Plotting at the PTA (21 page)

The three of us held together as a group throughout the final evening chores of emptying the dishwasher, packing up backpacks for the long Memorial Day weekend with their father, getting into pajamas, and brushing teeth.

When I knocked on Jenna’s bedroom door, she was sitting up in bed, reading
The Lightning Thief
.

“How many times have you read that?” I asked.

“Not enough.” She turned the page and didn’t look up.

“Another half hour,” I said, “then it’s lights out.”

“Mmm-hmm.”

I went into Oliver’s room for his bedtime routine of a lullaby and a kiss good night.

“Mom?” Oliver held his stuffed dog, Big Nose, up in the air.

“What, honey?”

“I like Mr. Peterson. He’s nice.”

“Yes, he is.”

“Sometimes he makes me laugh so much my face hurts.”

I smiled. Pete had the gift of relating to children as if they were real people and not a slightly different species that just might turn into something human if everyone was very, very lucky. He also had a gift of making people see the funny side of almost everything.

“Do you think I could make people laugh like that?” Oliver asked.

“You”—I kissed him on the forehead—“can do anything you put your mind to.”

“Like getting good grades even in math?”

“Yup.”

“And like writing Mrs. Hoffman’s story? Parts of it are really sad, but maybe I can make it turn out good.”

For a moment I couldn’t speak.

Oh, Maude. I want to write you a happier story. I want you to have danced at Kelly’s wedding, I want you to be babysitting her children, I want you to be surrounded by love and laughter, I want you to go gently into the good night that waits for us all.

The lullaby of choice that week was “All Through the Night.” I sang it through, twice, then kissed him again. “Sleep tight, Ollster.”

“No bedbugs, Mommy,” he said, already half asleep.

I tapped on Jenna’s door and poked my head in. “Twenty minutes.”

“Mmm.”

Smiling, I went downstairs. If staying up too late reading was the worst habit she picked up from me, maybe I wasn’t doing such a rotten job as a mother.

But the time I reached the first floor, my smile had dropped away. Maybe I was doing okay as Mom this week, but I’d been neglecting my store in favor of looking for answers to Kelly’s and Amy’s deaths, and that wasn’t a good way to run a business.

With the lullaby still humming in my head, I went into the study and hunted through my purse. An empty sandwich bag, a small toy truck, and a pen that didn’t work, but I couldn’t find what I wanted.

I plopped the purse down on the computer chair and looked around. Where, oh where, had it gone? Could I have slid it into one of the bookcases?

Not in with the thrillers, not with the mysteries, not with the historicals, not with the parenting books or the biographies or anywhere else in the study.

In the next half hour, I ransacked the kitchen, the laundry room, the family room, the living room, the dining room, and my bedroom. I went out to the garage and looked there. I climbed into the car, looked under seats and in the trunk.

Nothing, nothing, nothing. I couldn’t find it and panic was setting in. The notebook. The spiral notebook with all my Amy notes and my Kelly notes and my lists and thoughts and questions and finger-pointing.

It was gone.

Chapter 17

T
he next morning I woke up with a cat on my stomach. For a moment I lay there, sleepily petting George’s black fur, happy to know my children were just down the hall, content with my life, and . . .

“Oh, no! It’s gone!”

I pushed a protesting feline aside and jumped out of bed. Finding that notebook was priority one. Well, two, after I got the kids up, dressed, fed, and off to school, but it was a two that was very close to a one.

Morning records were broken as I rushed about like a mad thing, assembling lunches and pouring orange juice. Once I caught the kids exchanging surprised looks. Jenna shrugged and went back to her cereal. Oliver frowned, then blew bubbles in his juice until I told him to stop.

“Are we late?” he asked.

“No, honey. I just need to get to the store as soon as I can.”

“Why?”

Because your mother is an addle-brained idiot who can’t be trusted to keep track of something as simple as a notebook. “I have work to do, that’s all.”

“Oh.” He drank some juice. “Dad says he’s going to take us to a parade this weekend. Why is the parade on Monday? I thought parades were on Saturdays.”

I looked up from the kitchen counter where I was slapping strawberry jam onto peanut buttered bread. Now, he wants an explanation of Memorial Day? I didn’t have time to do this, but I didn’t want to miss a teaching opportunity, either. “Well . . .”

“Because Monday is the holiday,” Jenna said. “Not Saturday.”

“Oh.” More juice went down. “Okay.”

Sometimes the easy explanation really is the best answer. Why did I make things so hard for myself? I flashed Jenna a grateful smile, but she was busy drinking the milk out of her cereal bowl.

Fifteen minutes later, I waved good-bye to my beloved children. Ten minutes after that, I was in my office, searching for the notebook.

All night long I’d tamped down my panic by telling myself I’d left the dratted thing at the store. It was in my office. Of course it was. In a drawer or on the desk or on a chair or on the floor. No need to worry. Or, no need to worry that much. It’ll be fine. It’ll all work out.

But things weren’t working out. The notebook wasn’t in my office and there was no way I would have left it up front.

Knowing that, however, didn’t stop me from inspecting the books behind the counter to see if the notebook had gotten mixed up with them. Didn’t stop me from shoving aside the wrapping paper to see if it had wandered back behind.

“What are you doing?”

I heard Lois, but since I was on my hands and knees, head tilted at a funny angle, my right eyeball peering at the small gap between the counter and the wall, I couldn’t see her. “Looking for something. How’s your daughter?”

“Into applesauce and chicken soup,”

“That’s good,” I said absently. No notebook down there. No room, really, but you never knew. “Beyond soda crackers?” I stood up, brushed off my hands, and looked around. If it wasn’t at home, wasn’t in the car, and wasn’t here, where was it?

“What on earth is so important that you’re getting all dirty first thing in the morning?”

“Oh . . . nothing.”

Lois made a noise, and I knew she was going to launch into a diatribe about my penchant for understatement.

“Look,” I said, “there’s something I need to do. I’ll be right back.” Without waiting for a response, I hurried out the front door.

* * *

Half walking, half trotting, I covered the short blocks to Sunny Rest with the hope that I’d dropped it underneath Maude’s bed. Or maybe it fell out of my purse in that linen closet and slipped between the pillowcases and washcloths.

I tried not to think about my future if the notebook had been found by someone with an average sense of curiosity. Who could resist reading a notebook filled with handwriting? Who wouldn’t want to read someone else’s private thoughts?

By the time I reached Sunny Rest, I’d worked myself up to a near panic.

“Hi, Beth.” The receptionist smiled at me. “Are you here to see Maude? She’s in the solarium.”

“She . . . is?” I blinked. “So she’s feeling a little better. That’s good.”

The receptionist’s smile turned into a vague frown, but I didn’t have time to discuss Maude, not right now. “Say, has anyone turned in a spiral notebook? About so by so.” With my hands I made a rectangle about four inches on one side, six inches on the other.

“Let me look.” Her head disappeared while she ducked behind the counter. “No, sorry, I don’t see anything. Did you lose it . . . ?”

But I was already pushing open the door, headed back outside.

Where could it be? Had it even been in my purse that day I was at Sunny Rest?

I thumped my forehead with the heels of my hands. What was the point of having a brain if you couldn’t get it to work when you needed it? What was the point of trying to learn the names of all the U.S. Supreme Court justices if you couldn’t find the one thing that might help you track down a killer? What was I going to forget next, my children’s middle names?

“Jenna Elizabeth, Oliver Richard,” I said out loud. “Jenna Elizabeth, Oliver Richard.” After repeating their names a few more times, the clutch of anxiety that had seized me started to release its hot grip.

There. I wasn’t losing it, not completely. And as long as I could find that notebook, everything would work out just fine.

But then the very real possibility of
not
finding it pushed me along the sidewalk a little faster. I looked under trees and under shrubs. I looked under the edge of fence lines and around petunias planted at the curb. I peered under cars.

Don’t panic. It’s around here somewhere. All you have to do is find it. You’re good at finding things, remember? And you’re good at figuring things out. Link up Kelly and Amy in the right way and you’ll find the truth. You’re close, so close.

My pep talk worked fine until my stupid imagination chose to play a video of Claudia and Tina out for a power walk yesterday evening. “What’s that?” Tina would have pointed.

“Looks like a notebook.” Claudia stooped to pick it up. “One of those cheap spiral jobs no one but college kids uses.”

“Maybe there’s a name inside?” Tina asked, standing back. Touching anything that had touched the ground had her running for antibacterial soap and warm water.

“Just like in grade school?” Claudia asked. “No one does that anymore. If you lost it it’d be an invitation to invade your privacy, and . . . well, would you look at that. Beth Kennedy.” She laughed loud and long. “Such a surprise. Wonder what’s in this little gem?”

“Shouldn’t we return it?” Tina edged closer.

“Of course we should. And we will.” Claudia grinned. “Right after we read it.” She flipped through the first few pages. “Geez, what kind of chicken scratches are these?” She thrust the notebook at Tina. “Can you read this?”

Tina kept her hands behind her back, but peered at the open page. “Well, sure. She writes like my sister. Kinda.”

“What’s that say?” Claudia pointed to a titled list. “There, at the top.”

“Um . . .” Tina squinted, opened her eyes wide, then squinted again. “It says potential suspects in Amy Jacobson’s death.”

I shook away the image. That hadn’t happened. It couldn’t happen. Wouldn’t happen. Claudia would not read that list and see her name sitting high at number six. She would not read the other names, and she would not read my ramblings that included far more than questions about Amy and Kelly. If Claudia got her hands on what had turned into a stream of consciousness litany of my deepest thoughts, I’d be the laughingstock of not only the Rynwood PTA, but the whole town of Rynwood. And, thanks to e-mail and Facebook, the entire cyberworld would soon be giggling at me.

What idiotic impulse had made me write—in pen!—that the summer after my sisters had forced me to watch
Jaws
at age eight, I’d been afraid to swim in the lake? And I must have been feverish the night I wrote that Claudia Wolff frightened me.

My steps went faster and faster. If Claudia read that, I’d have to resign as PTA secretary. I’d leave the PTA altogether, and I’d close the store. Move the kids to a place where no once had ever heard of Facebook.

I slowed, trying to think if such a place still existed. Slowed a little more when I realized that there probably wasn’t a place like that. Not any longer.

“But maybe,” I said out loud, “there are places still on dial-up. No one on dial-up would be on Facebook, would they?”

There had to be pockets of dial-up everywhere. We might not have to leave the country. Maybe not even the state.

Cheered, I refocused on the task at hand. Outside a small apartment building a flat piece of cardboard sent my heart racing, but it was only a piece of packaging. I picked it, a candy wrapper, and the cap from a soda bottle up off the ground to toss and looked around for a garbage can. There.

I crossed the street into the official downtown blocks and dumped the litter in. Took two steps away, then went back. I pushed back the garbage can’s lid—please, don’t let it be full—and, one eye shut, looked inside. “Hello?” I called quietly. “Are you in there?”

My voice echoed around the plastic liner and came back at me. I remembered that the city emptied garbage cans on Monday and Friday mornings. If someone had dumped my notebook in, it was on its way to the landfill and no way was I going to work that hard to find it. Claudia-sponsored embarrassment would fade. Eventually.

“What are you looking for?”

I looked up. “Oh, hi, Alan. Um, it’s not that important.”

He leaned on his broom. “Do you feel okay? You look a little odd.”

No, I wasn’t okay. The new scuffs on my shoes, the dirt on my pants, and the scratch on my hand were mere outward manifestations of the mess on the inside. Frustration that I couldn’t help Maude, anger that I couldn’t manage to keep track of a simple notebook, confusion over the tangles between the past and the present, and always, always, sorrow and longing for those who had died before their time.

Why couldn’t I figure this out?

“Beth . . . ?” Alan, concern all over his kindly face, reached out to touch my arm.

I jerked away. “Thanks, Alan. I’m fine. Really, I am.” Ignoring his frown, I started walking backward. “Just looking for something, that’s all. I’m sure it’s here somewhere. Probably dropped it yesterday. . . .” Just outside Alan’s store was a planter filled with holly bushes. I pushed the branches aside, looking deep into the dark green thickness.

Nothing.

Nothing in the next planter of daylilies, nothing in the garbage can, nothing under the garbage can.

Where, where,
where?

“Beth Kennedy, what on earth are you doing?” Flossie stood outside of her grocery store, hands fisted on her hips.

I brushed past her, intent on looking in the flower box attached to the hair salon next door. “Looking for something.” Nothing in the red geraniums, nothing in the sweet alyssum, nothing in the ivy dangling over the edge.

“Beth . . . ?” Denise hung out the door of the salon. “If it’s weeds you want, I have plenty at home.”

I gave her a blank look. Weeds? What was she talking about? Maude needed me and I needed to find what I’d so stupidly lost. I blinked at Denise a few times. She was asking that question again; did I feel okay? Why did people keep asking that?

She was still talking when I turned away. There were lots of places left to look. Another whole block of downtown was ahead of me, and I hadn’t even touched the alleys and side alleys.

Nothing under the teak benches next to the dentist’s office, and nothing tucked into the table of seventy percent off items outside the gift shop.

Where was it?

“Beth, honey? What are you doing?”

I hurried past Ruthie. Nothing behind the newspaper racks outside the pharmacy. It wasn’t in the container of dried grasses by the accountant’s front door and no one had left it on the window ledge outside the Green Tractor.

Where was it?

No one had put it in the rack of brochures outside the chamber of commerce.

Where?

I pulled at my hair.
Where?!

“Beth!” Strong hands gripped my upper arms. “What is the matter with you?”

I tried to yank myself free, but he was too strong. “Let me go!”

“Not until you calm down and tell me what’s going on.”

“Nothing!” I glared up at Evan. “Leave me alone!”

He put his hands on my shoulders. “Beth, you’re traipsing all over downtown with dirt all over your face, blood on your hands, the hem of one pant leg torn out, and a rip in the neck of your shirt deep enough to show more cleavage than you see at the Academy Awards. Everyone’s looking at you and it’s a little embarrassing.” He tipped my chin up. “What is going on?”

I jerked my chin away and twisted out of his grasp. “Nothing.” I did not like having my chin tipped up against my will and I did not like my shoulders being clamped down upon. With his size and strength advantage he could twist me into a pretzel if he wanted, but I would not go willingly. “I’m fine, why do . . .”

My voice trailed off as I looked down the street. Almost every downtown business owner and half their staff was out on the sidewalk, staring at me. Most had their mouths open.

I looked down at myself. Evan hadn’t been exaggerating. Dirt was ground into the knees of my pants in large round splotches. My ragged fingernails looked as if I’d been digging in the garden with my bare hands. Blood streaked my arm and the back of my wrist—a scratch from something, I didn’t remember what. And my shirt . . . I hitched it up, hoping my feminine undergarment was now under cover.

“Beth?” Evan’s tone was turning harder. “I think I deserve an explanation.”

Deep down inside me, down below the ever present concerns about my children, below the misty grief that was hovering over me, underneath my fears of early onset Alzheimer’s because what other reason could there be for imagining the voices of dead people in my head, down in the darkest part of my hidden self, I suddenly realized something very important.

I wasn’t in love with Evan.

At all.

If I was really in love, I would have been more considerate of his wishes. If I truly loved him, I wouldn’t have kept my investigating to myself. I would have talked about what I was doing and asked for his opinion. I wouldn’t have kept a bland smile on my face and said, “Oh, nothing,” when he asked what I was thinking about.