Once Upon a Lie (2 page)

Saturday, the twenty-ninth was the day Sean was murdered. Maeve would ask him about it, but it wouldn’t do any good. He wouldn’t have any recollection of where he had been. He told her once that he liked to walk to the park down by the river, but that was a good three-mile walk from Buena del Sol. At eighty, was he really capable of making a six-mile round-trip journey? If so, Maeve gave him credit. He couldn’t remember where his shoes were, but he could find his way to and from the park. The mind—his mind—was an incredible thing.

Charlene was still talking. “Just remember to sign him out next time.”

“Will do,” Maeve said, and snapped her phone shut. Both hands free, she pulled off the Spanx, one leg getting tangled in her stiletto heel before she threw both of them on the passenger seat, taking in deep breaths. Never again would she take for granted the ability to breathe deeply from her diaphragm. She leaned her head back and closed her eyes, wondering how long it would be before she had to tackle the onerous task of finding another home for Jack. This was his second, and the last one in the immediate vicinity. He had a bit of a wandering jones, and that made him wholly unsuited to life in an assisted-living facility, where people like Jack needed to be present and accounted for at all times.

She wondered how to get him placed under house arrest. An ankle monitor on her elderly father would be just the ticket to take one stress off her plate, but she was sure they were practically impossible to come by on the open market.

Now that she could breathe, she watched the game, noticing Rebecca on the sidelines scanning the crowd for her mother. Maeve knew she couldn’t spend the entire game in the car, even though that was her inclination and something she did on a fairly regular basis. It didn’t endear her to the other moms, and it incensed Rebecca, who felt that her mother needed to be front and center, cheering for the daughter who was playing for a college scholarship and a way out of this “sucky town,” as she liked to refer to it. Maeve had the good sense not to tell her it was actually a sucky “village,” Rebecca not really caring what Farringville was, technically.

She put her shoes back on and made her way down to the bleachers, her high heels unsuited to picking over gravel and grass, her dress feeling tighter now that she didn’t have anything pushing her belly back toward her spine. She passed a group of mothers, some of them her friends, most with an unnatural devotion to soccer, and took her place on the lowest bleacher in the stands, closest to the field but with the best view of the chain-link fence. She didn’t have the energy to climb any farther, so it would have to do. During the next time-out, she waved to Rebecca, making sure her daughter saw that she was there, in the stands, and cheering as though her life depended on it.

Sitting on the top row was her fifteen-year-old, Heather, and with her was a boy that Maeve recognized from Rebecca’s grade who was grade-A trouble. Maeve filed that away for later, thinking that she would have to tread lightly to find out about this new boy and what he had to do with her youngest. Heather avoided her mother’s gaze and was probably trying her best to squelch the embarrassment she felt at having a mother who thought nothing of showing up at a soccer game in a black dress and heels. Heather wasn’t much different from Jack when it came to memory; although Maeve had reminded her that she would be attending Sean’s wake, by the time the sentence was out of her mouth, Heather was on to something else, something in which she was the star and the only person who mattered.

If hell had a sound track, it was the sound of a bunch of overeager suburban mothers screaming the names of their daughters over and over and over again. If Maeve never heard Marcy Gerson scream the name “MEER-ANNN-DAAHHH” again, it would be too soon. That high-pitched wail haunted her dreams, even though otherwise she found Marcy pleasant to be around. Maeve plastered a smile on her face and clapped enthusiastically as the girls ran back onto the field, their time-out over.

She looked up to see her ex, Cal, slide in next to her, his infant son strapped to his chest, facing forward, his little arms flailing as Cal rearranged himself so that he could sit comfortably on the bleacher. Devon was Charles “Cal” Callahan’s latest accessory, the baby’s mother, Gabriela, being the second. He turned and waved at Heather, who gifted him with a big smile and a wave that looked sincere.

When it came to her daughters, Maeve accepted her role as creator and nurturer of all things bad and inconvenient, but she didn’t relish it.

“Glad you could come. What’s Gabriela up to? Writing a column telling us all why we should be wearing cerulean this season?” she asked, not proud. Sarcasm in this instance was beneath her, and she bit back more biting words that would just illustrate how bitter she was that her onetime friend was now her former husband’s wife.

“What’s the score?” he asked, ignoring her. He was good at that.

Maeve pointed at the scoreboard. “Three–two. We’re losing.”

Cal gave her a once-over. “I didn’t realize this game called for formal attire,” he said, pulling a cloth diaper from his back pocket and wiping the baby’s mouth.

“Sean’s wake.”

“Oh, right.” Cal focused on the game while continuing the conversation. “How was that?”

Maeve pulled a pair of sunglasses out of her purse and put them on. “The usual. A bunch of old biddies from the neighborhood, Father Madden…”

“He’s still around?”

Father Madden had married them a long, long time ago and had been very disappointed to learn that the vows hadn’t “taken.” “He is. He’s doing the funeral in the morning.”

“You going?”

Maeve jumped to her feet as Rebecca launched one toward the goal, hitting the goalpost. A collective groan spread through the crowd. “To the funeral?”

“Yeah.”

“Probably not.”

The baby started fussing and Cal pulled a bottle out of his cargo shorts. He handed it to Maeve. “Hold this?” He unstrapped the baby and took him out of the contraption on his chest, sitting him upright in his lap, still facing forward. The baby was obviously a soccer fan; he was more animated than Maeve had ever seen him. Cal put the bottle in the baby’s mouth and he sucked greedily. “There was never any love lost between the two of you.”

“Me and Sean?” she asked. “You think?”

Cal watched the game until the ref blew the whistle, signaling the end of the first quarter. “I could never figure it out. He seemed like an amiable sort.”

They always do, Maeve thought. Instead, she shrugged in response.

“Jack doesn’t want to go? Granted, he was your mother’s nephew, but still…”

“Jack isn’t entirely sure who died or why. I think he’ll be fine with not attending.”

The baby finished the bottle in record time, and Maeve braced herself for the inevitable projection of undigested formula that was bound to come her way. Cal threw the baby over his shoulder to burp him. “How’s business?”

“Great,” Maeve lied.

Cal gave her a sideways glance. “Still making your fortune one cupcake at a time?”

“Something like that.”

“You’ll let me know if you need help? Especially with the wholesale thing? That’s where the money is.” The baby let out a burp that sounded as if it had started at his toes; Maeve put a little distance between herself and the baby, but the burp was unproductive. “Let me know,” he repeated.

Never. “Of course. We’re doing great, Cal. No worries.” It was typical of most of her conversations with Cal: he knew just enough and not really enough. As a result, he was low on the list of people from whom she sought advice. She went to him only if she had to and could count on one hand how many times that had been.

He finally got caught up enough in the game to leave her alone. Although he was now a stay-at-home father, the attorney in him had never completely disappeared. Once, she was used to his interrogations, but now she was out of practice and had to stay on her toes so that she didn’t let on the things she didn’t want him to know. The wholesale deal was done, gone the way of a larger manufacturer in Brooklyn who could produce cookies at an alarming speed and for far less money than Maeve’s two-person operation.

She was able to cheer when Rebecca scored a goal early in the third quarter, and feel dismay when the game became a runaway for the other team in the final minutes of the fourth. Her mind was still in the Bronx, though, and back at the funeral home. She wondered just how much damage the bullet had done to Sean’s brain. Was death instant or had he lingered even a few seconds before dying? Did he know what was coming—not him, obviously—when the passenger-side door of the car had opened and someone had slid into the seat? Did he know it was the end or did he think he deserved one more chance? Did he have any regrets at all?

She wondered about all of this, not noticing that Cal was talking to her. “Huh?”

“A hobby,” he said, taking the baby off his shoulder.

“For me?”

“Yeah. You work twelve hours a day and when you’re not working, you’re taking care of the girls. Or your dad. You need a break.” He shoved the baby’s chubby legs into the carrier. “You need to do something for you.”

“Like tennis?” It was the only thing she could think of that women her age did when they were at a loss for other things to do.

“Sure. Like tennis.”

Maeve mulled that over. A hobby.

“Find something meaningful. Something that would help you relax.” He stood, pulling the baby’s feet through the holes in the carrier. “Or if it makes more sense, something that would help other people. Because if I know you, that drives you more than anything.” He was smiling, but she could sense the dig inherent in that. Doing for others and not for him. For him, that had been the downfall of her marriage.

Maeve’s mind was racing. “Or a combination of all three of those things.” You know what would help me relax? she thought. You shutting up. The smile never left her face.

Cal looked as though he had hit on something. “Right! Meaningful, relaxing, and helpful to others. That sounds like the perfect combination for you.” He leaned over and kissed the top of her head. “Now you just have to figure out what that might be.”

Maeve looked up, her ex-husband’s handsome face backlit by the late afternoon sun. She smiled. “I’ll give it some thought, Cal.” She was glad she had left the Spanx in the car. If they’d been in her bag, handy, she might have been inclined to strangle him with them, right in front of every mother in the stands. No jury in the land would convict her, she always thought, particularly if it were truly a jury of her peers: overworked, underappreciated wives and mothers who just wanted someone to clean the toilet when it was dirty and pick up a gallon of milk when there was none. Instead, she continued smiling, thinking of how she used to ignore the way he patronized her, sometimes even finding it just short of charming, chalking it up to his concern for her. Now, though, it got under her skin the way a lot of things did, things that never used to bother her but now made her blood boil, like rude customers at the store or people who let their officiousness and position hold sway over her, making her fear the worst. People like Charlene Harrison, who couldn’t contain one old man in an assisted-living facility that was a good three miles from the river the man loved so much.

“Hey, what are you thinking about?” Cal asked.

Nothing. Everything. “Just all the things on my to-do list.”

“I’ve got the girls this weekend,” he said.

She knew. Unlike him, she never forgot where the girls needed to be or what they required to live happy lives in this little village. Her brain was full, way fuller than his, with details about everyone else’s lives. How she managed to keep everything straight, while he could barely account for himself most days, was a mystery she had yet to solve. Maybe it was like the late George Carlin used to say: Women are crazy and men are stupid. And the reason that women are crazy is because men are stupid. Maeve ran through the list of activities scheduled for the girls while in Cal’s care. “And don’t forget that Heather is grounded.”

“She’s here now,” he said, pointing to his middle child, high up in the bleachers.

“This doesn’t count. She’s supporting her sister,” Maeve said, although she didn’t entirely believe it. “She wants to go to a party this weekend, but she’s grounded from going.”

Cal raised an eyebrow. “For?”

“Unauthorized Facebook use.”

“I don’t even know what that is.”

“And you don’t want to know,” she said, adjusting herself on the bleachers. It entailed putting something on Rebecca’s wall that detailed her older sister’s extensive morning toilette, inviting derision from many of Rebecca’s own classmates, not to mention Heather’s. “She doesn’t go to the party. Under any circumstances.”

He gave her a salute. “Got it, chief.”

She let that go, as it wouldn’t be the last time she would tell him about the grounding, nor would it be the last time he gave her a contemptuous salute. Pick your battles, she said to herself, breathing deeply. Even those that she chose to fight she might not win, so choosing carefully would be her goal. She looked up at him again.

Why did I ever love you? she thought. She probably knew the answer to that question, but sifting through the various emotions would take time she did not have.

CHAPTER 3

Rebecca was still in uniform when Maeve got home, working on math at the kitchen table. Her dark head, her hair the same color as her father’s, was bent over a textbook filled with symbols that Maeve didn’t recognize from any math course she had ever taken. Fortunately for her, Rebecca had inherited her father’s good looks—his deep brown eyes, his full lips—and his aptitude for anything that required logic. Maeve could create anything from scratch but failed when it came to writing anything down that would approach a recipe, one with fractions and precise measurements.

“What are we having for dinner?” she asked by way of greeting.

Maeve hadn’t thought that far ahead, but one thing the Culinary Institute had taught her, besides great pastry skills, was how to turn whatever was in the refrigerator into a meal. That is, if the refrigerator held any food whatsoever, which hers didn’t.