Live to Tell (Live to Tell #1)(9)

She smiles and nods. “Every single one.”



“Do you have a feeling, one way or another?” The therapist’s voice intrudes on Elsa’s melancholy thoughts.

She looks up to see Joan watching her.

“A feeling about what?” she asks.

“About whether Jeremy is alive?”

Or dead.

Ever tactful, Joan doesn’t complete the question.

The wisp of hope drifts, as it does from time to time, like a helium balloon whose string was swept beyond her grasp by a cold, cruel wind.

“What do you think, Elsa?”

In this particular moment, she doesn’t think. She knows.

A mother knows.

There’s no mistaking the aching emptiness; the sense that you will never again cradle your sweet child in your arms.

“He’s dead,” she says resolutely.





CHAPTER TWO




Do you want white or red? I brought both.” Holding a paper bag from the wine store, Trilby McCall follows Lauren to the kitchen, her heeled sandals tapping across the hardwoods.

“Is the white chilled?”

“Yep.”

“Definitely white then. Maybe that’ll cool us off.”

Lauren steps around comatose Chauncey on the floor in front of the fridge, pushes her sweat-dampened hair back from her forehead, and looks up to make sure the paddle fan is still turning. It is, but does little to stir the sultry night air.

“It feels good in here, actually,” Trilby comments. Her long, dark ponytail has plenty of bounce and she looks cool and crisp in a linen top and capris, making Lauren wish she’d changed out of her dated, pleated, too-big khaki shorts.

“Are you kidding? It’s a thousand degrees.”

“Well, Bob keeps our AC cranked so high I need mittens at home.”

Air-conditioning—yet another thing Lauren and Nick didn’t want when they moved here. Too sterile. They both enjoyed fresh air through screens, falling asleep to the hum of crickets or the loamy smell of rain.

Toward the end, though—last summer—Nick looked into installing ductwork for a central cooling system. Gnats were getting in through the screens, he said, and the house felt too damp with all the humidity, and it wasn’t good for the allergies he claimed to have developed…

Yeah, right. Looking back, it’s pretty clear that Nick was allergic to one thing only: marriage.

“What are Bob and the kids doing tonight?” she asks Trilby.

“Right now?” Trilby checks her watch. “Either arguing about bedtime, or snooping around in the cupboards for some kind of crap to eat because all we had for dinner was salad.”

“I can top that. All we had for dinner was apples dipped in peanut butter. And that was hours ago.”

It’s almost eight-thirty now. When Trilby called earlier wanting to stop by tonight, Lauren almost told her no. She’s tired, and Sadie is weepy and needy, and Nick has yet to call back about Fred. She’d been planning on tucking her daughter into bed—hopefully Sadie’s own bed, with Fred on the pillow beside her—then collapsing in front of some mindless television show.

But it’s always hard for Lauren to say no to Trilby. In fact, it’s always been hard for her to say no to anyone. But she’s learning.

“There’s nothing like divorce to help you discover your inner bitch,” Trilby likes to say, and she’s right. Lately, Lauren has gone from feeling defeated and depleted to feeling like she’s not going to let anyone push her around. Particularly Nick.

“Hey, there, how’s it going?” Trilby leans over Sadie, who’s hunched over a coloring book, scribbling a Disney princess a moody shade of dark gray.

“Bad.”

Trilby shoots a questioning look at Lauren over Sadie’s blond hair.

Lauren shakes her head.

A fellow mom, Trilby nods that she gets the message: Don’t ask.

“I like your princess, Sadie. Even if she is a little…drab.” She watches Sadie hunt through the crayon box. “How about some pink? Or yellow, maybe?”

“No.”

“Who is that, Mulan?”

Sadie nods grimly and exchanges her gray crayon for a brown one.

“You know, nobody ever colors princesses in my house.” Trilby straightens and removes the bottle of white wine from the bag. “Our coloring books just have trucks. Or Spider-Man.”

Sadie looks up with guarded interest.

“Do you think Dylan and Justin would like a Mulan coloring book?” Trilby asks.

The barest hint of a smile. “No.”

“Yeah. I don’t think so, either. Oh well.”

Lauren grins at her friend. The mother of two sons, Trilby is often wistful about Sadie’s—and Lucy’s—girly trappings. She frequently comments on what they’re wearing, right down to sparkly nail polish, and she reveled in Lucy’s tiara stage years ago. In fact, she took to wearing one, too, whenever she came over, so they could be princesses together.

Lucy. The thought of her older daughter brings a pang. Lauren misses her, and Ryan, too.

And Nick? Do you miss him?

Yes—she misses the old familiar Nick, anyway. The one who was comfortable and steadfast and sweet. The Nick who had grown up in a broken home and was determined to make his own marriage last forever.