Live to Tell (Live to Tell #1)(80)

“Lauren! It’s good to hear from you. I’ve been wondering how you are.”

“Pretty good, Sam, pretty good. And you?”

“Mommy! He’s right there!”

Lauren looks down at Sadie, sees the exasperated expression on her daughter’s face. Clearly, she’s not thrilled by the flirtation.

The spell is broken.

“Bye, Sam,” Lauren says abruptly into the phone.

“Bye, Lauren.”

They hang up.

“Mommy, can I have these?”

“Hmm?” Lauren gives a little wave at Sam. He waves back and walks away.

“Mommy!”

Lauren turns to Sadie and the box of crackers, but out of the corner of her eye, she watches Sam until he disappears around the end of the aisle.



“Elsa! There you are.” Brett puts aside his newspaper and rises from his leather recliner. He’s changed out of his suit into a pink polo shirt, madras shorts, and loafers. A martini glass sits on the table beside him.

Ordinarily, Elsa mixes his drink for him, and pours a glass of wine for herself—an evening tradition begun long before Jeremy came along.

For a few years after their son went missing, Elsa didn’t drink at all—and Brett drank too much. At some point, though, they settled back into the civilized nightly routine.

“I tried to call you,” Brett tells her, crossing the room to place a perfunctory kiss on her cheek.

“I’m sorry… I heard it ring but I couldn’t get to it in time.” And so the lies begin.

Hadn’t she just been thinking of telling him the truth?

But it’s so much harder, now that they’re face-to-face.

Brett Cavalon is an imposing man—tall, handsome, distinguished, accomplished, brilliant. At twenty-one, she met him in New York and fell in love with him at first sight. Miraculously, he was equally smitten, and Elsa began to fantasize about something she’d never imagined for herself: marriage and children in a world far from the glamorous runways, showrooms, and avenues of Manhattan’s fashion industry.

She’d never dreamed about a domestic happily-ever-after because she’d never seen it, thus never believed in it. Raised by a single mother who’d been an industry icon in her own right, Elsa had inherited her mother’s incredible beauty—and, until she met Brett, her single-minded ambition.

“It’ll never last,” her mother warned her when she got engaged.

“How can you say that?”

“Because nothing worthwhile ever does.”

At the time, Elsa hated her mother for that, certain she was wrong.

She hates her still—because she might have been right.

“Where were you? Shopping?” Settling back into his chair, Brett inadvertently provides Elsa with a viable alibi, and she’s fully prepared to take it.

But then she hears herself say, “No. Not shopping.”

“No? Where were you, then?”

Should she or shouldn’t she?

She probably shouldn’t, but she does.

“I went to Boston.”

About to sip his drink, he looks up sharply.

“I saw Mike Fantoni.”

Brett hesitates a moment longer, then raises the glass to his lips. Elsa perches on the edge of the sofa, waiting.

“Why?” he asks at last, setting down the martini, now half empty.

Or half full, as the cliché goes, depending on one’s philosophy.

Before Jeremy, Elsa was a glass-full kind of woman. And now…

“I want closure, Brett, if nothing else. Don’t you?”

He’s silent for a minute.

Then he asks, “Why now?”

“It’s not just now. I’ve always wanted—”

“No, I know, but why all of a sudden are you getting in touch with Mike Fantoni again, going to see him? What’s changed?”

“Being back here, in New England—it’s brought back so many memories. It’s like we’ve come full circle, but we’re no closer to knowing what happened to him than we were when we left.”

“Chances are we’re never going to know. Why can’t you accept that, Elsa?”

“Why can you?” she returns. “I feel like you’ve given up. I feel like you gave up years ago.”

“You know that’s not true. You know I’ve done everything in my power to get him back, from day one.”

Yes, Brett was just as involved, initially. But somewhere along the line, he drifted back to the real world, the world without Jeremy, leaving Elsa behind.

Or was it the other way around? Was it Elsa who drifted away, Elsa who left Brett behind?

“What did Mike say?” Brett asks, after a long moment of silence.

“He said he’s still looking.”

“He should be. We’re still paying him. We’ve been paying him for years.”

“We can afford it.”

Brett shrugs. “That’s not the point.”

“What is the point?”

“Never mind.”

She wants to tell him the private investigator’s fee is a hell of a lot cheaper than fourteen years’ worth of food and clothing and baseball equipment and college tuition and all the things they’d expected to provide for Jeremy.