The Neighbor's Secret(33)

Sierra tried again, and they toppled in a tangled heap on a family’s picnic blanket. Plates spilled, the parents jumped up, and as Sierra started to help clean up the mess, Laurel crawled on her hands and knees toward their toddler, then rose on her hind legs, hands clawed like a grizzly bear. The child’s mouth opened in a wail as the crowd began to cheer for the second graders, who were taking their final bows.

Annie glanced guiltily at the stage before looking back toward Laurel, who kneeled in the center of the plaid picnic blanket. She swigged from her pink water bottle, wiped her mouth with her sleeve.

There was a cold pit of comprehension in Annie’s stomach. Laurel was drunk.



* * *



The text that Annie had sent to Lena showed Hank in the town’s gazebo in the throes of a dance step, his knees bent inward awkwardly. It wasn’t fair to blame Annie for sending the picture. She thought she was being nice.

Which didn’t mean Lena wanted the thing.

The oven timer buzzed. Lena should check on the cupcakes, but she ignored them. She pressed delete and watched the gazebo and Hank’s knees and the slice of river and the crowds of people gathered for Fall Fest swirl together and swoosh into the trash.

Very satisfying.

This was the problem with new friends: they might breezily send pictures of off-limits places, unaware that there were rules to be followed.

No main street, no town green, no high school, no riverbanks. Places are tricky, Annie. Memories barnacle to them.

This was the problem with old friends, too. That one conversation with Melanie about Fall Fest had been a signal whistle to long-buried memories: emerge and attack!

Like the year when Rachel was in middle school and Tim, for some reason, had decided to crash their mother-daughter tradition and tag along to Fall Fest.

He had acted like a bratty child, sulked when Rachel wanted to hang out with her friends and insisted that they make a leaf pile like they had when she was little. Rachel had played along dutifully, watching patiently as he fell dramatically backward into the pile with a too-loud laugh. He stayed there for a long moment, playing dead.

Middle school was difficult enough and the last thing Rachel needed was to worry about placating her embarrassing dad. Lena recalled being furious, wishing that Tim wasn’t just playing dead.

It wasn’t out of the realm for him to have fallen on a rock and knocked himself out, was it? And if he was left there for long enough … well, given hypothermia, rattlesnakes, bears, might he just disappear?

She remembered feeling a little burst of happiness at the thought. Life would be so much easier without him.

It started there, Lena’s granting herself permission to imagine, when she needed to, Tim slipping off Waterfall Rock, Tim’s car with failed brakes. The game was figuring out how to off him in a way that would keep her hands as clean as possible.

All that preparation apparently served her well: when she succeeded in killing him a few years later, Lena didn’t even break a nail.



* * *



“That girl is crazy,” Abe said.

“What?” Jen asked. She was trying to collect errant burrito wrappers into an empty doughnut box and the wind kept blowing them away.

Jen had purposefully set their blanket down as far away from the stage as possible, but even so, Fall Fest was a sensory explosion. A tiny child had wandered over to the Kingdom School picnic blanket to repeatedly slam the tambourine Colin had brought, and there was a line of kids patiently waiting for a turn with his guitar. And from the gazebo there were the chants of the second graders and the feedback of a PA system that was circa 1952.

People were shouting and cheering and despite it all, Abe had neither melted down nor insisted they leave.

“She fell down again,” Abe said with a snicker. Colin and Jen both turned in the direction of his pointed finger.

About twenty feet away, a teenaged girl lay on her back, singing loudly, her arms raised upward in an attempt to conduct the clouds.

One of her friends filmed her with a camera phone, while another tried repeatedly to get her up on her feet.

“Is that Laurel Perley?” Jen said.

“What is she on?” Abe said.

Laurel was now upright and sashaying in their direction. She stopped along the way, extended her hand to an older couple sitting in camping chairs. “Madame and Monsieur, voulez-vous enjoy Les Fall Fest Dancers?” she shouted.

“Oh dear,” Jen said. She stepped in Laurel’s path, and was hit by the sour smell of alcohol. Colin appeared on the other side of Laurel, and together they coaxed her over to their blanket.

“Laurel, I’m Jen, a friend of your mom, from the neighborhood.”

“Lucky for you,” Laurel said. “She’s a blast.”

“Here,” Colin said. He handed Laurel a water bottle. “Take a sip.”

Laurel held up hers. “I’vealreadygot.”

“This one is water, though. Good to hydrate.”

“Excellentidea,” Laurel said. “Big French test on Monday. De l’eau!”

“Right,” he said.

She sipped and closed her eyes and then leaned over and got sick on their blanket. Jen awkwardly patted her back.

“Gross,” Abe said. “Colin, it’s on your pants.”

Jen hadn’t noticed Annie run up, but suddenly she was on their blanket, too. She yanked away Laurel’s pink water bottle and unscrewed the top, sniffed and gagged.