The Perfect Stranger (Social Media #2)(21)

“No! No, I just mean that if she didn’t know what hit her . . . well, that was a blessing.”

“I lost my wife! My kids lost their mother! You’re saying that’s a blessing?”

Pop threw Uncle Louie out of the house, and Elena listened to him sobbing, late into the night. She heard it that night, and every night thereafter, for a long time. Months. Maybe years.

They hardly saw Uncle Louie after that. She and her brother no longer got to visit anyone, not any of the aunts, uncles, or cousins. After spending the first seven years of her life surrounded by a close-knit family, Elena basically spent the rest of her childhood listening to her father cry, or watching him drink himself into a stupor while she took care of the house and her younger brother.

For years she forgot all about the argument she’d overheard between her father and her uncle after her mother’s death.

She’s forgotten a lot of things she’s seen, and heard, and done over the years. She’s always been good at that. If a painful memory tries to work its way into your consciousness, you learn to push it right back out before it can fully form.

But the decades-old family argument she’d overheard came barging into her brain out of the blue on the day she herself was diagnosed with breast cancer, and she was too shell-shocked to defend herself against it.

“I know it’s a shock,” her doctor was saying, “especially at your age.”

Just thirty years old.

Yes, it was a shock.

She never knew what hit her . . .

The phrase landed in her head that day, and try as she might, she’s never quite managed to get it out again.

Maybe because it resonates now. At last, she understands what her uncle was trying to say.

That if you have to die young—or die at all—maybe it’s better that way. Better not to suffer, and linger, and waste away. Better not to fear a looming death for weeks, months. Better for it to be over with in a flash.

“What do you think?” Tony’s voice reaches her, plucking her out of the past and depositing her, with a thud, into the present.

She blinks. “About what?”

“About putting this new policy into place for the next school year? No gifts. None at all. Not even cards. No more passing them around for everyone to sign, no more collecting for people’s wedding showers and baby showers and retirements . . . no more. Done. Finito.”

She stares at him, thinking about cancer. About Meredith. About her mother. About never knowing what hit you . . .

“Otherwise, where does it end, Elena? Elena?” Tony passes a beefy, hairy-knuckled hand in front of her face. “Are you even listening to me?”

“Sorry.”

“Are you okay? I’ve noticed there are a lot of times when you seem like . . . you know, the lights are on but nobody’s home.”

She clenches. “I . . . listen, I need a minute alone right now. And I’m fine. Okay?”

“Did you even hear what I said about the gift for—”

“I heard.”

“Good. Just so we understand each other.”

We will never understand each other, Elena thinks. Trust me.

Finally, she musters that fake smile. “Absolutely. See you, Tony.”

Alone again in her classroom, she clicks on the X in the corner of the newspaper article onscreen, closing it out. Then she starts typing: P-I-N— Thanks to her regular visits to the address, the full name of Meredith’s blog pops up before she goes any farther: PINK STINKS.

She hits Enter and is transported to the home page.

After reading the post from Meredith’s daughter, she scrolls back up to the top of the page and stares at the photo. In it, Meredith is smiling, looking as though she hasn’t a care in the world.

Her last few posts were about her garden, about cooking healthy meals for just one person with her husband away, about a novel she was reading . . .

Not a hint of dread or sorrow; no clue that these were her last days on earth, no drawn-out good-byes, no pain and suffering.

Yes.

In the end—if there has to be an end—it really is better that way.

Hearing voices in the hall, Elena clicks the mouse again, and the screen goes black as her first-graders bound back into the room.

Slowly, Beck climbs the stairs to the second floor, thoughts spinning.

The detectives are still down there, now behind closed doors with her oldest brother, Teddy. Her middle brother, Neal, is on his way. Her sisters-in-law are scrambling to find child care because the police want to speak to them again, too.

And Keith—they’ve summoned Keith as well. He couldn’t have been pleased.

Beck hasn’t spoken to him directly, but he texted her to say that he’s on his way back from Lexington to be interviewed again by the police.

Are there new developments?

Are they closing in on a suspect?

Is it . . .

Do they really think it’s one of us?

Or do they just think someone knows something, or might remember something?

They asked so many questions.

Beck was careful to look them in the eye when she answered, not wanting them to suspect that she had anything to hide.

Because, of course, she doesn’t.

None of them do.

Beck’s hand is tight on the banister as she reaches the top of the stairway, greeted there by the closed master bedroom door.