Live to Tell (Live to Tell #1)(57)

Why did she have to go and plant all those impatiens back in May, when she and Brett first moved in?

Because the nice, knowledgeable man at the nursery told you that impatiens love shade, remember?

“We’ve got plenty of that,” Elsa assured him. The new house is perched beneath a canopy of towering tree limbs, casting the entire yard in shadow most of the day. The beds themselves are sheltered by an overhang—which wouldn’t be a problem if impatiens didn’t happen to love water as much as they do shade. The weekend’s rain didn’t do them a bit of good.

As Elsa unwinds the garden hose, she hears movement in the yard next door.

“Hi there,” a female voice calls, and she reluctantly looks up.

“Hi.”

Her neighbor, a breezy, middle-aged divorcee named Meg, waves across the low boxwood hedge.

“Nice day for gardening,” Meg observes.

“Yes, it is.”

“Not a nice day for working inside, but that’s where I’m off to.”

Elsa knows that Meg is a part-time cashier at Macy’s over at the mall, and that being on her feet for hours aggravates her bunions. She mainly works there because of the employee discount, which helps her to keep her three teenagers in clothes and shoes. But her paycheck barely covers her bills, and her louse of an ex-husband is frequently late with his support payments.

Elsa knows all of this—and much, much more—because Meg loves to chat across the hedge whenever she happens to catch Elsa in the yard.

She’s a likable woman, and would probably be a good friend—if Elsa wanted, or needed, a friend.

She used to have many. As a child, as a young fashion model in New York, as half of a married couple…

Now all those people have faded away.

No they haven’t. They’ve been pushed away.

You pushed them away.

But it had to happen.

Friends share their lives—past and present—with each other.

Elsa has no intention of revealing her personal tragedy across the hedge, or across a lunch table, or anywhere else friends meet.

It makes for a lonely existence, but this—like everything else that’s happened to her—is Elsa’s lot.

With a wave, Meg gets into her car and drives off.

Elsa looks again at the limp impatiens bed. They’re just flowers. Summer is waning. Who cares?

I do. I don’t know why, but I care.

Feeling oddly bereft, she turns on the sprinkler.



On the driveway back at home, Lauren gets out of the car lugging the straw beach bag, heavy with wet pool towels.

“Lucy, can you hang these out on the line?” she asks her daughter, who’s helping her little sister out of the backseat. “And Sadie, you need to go straight upstairs and change out of your wet bathing suit.”

For once, nobody protests.

Good. That should give Lauren a few minutes alone to check the voice mail and make sure there aren’t any disturbing messages from—or about—Nick.

She hands the beach bag to Lucy and heads toward the house with Sadie trailing along behind her. There’s not a cloud in the sky and the sun is still shining, but it’s not as warm as it seemed earlier, on the playground. Again, Lauren notes that a fall chill seems to be in the air today.

Or maybe the chill has nothing to do with the weather.

Where are you, Nick? What’s happened to you?

Lauren unlocks the back door and opens it cautiously, expecting Chauncey to make a dash for it as usual.

He doesn’t.

“Chauncey?” Lauren opens the door all the way and listens for his jangling collar and welcoming bark.

Silence.

“Chauncey!” As she crosses the kitchen, she remembers John, the new dog walker, and wonders, fleetingly, whether he ever brought Chauncey back.

Wait a minute—yes, he did. She remembers being relieved about that when she got back from the church this morning—before she spoke to Georgia, and Marcia, and found out that—

“There he is, Mommy!”

For a split second, she thinks Sadie is talking about Nick. Then she spins around and sees her daughter pointing to Chauncey, sprawled out in a sunny patch of rug in the next room, sound asleep.

“Is he okay?” Sadie asks anxiously.

Lauren takes a few steps closer. The dog is snoring. “He’s fine. He’s just taking a nice little catnap.”

“Don’t you mean dognap?”

“Well, dognap is something different.” It’s what she’d thought, for a moment, John had done to Chauncey.

Talk about paranoid…

Why would anyone want to steal a big old mutt?

Sadie goes closer to Chauncey and leans over him, her elbows resting on her knees. “Are you okay, boy? Why are you so tired?”

“Maybe the new dog walker exercised him more than he’s used to, honey.”

“But he always gets up to see us when we come home.”

That’s true, and the thought gives Lauren pause.

Chauncey is getting old. Maybe he’s getting sick, too.

Please, no. The kids won’t be able to take it. Not anytime soon.

That thought reminds her of her more immediate concern.

Lauren turns back toward the phone, saying, “Sadie, please go up and get on some dry clothes, okay?”