The Neighbor's Secret(20)

Rachel’s hair had been so thick when it was long, it had grown out as much as down and it had taken Lena forever to figure out how to instruct the stylist to get the layers just so, and which products to use, and then, right after she’d gone east, Rachel had cut it all off.

She’d never grown it out again.

There wasn’t a true resemblance. It was Laurel’s age and what she was going through. Lena wanted to yell at her to be nicer to her mother, then throw her arms around those slouched narrow shoulders and lie that it would all be okay.

“Kids,” Lena said. “Can I trust you with something?”

Hank looked uncertainly at his mother for the answer—not sure, can I be trusted?

“I’m giving you a key to the gate. You can use it whenever you want—on one condition. Your mother needs to give you permission first. And you have to share it with each other.”

“Really?” When Laurel smiled at Lena, Lena saw into her future: with cleared skin, hair off her face, those braces off, standing up straight—the girl was well on her way to being as pretty as Annie. “Thanks so much, Mrs. Meeker.”

Lena felt warm at having saved the moment. She’d always suspected that she would make an excellent grandmother: generous, a dash of wise humor.

“A-hem,” Annie coughed, and nudged Hank.

“Thank you, Mrs. Meeker,” Hank said.

“Laurel,” Annie said slyly, “I’m trying to convince Mrs. Meeker to join book club.”

Laurel managed to make eye contact with Lena. “You should go,” she said in a monotone.

“There’s always really good food there,” Hank said.

“Just one meeting.” Annie held up one finger. “Lena. You deserve to have some fun.”

It wasn’t the most compelling argument.

It’s only book club, Lena repeated to herself over a quickening pulse.

She might choose to pretend that she gave in for the sake of Mike Perley’s restaurant, but the fact was that Lena enjoyed Annie’s visits a bit too desperately.

Lena wanted more. More warmth, more fun, more noise, more belonging, and it wasn’t like Rachel was ever coming back.

Fourteen years and Lena’s essence hadn’t evolved. When she fancied something—like she did now, like she tragically had Gary Neary—Lena went for it, consequences be damned.

She suspected most people did.





CHAPTER EIGHT



Dr. Scofield had referred Jen to Dr. Maggie Shapiro, who had a neat gray-streaked bob and warm almond-shaped eyes and, as fate would have it, a last-minute cancellation that meant she’d been able to start assessing Abe in late September.

Dr. Shapiro’s office was decorated in calming shades of taupe and beige and was on the seventeenth floor of a glass office building. The HVAC system hummed soothingly and the yellow-tinted windows of Dr. Shapiro’s office had a view of the jagged line where the mountains met the sky.

Over the past two weeks, Jen had filled out reams of paperwork for Dr. Shapiro about everything from the development of Abe’s pincer grip right up to the Harper French stabbing. She and Paul and Abe had all met with Dr. Shapiro in various permutations, but today’s meeting was the big one:

Ease into these comfortable chairs, Jen and Paul, so I can tell you just how broken your son’s brain is.

Of all the experts Jen and Paul had been to, Dr. Shapiro was the very best at assembling a shit sandwich—neatly tucking the distasteful truth inside two slices of positivity.

I so enjoyed getting to know Abe this week, Dr. Shapiro now intoned in that soothing therapist’s voice, because he is a uniquely creative soul with deep interests and a searing intelligence.

Abe fit the criteria for conduct disorder, a precursor to sociopathy. But: he was very lucky to have parents like Jen and Paul—present, loving, willing to do the work.

Even if Jen recognized the sandwich for what it was, her eyes teared, in part from the diagnosis’s starkness, but also from the acknowledgment that she was a good parent. The proof tended to be in the pudding with child-rearing, and people looked at Abe and assumed that Jen and Paul, let’s face it, mainly Jen—if it’s not one thing, it’s your mother—was asleep on the job.

But Dr. Shapiro, dressed in an expensive-looking fringy black-and-white sweater-blazer, assured Jen and Paul that they were up to the work ahead. There would be a lot: weekly individual therapy, possibly group therapy, all designed to bolster Abe’s empathy skills, which were, well, not the strongest she’d seen. Ditto his impulsivity.

He had a pattern of lashing out when things didn’t go his way.

“Having two involved, caring parents puts Abe in the minority, unfortunately,” Dr. Shapiro said. “Many kids with this diagnosis come from serious abuse.”

“What if Abe was abused?” The words emerged from Jen’s mouth in a panicked rush. “He’s been bullied. What if someone—”

Dr. Shapiro shook her head decisively. “This has been noticed from Abe’s earliest interactions. The fact that he’s grown up in a loving environment and still struggles with empathy makes me think this is about brain wiring.”

“But no one in either of our families has anything like this,” Paul said.

“Does anyone have anxiety or depression?”