The Neighbor's Secret(84)

Annie Perley hurried across the muddy lawn, passed the raccoon without seeing him. Lena had to reach out her arms to physically stop her.

“Annie?” Lena said. “Mike thought you went home. He must be worried.”

There was something wrong with Annie. Her mouth hung slack. Her right nostril was caked with blood. The caftan’s shoulder seam had been torn open.

“Annie?”

“We need to call the police,” she said. “I killed him.”





CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN



After hearing Annie’s story, Lena felt a tempest within her. “Are you sure he’s dead?”

“I stared at him for a while,” Annie said. “He was face down in the water. Aren’t you going to call the police?”

Lena understood the need to stop and think first, to coax Annie inside to her usual spot on the sofa, dab a wet washcloth to her face, fold a chenille throw over her lap and boil the water for a mug of tea, text Mike that, as it turned out, Annie had been here all along, helping clean, and might be a little while still.

“What do I tell the police?” Annie wondered aloud. “Do you think they’ll arrest me right away?”

“It sounds like self-defense,” Lena said. “But if they’re involved, Annie, the news of it will be everywhere, and out of your control, regardless of whether you’re around to protect Laurel from it.”

Annie considered that. Her fingers stroked the throw tucked around her lap.

“I’m sure no one was on the trails,” Lena said, “but did anyone see you leave the party?”

“Maybe Jen?”

“She wouldn’t say anything,” Lena said.

“How do you know? I was awful to her.”

“Just a feeling.”

Annie made a sound between a gasp and a laugh. “Oh my god, how will I explain it to Laurel?”

“You won’t,” Lena said. “What is there to explain?”

Neither one of them verbalized the thought that passed between them: Who would ever know?

It was all so clean, Lena marveled. Annie didn’t even know to be grateful for how clean it was.

Lena moved right next to Annie on the sofa, faced her, took Annie’s hands—slightly thawed—in her own.

“It can be surprisingly easy,” Lena lied, “if you let it.”


FIFTEEN YEARS EARLIER, 1:45 A.M.

Lena palmed her keys, opened the door.

Tim’s car had been parked at an awkward angle in the darkened garage. The windshield was cracked and torn in two spots. Its edges peeled up like it was made of a flimsy plastic. Rachel sat upright in the driver’s seat.

Lena ran through the shards of glass that covered the garage floor, flung open the car’s front door, and touched Rachel’s arm, which was cold and clammy. “What happened?”

Lena moved Rachel’s heavy limbs, tried to assess damage. The splotches of blood on the skirt of Rachel’s dress seemed to be from a wound on her palm. The cut didn’t appear deep.

“What happened?” Lena pressed both of her hands against Rachel’s cheeks, forced eye contact.

Rachel’s lids squeezed shut. Lena pinched her bare upper arm, and they flew back open.

“I don’t know.” Rachel sounded genuinely perplexed. Her breath was sour and hot. “I feel really sick.”

“But the windshield…” Lena’s voice screeched out of her. “What hit it?”

“Don’t know.”

“Tell me where you went, Rachel. At least tell me that.”



* * *



Lena’s headlights were the only illumination on Canyon Road. Her grip on the wheel was tight and dry and she drove slowly, scanned the blue grama grass on the roadside.

She got out of the car after she felt the bump underneath her car, bent down to look at a blue sneaker planted upright in the middle of the road.

The wind died down, diminished to a gentle rustle that waved through the tall grass as if beckoning Lena closer.

He’d landed mostly on his back, the leg with the shoeless foot stretched toward the road, the other tucked under him at an awful angle.

His face was unblemished but for a golf-ball-sized crater collapsed in the middle of his forehead. The hair on the side of his head was soaked with blood and matted with tiny seed heads. There was a spread of darkness under him. Lena couldn’t tell where he ended and the earth began.

She kneeled, pressed two fingers lightly against his exposed wrist, and averted her eyes from his, which were open and vacant. His skin was soft and a bit warm, but she felt no pulse other than a beat deep within her.

You could hide him, Lena.

Quickly, hide the body so no one finds out.

But her legs were running to the Nessels’ house and she was knocking and ringing the bell.

When Harriet came stumbling to the door in her nightshirt, Lena’s voice was an unfamiliar shriek. You need to call 911.

“What happened,” Harriet demanded.

It wasn’t a decision. It wasn’t thought-out. It was something essential that clicked together within Lena.

It was Tim. The lie felt true as it spilled out of her mouth. It was Tim.

She waited for questions, a challenge, but Harriet nodded gravely, wrapped her arms around her chest.