Die Before I Wake (11 page)

As predicted, I found Claudia in the greenhouse, repotting a geranium. Her work station was a silvered wooden plank set atop a pair of sawhorses. A shelving unit, nailed together from pieces of the same plank, held gardening tools, bags of potting soil and mulch, a stack of empty terra-cotta pots, containers of various fertilizers and insecticides, and God only knew what else. The rest of the greenhouse, every inch of it, was filled with plants. I’d never seen so much green—or such a profusion of color—in one place in my life.

With her hands buried up to the knuckles in rich, black soil, she sang off-key with Michael Bolton:

“When a ma-an loves a woman—”

I cleared my throat. Her head whipped around and she saw me. “Oh, good,” she said, apparently without embarrassment at being caught. “I was just thinking about you.”

“Hello, yourself. This place is impressive.”

“Welcome to my world,” she said. “My obsession. Gardening keeps me relaxed, helps me work out my aggressions, and prevents me from tumbling over the edge of reason into insanity.”

“You certainly seem to be good at it.”

“It’s the only thing in this world that I can call mine alone. I don’t have to share it with anyone else.

Even my son I have to share with his father. Whether I want to or not.” While she talked, she tamped down the soil around the roots of the transplanted geranium. “When I get mad at my ex,” she confided, picking up a small watering can and dousing the soil,

“weeding the garden is my favorite activity. As I lop off their little heads with my hoe, I imagine it’s him I’m decapitating.” She grinned. “It’s so freeing.”

“Remind me not to get on your bad side.”

“Oh, you’re safe.” She picked up a towel and wiped the dirt from her hands. “I only take out my aggressions on stubborn weeds and ex-husbands.

But, Julie—I’m so glad you came! I’m dying of thirst. Let’s make a pitcher of strawberry daiquiris, sit on the patio, and get shitfaced.” Her enthusiasm was contagious and, although shitfaced probably wasn’t in my future, we sat in lounge chairs on the patio with a pitcher of daiquiris on the table between us. Her face turned up to the sun, Claudia said, “So how’s it going so far? Is the transition difficult?”

“Oh, it’s going just great.” I took a sip of my daiquiri. “My mother-in-law hates my guts, I’ve been threatened by a seven-year-old, and a total stranger accused me of marrying a homicidal maniac.”

“Let me guess,” she said over the rim of her glass.

“Melanie Ambrose.”

“The lady gets it in one.”

“Ignore Melanie,” she said. “Everyone in town knows she’s a few sandwiches short of a picnic. And that mother-in-law of yours? Woo-hoo, she’s a piece of work. But I’ll admit I’m intrigued by the threat from a seven-year-old. I assume we’re talking about Taylor?”

“We are. And it’s not as though I don’t understand where she’s coming from. I’m a stranger to her, and she’s reluctant to take me at face value. I believe that’s a sign of good judgment.”

“But?”

“But—” I realized that the alcohol had loosened my tongue, and I wondered if I were saying too much.

But Tom had known Claudia Lavoie all his life, and after five minutes in her company, I felt as though I had, too. “It isn’t so much what she said. The poor kid was just repeating what she’d heard. I guess what bothers me so much is that she was parroting something Jeannette had said to her. Something toxic and hurtful that should never have been said in front of her.”

“What did she say?”

“She told me I shouldn’t get used to being here, that I wouldn’t last any longer than any of the others.”

Claudia raised a single, elegant eyebrow. “Yikes.”

“Exactly. When I told Tom, he was—”

“You told Tom what she said?”

“He’s my husband. He’s supposed to support me in times of need. And since I didn’t find it appropriate subject matter for Jeannette to be discussing with his daughter, I thought he needed to know.”

“You do like to live dangerously, don’t you?” She leaned forward eagerly, her stemmed glass of bloodred liquid dangling between two elegant fingers. “So what’d he say?”

“He threatened to throw her out. His mother, that is. Not Taylor.”

“That might be a little hard, chickie. Since the house belongs to her.”

It was my turn to raise my eyebrows. “
Jeannette
owns the house?”

“Unless she sold it to Tom. And if she’d sold it to Tom, I would have heard. Nothing stays a secret for long in this town.”

“I just automatically assumed the house was his.”

“You assumed wrong. Tom grew up in that house.

I should know. I grew up in this one. Your husband gave me my first kiss when I was six years old. I’m thirty-seven now, and still comparing every man I meet to my first crush.”

“But why? Why would he tell me he had the power to remove his mother from the household if it wasn’t true?”

Claudia leaned back, adjusted her gold watch strap. “He’s trying to save face, sweetie. He wants you—his blushing bride—to be impressed with him.

What would you think if you knew he was still living with his mama? Instead of the other way around.”

“But Tom isn’t like that,” I insisted. “He’s very forthcoming with me.”

Yet, even as I said the words, I remembered that he hadn’t bothered to tell me the truth about Elizabeth’s death. Instead, he’d allowed me to assume something that was untrue. How forthcoming was that?

Seeing the crestfallen look on my face, Claudia squeezed my arm. “Don’t feel so bad, hon. Tom’s an all right guy. He may not be perfect, but compared to my ex-husband, he’s a saint. He always was, as far back as I can remember.”

“Not according to Riley, he wasn’t. He says Tom was a normal kid who pulled normal juvenile she-nanigans; he was just too smart to get caught.” She dismissed that idea with a wave of her hand.

“Forget Riley. He’s just jealous. Always has been, always will be. Tom was always the Crown Prince of Newmarket, and Riley just a humble footman. It drove him crazy. Whatever Tom had, Riley wanted.

Up to and including the lovely Lady Elizabeth. Remember the Bible verse that says you shouldn’t covet your neighbor’s wife? I guess they forgot to put in the part about brothers.”

“But Riley said—”

She raised her sunglasses and studied me beneath them. “He said what?”

“He said that he and Elizabeth were a couple before she started dating Tom.”

“Well, I suppose that’s true enough.” Claudia dropped her sunglasses on the table, next to the pitcher of daiquiris. “They dated for a couple of years, while Tom was away at college. But they broke up before he came back, primarily, I believe, because Riley didn’t seem to have any ambition. Beth wanted more than to spend the rest of her life married to a self-employed carpenter. Tom was a doctor. With him, she and her future children would live the kind of lifestyle she craved. She knew exactly what she was doing when she married Tom Larkin.”

“Riley implied that Tom stole Beth right out from under him.”

Claudia laughed, a sweet, musical sound. “Trust me,” she said. “Beth was not the passive type. Nobody stole her out from under anybody. She was a strong woman, with strong convictions. She knew what she wanted, and she went after it.”

“Then what happened to her? If she was such a together person, why did she commit suicide?” Something in Claudia shut down, right before my eyes. Some of the lightness, the vivacity, left her.

“That’s a question,” she said, “that I’ve asked myself every day for the last two years. We were close, you know. I thought I knew her so well. But she changed. The last year of her life, she wasn’t the same person. Something was wrong, something I couldn’t fix. And then—” She studied me through narrowed eyes. “Promise you won’t repeat this?

Scout’s honor?”

“I promise.”

She continued to study me, as though gauging my sincerity. Then, with the briefest of nods, she said,

“I never believed Beth killed herself.” The daiquiris had slowed my reflexes. It took me a minute to follow her line of reasoning to its chill-ing and far-fetched conclusion. “Are you saying that—”

“Yes. I’m saying exactly that. I don’t believe Beth killed herself. I think somebody helped her over the side of that bridge.”

 

Six
Following that afternoon with Claudia, I became mildly obsessed with Elizabeth Larkin. Was it morbid curiosity that fueled my fascination? Some kind of survivor guilt, because she was dead and now I was sleeping with her husband? Or was it an empathic reaction that arose from identifying too closely with her motherless daughters? I had no idea. I only knew that I’d been furious with her for deliberately deserting her girls, and now, in a 180-degree turn, I’d circled back to viewing her as a victim. Except that this time, the fabled Beth who lived inside my head wasn’t a victim of random fate. Instead, she’d fallen prey to some dark and sinister evil. Somebody with means and motive had intentionally chosen to end Elizabeth Larkin’s life.

Maybe. Or maybe not. Had she really been pushed over that railing, or was Claudia’s homicide theory simply a figment of her daiquiri-fueled imagination?

Either way, an injustice had been done. Whether victim or perpetrator of that injustice, Beth Larkin haunted me. I even started dreaming about her, this faceless woman whose life I seemed to have inherited. In the morning, I could never remember the dreams, only that Beth had played the starring role.

The knowledge left me with a vague unease. Why was I dreaming about Tom’s first wife? Was I looking for justice? Retribution for the death of a woman I hadn’t even met? I’d never before been consumed with righting a wrong; I’m no crusader, no espouser of causes. I live my life my way, and I expect others around me to do the same. I’m not the kind of woman to pursue a killer.

If, indeed, there even was a killer.

Tom finally got a Saturday off. I’d already discovered that a doctor’s wife pretty much lives alone, especially the wife of an obstetrician. Sleeping solo comes with the territory, and though I’d hoped to have more time with him, I understood the demands of his career. So when Tom was working, I found other things to keep me busy. I’d begun making jewelry again, and catching up on my reading. But on that particular Saturday, with no gynecological emergencies and no babies whose arrival appeared to be imminent, I had my husband all to myself. Or as much to myself as I could manage with two pint-sized chaperones. That morning, beneath a brilliant blue sky, we packed the girls into Beth’s Land Rover and drove to Portland, where we traded it for a shiny new burgundy-colored Toyota Highlander. Automatic, of course. I liked the look of the small SUV, there was plenty of room for the girls, and Tom said the four-wheel-drive would get me through the worst winter storms. I still missed my Miata, but I was grateful I’d married a man who made my welfare a priority. That was something Jeffrey had never done.

Afterward, we took the girls apple picking. I sat cross-legged on a blanket and watched the three of them: Tom, standing high on a ladder selecting apples and handing them down to the girls to be bagged; Sadie, whose ponytail had come undone, her hair askew and tangled with twigs; and Taylor, whose ruddy cheeks played a nice counterpoint to the grass stains on the knees of her formerly white pants. Tom glanced over at me and grinned, and like the Grinch, my heart grew three sizes that day. It was one of those golden moments, the kind of moment that you can pull from your memory in ten or twenty or fifty years, and it’ll still be there, frozen in time with every detail intact. In that moment, I realized I had it all. The little tableau in front of me was everything I’d ever needed, everything I’d ever wanted.

Tom and the girls. A package deal. My family.

That night, after the girls went to bed, we ordered pizza, took it up to our room, and had our own private candlelight dinner. No kids, no mothers, just the two of us. While we ate pepperoni and mushrooms, we talked, bouncing around from topic to topic: the events of the week; Taylor’s math grades; the article Tom had recently read about a promising new cure for cancer. Tom was a talker, and so was I. We never ran out of things to say. We’d spent more than one night on board ship sitting up into the wee hours, talking. Communication came easily to us; we seemed to have a palpable connection, an unbreachable bond.

But we were equally good at other methods of communicating. That night, when we were done talking, we made love on crisp, clean sheets, a cool breeze drifting through the open window and a single candle flickering on the dresser. Afterward, as I lay cradled in his arms, I said sleepily, “You’re pretty good at that.”

“I pride myself,” he said, “on my skills in the boudoir.”

“You know—” I lay my cheek against his chest, absorbing his heat, and listened to the steady thud of his heart. “Considering your choice of career, I’d think you’d be so tired of looking at women’s hoo-ha’s all day long that when you come home at night, sex would be the last thing on your mind. Seen one hoo-ha, seen them all.”

“Ah,” he said, “but that, my darling, is business.

This is pleasure.” He ran a finger down my arm, sending a tiny
frisson
of delight through my nerve endings. “There’s a line I’m not allowed to cross. Di-agnosing endometriosis and making love to my wife are very different activities. Besides, if I may be so bold as to say so, I find your hoo-ha infinitely more attractive than any of the ones I meet on a daily basis.”

Groggily, I said, “You are so full of it.”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing. Jules?” Half-asleep, I said, “What?”

“Let’s make a baby.”

That woke me up fast. In the soft flicker of candlelight, his face was all light and shadow, lines and angles. Dramatic, mysterious. “Isn’t this a little soon?” I said. “We haven’t even been married a month.”

“Why wait? When you know it’s right, why wait?

It would be nice to have a baby while the girls are still young. It’s easier for kids when they’re closer in age. They have a built-in peer group.” I searched his eyes, saw nothing there but sincerity. “You’re serious,” I said. “You’ve actually given this some thought.”