Someone Else’s Life(31)

Annie slipped on flip-flops and threw on her black windbreaker, which come to think of it, looked just like Serena’s hanging on the hook by the door. With a glance back at Serena, who gave her a thumbs-up as if rooting for her against the storm, she took a breath and reached for the front door.

“Ready, Marley? Let’s go!” She threw open the door and gasped as the cold rain hit her square in the face, soaking her. Marley looked at her, then stepped just enough outside to get his butt out the door and lifted a leg to pee, right on the lanai.

“Smart boy,” Serena called, laughing.

“This rain is insane.” Annie’s hood flew off as the wind whipped through her hair. “Come on, Marley, hurry.”

Marley finished his business and rushed back inside. He shook himself as Annie slammed the door shut. “You’re spraying water everywhere.” Annie held up her hands and turned away.

She took off her drenched windbreaker and hung it up next to Serena’s. “Look,” she said, pointing to their matching jackets. “Twins.”

“Even our jackets have something in common.”

Annie took the towel she’d used earlier off the hook and dried herself and Marley. “I can’t believe how much rain there is. And it’s kind of chilly with all that wind. You want a blanket?”

“Sure,” Serena said from the couch. Annie walked to the closet next to the bathroom and pulled out two burgundy-and-white fleece blankets that they’d brought from New York. She hadn’t thought they’d ever have to use them in Kauai, but now she was glad to have them. She tossed one to Serena, then pulled out a chew bone for Marley. He grabbed it in his mouth, and after she’d settled on the couch under her blanket, he jumped up next to her.

“It’s so cozy in here.” Serena gestured around the room.

“It is.” Annie nodded in agreement. And to think, just hours ago, she’d looked forward to an afternoon of drinking by herself. This was so much better.

Serena pointed in the direction of the main house. “I’ve always wanted to be part of a big family.” Her voice was a mixture of longing and something hard that Annie couldn’t identify.

“You said you were an only child?” Annie wanted to know more about Serena. It felt as if they’d started their friendship backward. They’d told each other their deepest thoughts without knowing the basics first.

“Yes. My parents divorced when I was young. They were so nasty to each other.” Serena twisted her fingers together on top of her blanket. “My mom was a sociopath and a pathological liar.”

Annie almost laughed out loud, thinking Serena was joking, but the sharp look on the younger woman’s face stopped her. Her face had turned to stone, and a frown furrowed her forehead. “I mean it. She was crazy. She had no empathy and no idea what simple human compassion was. She wanted to hurt my father, to come out ahead of him no matter what, even if it meant hurting me in the process. She didn’t want me. Never had. But she knew he did, and so she fought him.”

“I can’t even imagine.” Annie rubbed Marley on top of his head as he gnawed on the bone, her heart going out to young Serena.

Serena’s face turned almost ugly as she spoke, her mouth twisted and her eyes narrowing into two slits. “I hated her so much. Hated how she used the fact that courts usually grant custody to the mother against my father, lying about him under oath and twisting events around to make him look bad. Even though she was the one who was an alcoholic. She used to leave me by myself to go off on a binge when my father was working. But he didn’t want to use that against her. It wasn’t until she got really nasty that he finally told his lawyers about it.”

“She sounds . . .” Annie trailed off, catching herself before she said something bad.

“Mean, crazy, awful?” Serena supplied, her face scrunched up in pain or hatred, Annie couldn’t be sure. “She was. She dragged the divorce on for years, fighting my father at every turn. Eventually, the forensic psychiatrist recommended that she not even get visitation rights without a social worker present. That’s how scared I was of her.” Serena’s mouth hardened. “I was only six when my father filed for divorce, and I was already scared to death of her then.”

Sympathy for Serena bloomed in Annie’s chest. “What an awful situation to grow up in. But your father eventually got full custody?”

Serena nodded. “Yes. Four years later. That’s how long the divorce took. I was ten by then. We were both so relieved we cried the day we found out. He didn’t care how much money he had to pay her. He only wanted me. And I never saw her again.”

Annie’s mouth opened in shock. “I don’t understand how a mother can just leave her child like that.” The lights flickered as if in reaction, and they both looked up. When the lights stayed on, Annie breathed out a sigh of relief. “Let me dig out flashlights and candles just in case. But keep going.”

Serena shook her head as Annie stood. “She disappeared. For all I know, she’s dead. Or she has a new family and is torturing them like she did us. I don’t know.” She narrowed her eyes and stiffened her spine. “I don’t know and I don’t care. She’s dead to me.”

Annie placed a hand on Serena’s shoulder briefly before going to the closet by the bathroom. She had no words to comfort Serena, who was staring off in space, lost in her thoughts.