack, and how she had found Aaron the next day. How he had come by to thank her, and ended up staying for dinner, and then overnight. And how somehow they had found him some work, which meant he had a way to stay around town, at least for a short while.

At the end of Meg's narrative, Lori demanded, “Why the hell would he want to stick around here? The place can't hold many happy memories.”

“Where should he want to go?” Seth countered. He looked about as fed up with Lori's lack of sympathy as Meg felt. From what she'd seen so far, Meg decided she liked Aaron better than his sister.

“Got me,” Lori told him. “Me, I'd go make a new life for myself, somewhere else. New place, new name, all that.”

“You were at college when the fire happened, weren't
you, Lori?” Meg asked. She was having trouble picturing Lori as a preppy type.

“Yeah. Bunch of snobs. That was a bitch of a phone call to get in the middle of the night, when the fire happened. Oh, you poor dear, your parents were fried to a crisp.” She mimicked a fluty old-lady tone.

Meg wondered briefly who had made that call. “Did they mention Aaron when they called?”

“Yeah, they said he was alive. Like that made up for two dead parents.”

“And your other brother? Kevin?”

“Ditto. We both arrived the next day, or maybe I mean the same day. After the sun came up, anyway.”

“Did someone come get you? A friend or neighbor?”

“We didn't have any friends in Granford. My folks had drinking buddies at the nearest country club, but I never saw any of them at our house. No relatives nearby, either. My brother and I each had a car, and we came separately.”

That was news to Meg. “Could students at Deerfield have cars back then?”

“Only seniors, with permission. When I was at Mount Holyoke, they didn't care, except you had to find your own parking.” Lori looked back and forth between them again. “What's it to you, anyway? I just thought I should check in with my brother. It's been twenty-five years, you know.”

“You never visited him in prison?” Seth asked.

“Hell no. Creepy. And I was pissed at him.” For someone who had said she was in a hurry, she certainly didn't seem to be rushing now.

“Why?” Meg asked.

“He killed our parents! And Gramma! And he burned the house to the ground. We came out of it all with squat, Kevin and me. I had to drop out of college. Kevin was lucky—his
first semester at school was paid for, and the school oh-so-generously gave him a scholarship for his last semester. The insurance money just about covered the bills.”

“Did Kevin go to college?” Meg asked.

“Yeah, but not right away. He took a year off, and then he started. He was smart and he did well in school, so he got financial aid. I think those places take pity on orphans. He must have written a hell of an admissions essay.”

“What did you do after you dropped out, Lori?” Seth asked.

Lori stood up and started pacing around the kitchen. Then she stopped and leaned against a counter. “What is this, an interrogation? I did this and that. Traveled. Had some jobs. Got married, had a kid. Got unmarried. And that's my life in a nutshell. Like I said before, why should you care?”

“Lori, are you sure Aaron set that fire?” Meg said softly.

Lori stared blankly at her. “What? He was convicted! There was evidence, and a trial. Who else could it have been? And why are you asking this now? It's ancient history.”

“Because Aaron still can't remember that night, and that troubles him. He's not claiming he didn't do it, but he'd like to know for sure, if it's possible.”

“Good luck with that!” Lori said. “If there ever was any evidence pointing to anybody else, nobody ever mentioned it, and it sure as hell is long gone now. And I don't doubt that Aaron can't remember it; he was stoned every time I saw him, those last couple of years. That was his rebellion, although I'm not sure Mom and Dad ever noticed. Me, I went another way—slept around and mouthed off to my professors. I never was college material, but our folks just didn't want to hear that. We had to be the perfect little family. Nice house, nice cars, nice kids. Maybe I should be glad Aaron broke the ice, so I could act out, too. They were so
busy trying to handle him, they didn't pay much attention to me.”

“And Kevin?”

“I guess Kevin was the poster boy for the family—the goody-goody kid. Hey, they got one out of three right.”

“Do you know where Kevin is now?”

Lori shrugged. “Last I heard, somewhere in the Midwest. I think. We do not exchange Christmas cards. He thinks I'm a lazy tramp. I think he's a pompous asshole. Takes after Dad, I guess.”

Meg was amazed that Lori had kept talking as long as she had. The more she learned, the more she saw the Eastmans as a classic dysfunctional family, worried about outward appearances, short on emotional connections. On the outside everything had looked nice and shiny—handsome old house, professional dad, three kids in good schools. But the cracks had already been showing, before the fire happened. “How'd you get along with your grandmother?”

“Gramma?” Lori looked surprised at Meg's question. “Okay, I guess. She was old, but she was pretty sharp. She'd listen to me. Dad kept trying to make it out like she was senile and helpless, but that was a load of crap. She had arthritis pretty bad and couldn't get around easily, but her mind was all there.”

“Did she like your dad?”

Lori gave Meg a searching look. “That's kind of a weird question to ask somebody you just met. What mother-in-law ever thinks her daughter's husband is good enough for her darling?”

“Is that a no?”

“Yeah, I guess. Dad treated Gramma very politely, if you know what I mean. Like, ‘How're you feeling, Virginia?' ‘Can I get you a cup of tea?' ‘Is the television loud enough for you?' Like she was a helpless idiot.” Lori's tone was
simpering. “He had that addition built on so she could live with us.”

“Was she financially independent?”

“You mean, did she have money of her own, so she didn't need Dad's charity? Sure, as far as I know. I mean, we didn't sit around the table talking about the family budget. We kids got our tuition paid and a nice allowance and a car, so we didn't ask questions.”

“So let's go back to my earlier question: do you believe Aaron deliberately set that fire?” Meg asked.

Lori glared at her. “I don't know, and I don't much care. It's water under the bridge, isn't it? Even if he didn't, what's knowing anything different gonna change?”

Meg ignored her question. “What would Aaron's motive have been?”

“Like I know? He was a stoner. Maybe he took the wrong pill and started seeing pink dinosaurs and thought the only way to get rid of them was to set them on fire. If he'd thought it through, he'd've known that it wouldn't get him any money. I mean, not if he was convicted.”

“So it wasn't that he hated your parents enough to want them dead?”

“I think ‘hate' is kind of a strong term for what he felt. He didn't respect them. He didn't like them. He tried to ignore them and stay out of their sight as much as possible. And they were fine with that.”

“He told us that he got along well with your grandmother,” Meg said. In fact, she thought, Aaron's description of her matched Lori's pretty closely.

“Yeah. Actually, looking back at it, she was kind of a cool old lady. She didn't judge us, and she stood by us. Which is more than I can say for Mom and Dad.”

“Were your parents getting along well?”

Lori gave a short bark of laughter. “Define ‘well.' They weren't planning a divorce, as far as I know. They were polite—no throwing things or getting drunk and yelling. Kind of a chilly environment, overall. Family dinners were a trip—real silver and china and crappy food. Mama was a wannabe.”

“Why do you say that?” Meg asked.

“She wanted to fit in with the ladies. You know, playing bridge, going out for lunch, getting her hair done. They used to do that in those days, or at least when she first got married. But now that I think about it—which I don't spend much time doing, believe me—all that was kind of over by the time she died. The old model just wasn't working anymore, but Mom didn't have any better ideas, and she was too old to rewrite the script.”

“Did either of your parents ever get counseling?” Seth asked suddenly.

“Like, see a shrink? Or couples therapy? Hell no. That would mean they had to admit there was something wrong with them and their perfect family. Why does that matter?”

“I just wondered if there was ever an official evaluation—if one or both of them was depressed, say. Or suicidal. Or homicidal.”

Lori stared at him, then burst out laughing. “Wow, you two sure are a pair! I come here with a simple question—where is my brother?—and now you're trying to psychoanalyze the entire family? Why the hell do you care?”

“Because I asked them to help.” Aaron's voice came from the kitchen door: somehow he had managed to slip in while the rest of them were talking. “Hello, Lori. Here I am.”

The siblings held each other's gaze from opposite sides of the room. Meg realized she was holding her breath. How would they play it?

Lori spoke first. “Oh God, Aaron, you look so much like . . .”

“Dear old Dad?” Aaron spat out, his tone sarcastic.

Lori shook her head. “No, Mom. I'm the one who took after Dad. Damn—you're pretty close to the same age she was when she . . . died.”

“I look older.” He paused before saying, “Thanks for coming. Why did you?”

“You wrote to me,” Lori told him. “I figured either you were dying and it was my last chance, or you wanted to apologize for screwing up everybody's life.”

“Thanks.” Aaron's voice was flat. He probably heard what he expected to hear, Meg thought.

This was stupid. Meg hadn't asked Lori to be here, and then Aaron had walked in, and now they were acting out some ridiculous Greek drama in her kitchen. Seth wasn't helping much at all, although if a fight broke out, maybe he could break it up. “Listen up, people!” Meg said loudly. Everyone turned to look at her. “This is my house, and if you want to fight, take it somewhere else. If you want to talk, I'll feed you dinner and then you can do whatever you want. What's your choice?”

“You don't have to stay, Lori,” Aaron said, once again in that curiously neutral voice.

“It's been so long, Aaron,” she replied softly. Then she shook herself. “Sure, why not? There's nowhere else I have to be. Where are you hanging out, Aaron?”

“Over the hill. I'm fixing the fence at an alpaca farm. I'll be leaving whenever that's done. I just stopped by to ask Seth here if I could borrow some tools.”

Lori startled Meg by bursting out laughing. “Alpacas? You and those silly fuzzy things? Wow!”

Aaron smiled reluctantly. “They're actually kind of nice, once you get to know them. Want to take a walk while dinner's cooking? If that's okay, Seth?”