Crooked Little Lies (19 page)

The revelation surfaced in Annie’s mind, along with the understanding that her mother had shared things with JT, hopes and fears, doubts and concerns, that she’d never shared with Annie, and it pained her. It occurred to her that her mother had loved JT, and she’d never thought of that before. It was one of the realities she’d consigned to a drawer in her mind. She didn’t want to share her mom with him, and she had made sure he knew it.

She looked covertly at him, feeling the vestiges of the old resentment, a child’s jealousy, and a newer warmth of dawning shame, wishing she could change the past. Wishing for the courage to say so, to make amends, but even as she hunted for the words, she couldn’t pluck a single one from the tangle of her emotions. Suppose he didn’t know what she meant?

“Did you call Sheriff Audi?” JT asked.

Annie said she had. “They’re checking the terminals, but I don’t think he expects to find out anything. He’s got it in his mind that wherever Bo is, it’s related to drugs.”

“Well, he did have all that money,” JT said. “That’s what worries me. Where did it come from?”

“Madeleine. I told you. She paid him.”

“But she said he had more than that. Even that woman, Lauren, said what Bo showed her was a pretty big roll of bills.”

“So what are you thinking?”

“You know how stubborn Bo is. If he wanted to get to his mama bad enough, he’d find a way. He’d do whatever he needed to raise the cash.”

“Sell drugs, you mean.” Annie held JT’s gaze. “What if he tried to contact Leighton? If Leighton hurt him—” She broke off. She would never forgive herself.

“What if overhearing me talk about his mother is what caused him to leave?”

The silence that fell was heavy with blame, the futility of second guesses.

“Why didn’t he just ask me?” JT spoke to the ceiling.

“He was probably scared,” Annie said, “or mad, or maybe he didn’t know if it was real. He’s been listening to her through his earmuffs for so long.” She sat down at the desk. “I saw him right after that, at the café, and I knew he was upset. Why didn’t I ask him what was wrong? He would have told me. You know how he is; you have to ask.”

“It’s not your fault,” JT said.

Annie fingered a stack of mail. “He’s so easily confused,” she said. “Anything outside his own neighborhood and routine just—Morro Bay, JT—it’s so far.” She locked his gaze. “Anything might have happened by now. Even if he got there safely, how will he manage getting to the hospital? Does he even know which one his mother is in? Shouldn’t we go there?”

“To California? It’d be like looking for a needle in a haystack. We have to let the cops do their job.”

He was placating her, Annie thought. JT was trying to get her to accept that whatever had happened to Bo, it was something that involved drugs.

An exhausted pause hung around them like a shroud.

“They closed the command center,” Annie said.

“Yeah, but folks are still looking, and Audi swore he wasn’t giving up. He knows I won’t. Not until we bring Bo home.”

Tears seared the backs of Annie’s eyelids. If only Bo could hear his dad; if only he knew how much JT loved him. If only JT could have expressed it before, but regret now was as useless as blame. “You should go to bed, get some rest,” she said.

“I’m fine right here.” JT settled his head against the back of the recliner and closed his eyes. “You’ll stay? You need sleep, too.”

“I’ll stay,” she said, because neither one could face the rest of this night alone. She flipped off the lights, and going into Bo’s old room instead of her own, she lay down on his narrow bed, pulling the throw at its foot over her. But after only moments, she flung the small blanket aside and got up. There was another throw in JT’s bedroom, and carrying it into the den, she covered him with it. He mumbled what sounded like thanks and something else she didn’t catch, and she waited a moment before leaving him again, but he said nothing more.

Back in Bo’s bed, Annie pulled the small blanket to her chin, clutching its edge, wide-eyed. She kept thinking of the white-haired woman, of what she might know, the answer she might have. She felt wired and alert, as if she were the one endangered. It seemed to her the entire world was in jeopardy, and it amazed her how the night went on, impervious. The wind sighed through the trees, loosening the shadows in the room, making the house creak like old bones as it settled. Pretty soon, Annie heard JT’s breath fall into ragged snores, and she curled on her side. Once she had complained to her mother about his snoring, that it was loud enough to raise the roof.
How am I supposed to sleep through that racket?
she’d demanded. Now it was a comfort to her, hearing it, and she was glad for JT, that he was finally getting some rest, however brief.

As Wednesday night gave way to Thursday morning, Annie did little more than toss and turn, and finally, giving up on the notion of sleep altogether, she rose at four and dressed quietly. JT was still snoring softly when she left the house and drove through the darkened streets to the café. It was her usual routine, flipping the lights on in the kitchen, pulling the ingredients from the walk-in pantry, sifting quantities of flour, measuring out cups full of butter, spoonsful of spices, and she gave herself to it, losing herself in the rhythm of mixing and kneading. Madeleine came at five thirty and tied on her apron, and if she was surprised to find Annie there, she didn’t remark on it. Neither did Carol, when she arrived a while later. Not one of them talked beyond what was necessary to get breakfast going, and at seven, when Madeleine unlocked the café’s doors, several of the regulars walked in, and they were subdued, too.

Annie couldn’t face them and stayed in the kitchen, making herself useful by washing dishes, Bo’s old job, until the breakfast crowd thinned.

“You don’t have to be here,” Madeleine said when the last diner left. “We can manage.”

But Annie had no place else to be. She sat with Madeleine and Carol over coffee and told them about Bo’s mother, that she was alive, that he might have gone there. They agreed it made sense.

“I don’t believe that business about the drugs, though,” Madeleine said.

“I’m lighting a candle,” Carol said.

They took their empty mugs to the sink, and Annie asked Madeleine if she could use the computer in the office. “Just until the lunch crowd picks up.”

“Honey,” she said, “you take as long as you need. Carol and I can manage.”

Carol nodded, exchanging a look with Madeleine that on any other day might have caught Annie’s attention, but her registration of such details now wasn’t more than subliminal. She was grateful when they didn’t question her. The last thing she needed was one more person telling her how futile it was to search for the white-haired woman through the ownership of a blue-eyed dog.

She was startled a bit later by a light tapping on the door frame, and looking up, her eyes collided with Lauren Wilder’s.

“Madeleine told me you were in here,” Lauren said. “I hope you don’t mind.”

“No, it’s fine,” Annie said, although she wasn’t sure. “Did you find your car?”

Lauren said she had and abruptly averted her gaze, pointing her face into the late-morning light that slanted through the window, as if to signal she couldn’t say more without losing her composure.

She looked awful, Annie thought. Parched and bruised, like a ruined flower. She looked . . .
haunted.
The word appeared in Annie’s mind, and she could understand how that might be. She knew what it was like, having to fight to hold yourself together. “I’m glad,” Annie said and left it at that.

“Is it true they closed down the command post?”

“It costs a lot of money to run something like that. Anyway, people have to get on with their lives.”

“I suppose I can understand that, but I meant what I said yesterday about helping you. You can’t give up, you know? Because sometimes, even when everything looks really hopeless, it can work out. If you just give it . . .” Lauren didn’t finish.

But she didn’t need to. Annie knew what she meant, that you could never give up when a horrible nightmare involved someone you loved. You couldn’t go home from that. You couldn’t just take up your life. “Thank you,” Annie said when she could speak. “I’m trying to find the dog.” She picked up the list of area veterinarians she had made. “The one with blue eyes you described.”

“Any luck?” Lauren asked, setting down her purse.

“I’ve gotten about a quarter of the way through. Some of the practices have blue-eyed dogs as patients, but so far, none of the owners are white-haired women.”

“Want to tear the list in half?” Lauren pulled her cell phone from her purse. “We’ll split the vets that are left, get through them in no time.”

The surge of Annie’s gratitude caught her off guard. She covered her face with her hands, and when she could, she looked up at Lauren. Their eyes locked and what passed between them was visceral, as physical as the warmest of handshakes, as tender as an embrace.

17

H
er arm hung over the side of the mattress, fingertips dipping toward the floor. That’s what wakened Lauren early on Thursday morning. The weight of her arm, throbbing and dead with sleep. Her head, too, hung over the bedside, and she pulled it back, along with her arm, curling into herself, turtle-like. Awareness rose, gritty and harsh. Dry. Her mouth was dry, her tongue a stone. And she hurt. Everywhere. As if she’d been battered. Was she dreaming? Ill? Tentatively, she straightened her knees, almost moaning with the effort.

Her feet—what was on her feet?

Her eyes hitched open. She sat up, heedless of how the room tilted, a ship in a rough sea, and flung away the bed linen, staring at her feet in some mix of alarm and dread and utter disbelief. Mud caked her toes; it clung to her bare soles, along with odd bits of leaves and grass. There was mud smeared on the sheets. And her shirt, the one she’d worn yesterday. She still had it on. Where were her jeans? Maneuvering carefully, she stood up, loosening a jolt of pain so raw, she almost cried out. Tears stung her eyes, and her hand fell to her hip, the one she’d smashed in her fall from the church bell tower.
What had she done to herself?

She took a step, and the room swam in her vision, making her wobble. She groped for a handhold and found the nightstand’s edge. She thought of calling for help, but then bit her lip. It was barely six according to the clock. Besides, she knew what any member of her family would think if they were to catch her in this sorry shape. But it wasn’t true; it couldn’t be true.

She hadn’t taken Oxy.

Had she?

Reaching the bathroom, she flipped on the light, and when she saw them, the four tablets in the small plastic sleeve, sitting in plain view on the vanity, she whimpered, shutting her eyes against them. But they were still there when she looked again, mocking and ruthless. Accusatory.

She snatched up the packet, spilled the tabs across her palm, turned them over with the tip of her index finger. They were yellow 40s, the same as before, but this time she didn’t remember anything about getting them. She didn’t have so much as the vestige of a dream to go on. Closing her fist around them, she brought them to her chest, squeezing her eyes shut, trying to find her breath or sense—or the way to wake up now, please—and she jumped violently when Jeff said her name.

“Lauren?”

She peered at him, trying to read his expression, seeing clearly that he knew. “I—I’m so sorry. I don’t know what happened.” She looked away, fighting tears, an urge to fall to her knees. Possibly she would beg, if begging would make a difference. She would do whatever it took. The thoughts, her terror, tumbled hollowly through her mind.
My children
. . .

“What do you remember? The last thing.”

His tone was neutral, not expressive of any emotion she could name. She wanted to answer him properly, and she thought hard, raising a jumble of impressions from yesterday: the detectives, Willis and Cosgrove, seated in those ridiculous pink chairs in her unused living room, asking her questions about Bo Laughlin. Annie Beauchamp’s eyes, aching with loss when she spoke of the car accident that had taken her mother . . . Madeleine Finch’s idea to do a fund-raiser to collect money for a reward for information leading to Bo’s whereabouts . . .

. . . her SUV that she had believed to her core was stolen, that had turned out not to be stolen after all.

Lauren groped her way to the Jacuzzi and sat on its wide edge.

“I came home with dinner, and you weren’t here. The kids said they hadn’t seen you, and you hadn’t called. When I tried your cell, you didn’t answer. I filled up your voice mail. You never responded. I thought about calling the cops, but I knew you wouldn’t want that. It would only piss you off—after yesterday. I mean, you seemed pretty shook up that the detectives came to the house, you know? And then the way that sheriff was looking at you . . .”

Lauren glanced at Jeff. “What are you saying?”

“Nothing, really. It’s kind of crazy, that’s all. You being the last one to see that kid, Bo, then a couple of days later there’s this mix-up with your car.”

“The two things aren’t related.” Lauren heard how she sounded, indignant, offended. Was it how an innocent person would sound? Or a guilty one? She put her face in her hands.

“No, but I didn’t think you’d want to draw more attention from law enforcement, right? If you’d still been gone this morning, I’d have had to contact them. I’m just glad it didn’t come to that.” Jeff’s voice was so quiet, it was almost surreal.

Lauren was confused by it. “Why aren’t you yelling at me? I would be if I were you.”

“What good would it do?” he asked.

She shook her head.

“I must have dozed off, waiting for you, and when I woke up around two this morning and you still weren’t home, I went outside and found you passed out in the yard. The sprinklers had kicked on. That’s why you’re muddy.”

“Where did I say I’d been?”

“Houston, some bar near White Oak Bayou. You said some guys there hooked you up.”

Lauren closed her eyes again, feeling sick. She knew the location. It was a dive, a dank hole in a graffiti-scratched brick wall. She’d been there a few times after Bettinger cut off her legal drug supply. One of the nurse’s aides at rehab had told her about it when she showed up for a session, looking as rough as she felt. He’d taken pity on her and scribbled out an address that even she knew was located in one of the worst neighborhoods in Houston. Every time she went there, she took her life in her hands. Every time she swallowed the Oxy, she knew she could die.

She nearly had died once from an overdose. She would have if Kenzie hadn’t come home from school and found her. In the front yard, facedown, barely breathing. Lauren knew from Jeff’s account that Kenzie had been terrified. Still, she’d had the presence of mind to work through the steps, at first trying to rouse Lauren, and when that hadn’t worked, she’d gone into the house and dialed 911. The operator there had called for an ambulance, then instructed Kenzie on what to do until help arrived.

“Roll your mom on her side,” the operator said. “Tilt back her head and lift her chin to keep her airway clear.”

It was unbearable to imagine a child, her own daughter, being put through such an ordeal. What kid gets coached, schooled in what to do if they find their mother passed out and drugged to the gills? Remembering now, Lauren bent over her knees, almost choking on the evil tar of self-loathing that rose into her throat. She would never outlive the guilt; she didn’t deserve to, and here she was, at it again. Swiftly, she went to the toilet, dropped the tablets—plastic and all—into the bowl, and flushed them away.

When she came back, Jeff slid his hands under her elbows and drew her into his embrace.

“I—I sort of remember going there, but I don’t remember taking anything,” she said. “A—a glass of wine—I drank a glass of wine, or maybe two.”

“You had a bit more than that, I think,” Jeff said.

Lauren stepped out of his embrace. Finding a tissue, she blew her nose. She seldom drank anymore. Since the accident, alcohol affected her differently, and its impact on her was only intensified if she was taking Oxy. In fact, she had been warned not to drink at all when she was on it.

“I’m surprised you didn’t call Gloria,” Jeff said.

“I thought about it.” Lauren shrugged. It had seemed pointless. Gloria would have insisted on meeting; she would have given Lauren the speech about waiting through the next minute, and the next, and the next, until the whole abomination of her terrible, gut-ripping desire to lose herself passed. Yesterday, standing in the street, holding her mother’s scarf, the evidence of her deluded behavior in her hands, Lauren hadn’t believed that sobriety was anything she could want, much less sustain. She didn’t know if she believed in it now. After almost a year attending 12-step meetings, she still didn’t know where to find that conviction, the way out of her bouts with despair. “It was selfish,” she said. “Selfish of me to put you and the children through that. I’m so sorry.” Her voice was rough with her unfallen tears, but she had no right to let them go, no right to a release of any kind.

“You shouldn’t have been driving,” Jeff said.

“No,” she said, and she turned from him to lean on the sink’s edge while the awful question of what she might have done coiled in her brain like a snake, tongue darting, ready to strike her down with any number of sordid revelations.

“The kids need to get up. They’ll be late for school. Do you want me to take care of them?”

“No, I’ll do it as soon as I take a shower. There’s time.” Lauren lifted her glance to the mirror and, wincing at her image, looked quickly away. “I’ll make waffles. They’ll be thrilled.” BTA Lauren had made waffles. Maybe if she copied her, if she faked those motherly, nurturing things she had done often enough, the knack of being her would come back.

She looked again in the mirror and found Jeff’s gaze there. He looked so worried, so undone. Turning to him, Lauren cupped his cheek. “Just let me get a shower. Then I’ll make breakfast, okay? I just need to be with you and the kids.”

He wasn’t convinced.

“Look, you can hide the car keys at night if you want. I’ll go to more meetings. I won’t drink again, ever, because maybe that’s all this is, a bad reaction to the wine.” Even she knew better.

“Maybe you should talk to Dr. Bettinger.”

“Yes.” She brightened, feeling eager. “It’s almost time for my checkup anyway.”

Jeff said, “Okay then. If you’re sure you don’t need me, I have a couple of calls to make. We’re starting preliminary work on the Waller-Land building.”

“Today? Oh, of course, today. What am I saying?” Her smile felt foolish, wrong. “Go,” she urged, brightly.

He held her gaze a moment and then left, and she leaned, stiff-armed, on the vanity. What if she’d had a wreck last night and killed someone? What if she’d gone home with one of the men she vaguely remembered drinking with? What if a neighbor or the children had seen her passed out on the lawn?

After her shower, she woke them, first, Kenzie, who was easily roused, and then Drew, who was not. Back in the kitchen, she started breakfast, layering bacon into a frying pan, turning on a low fire underneath it. But then, getting out her cell phone, she called Tara, needing her sister, the sound of her voice, her reassurance. “Can you have lunch later?” Lauren asked when Tara answered. “I’ll meet you at that tearoom near your office. What’s the name of it?”

“I can’t.” Tara declined so quickly that Lauren was taken aback.

“What’s wrong?” she asked, but then, remembering Greg, she thought she knew, and she waited to hear that Tara had found out he was gone or back on heroin or both.

Instead, Tara said she wasn’t at the office but home in bed, still not feeling good. “It’s some nasty intestinal bug.”

She was lying, Lauren thought. It was Greg that ailed her. Tara just didn’t want to admit it, that she’d lost another man, another relationship.

“I could bring you some 7UP.” Lauren named the soft drink their mother had given them to settle their stomachs when they were kids.

“That’s sweet of you, but I don’t want you catching this.”

“Okay,” Lauren said, “but you can talk to me, you know.”

There was a beat of silence, and Lauren got the sense that Tara was fighting not to cry. “I’m okay,” she said, but her voice was strained. “I will be, I guess.”

“Has he called?”

“Who?”

“Greg,” Lauren said. “Have you talked to him?”

“Have you?”

“Not lately.” Lauren paused. “There’ll be other guys, you know.”

“Oh, Lauren, if only that could fix it.” Her voice hitched.

Lauren felt her own tears rise. “It’ll be okay, TeeRee—”

“Has he been at meetings? Greg, I mean?”

Lauren said she hadn’t gone to any meetings this week, and she was explaining about Bo, that she was helping in the search for him when Tara broke in.

“I can’t talk about this now.”

“About what?”

“Greg. I don’t want to talk about Greg.”

Lauren was nonplussed. “Okay,” she said.

“Why did you want to have lunch, anyway? What’s wrong?”

Lauren thought about saying it was nothing; she thought about saying the everything that it was. But suddenly, she had as little desire to talk about last night as Tara did to talk about Greg. Her antics, her backsliding were only symptoms of the real trouble anyway. “I don’t trust, TeeRee. I have no faith in people. You, Jeff. I’m going to drive everyone who loves me away if I don’t stop feeling like this, doubting everyone, being suspicious of them.”

“People don’t like their love and loyalty questioned. They don’t like to be—” Tara interrupted herself. “Whatever it is you think Jeff is planning—divorcing you, taking the children—it’s just not true. It’s nuts for you to think either of us would do that.”

“You did say—”

“Yes, but that was when you were still using, and you’ve stopped now.”

“My mind isn’t the same, though. I don’t feel like me, the me I used to be. I’m scared—and lately, I feel so crazy. Crazier, I guess.”

“Have you called Bettinger?”

“I’m going to.”

“Maybe you need a shrink instead. I don’t mean that in a bad way—”

“I know. Oh, God, the bacon’s burning. I’ve got to go!” It was true. Lauren dropped her phone on the counter and shut off the gas flame under the frying pan.
How did it happen?
a punishing voice in her brain wanted to know.
You were standing right here
, it said.

It was the last of it, the last of the bacon. There wasn’t any more, and she set about salvaging the burned batch, prying the charred centers of the strips from the bottom of the pan, then carefully pressing the curled ends into the still-hot drippings to brown. Grim now, focused on simply serving her children their breakfast, she whipped up the waffle batter. It was a sudden longing for something lovely that sent her outside to collect a few roses from the heavenly scented antique shrub,
Souvenir de la Malmaison,
that bloomed near the back door. The thorn that pricked the tender webbing of flesh between her thumb and the base of her index finger drew blood and a renewed threat of tears that disgusted her. She had put the flowers into a small vase and set it on the kitchen island, and she was dishing up the waffles and overdone bacon, when Kenzie and Drew slid onto their stools. They exchanged a glance, one that said louder than words,
What’s up with her?