Crooked Little Lies (7 page)

“I went to Fishers’ and got pumpkins,” Lauren said.

“Really? For jack-o’-lanterns? Can we carve them now?”

Lauren smiled, all at once feeling light with gratitude that her headache was gone, the Oxy was gone, her children were home safe, a fish was filleted, and the laundry was done, all the small things. “Sure. Unless you have homework,” she answered Kenzie.

“No. I finished it Friday in study hall.”

“Put your things away, then, and tell your brother if he’s finished his homework to come and help if he wants to. We’ll take the pumpkins outside on the picnic table.”

Kenzie headed up the stairs and then paused. “Mom?” she asked, turning slowly around. “Is Daddy still mad at you?”

“I don’t think so.” Lauren was puzzled. “Why?”

“Because, you know, last week, when you didn’t charge enough for that job when Daddy took down the Anderson barn? He said you made him lose, like, a ton of money, and how was he supposed to make it up?”

Lauren’s heart sank. It was dumb, really dumb, but she’d so hoped Kenzie would forget about it, the ugly argument she’d witnessed, her mom and dad shouting at each other at the top of their lungs—worse than kids. Worse than any performance Kenzie and Drew put on when they got into it. It still rankled. It was true; they had lost several thousand on that job because of her mistake. She’d transposed the numbers on the contract, and no one caught it until the job was done and signed off on at an amount way below what it had cost to get the barn down. They’d been counting on the income, had needed it to make their month.

The day Jeff discovered the discrepancy, Lauren and Kenzie were just coming into the warehouse when he barreled out of his office, yelling something about Lauren screwing up, intimating that she must be back under the influence. It was a moment before she realized he was blaming her as if he wasn’t equally responsible. He’d taken the contract to be signed. He should have checked it over, seen her error. That was why it was called a partnership.

Almost instantly, she felt on fire, just lit up. She yelled back at him—things like if he was going to accuse her of being back on OxyContin every time she forgot something or made a mistake, why should she bother with recovery? Where was the end of his suspicion? When would he consider her debt paid and let her out of guilt jail? Poor Kenzie was flattened against the wall, dark eyes huge with alarm. Yelling was taboo in their family, like hitting and saying
shut up
. Lauren and Jeff pointed to themselves as examples. They didn’t do these things, therefore Drew and Kenzie shouldn’t, either.

But those rules only made sense when applied to the family they’d once been, before Lauren tumbled from the church bell tower, smashed her head and her pelvis, and plummeted down the OxyContin rabbit hole. She looked at Kenzie. “Your dad should have—” Lauren began, but then she stopped, biting down on the influx of her panic and aggravation. Kenzie didn’t need excuses. What she needed was reassurance. “He’s not mad anymore, okay? He said he was sorry, remember? It’s fine. Everything is fine.”

“You and Daddy are really stressed out.” Kenzie came down one step.

“Well, honey, things are kind of difficult right now, you know? But we’ll get through it, I promise.” Lauren smiled, holding Kenzie’s gaze, and when she came down the rest of the way and circled Lauren’s waist hard with her thin arms, Lauren pulled her close, bending her cheek to the top of Kenzie’s head, inhaling her sweetness, drawing it deeply into herself through the cold, bruised shade of her sorrow. Their embrace lasted only moments before Kenzie turned and flew up the steps, shouting for Drew, telling him something about whoever got into the backyard first got to carve the biggest pumpkin.

Lauren watched her daughter disappear into her room through a prism of tears. Sometimes she thought she couldn’t bear it, the weight of her daughter’s forgiveness and her love.

The moment Jeff got home, Drew brought out the bowl filled with fillets to show him. He launched into his fish story. Gabe and his dad hadn’t caught anything big enough to keep, he said. No one fishing at the lake that day hooked a fish as big. Jeff listened to Drew as if nothing else mattered. Watching them, Lauren wanted to shush Drew. She wanted to say
Your father’s exhausted
. She wanted to smooth her hand over Jeff’s brow, wipe away the dark smudges under his eyes. He looked so old and haggard, as if he’d aged overnight. Or had she not been paying attention? It jolted her somehow, how much she still seemed to miss, as if her mind were elsewhere without her permission.

“I tried to call you, Dad,” Drew said.

“Huh? What?” Jeff was admiring the fish. “How do you want to cook this bad boy?” he asked.

“Grill. We should definitely grill it, right?”

“I could sauté it,” Lauren said, thinking she would save Jeff the trouble of supervising Drew outside, but he said no.

“A bass that size has got to be grilled. Right, champ?”

Lauren passed Jeff a beer. “Are you okay?”

“Sure. Why wouldn’t I be?”

“It’s a mess at the farm, isn’t it? More work than you thought.”

“Yeah.”

A look crossed his face. Was it regret? Could he be like Tara? Were they both having second thoughts? Lauren started to ask; she might have reopened the whole subject then, but he pinched the bridge of his nose, and when he looked at her again, when he said, “It’ll probably take a couple more weekends” and “I’ll have to figure out when,” something in his tone, like impatience or aggravation, some weariness—she didn’t know—stopped her, and she only nodded.

Jeff looked at the bottle of beer in his hand, drank some, gave her a quick glance. “Maybe when we go back, it should just be the two of us. Tara and Greg may not want to go. They weren’t that much help anyway.”

“What happened?”

“Nothing.”

“The money—you talked to Tara about her money, investing with Greg, and she didn’t take it well.”

“Something like that.”

“Greg knows?”

“Yeah, maybe. Guy’s a loser. I told Tara she needs to get away from him.”

She wouldn’t have taken that piece of advice well, either, Lauren thought, and Greg would be angry at her now, too. He’d suspect her of talking to Jeff about him.

They’d made another enemy.

Great.

After dinner, when the kids had gone upstairs, Lauren followed Jeff outside. They sat in adjacent chaise longues on the deck and looked at the moon, hanging like a fat, misshapen pearl in the dark throat of the sky, and Lauren again considered it, taking up the whole thorny matter of selling the farm. But then Jeff took her hand, and reveling in his touch, she didn’t want the moment spoiled if she was wrong in assuming he might be softening, yielding to her way of thinking that the farm shouldn’t be allowed to pass out of their family.

They would find another way.

File bankruptcy, if Jeff could stand the blow to his pride. It might allow them to keep this house, possibly even protect the business and the farm somehow, too. Maybe that was a lot to hope for.

But they could look into it. They had options, Lauren thought.

Even Jeff might have thought of a plan. That could be the reason for opening the account at Cornerstone Bank. She turned to him to ask about it, holding the question in her mouth. But the night was so lovely and quiet, and his grasp was so warm. He was always warm, and she loved that about him, and later, in bed, when he pulled her into his embrace, she welcomed the heat of his kisses, the touch of his fingertips as he teased a path from the hollow of her neck, to her breast and lower, to outline the curve of her hip. She looked into his eyes when he entered her, and she wondered if it was a trick of the light or were they shining from tears?

“Jeff?” she whispered, touching his face, encountering the damp evidence.

He paused, locking her gaze, and it was only for a moment, but his expression seemed so intense, so desperate and filled with longing, that she pulled him to her, pulled him more deeply inside her, giving herself to him. Providing him with shelter. Because sometimes, that was all you could offer, and after the way he had sheltered her, it was the least she could do.

The next morning, they were in the bathroom, in the midst of their usual routine, and she felt normal and ordinary and rejoiced in it. Something had shifted between them last night; in their lovemaking, she and Jeff had rounded some awful corner.
He had cried!
The thought blazed in her mind. She was filled with hope. They would be all right. She glanced sidelong at him. “This will sound crazy.”

“What?”

“I don’t remember opening an account at Cornerstone Bank.”

“We were there last month. We talked to Paul Thibideaux, my buddy from Dallas? He’s the VP.”

Lauren saw her own hope mirrored in Jeff’s eyes, that any minute now, the details he was feeding her would raise the memory from the dead zone in her mind. She shook her head, touched her brow.

“You signed the papers,” he said. His tenderness, if there was any left from last night, was tinged with a degree of impatience.

She turned to lean against the vanity countertop, saying she’d seen them. “On the desk in the study.”

Jeff spit toothpaste into the sink. He rinsed his mouth, wiped his face with a towel. “You were sick of Diane sticking her nose into everything we do. We both were.”

Lauren made a face. Diane Taggert was a teller at First State, where she and Jeff had banked for years. She was also a neighbor and nosy, just as Jeff said.
How are you, dear?
She’d ask every time she saw Lauren, and it wasn’t out of genuine caring. The question and the stare that accompanied it were more pointed, like daggers.
Are you still sober?
That’s what Diane really wanted to know.
Taking care of your poor kids? Walking the straight and narrow?
Lauren thought Diane felt entitled to meddle. She’d earned the right, given all she’d done for the Wilders in the wake of the accident—organizing an entire team of neighbors who, through the long weeks of Lauren’s hospital stay made sure the refrigerator was stocked with groceries, the house was cleaned, and the kids were ferried to ballet lessons and football practice. None of their neighbors in those early weeks had seemed able to do enough, but that changed. People didn’t bring casseroles to the family of a dope fiend.

“It’s a relief, right?” Jeff asked.

“I don’t know. I guess. It’s just—”

“What?” He bent his head, wanting her gaze.

She thought of the Oxy she’d found, that he might know about it and be waiting in vain for her confession. She was failing him again. Failing to be honest, to show courage.
Tell him
, she ordered herself. But she couldn’t; she was too afraid of losing him and her children, not to mention her mind.

“It’s nothing.” She went into her closet to escape his scrutiny. If only there were someone she could talk to. Someone safe.

But there wasn’t. Not since Margaret died.

6

B
o was wearing red earmuffs the day Annie met him for the first time, and Batman pajama bottoms with a green T-shirt turned wrong side out. He was six and she was ten, and she’d been dragged to McDonald’s by her mother to have dinner with Bo and his dad. Annie’s mom said she and Bo’s dad, JT, were friends, but Annie was no dummy. She knew JT was more than a friend. She saw them kiss. She saw how her mom smiled at JT and at Bo, all moon-eyed and sugary, and it infuriated her. She got madder still, on that summer evening at McDonald’s, when her mom took her off to one side and whispered to stop the pouting and be nice. “Bo’s been through a lot.”

She jiggled Annie’s elbow. “A lot,” she repeated with emphasis.

Annie wondered what
a lot
meant but not enough to ask. Under duress, she took Bo out to the play area with the big colored tubes you could slide around in, even though she was too old to go there.

“C’mon,” she said when he hung back, “and take off those stupid earmuffs.”

“They help me,” he told her gravely.

“How? It’s a hundred degrees outside. You look like a moron.”

“When I have them on, the noise goes away, and I can hear my mommy singing.”

Annie frowned.

“She’s in heaven. She’s an angel.”

“She’s dead?” Annie couldn’t imagine it, not having her mama.

He nodded, still solemn, and Annie’s heart melted.

“My dog died,” she said. “She was old, but I had her since I was two.”

“What was her name?” Bo asked.

“Cassie,” Annie said. “I still miss her.”

Bo took off his earmuffs and held them out to Annie. “You can wear these, and maybe you’ll hear her the way I hear my mom.”

He let the earmuffs be packed away a year later, after JT and Annie’s mom got married, when they became a family. Annie put stuff away, too, the way kids do—her dolls and the squishy blue doggie her mom had made for her out of an old towel when she was a baby. She didn’t think about Bo’s earmuffs again until her mother was killed in the car accident. Annie guessed Bo went into the attic and got them, because he’d been wearing them the day after the funeral when he’d found her outside on the back steps crying. Sitting beside her, he took them off and pulled them over her ears. He circled her shoulders with his arm and held on to her, and she leaned against him, finding comfort in his presence. He was her brother, and she loved him even when he acted crazy.

Even when he walked for miles on end like someone possessed. There were other indications, too, that his brain was wonky, periods of time when he talked too fast or not at all. Times when he forgot to eat or bathe or sleep. He couldn’t concentrate. But then, a patch of days or even weeks would pass and he’d behave almost normally, almost like his old sweet, quirky self.
We’re all oddballs
. Annie’s mom had said that. But while she was alive, she never stopped searching for answers, for ways to help Bo. He was tested and scanned, counseled and medicated. Labels were tossed around like confetti, but the general consensus was that he suffered from schizoaffective disorder topped with bipolar and autistic tendencies—and earmuffs. That was the one constant with Bo. He wore his earmuffs, religiously.

Red ones—always red—worn so frequently that Annie got to the place where she thought she might not recognize him without them, and that was why, on Sunday evening, when she found them discarded on his bed at JT’s, it scared her.

She’d been worried since Friday when she was at Fishers’ with Cooper and he said he’d seen Bo get into a car earlier that day, a Lincoln Town Car, driven by a woman.
What woman?
Annie had asked Cooper, but of course, he didn’t know. Why would he?

Annie scooped Bo’s earmuffs off his bed, thinking two things: One, he never rode with strangers. And two, he always wore his earmuffs.

She brought them into the den, where JT was watching football on ESPN, and held them up. “He left these here. Did you know?” She lifted her voice over the sound of the game announcer.

JT looked at her, then back at the television, half shrugging.

“Something’s wrong. He never goes anywhere without these.” Annie walked over to the TV and switched it off.

JT sighed, rubbing his eyes. “Almost never.”

“He was seen on Friday getting into a car with some woman, probably a stranger. He never does that. You know it’s one of his rules, JT.”

“About the time you figure out his rules, he changes them. Where did you hear this anyway?”

Annie told him about Cooper’s sighting of Bo at the convenience store.

“He’s the guy who towed your car, right? You think he knows Bo well enough to say for sure it was him?”

Annie rolled her eyes. “Everyone in this town knows Bo.”

JT picked up the remote and turned the TV back on, muting the sound. “He’s probably at the library or down at the rail yard, camping out in one of the boxcars.”

Bo loved the old switchyard. He went there as often as he did the library, but Annie had looked there. She and Madeleine had spent the better part of Saturday looking for Bo in every one of his usual places, and Annie said so now to JT. “There’s no sign of him. No one’s seen him all weekend.”

“What about your car? You get it fixed?”

“Cooper brought it to me this morning.” Annie sat on the edge of the ottoman, where she’d sat so often when her mom was alive. Often enough that the rose-colored piping was worn. Annie traced the cording with the tip of her finger. They were going to re-cover the ottoman and the matching chair. They’d even figured the yardage it would take and talked about fabric, something soft, the color of moss, they’d thought. Maybe chenille.
Oh, Mama
. . . Annie’s throat closed against the bite of her tears. Would it never go away? The ache of missing her? The need to talk to her, to ask her advice?

Annie didn’t know how to feel about Cooper and his dad. When she asked Cooper how much she owed for the car repairs, he’d given her an invoice for $123.52, and that included the part, the harmonic balancer, and the labor. She was no mechanic, but even she knew it should have been more, a ton more, maybe as much as three or four or five hundred dollars more.

Not that she could give Cooper the amount on the invoice. She’d had to admit to him she didn’t have it and ask if she could pay it off, twenty dollars a week. It was the most she could afford. He said it was fine, that they trusted her; he made it easy. Too easy. She hated owing him, hated being treated as if she were a charity case. She had wanted to tell him he could keep the car. She didn’t need it or him. She ended up thanking him instead. But she hadn’t invited him in, and it shamed her to remember. She’d declined his invitation to accompany him and Rufus to the lake, too. She realized it was perverse, and she deplored it, the way she’d cut off her nose to spite her face.

“Bo wouldn’t go with a stranger,” she insisted now to JT. “He wouldn’t go this long without answering his cell phone, either.” Annie studied Bo’s earmuffs in her lap, passing her hand absently over one red-furred earpiece, smoothing it.

“I tried a while ago, before you came, to get hold of him. His voice mail’s full.”

“Of my messages,” Annie said. “I think we should call the police.”

“Oh, now, I think that’s kind of drastic,” JT said quickly. “Let’s give it another night.”

“Why? Do you know of any place else he might be, another place he might have gone to?” Something in JT’s expression made Annie ask.

He didn’t answer. He kept his gaze from hers, too, and it seemed deliberate.

“The woman Cooper saw Bo with, do you know who she is?”

JT said he didn’t.

“Well, there must be some reason why you aren’t worried.”

“I’m worried. Just not as much as you. Did you check the shop?”

JT meant Shear Heaven, the hair salon where Annie’s mom had worked as a stylist. “I called,” Annie said. “They haven’t seen him.”

The silence filled up with the mystery of everything JT wasn’t saying, and it went on long enough that he picked up the remote, but before he could restore the volume, Annie said, “When did you see him last?”

JT lowered the remote. “I don’t know, a couple days ago, maybe. I’ve been working a job down in Houston and one out here. The days are kind of tangled up.” JT was a telephone-system installer, a whiz with anything electronic. He’d often said that if he could, he’d rewire Bo’s brain. It was always there in JT’s eyes, how much he hurt for his son’s deficiencies. He didn’t show it, but Annie knew he’d give anything to have Bo be right, to keep him safe, to see him happy. JT would give his last dollar, maybe his own life.

Annie put on Bo’s earmuffs, waiting to hear Bo speak to her, listening in her mind as if he might tell her where he was, but what came was fear, spilling through her, a river of ice.

She didn’t sleep well that night, and the following day, Monday, when Cooper came into Madeleine’s at the tail end of the lunch rush, her nerves were frayed and raw. She didn’t want to see him, to take his order, to speak to him at all. She didn’t return his smile or his wave, and it was rude. He’d been nothing but kind to her.

But why? What did he want? She couldn’t imagine he was interested in her, and even if he were, she was too tired and too broke and, now, too panicked over Bo to think of romance. She watched Cooper take a stool at the near-empty counter and looked around for help from Carol, but she was working two booths and a table near the door. Minding the tables closer to the kitchen and the counter was Annie’s chore. Reluctantly, she walked over to Cooper, said hello, and asked what she could get for him.

“Nothing, thanks,” he said. “I came in to see if you’ve heard anything.”

She shook her head, and the fear in her stomach pushed its fist into her throat.

“Don’t you think you should let the sheriff know?”

“That’s what I’ve been telling her.” Madeleine came out of the kitchen. “Well, look. There’s Hollis now.”

Annie followed Madeleine’s glance to the front of the café, where a tall, silver-haired man wearing a sheriff’s uniform was coming through the door. “You called him?”

“He’s come for his lunch,” Madeleine answered, but she wouldn’t meet Annie’s eyes.

Cooper raised his hand. “Sheriff Audi.”

Annie’s heart faltered. She recognized him. She had waited on him many times, but she didn’t know him other than he made her nervous. It wasn’t personal. Hollis Audi had never given her any reason to be anxious. Something about police in general had that effect on her. She didn’t know why. It wasn’t as if she’d ever had any dealings with them, not so much as a speeding ticket.

“He’ll be wanting his sandwich,” Madeleine said, and she went into the kitchen.

Sheriff Audi came over. “Hey, Coop.” The men shook hands. Then, as if he registered a disturbance, he divided his glance between Annie and Cooper. “What’s up?”

“Her brother’s missing,” Cooper said.

“He’s not my real brother,” Annie said and wondered why. Because Bo was related to her in every sense that mattered.

“Bo? We’re talking about Bo Laughlin?” Audi asked.

“You know him.” Cooper was matter-of-fact.

“Sure, everyone in town knows Bo.” Hollis Audi said the same thing Annie had said last night to JT. “He’s missing? Since when?”

“Friday.” Cooper answered again, because Annie seemed incapable. “Really, before that, I guess.” He looked to her for confirmation.

She said, “I haven’t seen him for nearly a week. No one I know of has, except Cooper, and I’ve checked everywhere I can think of.”

“When did you last see him? What day?” the sheriff asked.

“Last Wednesday,” Annie answered. “He came here. We had tea.” She looked over at the booth nearest the door, where Bo liked to sit.
So he could get away quickly? So he could see out?
Annie wasn’t sure, but he always chose that spot. If it was occupied, he’d wait for it or he’d leave altogether.

Last Wednesday when he came into the café, the booth was empty, and Annie had sat with him, watching while he sugared the already-sweetened tea and stuffed down two of the carrot-and-cinnamon muffins that were leftovers from the batch she’d made and served to that morning’s breakfast crowd. She remembered nagging him about eating so much sugar; she remembered he’d been agitated and jumpy.
I could tell you something.
He’d said that to her more than once. But she’d been focused on the sweets, determined to get her point across by basically venting her disgust over his diet.

Why hadn’t she asked him what was wrong? Why hadn’t she slid in beside him and put her arms around him? She bit her lip. How many times in that single afternoon, after she’d spoken to him in her brittle, authoritarian voice, had he told her he was sorry; he would do better, he promised.
But just listen,
he’d said,
I heard talking
. . .

She looked at Bo in her mind; he’d been wearing his earmuffs. She was certain of it, and if that was true, then at some point after leaving the café, he’d gone to JT’s and left again without them. The fact that he’d forgotten them worried her even more now. Clearly he’d been upset; his mind had been in more than its usual turmoil.
I heard talking
. . .

What had he meant? Had he heard voices in his head? Real voices? Why couldn’t she have shut up for five seconds and let him tell her?

“Bo wouldn’t go this long without touching base.” Madeleine had rejoined them and was answering some question the sheriff had posed that Annie had missed. “A couple of days is his limit, wouldn’t you say, Annie?”

Madeleine sounded so definite that Annie agreed even as she searched her mind for an exception, and not finding one, she said, “I can’t think when he’s ever gone this long without at least calling or texting me.”

“Something else,” Madeleine said. “I paid him last week, in cash like I always do. He showed me some other money he had then, wrapped up with a rubber band around it. He wouldn’t say where he got it.”

Sheriff Audi looked from Madeleine to Annie.

“It isn’t stolen, Sheriff. Bo’s not a thief,” Annie said.