Live to Tell (4 page)

“Of course you’re not,” he tells Caroline, and shoots Annie a warning glance when she opens her mouth again.

“I told Sharon I don’t want the two of you on Facebook all summer.” Marin shakes her head. “That’s how you talked me into hiring a summer nanny in the first place, Garvey. To keep the girls occupied while you and I are campaigning.”

Yes, though it hadn’t exactly been his idea; it had come from his campaign staff. Specifically, Beverly. Her cousin Sharon—whom she described as a “delightful, all- American blonde”—had just gotten out of college in the Midwest and wanted to move to New York.

Garvey was agreeable. He didn’t want the girls at loose ends all summer long. He convinced his daughters that it would be like having a big-sister-slash-cruisedirector—someone who would plan fun outings and keep an eye on them.

Marin—who prided herself on being a hands-on mom—was reluctant, but eventually gave in, realizing her place would be on the campaign trail in the months ahead.

And so Sharon was hired.

What Beverly had failed to mention was that her cousin hadn’t graduated; she had flunked out of college—community college. Within five minutes of meeting Sharon, Garvey concluded she was the kind of girl who gave stunning blondes their dim-witted reputation.

In the month she had been working for the Quinns, Marin had grown increasingly frustrated; sweet-natured Annie had taken to calling Sharon “the Bubblehead” behind her back; and just yesterday, Caroline had said, “Daddy, can we please get rid of her? She’s useless.”

That did it. Garvey will have to get rid of her. Beverly won’t be pleased, but too bad. His daughters’ needs come first.

“Mr. Quinn? We’re losing light,” the photographer nudges from the next room.

“Come on, girls. Just a few more pictures.” Garvey puts a hand on both their shoulders and leads them out of the kitchen, where they just staged yet another happy family scene for the camera.

The takeout containers are buried in the trash; though Garvey’s pretty sure the photographer couldn’t care less that the “homemade” potatoes in the rarely used six-hundred-dollar skillet actually came from Dean & Deluca. Or that neither Marin nor Caroline eats red meat and their perfectly grilled steaks will be fed to the dog or the maid.

It looked good for the cameras, and that’s what counts.

Garvey can just see the caption:
The wholesome, all- American Quinns whip up a wholesome, all-American meal together after a long day on the campaign trail.

Well, Garvey was on the campaign trail, anyway. He lunched with the local chapter of the League of Women Voters, then stopped in to visit a couple of disabled veterans before hurrying home to the East Side apartment for the photo shoot. All in a day’s work.

He’ll be glad when the primary is over and the nomination is secure. After a term as a conservative Republican congressman from New York City—a notoriously rare breed—this is the opportunity he’s been waiting for all his life. According to the latest polls, the governor’s mansion could very likely be in his future.

Barry Leonard, his campaign manager, keeps telling him that he has nothing to worry about; that it would take a serious screw-up between now and September for Garvey to lose the GOP nomination—or the election after that.

If Barry Leonard had any idea…

But he doesn’t
, Garvey reminds himself.
Not yet, anyway.

And if all goes according to plan, the one person who does will be silenced long before November.

Seeing Nick down on one knee in the foyer, hugging Sadie against his chest, Lauren is struck by a ferocious wave of regret. It’s all she can do not to stop dead in her tracks to take in the tender father-daughter reunion.

Even now that all is said and done, there’s no doubt that Nick loves the kids.

I’m the one he doesn’t love.

No mistaking that. Not when he looks up, sees her, and his dark eyes harden immediately.

“Hi, Lauren.”

“Hi, Nick.”

Chauncey, wagging his tail beside Nick, barks his approval.

That’s right. Your master’s home
, Lauren tells the dog silently,
but don’t get too attached
.

“Did you bring Fred?” Sadie asks, eagerly eyeing the shopping bag in his hand.

“I brought Fred.” He hands over the bag.

With a squeal, she grabs it. “Thank you, Daddy! Wait, I made you a picture!” She races toward the kitchen as Nick gives Chauncey an obligatory pat before getting back to his feet.

A full head taller than Lauren, he’s always had a fairly solid build and had developed a bit of a paunch over the last year or two. It’s gone now though, Lauren notices. Something tells her his own weight loss, unlike hers, has little to do with grieving their marriage. No, these days, he’s all about vanity and a new lease on life.

“So where was Fred?” she asks. “In the lost and found?”

Nick nods. “Do you know how many stuffed animals kids lose in Grand Central Station?”

“I don’t know, a lot?” she asks disinterestedly, wondering if she’s supposed to regret asking him to go out of his way to look for Fred.

“Do you know how many of them are pink? That place was a nightmare.” He shakes his head wearily.
Woe is me.

She’d love to inform him that having to sort through a bunch of lost toys is hardly the worst thing that could happen to a person. Not by a long shot. But before she can speak, Sadie cries out in the kitchen.

“Lauren? Problem here,” Trilby calls urgently.

Lauren hurries in that direction, trailed by Nick and Chauncey, too.

Sadie stands in the middle of the kitchen holding the empty shopping bag and crying, pointing at something. Lauren sees the pink stuffed toy that was obviously hurtled across the room in dismay. Even from here, she can tell it isn’t Fred.

Chauncey goes over to sniff the toy with interest.

“What’s wrong, honey?” Nick appears genuinely bewildered.

“
That’s…not… Fre-ed
,” Sadie sobs.

“It’s not?”

“No,” Lauren says succinctly. “It’s not.”

There’s a long pause.

“I thought it was.”

“Really? Because that’s a dog. Fred is a rabbit. I told you that. Remember?”

“You told me Fred was a dog, Lauren.”

“Why would I do that when he’s a rabbit?” she bites out through clenched teeth, barely containing a tide of fury.

Conscious of Trilby taking in the scene, Lauren isn’t sure whether to wish her friend weren’t here, or be glad she is. Without her presence, the floodgates would surely burst.

Nick tries to hug Sadie, who stiffens and weeps inconsolably.

Resisting the urge to shove him out of the way, Lauren kneels at her daughter’s side, brushing her hair back from her face. “You need to go back to Grand Central and find Fred for her,” she tells Nick over Sadie’s head.

“
Now?
”

“Now would be good. Five minutes ago would be even better.”

“You’re insane if you think I’m going all the way back to Manhattan for a toy. I’m sorry Sadie, sweetie, but Daddy will look tomorrow, and if Fred isn’t there, Daddy will get you a new Fred.”

Kind of like Daddy got himself a new me
, Lauren thinks grimly.

Judging by the look on Trilby’s face, she’s reading the thought loud and clear.

Fed up, Lauren gets to her feet and faces Nick.

Over Sadie’s wailing, she tells him, “Just go. I’ll handle it.”

Some hopeful, delusional,
idiotic
part of her expects him to protest. To sweep Sadie into his arms—and maybe herself, as well—and apologize for being such a jerk. To promise them both that he’ll move heaven and earth to find Fred. To tell them that everything is going to be okay.

Old Familiar Nick would have done that.

Midlife Crisis Stranger Nick just looks at her for a moment, and then he does just as she asked.

He goes.

CHAPTER THREE

M
ore than three weeks later, Lauren dangles her feet in the town pool, frowning behind her sunglasses. She hates the muggy heat, hates the lazy quiet, hates that she practically has the place all to herself.

In the old days, those were the very reasons late August was her favorite time to visit the recreation complex adjacent to the town park. Most local families go on vacation during this two-week window between summer camp and Labor Day. So at this time of year, even on hot, sunny days, there’s no need to get here precisely at noon when it opens to ensure availability of chairs and umbrellas, no wait for the lap lanes, no line at the snack bar.

Nice, right?

Not today.

Today, Lauren finds the pool depressingly lonely.

At least she can be sure that she’s not going to run into the Other Woman, who has reportedly spent a good part of her summer here, sunning and swimming.

She’s currently in an expensive rented beach house on Martha’s Vineyard with Nick, having conveniently shipped her own two college-age kids off to Europe with her ex-husband. That detail was provided by Trilby, who is far more plugged into the local gossip than Lauren is. Or cares to be.

When it comes to details about Beth, Lauren can’t decide whether she wants to know or not. The details might be painful, but ignorance is far from bliss.

In the deep end, a trio of adolescent boys, including Ryan, practice their dives.

Watching her son bounce somewhat recklessly off the high board, Lauren tells herself there’s no need to worry. He’ll be fine. Of course he will.

When you’ve lived through a nightmare, there’s nothing left to fear.

True, the end of her marriage wasn’t the absolute worst that could happen…but it was pretty damned close.

Ryan splashes safely into the pool.

Relieved, Lauren waves as he emerges and climbs up the ladder. Either he doesn’t see her, or he purposely ignores her.

She’ll bet on the latter. Ryan made it clear when they arrived that he isn’t thrilled she’s here. His friends were all dropped off by parents who have better things to do on a summer Friday afternoon. Probably pack for—or unpack from—their fabulous family vacations.

Trilby, too, has abandoned Glenhaven Park, having gone down the Jersey Shore with her family.

I really need to make some new friends
.

The women with whom Lauren socialized before Nick left were part of their circle as a couple—mostly the parents of Lucy and Ryan’s friends.

Now that she’s emerging from her cocoon, she has no desire to rebuild those fractured friendships. Maybe she should make an effort to reach out to the moms of children Sadie’s age, something she never bothered—or needed—to do before.

They’re all so much younger, though; many of them still on their first child, or nursing newborns, or pregnant. Those days are long behind Lauren.

That doesn’t mean you can’t find something in common with them
, she reminds herself.

Anyway, Sadie could use some friends, too, after a summer hanging around in the house with just miserable mom for company.

She looks around. A smattering of stay-at-home moms lounge in the adjacent grassy shade. There’s a cliquish air about them; Lauren can’t imagine going over and introducing herself.

Another cluster of young, chatting mothers stand waist-deep in the water, keeping watchful eyes on babies napping in shady strollers and toddlers and preschoolers splashing in the shallow stairwell.

If Sadie were here, Lauren might attempt to mingle. But Lucy, bored with the pool scene, took her little sister over to the playground—after asking if Lauren would pay her for “babysitting.”

“Mom?”

She looks up to see Ryan, dripping wet, standing over her. He’s growing up; he’s starting to look more and more like his father, she thinks, with a twinge of both affection and pain.

“Where’s your towel?” she asks him automatically.

“Dunno. Can I have money for the snack bar?”

“Please?”

He flashes a brief, rare grin. “Please?”

“There are a couple of dollars in the pocket of my bag on the chair over there.” She points to the spot she staked out earlier, when it was beneath the shade of a tree. Now it’s in full sun. Time to move.

“Can I have ten?”

“
Dollars?
”

“Please.”

“You don’t need ten dollars for a bag of chips or an ice cream, Ry.”

“I’m getting a burger and fries.”

“But you ate lunch an hour ago.”

Ryan shrugs. “I’m hungry again.”

He’s been ravenous day and night since he got back from camp. All that fresh air, or maybe all the growing he did in the eight weeks he was gone. She’d sent away a little boy and gotten back a man. He’s going to need his father now more than ever.

“Mom…money?”

“My wallet is locked in the glove compartment,” she tells Ryan. “The car keys are in my bag. Go get the keys, get the money, put the wallet back in the glove compartment, and make sure no one sees you do that.”

He rolls his eyes.

“I’m serious, Ry.”

“Where are we, Mom, the South Bronx? Do you really think I’m going to get mugged
here
?”

“You never know. Bad things happen everywhere. And make sure you lock the car again. Okay?”

He’s already heading toward her bag on the chair.

“Ry! You need to reapply your sunscreen.”

“After I eat.”

“Make sure you lock the car!”

“I heard you! Geez! I said okay!”

Watching her son take her keys and stalk off toward the parking lot, Lauren makes vigorous circles in the water with her bare foot.

Damn Nick. He left for the Vineyard the day after the kids got home, seeing them only briefly in between. He did send them a few text messages after he left—a form of communication both Ryan and Lucy relish. Lauren isn’t big on thumb typing, but Nick started getting into it right around the time he began his affair. Lauren suspects that it was Beth, and not his teenage kids, who prompted him to jump on the technology bandwagon.

Poor Ryan. He’s been hoping his father will have time to take him on an overnight fishing trip before the summer’s over—a longtime summer father-son tradition. But Lauren doubts that’s going to happen. Next weekend is hers, and she’s planning to take all three kids to Rye Playland, another summer tradition.

All too soon after that, it will be Labor Day; back to schedules and routines. Lauren might actually be looking forward to that. She isn’t sure.

Why don’t I ever know what I want anymore?

“Here.”

She looks up to see Ryan standing over her again, holding out her keys. His fingernails are, she notices, bitten down to stubs.

“Did you lock the car?”

“You only told me to five times.”

“So did you?”

“Yes! Okay? Yes!”

“Don’t speak to me in that tone. Did you find a ten?”

“I found a twenty.”

“You don’t need—”

“I know, but you didn’t have a ten.”

“Bring me the change, okay?”

“Okay!” he says, as if he thinks she’s told him that five times, too. He looks over toward the snack bar. His friends are already at a picnic table, eating.

“Mom—your keys.”

“Put them back in my bag, Ry.”

He huffs over, drops them in. She opens her mouth to tell him to push them down inside so they won’t fall out, but he’s already dashing toward the snack bar.

The camp didn’t just send her back a man, she notes, climbing out of the pool; they sent her back a mercurial, derisive man, very much like…

No. That’s not fair.

Just because Ryan looks like Nick—that doesn’t mean he’s picked up on the way Nick treats her these days and is following suit. It’s just his age.

Regardless of his new moodiness, Lauren reminds herself, sitting on her chair and toweling off, Ryan isn’t Nick.

Her gaze falls on a nearby mom who is kneeling on a blanket, doling out Goldfish crackers and juice boxes to several look-alike children.

Watching her, sensing her contentment, Lauren feels as though she knows her—knows her life, anyway.

You’re married, and your husband works in the city
, she guesses.
You’re living happily ever after here in suburbia—or at least you think you are
.

I was you. I had your life. I took it for granted, just the way you are.

There’s still a tiny part of her that would give anything to have those days back again, blinders and all.

There’s another part of her, though, that would never go back, not even if she could have known what was coming. No, especially not knowing what was coming.

Two summers ago, after her father-in-law died of cancer, she and Nick had discussed that very topic in the car on the way home from the funeral in Baltimore.

Would you rather die a slow death and have the chance to say good-bye, or would you prefer to die in an accident and never know what hit you?

Nick took the latter option. She couldn’t understand it. Not back then.

“One minute you’re here, the next you’re not?” she shuddered. “I’d rather know what was coming, even if it was horrible, so that I could prepare myself and the kids.”

“You mean if you were the one who was going to die, or if I were?”

“If I were.
Or
if you were. Either way, I’d rather know.”

“Not me. Either way, I think it’s better not to know,” Nick told her. “That way, you get to go about your daily life, same as always, until the very last second.”

Oh, the irony.

Nick, after all, was the one who got to know—probably a mere few months after that conversation—that their marriage was doomed.

Lauren was the one who got to go about her daily life, same as always, until the very last second.

She grasped, the moment she found out about Beth, that her own life as she knew it was over. Just like that. Just like being hit by a truck.

Yes, she forced Nick through the motions—counseling, talking, dating, sex—but she really had no illusions about saving their marriage. Maybe she was trying to make it harder on him.

Or maybe she was just trying to do it her way, after all. Trying to buy time, to prepare to say good-bye.

Across the grass, the young mom packs away the extra Goldfish crackers and juice boxes, probably looking ahead to more of the same tomorrow. Probably thinking about heading home, and getting the kids cleaned up, and making dinner in time for her husband to get off the train from the city.

Probably never dreaming that one night, he might get off that train with another woman and want to kiss her.

Lauren wishes she’d never pressed Nick for the gritty details of his relationship with Beth. At the time, she’d thought hearing them would make it easier to hate him—and thus, easier to let go.

She was probably right about both of those things, but now she carries the added burden of all those memories that aren’t even her own. Every time she glimpses Beth from afar, she imagines her in Nick’s arms during one of their countless intimate moments stolen while Lauren was shuttling the kids to tournaments or away with her sister on a spa weekend Nick gave her for Mother’s Day.

“You need a break,” he’d told Lauren on that sunny May day over a year ago. “Go to Red Door with Alyssa. The kids and I will hold down the fort here.”

Bastard.

And now he’s off on a permanent vacation while she holds down the fort forever.

Lauren forces herself to lean back in her chair, tilt her face to the sun, and close her eyes.

In a perfect world, Nick would get what’s coming to him.

But the world is far from perfect, and he’s most likely lounging on an Atlantic beach somewhere at this very moment, without a care in the world.

“Next!”

Byron Gregson steps forward, glad there’s no one in line behind him. The fewer witnesses, the better.

“Hi. I’m looking for my daughter’s toy. She dropped it here in the station when we were here a few weeks ago—I can tell you the exact day.”

“Can you now.” The woman behind the counter doesn’t seem particularly impressed. “All I need to know is the month.”

“July. It was a pink—”

“Toy. Right. July. Be right back.”

Byron watches her step away. So far, so good.

For three weeks, he’s been waiting for this opportunity. Three weeks spent in a hellhole prison cell for mugging a tourist over by Penn Station, stealing the guy’s wallet.

Even now, despite everything else that’s happened to him—despite everything else he’s
done
—he’s incredulous that he, Byron Gregson, is a common street thief.

The other stuff—it kind of goes with the territory when you work in this field.

But pickpocketing?

Desperate to get out of town, he had few options—and all of them demanded cash. He didn’t dare use his ATM card or a credit card—he couldn’t risk a trail.

So he did what he had to do: ran up behind some old guy and grabbed the wallet he’d foolishly tucked into the back pocket of his baggy Wranglers.

Never in a million years would he have imagined that the guy’s wife—a puffy, florid-faced woman in a track suit—would fight back, grabbing on to him and screaming bloody murder.

He wrenched himself from her clutches and shoved her. Hard. Again, he had to. All that commotion—it was the last thing he needed.

Naturally, a couple of cops spotted him and gave chase.

All those blocks in the hot Manhattan sun, knowing he wasn’t going to make it, knowing he needed to come up with a perfect, brilliant plan…

And I did.

Naturally, he couldn’t make bail. As he told the court-appointed lawyer, if he’d had access to money, he wouldn’t have robbed the poor schmuck in the first place.

“How does someone like you wind up robbing innocent people on the street?”

“Hard times,” he said with a shrug.

The lawyer shrugged, too. Plenty of people were out of work. The papers were full of dire headlines about former middle-class people who were now homeless, white-collar executives working in factories, even a former executive turned bank robber. A reporter-turned-thief? No big deal, in the grand scheme of things.