Crooked Little Lies (22 page)

“He had a lot of cash, Sheriff.” Lauren spoke for the first time. “I saw it myself, and Charlotte confirmed it was over three hundred dollars. Someone could have robbed him.”

Sheriff Neely didn’t answer. Annie heard the shift of his feet under his desk, and the sound suggested impatience to her. She got the sense that the sheriff wished her gone, as gone as Bo. Her jaw tightened. “You have to do something, Sheriff Neely, get people together to look for him.”

He sighed, audibly, wearily. “I’d like to help,” he fixed Annie with a regretful gaze, “but we’re a small department with limited resources. There are four officers total, including me, and two of the guys are part-timers. And don’t even get me started about the budgetary constraints.”

“I didn’t come here to talk about your budget,” Annie said, and she would have said more that was heated and angry, but the sheriff cut her off, saying sharply that he knew Charlotte Meany and she wasn’t reliable. “You can’t trust what she told you.”

“Are you saying she’s a liar?” Lauren asked.

She sounded incensed, as if the sheriff had accused her of being untrustworthy. She probably got that a lot herself, Annie thought. They were all three alike in that respect, Bo and Charlotte and Lauren. No one put much stock in anything they said.

“No, I’m saying she’s elderly, and like a lot of folks her age, she has trouble with her memory.” The sheriff touched his temple. “Her daughter, Diane, wants her to sell the house and go into an assisted living facility. She’s afraid Charlotte’s going to injure herself. She for sure shouldn’t be driving anymore. The state took her license over a year ago.”

“No, Sheriff, here’s what’s for sure.” Annie bent forward. “She drove my brother from Hardys Walk to her house almost a week ago, and he hasn’t been seen since. That’s what’s for sure.”

The sheriff’s mouth flattened.

Annie brought her palm down on the desktop. “You can’t just dismiss—”

“Wait.” Lauren cut in, holding Annie’s gaze for a single reassuring moment before addressing the sheriff. “It’s true Bo could have found a ride with someone, but that someone might live here in Cedar Cliff. They could have information about where they took him, what shape he was in, what he might have talked about. It could help find him.”

“They would have come forward by now,” Sheriff Neely said.

“Charlotte didn’t,” Lauren countered.

The sheriff looked reluctant, as if he didn’t want to see the logic in what Lauren was saying. He looked as if he was too tired to move, and it infuriated Annie.

“Don’t you even care?” she demanded. The ensuing pause rang with her indignation. She could hear the heave of her breath. Even her heartbeat was loud in her ears.

“Is that your wife and baby?” Lauren asked.

Small talk?
Annie stared at Lauren. She was making small talk again? In some disbelief, Annie followed Lauren’s gaze to the credenza behind the sheriff’s desk, where a framed photograph showed a woman sitting in what was clearly a hospital bed, holding a newborn. The woman’s mouth was curled into an exhausted yet triumphant smile.

“Yeah,” the sheriff answered. “That’s the last time he slept, I think. It was taken a month ago,” he added.

“Your first?” Lauren asked.

He nodded. “I wasn’t prepared. I mean, everyone says how they’re up day and night, but my God, I don’t think he’s slept more than ten minutes since we got him home. My wife spends all her time worried sick there’s something terrible the matter with him.”

“It gets easier. In another month or so, you’ll be wondering how you could have ever imagined your life was full before your son was born.”

“I hope you’re right.”

“I hope you’ll consider putting together a search effort for Bo,” Lauren said smoothly. “He’s Annie’s brother but also somebody’s son. As a father yourself, you can imagine how it would feel if your son were to disappear without a trace.”

Annie held her breath.

The sheriff took his time before saying, “All right,” grudgingly.

Annie wanted to whoop. She glanced at Lauren, who was serene. Who looked as if nothing ever ruffled her composure or ever had. And somehow now, Annie doubted the scene she’d witnessed last night, Lauren down on her knees, plowing through the contents of her purse, shaking and distressed. That woman and this one couldn’t be the same.

“We’ve brought flyers with Bo’s photograph on them,” Lauren said.

Annie extracted one from the folder on her lap and pushed it across the desk.

The sheriff picked it up, studying it. He switched his glance to hers. “I doubt he’s still in the area, if he was ever here, but I’ll see if we can get some folks together to have a look around. We’ll start at Charlotte’s place, either side of the highway there.” He indicated the flyer. “Can I keep this? Do you have extras you can spare?”

Annie handed him half of what she’d brought.

“You want to post them around town, go ahead. Talk to people, if you want to, and let me know if you hear anything.”

“Thank you,” Annie said.

He stood up.

Annie and Lauren did, too.

“Leave your contact information with Darlene,” the sheriff said. “She’ll need it for her report.”

Lauren’s cell phone rang, and she took it from her purse. “I need to get this,” she said. “Will you excuse me?”

Once she’d left, Annie addressed the sheriff. “Maybe you should question Charlotte Meany yourself.”

“Yeah, I intend to talk to her, but what’re you saying? She give you some reason to believe she wasn’t being truthful?”

Annie hesitated. “When I said anything might have happened—”
she began and stopped.

“Go on,” the sheriff said.

“Suppose Bo was injured doing something at her house?” Annie was unsure how to go on. The implications were enormous. But it plagued her, the idea that he might have been hurt working for Charlotte, and because she was old, probably senile and frightened, she’d covered it up. It seemed outlandish, but so were a lot of things in life.

“I’ll talk to her.” The sheriff seemed to catch the gist of Annie’s concern.

She thanked him as if she believed him, but she knew what he was thinking: that mounting a search for Bo this far north of Hardys Walk, nearly a week after the last sighting of him, was crazy. As crazy as Annie herself or Charlotte Meany. Or maybe he was thinking of his crying baby or his budget constraints. She stopped by Darlene’s desk and gave her the information for her report, because beneath the weight of doubt, Annie harbored a glimmer of hope that something might come of it.

“If you give me a flyer,” Darlene said, “I’ll make copies. I can get some folks together to help get them up.”

Annie thanked her, too, and while her gratitude was immense and heartfelt, it was burdened with resentment at her helplessness, at her overwhelming need, at the yawning and still-growing debt she owed to virtual strangers.
Sometimes it’s harder to receive a gift than it is to give one
. Her mother had said that. Her mother had said some debts couldn’t be paid back, only forward.

Darlene said, “You and your brother are in my prayers.”

“Thank you.” Annie said it again, and she tried not to mind the intensity of Darlene’s gaze, how filled with longing it was for every last detail, the more personal in nature, the better. People craved tragedy, Annie thought, as long as it wasn’t their own. They were like skeletons at the feast, and she was the main course.

She went outside. It was late in the afternoon now, but the day was still warm for early October, and the light was as golden as freshly gathered honey.

“Annie?”

She turned, smiling at Lauren, grateful to her. “It worked so perfectly, what you said to Sheriff Neely. I don’t think he would ever have agreed—” But now, seeing the fear that was back in Lauren’s eyes, her look of utter despair, Annie took Lauren’s hands. “What’s wrong?”

“Oh, Annie,” she said, “what have I done?”

19

S
omehow Lauren found her way out of Cedar Cliff, and when she got to the interstate, as she waited in the lane that would take her onto the southbound ramp back to Hardys Walk, she considered not returning there. Looking north, she imagined herself on that ramp instead. She would disappear like Bo, go somewhere far away to lose what was left of her mind alone, without an audience and the continual demand to explain herself and her actions.

Behind her a horn bleated, and she jumped, gunning through the intersection, breath shallow, panic racing through her veins like dark ink. She gripped the steering wheel. Jeff’s voice bounced off the walls of her skull:
How could you have forgotten? Your own daughter?

Just yesterday, she’d been torn with worry over the possibility. Now it had come to pass.

Lauren tried to focus on driving, her destination. She was almost positive Mercy General was on the southbound feeder, a little north of Hardys Walk.
God, please let me be remembering right!
The prayer sat behind her eyes. She thought she’d been there at least once before with Drew when he broke his arm several years ago, playing flag football. Kenzie had never been in a hospital, though, since she was born. She would be so afraid, and Lauren hated that. And yet she’d let this happen. It was her fault.

Are you fucked up? Is that it? You’re fucked up again, aren’t you, while our daughter’s lying in an emergency room.

Jeff’s words, his accusation, made an endless loop in her brain, caustic, wearing. But he yelled when he was scared. She’d yell at him, too, if he were responsible. God, how she hated this. She felt as if she were trapped in a fun house, full of eerie sounds, warped mirrors, and dead ends. She wondered if Jeff would believe her assuming he gave her a chance to tell him the truth, that she’d lost track of time.

That was Annie’s excuse made on Lauren’s behalf. She’d blamed herself. “It’s because of me; you forgot because you were helping me. I’m so sorry.”

She’d looked so worried, on the verge of tears, when Lauren drove off alone. Annie had said she would call JT, that he would come and get search teams organized. He would watch out for her, Lauren thought, and be sure she got home safely. At least that much was a relief.

She found a parking space at the hospital near the emergency-room entrance and switched off the ignition, but then she could only sit staring at the building. Its gray hulk loomed over her like a nightmare. The weather had changed, and the sky peered down, a cloudy eye. Moody, judging. How could she go inside? She gripped the steering wheel and lowered her head to her hands. But then after a moment, she was out of the car like a shot and through the double doors. Her half-running steps rang in the empty corridor. A nurse looked up at her approach.

“My daughter’s here,” Lauren said. “Mackenzie Wilder? She was in a car accident—”

“Lauren?”

She wheeled at the sound of Jeff’s voice. “How is she? Where is she? I need to see her.”

Jeff took her elbow, steering her away from the nurses’ station, and he was calm now, and Lauren was grateful for that.

“She’s going to be fine,” he said. “She has a cut across her forehead.” With the tip of his finger, Jeff drew a line that bisected his eyebrow, coming way too near the outside corner of his eye. “It took fifteen stitches to close it.”

“Her head—what about her head?”

“It’s fine, nothing like what happened to you.” Jeff knew the source for Lauren’s anxiety immediately. “There’s not a sign of a concussion, much less the brain trauma you went through.”

“Thank God.” Lauren felt suddenly weak, as if her legs might give way. She stiffened her knees.

“They want to keep her overnight, though, in case.”

“I’ll stay with her.”

“She doesn’t want to see you.”

“What? Of course she does.”
But no.
She could see Jeff wasn’t being cruel. The truth was in his eyes, in a shadow that lay deeper than his anger. Deeper even than his affront, his disbelief, his conviction that, as a mother, she was unfit. What Lauren saw in his eyes was pity. Jeff pitied her. He was sorry for her that her own daughter was rejecting her.

She couldn’t speak for the longest moment, and when she found her voice, she said, “But I would never hurt her. I love her. You know that.”

“She’s mad as hell at you, Lauren.”

Lauren lifted her chin. She had seen the cubicle Jeff had come out of, and she went past him, heading toward it. She heard him say her name and “Don’t. Don’t hurt yourself this way.” But she had to see her daughter, to know Kenzie’s rejection for herself.

She pulled aside the curtain screening Kenzie from her view, and even as she locked eyes with her daughter, Lauren confronted the terrible damage to Kenzie’s face, the slim red seam that cleaved her sweet brow—that missed her left eye by the merest fraction. Lauren’s knees weakened again even as she stepped toward the bed. She wanted Kenzie in her arms, wanted, desperately, to hold her and offer comfort, to murmur a thousand apologies into the silken fall of her hair.

But Kenzie raised her hands, warding Lauren off. “Go away,” she said. “I don’t want you here.”

“Honey, I’m so sorry.”

“That’s what you always say. You’re always sorry, but then you drug yourself and you’re back to stupid. Back to not remembering anything. Not even your own family. You like your damn pills better. Everybody knows it. All the kids at school. Sarah Jane Farmer’s parents say she can’t be friends with me anymore because you’re a druggie. Did you know that?”

“No!” Lauren was horrified. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“There’s this girl Drew likes? But her folks won’t let her go near him because of you. You embarrass me, Mommy. You make me sick. I told the nurse you were dead; that’s why she called Daddy instead of you.” Kenzie turned her face away, her small chest heaving, jaw trembling.

Lauren’s heart broke. She was aware of Jeff, drawing her away, tugging her out of the cubicle, and she turned to him, needing his arms around her, his strength to hold her up, but he kept his distance. Guiding her to a waiting area, he sat her down, put a cup of coffee into her hands, and stood looking down at her. “Give her some time,” he said.

“I’m not taking drugs,” Lauren said. “You saw—I flushed them.”

No response.

“I was with Annie. We found the woman Bo was last seen with. She lives near Cedar Cliff. I drove Annie there to talk to her, then we went to the sheriff—”

“Jesus Christ, Lauren.” He backed off a step.

“Annie had no other way to get there, Jeff. Her car isn’t reliable.”

“I don’t understand you—this obsession you have with these people, some guy that’s missing, some fucking stranger.” He paused. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean that. I feel bad for the family, too. But you and our kids are my family. You come first with me no matter what.”

“I know—”

“I’m working my ass off . . . trying to keep us together. What is going on with you?”

She bowed her head, picking at her thumbnail.

“The contract and permits for Waller-Land? They aren’t in my briefcase.”

She jerked her glance to Jeff’s. “They are. I put the folder in there. You said you saw it.”

“It’s there, but it’s empty.”

“Did the inspector come by?”

“No, we got lucky. I can’t risk it, though, working without the permit. I was on my way home to look for the paperwork when the hospital called.”

“I don’t know what happened.” Lauren was truly at sea. She clearly recalled gathering the pages and slotting them into a folder—she wasn’t quite sure when—Wednesday before she’d gone into town? She didn’t know, but she had put the file in Jeff’s briefcase. She could still feel the heft of it as she’d lifted it onto the desk in the study. He was wrong, she thought, and when she got her hands on the briefcase, she’d prove it.

Wiping her face, she asked about Amanda and her mom, assuming the girls had called Suzanne when Lauren didn’t show up. Lauren thought Suzanne had been driving, but Jeff said no, that the driver was a kid named Steve.

“He’s a friend of Drew’s, according to Kenzie. I talked to his parents a while ago when they came to pick him up. He wasn’t hurt, but the paramedics transported him anyway just to be safe. His folks weren’t too happy. He was driving his mom’s car, and they’re saying it’s totaled. His dad said the kid just got his license a week ago. He wasn’t supposed to be driving anywhere except to school and back home.”

“But where was Suzanne?”

Jeff’s eyes widened.
Where were you?
That was the question, and it sat between them, no less radiant in its condemnation for remaining unspoken.

Lauren was surprised when he sat down, but he was careful to take the chair on the other side of a small built-in table, not that he’d have offered to comfort her. But then, she didn’t deserve his concern, his tenderness.

“I don’t know where Suzanne was. Kenzie said Amanda tried calling her, but she must have been out of pocket. Meanwhile, Steve showed up. Amanda wouldn’t get in the car with him, but Kenzie thought it was all right because she’d seen him hanging out with Drew. She was pissed at you, Lauren. You know how she hates being late for ballet.”

Lauren set down the paper cup filled with machine-dispensed coffee, sharply enough that some slopped over the rim, burning her knuckles. She was angry, suddenly, unreasonably, at all the wrong people: Kenzie and Jeff, Suzanne. It made no sense to her when she knew she alone was responsible.

If Jeff was aware of her emotional upheaval, he gave no sign. He was always so calm and self-contained. Grounded in a way that she envied and resented. How was it that relationships—love—could be so twisted with contradiction?

“Kenzie’s had it, Lauren.” Jeff looked at her.

She looked at the floor.

“She’s sick of making excuses to all her friends for the craziness.” Jeff twirled the tips of his index fingers near his ears. “Sick of trying to play it off that her mom isn’t a junkie. I can’t blame her. Can you? After everything she’s gone through on your account?”

Lauren was afraid to move. Her heart was beating too fast, and she was dizzy. Too dizzy and weak. She opened her mouth, intending to ask Jeff for help, a nurse, a doctor. “I haven’t taken anything, Jeff,” she heard herself say instead. “I don’t know how Oxy keeps ending up in the house, in my possession when I have no recollection . . .” Lauren could see he wasn’t going to brainstorm possibilities, other than the one that was obvious. To him, at least.

“You saw me flush it.” She repeated the single fact she knew for sure.

“How do I know you don’t have more?”

“I don’t.”

“Show me.”

Grabbing her purse, Lauren upended the contents onto the tabletop between them, passing her hand over her wallet, her car keys, a coin purse, tissues, lip gloss, two pens, a compact mirror—a plastic envelope that contained two yellow tablets. She recoiled, looking openmouthed at Jeff.

He gazed back at her and the mercy in his eyes was tempered with fresh pity.

“I don’t know how these got here,” she said.

“I don’t, either.” He stood up.

She gathered the contents of her purse, shoving them inside it, all but the Oxy tablets. Those, she left on the table. “Kenzie shouldn’t be alone,” she said. “I’m her mother. I should be with her.”

“Go home,” Jeff said, and his voice, his eyes were weary. “Just go home,” he repeated.

But Lauren didn’t go home. She went to Dr. Bettinger’s office. He wasn’t in, but his nurse Shelly was, and Lauren was almost relieved. Shelly was easier to talk to; she didn’t lecture.

“I’m a mess,” Lauren said.

“What’s going on?” Shelly asked.

Lauren didn’t answer; she was afraid if she spoke, she would cry. What if Shelly was like Jeff and didn’t believe her?

As if Shelly could read her distress, she took Lauren’s elbow and drew her into an exam room. “Sit down,” she said, indicating the paper-topped bed. “Now tell me,” she instructed, settling onto a stool.

Somehow Shelly’s air of calm, the sense she gave Lauren that she had all the time in the world, made it easier to talk about it—where Kenzie was and how she’d come to be there. “She thinks I forgot to pick her up because I’m using again. I can’t stand it, her thinking that.” Lauren pressed her knuckled fist to her mouth, willing away the tears.

“Well, a blood test will settle the question,” Shelly said. She left the room, and when she came back with everything she needed to take a sample, Lauren looked at it in dismay.

“I drank a lot of wine last night,” she said. “I know I shouldn’t,” she added, and she felt like a teenager who’d been trapped into admitting she’d raided her parents’ liquor cabinet.

Shelly inserted the needle. “Walking—some kind of exercise or meditation would be better,” she said.

Lauren closed her eyes, and immediately, the vision of her condition this morning when she’d wakened, filthy and aching, seared the backs of her eyelids. Heat rose from her shirt collar, warming her face. She couldn’t speak of it to Shelly, the possibility that more than the wine was involved; it wasn’t as if she needed to know the entire scope of Lauren’s fear to make a proper diagnosis anyway. Humiliation wasn’t relevant to the question.