The Last to Know (17 page)

Tasha thinks about Karen’s daughter, Taylor, who has some kind of stomach bug.
Please, God, don’t let it be that.
If Max has it, they’ll all get it. The very thought of a houseful of sick kids is enough to send Tasha out the front door shrieking.

She goes over to the phone, thinking she should call Karen to see how Taylor is. Karen looked so worried and exhausted when Tasha dropped off the Pedialyte this morning. It’s a first-time-mom thing. Tasha remembers rushing Hunter to Ben’s office every time he so much as sneezed.

She peels a banana as she dials Karen’s number, realizing she’s hungry. She never did get a chance to eat today.

“Hello?”

“Karen, hi. It’s me, Tasha.”

“Hi!”

“How’s Taylor? Still sick?”

“She seems a little better, actually,” Karen tells her. “She had diarrhea and vomiting all morning, then that stopped this afternoon, and she actually took some Pedialyte and kept it down.”

“Must be a twenty-four-hour thing.” Good. Even if the kids get it, it won’t drag on for days. “So what are you up to?”

“Just more laundry. The baby’s sleeping again. I think she’s wiped out by this. Tom had to go out for a while to go over some paperwork with a client of his, so I’m on my own.”

“So am I,” Tasha says around a bite of banana.

“Joel’s working late again?”

“Mm-hmm.” Tasha hesitates, then blurts, “Or so he says.”

There’s a moment of silence. Karen asks, “Is something going on with him, Tasha?”

“I don’t know,” she admits, half wishing she hadn’t brought it up, half relieved that she did. She tells Karen about their argument, and then about how busy Joel is at work lately.

“But he just got a promotion, didn’t he? More responsibility?”

“Yes . . .” She sighs. “I guess I’m just suspicious all of a sudden, for some reason.”

“If it’s any comfort, I can’t imagine Joel cheating.”

It is a comfort. Not that Karen knows him all that well. But still . . .

“Yeah,” Tasha says, “I can’t imagine him cheating, either.”

The thing is . . .

Even a person who wouldn’t ordinarily cheat can get caught up in unexpected passion.

Tasha tries to swallow the banana in her suddenly dry mouth.

One minute, you can be the most committed spouse in the world. The next, you can find yourself in a stranger’s arms and contemplating—

“Oh, I hear the baby,” Karen says abruptly. “I’m going to try and get her up and feed her before I put her upstairs in her crib for the night. I’ve got to run.”

“Okay.”

“Listen, Tasha, any time you want to talk, I’m here. Okay? But I wouldn’t worry about Joel. It’s probably just work. It’s so easy to forget what it’s like when you haven’t been working for a while. Whenever Tom gets busy with a client, I find myself getting irritated that he’s taking so much time away from the family. But I used to do the same thing when I was working. I probably will again. But hopefully not until Taylor’s old enough not to need me so much. Anyway . . .”

“I’ll let you go,” Tasha says reluctantly, hanging up.

She stands in the kitchen, listening for footsteps. For a key in the lock.

Missing Joel.

Maybe he’ll be home soon. She might as well watch television in the meantime.
Saving Private Ryan
is supposed to be on again. She’s already seen it—once in the movies with Joel—and once on cable—but she’s suddenly in the mood for a long, depressing war movie.

“Something that will make my problems look like a piece of cake,” she says aloud, breaking the silence she longed for only an hour ago—silence that suddenly seems more ominous than peaceful.

She realizes she’s still holding the limp banana peel and tosses it into the garbage, then goes into the unlit living room. She crosses toward the lamp on the end table.

Outside, the wind gusts. Dry leaves scrape against the concrete.

Tasha pauses at the window and looks out.

The Leibermans’ house is unusually dark. She realizes the porch light and lamppost haven’t been turned on as they always are at this hour. Then she remembers that Rachel isn’t home. She said something about meeting friends for dinner, and that she had hired Fletch’s nephew, Jeremiah, to babysit. Tasha told her to leave the Bankses’ number with him in case he needed anything.

Rachel waved her off, saying thanks but she was sure he’d be fine.

When Tasha and Joel go out, they always leave several phone numbers, including the Leibermans’. Well, that’s mostly because Ben is their pediatrician, Tasha tells herself, feeling suddenly overprotective.

And anyway, she doesn’t like to take chances.

Unlike Rachel.

Sometimes Tasha thinks that in a decade, when her kids are older, Rachel is going to run off someplace in search of adventure. Or maybe she won’t even wait that long.

The funny thing is, Tasha figures Ben and the kids would ultimately be okay without Rachel. After all, she’s not the warmest or most devoted wife and mother in the world. In fact, she’s pretty self-centered.

But that doesn’t mean she wants to leave her family, Tasha reminds herself, wondering why she even thought of such a ridiculous thing.

But she knows. It’s the Jane Kendall situation. She can’t shake the thought of perfect Jane running away from her life.

Or the thought of doing the same thing herself.

But of course it’s only a fantasy. And she has plenty of fantasies. That doesn’t mean she’s going to act on any of them.

Guilt surges through Tasha again.

Damn it.

Damn Fletch Gallagher.

She turns away from the window and flicks the switch on a nearby lamp, abruptly chasing the shadows from the room.

I
f the silver Mercedes doesn’t slow down, Paula’s going to lose sight of it. Her junky little blue Honda can’t negotiate the sharp curves of the Sawmill River Parkway at this speed. Any faster, and she’s going to lose control and wind up in a ditch or wrapped around a tree. Preferably alive, but on this road you never—

“Damn you!” she curses the driver as he swerves into the left lane to pass a slow-moving car.

Paula, too, goes into the left lane, careering at an unsafe speed alongside the concrete Jersey barriers that separate her from the oncoming traffic. She sees the Mercedes’s taillights go back into the right lane and then unexpectedly shoot off to the right even farther.

She realizes he’s taken an exit ramp.

Terrific.

Gunning the motor, she sharply moves to the right lane, cutting off a Jeep. The driver sits on his horn.

“Sorry,” Paula yells unapologetically as she takes the exit, her eyes peeled for the Mercedes, praying she hasn’t lost him.

No. He’s right up ahead, stopped at a light.

She watches the car intently through narrowed eyes as the driver’s head turns toward the passenger’s. They’re having a conversation. Then they kiss, their silhouettes clearly outlined in Paula’s headlights.

“Bet you think he’s all yours,” she murmurs to the unsuspecting woman in Gallagher’s arms.

No, Jane Kendall isn’t the only one in Townsend Heights who has a bad secret, Paula thinks, shaking her head and pushing in the cigarette lighter on the dashboard.

The traffic signal changes to green.

For a moment the Mercedes stays where it is, the driver otherwise occupied.

Paula doesn’t dare blast the horn.

Finally, Gallagher sees the light and pulls forward through the intersection.

So does Paula, placing a cigarette between her lips. She maneuvers the wheel with her left hand. With her right, she removes the lighter from its slot and holds the glowing red coil to the end of her cigarette until it catches.

She follows the Mercedes through an unfamiliar, winding residential neighborhood and then into a commercial district. McDonald’s and Burger King. Car dealers and supermarkets. Strip malls and restaurants. Gas stations, too.

Paula glances at her gauge. It’s dangerously low. The red “Check Fuel” light has been on for a few miles. If she stops now to fill the tank, she’ll lose the Mercedes. If she doesn’t, she’ll wind up stranded and out of gas.

It’s a no-win situation.

Damn, damn, damn
 
. . .

Then she sees the car ahead put on its right turn signal.

“You dog, Fletch Gallagher,” she murmurs, realizing he’s pulling into a Holiday Inn parking lot.

And there’s a Mobil station right next door.

“This just might turn out to be your lucky day after all,” Paula tells herself, breaking into a broad grin as she flicks her right turn signal.

B
athed in the glow of the night-light, Karen puts the baby into her crib, covers her with a velvety pink blanket, and whispers, “Good night, sweetheart.”

She kisses her own fingertips, then touches them gently to her daughter’s downy head, not wanting to leave the room just yet. Not when Taylor’s been so sick, poor thing.

Well, she’s getting over it now. She drank a few ounces of formula just now, and she started taking the Pedialyte late this afternoon after rejecting it all morning. Karen had thought she was going to have to call Ben again and bring the baby to the office to be examined, but then, luckily, her condition improved.

Only when Taylor was past the worst of it did Tom decide to leave the house to meet with his client. The guy, a local business owner, had been calling all day, frantic about some tax crisis. Once Karen answered the phone and found herself tempted to tell the guy to leave her husband alone. That Tom had a sick baby and more on his mind than somebody else’s screwed-up taxes.

Luckily, she held her tongue.

Now that the crisis with Taylor is over, Karen realizes she was just high-strung and over-tired. All she wants now is to rest. She should probably be glad she has the house to herself for a while.

She takes a last look at the baby sleeping soundly in her crib.

“Don’t worry, angel,” she says softly. “Mommy’s watching over you.”

She turns on the baby monitor and leaves the room, cracking the door slightly.

Back downstairs, she plops on the couch and reaches for the remote control. She’s not very big on television, aside from The Learning Channel and PBS documentaries, but tonight she’s in the mood for something mindless. Something reassuring.

Like the
Who Wants to be a Millionaire
game show.

Finding it, she leaves it on and loses herself in it for a few minutes. If she were a contestant, she would have won $125,000.

She’s about to try and double the money when she hears a car door slamming outside.

Tom’s home, she thinks, relieved. She didn’t realize how uneasy she has felt about being alone until now.

She presses the “Mute” button on the television set and waits for the sound of his footsteps coming in the back door.

Only silence.

Getting up, Karen goes over to the window that looks out on the driveway. Only her Volvo station wagon is parked there. No sign of Tom’s little black Saab.

So he’s not home yet after all.

Disappointment mingles with anxiety in her gut.

She glances at the Gallaghers’ house next door. Their driveway is separated from Karen’s by a narrow strip of grass. Fletch’s car is missing, but Sharon’s Lexus SUV is there. Karen must have heard her coming home.

She returns to the couch and picks up the remote again.

But this time she can’t concentrate on the question Regis Philbin is asking.

She realizes that she wants Tom here with her. And it isn’t just because the baby’s been sick.

Karen pulls her knees up to her chest, wrapping her arms around them, filled with inexplicable apprehension as she wonders again what happened to Jane Kendall.

J
eremiah slowly opens the door to the little boy’s room, praying that it won’t creak. It doesn’t.

He spots Noah in his crib. He can hear his gentle snoring from here. He’s sound asleep.

Mara is, too. He just checked.

Jeremiah pulls the door closed again, holding his breath until it makes a quiet click, then pausing with his hand on the knob in case the baby stirs on the other side.

He hears nothing.

Good.

Turning away from the door, he walks slowly back down the long hallway. Strange, being alone in somebody else’s house at night.

Of course, this is how he used to feel at Aunt Sharon and Uncle Fletch’s, too. Until he got used to it.

But they’re family.

Rachel Leiberman is different.

Jeremiah stands at the head of the stairs, his head cocked, listening for the slightest sound. Nothing. It’s as if the whole house is holding its breath, waiting to see what he’s going to do next.

Trembling slightly, he checks his watch. He’s got time. Plenty of time.

His heart pounding, he steps forward.

He pauses one more moment, uncertain whether he wants to go through with this.

Then, reaching a decision, he opens the master bedroom door, and slips over the threshold.

I
t’s past midnight when Rachel arrives home. Humming to herself, she steps into the silent house, tossing her keys into a basket on the low table by the door. She can hear the television in the family room.

Stepping out of her shoes, she carries them as she pads barefoot toward the back of the house. Jeremiah is there, sitting on the couch. Not dozing the way you might expect to find a teenager at this hour on a school night. Not even lounging.

He’s perched on the very edge of the seat, hands at his sides, both feet neatly placed in front of him on the floor. There’s something odd about that, Rachel thinks uneasily. He seems almost guilty, sitting there in that tense, deliberate position.

“I guess I beat my husband home after all,” she says, trying to sound casual. “How were the kids?”

“P-perfect. They’re b-both asleep,” he says quickly, despite the stutter.

Too quickly?

“They’d better be, at this time of night,” she tells him, trying to sound more upbeat than she feels.

He looks at her—a fleeting, intense glance—before turning his gaze to the television. It’s tuned to MTV, yet something tells her he hasn’t been absorbed in the video. She senses that he turned it on to give the appearance of normalcy—just a regular babysitter, hanging out watching MTV.