Live to Tell (Live to Tell #1)(67)
We’ll just have to handle it, Lauren tells herself—then she remembers. No, I’ll just have to handle it.
She’d be a fool to count on Nick for anything, ever again.
Elsa pulled out of her driveway back in Groton at eight o’clock this morning, just after Brett left for work. He had no idea about her little excursion, and she wasn’t about to tell him. She knew what he would say.
Don’t do that to yourself. Why pour salt on an unhealed wound?
He was right, she’d thought at the time. Of course he was.
But then yesterday, when she held that orphaned puppy, and Karyn told her she’d have been a good mother, and the flower garden came back to life…
According to the GPS on the dashboard, Elsa should have been in Boston by ten—barring traffic complications. Ha. As always, Interstate 95 was riddled with construction zones and accidents.
The legendary Big Dig—a construction nightmare—might have wound down over the years, but the city is by no means a pleasure to navigate. It’s been almost fourteen years since she negotiated the narrow network of Boston streets, yet it all comes right back to her: the endless congestion, the shortcuts and detours, the roads that unexpectedly fork off without advance signage, the streets that begin as one-way but wind up two-way, and vice versa.
Something else comes back to her, too: the countless visits into the city to take Jeremy to various doctors and experts, none of whom was really able to help him.
Oh, Jeremy. I failed you. I’m so sorry.
It’s well past noon by the time she pulls into the parking garage off Hanover Street, having had plenty of time to rethink the meeting with Mike. It seemed like a good idea yesterday, when she impulsively made the call. Now, however, she has to force herself to get out of the car.
She smooths her trim black suit, pulled from the back of her closet, shrouded in clear plastic from a San Diego dry cleaner. She’d gotten rid of plenty of clothes over the year, but she kept this one. Not just because of the designer label, but because she knew, with morbid practicality, that the day might come when she might need a black suit.
Not this day. Not under these circumstances. But it’s all she could find in her closet that doesn’t scream small-town housewife.
Or does it? Are pencil skirts even still in style? Are sling backs? she wonders, her heels tapping briskly along the sidewalk as she makes her way past the neighborhood’s tenement architecture toward the café.
Does it matter what she’s wearing?
No. But cities tend to evoke faint memories of her fashionista past—a life that might as well have belonged to someone else.
Who am I now?
Why am I even here?
Pausing to wait for a pedestrian signal to change, Elsa fights the urge to turn around and run back to the car, to get the hell out of here and go back home where she belongs.
But that house isn’t home—not really. She doesn’t feel as though she belongs there yet. Oh hell, she doesn’t feel as though she belongs anywhere without Jeremy.
The light changes, and she makes her way across the street.
I have to touch base with Mike in person. Just to remind him that I haven’t given up on finding Jeremy, and to find out whether he’s made any progress on my other requests. Just to see if there’s anything new at all, any shred of information…
Mike Fantoni knows as well as anyone that Elsa is desperate to have her son back—or at least to learn his fate. Mike would never withhold information.
No—but maybe seeing her in person will trigger something. Some forgotten detail, some new avenue to explore, perhaps just the renewed need to do whatever it takes to pick up a trail that’s been cold for fourteen years.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Ryan really didn’t want to come to the pool today. His friends are all busy with dentists’ appointments and shopping and day trips and all the other stuff parents like to squeeze in before school starts.
All except Ian, anyway. Ryan doesn’t know what he’s doing today, and he didn’t call to find out. Ian doesn’t go to the town pool since he has one in his own backyard. He’d probably invite Ryan over, but then Ryan would have to deal with Mrs. Wasserman and her nosy questions again. No thanks.
So here he is, dangling his feet in the shallow end, chewing on his pinky fingernail, and watching his little sister splash around. Lucy is off somewhere flirting with Josh, and Mom is swimming laps. Talk about a sucky way to spend a precious summer day…
Though, to be fair, Mom did offer to pay him to mind Sadie, and he can sure use the money. Dad always slips him a few bucks when Ryan sees him, but it’s been a while, and now who knows when Dad is coming back?
At first, Ryan was so relieved to get the text message from his father that he didn’t even think much about what it said. He’d been so worried something bad might have happened, and he knew Mom and Lucy and even Sadie were worried, too.
But yesterday, once it sank in that his father was okay, Ryan started to get mad.
Really mad.
Madder, even, than he was about the divorce.
Dad has time to go away on vacation for a whole week with his girlfriend, and he has time to sit around and think, but he doesn’t have time to take Ryan on their annual fishing trip?
“Hey, Sadie, stay on this side,” he calls to his sister, noticing she’s drifting over to the opposite end of the steps, where a couple of other kids her age are bobbing around.