The Neighbor's Secret(17)

“I know that,” Lena said.

“It is stunning,” Annie said. After a moment of hesitation, she looped the scarf around her neck, patted it.

“So”—Lena crossed her legs—“any improvement with Mike’s restaurant?”

“It’s the same,” Annie said.

A year ago, Mike Perley had started his own restaurant, called CartWheel. It had been a lifelong dream of his, and although, according to Annie, Mike was working very hard and the chef was amazingly talented and the concept was fabulous—American bistro fusion fare served via dim sum carts—business was slow.

Now, Lena settled in to listen. Annie was trying her best to be supportive, she explained, and she wanted Mike to be happy. He deserved to be happy, and she didn’t want to be a dream killer, but she couldn’t help but struggle with his decision to open a restaurant now and to use their home as collateral.

Lena nodded sympathetically and nudged the biscotti plate across the coffee table to her.

Annie took one and bit into it frustratedly, speaking through the chew. She couldn’t object because—again, Annie lowered her voice—Mike hadn’t wanted to live in Cottonwood at all. They could have afforded something bigger and far less expensive on the other side of the hogback.

Annie had insisted, though. She had wanted to raise a family here. She looked guiltily at Lena. He had compromised back then. Didn’t Annie have to now?

“Wanting the best for your children is hardly a crime,” Lena said.

She had always been drawn to blurters, people like Annie who wore their hearts on their sleeves. The choice was: step back or get swept up.

Lena always chose to get swept up.

Freshman year of college, Lena had walked into the Psychology 101 lecture room and found an empty chair next to a stranger who announced that she had not done the reading, because there had been a party in her hall, and even though she hadn’t planned on going she had, and did Lena want to know what had happened at this party because it was crazy.

Oh, she had said, I’m Melanie, by the way.

And later that same semester Lena had met Tim, who could have majored in authoritative proclamations. When he zeroed in on Lena it had been thrilling: This is the plan! You and Me!

Who was she to argue?

Rachel had it wrong: Lena wasn’t a manipulative supervillain. She was, at heart, a people-pleaser. In early life, it had been Alma’s opinion that mattered, then Tim’s. Finally, even though Rachel would never want to see it this way, it was Rachel herself who had motivated Lena to act.

It wasn’t that Lena didn’t have her own opinions or goals, just that other people’s seemed more important.

But maybe everyone thought of herself as a follower. So many book characters were victims of circumstance—Alice in Wonderland, the Little Princess, Hamlet. Poor Odile up in the tree. Things had happened to them, and then their reactions propelled the story.

Just like Lena. She had merely reacted.

“You should bring these to book club when you come.” Annie took a rabbitlike nibble of her second biscotto. “Deb will flip.”

“If I come to book club,” Lena corrected.

Annie made a swooping motion with the biscotto to indicate she was dismissing Lena’s if.

Book club was well-trod ground between them by now—Annie pushing, Lena demurring—and although Lena had no intention of ever going to book club, she found it flattering to be so vigorously recruited.

“Deb’s the one who makes the drinks?” Lena said.

She knew this already, too: Deb Gallegos made the cocktails and was overly permissive with her daughter. Priya Jensen was the beauty who had moved here from India as a child, modeled lingerie in her twenties, and married that football player and had a ton of money and children and beautiful clothes but Annie said you couldn’t hate Priya, even if the laws of self-protection begged you to, because she was so kindhearted. Janine was the organizer who was, based on those frantic emails and Annie’s stories, well-meaning but a bit hysterical.

Lena had grown fond of the women, who she thought of as characters in another book. She could imagine having a cocktail with them and advising them in the way she might Hamlet. For heaven’s sake, pay some attention to Ophelia!

“Deb’s drinks will convince you to become a book club member,” Annie said. “She plots in a libations notebook—I am not kidding, she buys a new one each year—and orders obscure bitters and all of this equipment online. She might be a little bit of an alcoholic, though. Highly functioning.” Annie laughed nervously. “I don’t know. I’m kidding, obviously.”

Lena was by now used to the way Annie’s eyes would habitually float over to Rachel’s picture.

They had been seven years apart, Annie stammered last week. She’d barely known Rachel.

But Annie had wanted to ask about her, Lena could tell, so she’d changed the subject. As she did now.

“Do you think Laurel would like to see Waterfall Rock?”

Just beyond the back gate of Lena’s yard were hiking paths that connected to the state forest system. Rachel had named the spot where the trail led to a giant boulder, perched above a majestic thirty-foot waterfall that roared and sprayed down to the creek below.

Lena hadn’t been in years, but once upon a time, when Rachel was about Hank’s age, they’d picnicked there frequently, and she’d thought to show Hank and Annie during their last visit. They’d acted like it was Valhalla.