An Anonymous Girl(96)

I have to go back to the West Village Conservatory Gardens and find the bench near the frozen fountain. The spot April chose for her death must have some significance.

Does Dr. Shields also know that Thomas made up the affair with Lauren from the boutique? If I figured this out, then Dr. Shields, with her falconlike attention to detail, surely has.

How much longer until she discovers my unauthorized encounter with Thomas and all the lies I’ve told her?

And when she learns I’ve slept with her husband, what will she do to me?





CHAPTER


SIXTY-THREE


Monday, December 24

Are you getting the deep, dreamless rest you so desperately need, Jessica?

There won’t be any interruptions. You are utterly alone.

You no longer have work to distract you. And Lizzie is away. Perhaps you had intended to spend Christmas Eve with Noah, but he has retreated to Westchester to be with his family.

As for your family, they are unreachable. This morning the hotel concierge phoned and surprised them with a day-long trip on a sailboat. It is so difficult to get cell phone reception out on the ocean.

Even your new friend Thomas will be occupied.

But those who are surrounded by family and festive activities can feel isolated, too.

Cue the scene: Christmas Eve at the Shields family estate in Litchfield, Connecticut, ninety minutes outside of New York City.

In the grand living room, a fire blazes in the hearth. The delicate Limoges nativity figurines are arranged on the mantel. This year the mother’s decorator has chosen white lights and perfect pinecones to accent the tree.

It all looks so beautiful, doesn’t it?

The father has uncorked a bottle of Dom Pérignon. Smoked salmon with caviar on crostini are passed.

Stockings lay below the tree. Although there are only four people in the room, there are five stockings.

The extra one has been filled for Danielle, as it has been every year. The custom is to donate to a meaningful charity in her name and place the envelope bearing the check in the stocking. Usually the recipient is Mothers Against Drunk Driving, although Safe Ride and Students Against Destructive Decisions have also been chosen in the past.

Next week will mark the twentieth anniversary of Danielle’s death, so the check is a particularly large one.

She would have been thirty-six years old.

She died less than a mile away from this living room.

As the level of champagne in the mother’s second glass grows lower, her stories about the younger daughter, her favorite, grow more hyperbolic.

This is another holiday custom.

She winds up a rambling tale about Danielle’s summer as a counselor at the country club’s day camp.

“She was such a natural with children,” the mother ruminates pointlessly. “She would have been the most wonderful mother.”

The mother has conveniently forgotten that Danielle reluctantly took the job at the father’s insistence and was only hired because the father played golf with the country club director.

Typically, the mother is indulged.

But today a rebuttal is impossible to withhold: “Oh, I’m not sure how much Danielle actually liked those kids. Didn’t she call in sick so often that she almost got fired?”

Although an affectionate tone is sought, the words cause the mother to stiffen.

“She loved those children,” the mother counters. Her cheeks redden.

“More champagne, Cynthia?” Thomas offers. It’s an attempt to break the tension that has suddenly infused the room.

The mother is allowed to win the point by having the last word, although she is wrong.

Here is what the mother refuses to accept: Danielle was thoroughly selfish. She took things: A favorite cashmere sweater that was then stretched out, because Danielle wore a size larger. An A-plus paper for my junior-year English class that was stored on a shared home computer and resubmitted under her name the following fall.

And a boyfriend who had pledged to be true to the older sister.

Danielle never suffered consequences for those first two transgressions or so many before them; the father was preoccupied with work and the mother, predictably, excused her.

Perhaps if she had been held responsible for her misdeeds all along, she would still be alive.

Thomas has crossed the room to refill the mother’s glass.

“How it is possible that you look younger every year, Cynthia?” he asks, patting her on the arm.

Usually Thomas’s attempts at peacemaking feel loving.

Tonight’s is perceived as another betrayal.

“I need a glass of water.” What is actually needed is an excuse to leave the room. The kitchen feels like a place of refuge.

Over the past twenty years, items in this kitchen have been altered: The new refrigerator contains a built-in dispenser for ice water. The hardwood floor has been replaced by an Italian tile. The dinner plates behind the glass-fronted cabinets are now white with blue trim.

But the side door is exactly the same.

The deadbolt still requires a key to unlock it from the outside. From inside the kitchen, a simple twist of the small oval knob disengages the lock or engages it, depending on which way the knob is turned.

You have never heard this story, Jessica.

No one has. Not even Thomas.

But you must have known you were special to me. That we are inexorably linked. It is one of the reasons why your actions have cut so deeply.