Neighborly(86)

I glance toward June’s house. I don’t want to snoop on my new best friend, the one person I’ve come to count on, since I can’t seem to count on Doug these days. But I need to be thorough, for Sadie’s sake.

At first, it’s going well. There’s nothing incriminating in the garbage. It’s just Goth makeup (Hope stuff) and auburn hair extensions (June) and food wrappers and sundries. I’m about to turn back toward my own house, satisfied, when some sixth sense tells me to look in the recycling. That’s where I see the dining room chair cardboard, what’s left of it.

I try to think of any other explanation for it being here weeks later, anything besides June being the author of the notes. When I told her about them, she acted surprised. Now she’s getting rid of the evidence, a day after the police were here. Their squad car was right in front of my house, so either she saw it or someone told her, with the AV being what it is.

If she was scared of getting caught, does that mean it’s over, or will she just move on to some new way of terrorizing me? Or could she have had a change of heart after all this time?

None of it makes any sense. She’s been the only thing keeping me going, besides Sadie herself. She took care of me. I cried in her arms. She understood because she went through it with Hope all those years ago. She volunteered to be with me, day after day. She was by my side, on my side, I could feel it. She hated that Sadie was in pain. I know she did. I felt it.

Could someone else have put the cardboard in her recycling to frame her? They all told me how transparent I was, like it was an endearing quality. Maybe I telegraphed my next move in that GoodNeighbors message. The real perpetrator is one step ahead of me.

My first AV best friend is probably sleeping with my husband; my second AV best friend may very well have poisoned my daughter.

It can’t be true. It can’t.

I go back over each conversation June and I had, as best I can remember it, and yes, she asked a lot of questions, but I thought she was just trying to understand me better.

Or she wanted to find out things she could use against me. But why? How could someone I’d never met before hate me so much?

She’s sent me only one text since I’ve been home, asking how Sadie was; I told her, and then she didn’t respond. I’d thought, just for a second, how strange it was that June would spend all that time with me at the hospital only to disappear once Sadie was out of the woods.

She was there when I was at my most vulnerable. By design. Because it served her somehow.

Some part of me just can’t believe it, though. June? I felt like I’d known her forever, like I could trust her with my life and Sadie’s life. How could I have been so wrong?

That last day at the hospital, there was something about the glow in her eyes when I talked about Crayola, the way she wanted me to leave Doug rather than fight for my marriage. That glow didn’t care. It just wanted me gone.

But I saw how she looked at Sadie. I saw the tears in her eyes. Could anyone possibly be that good of an actress?

Maybe she meant to hurt me, not Sadie. The leptospirosis was meant for me, and when she saw Sadie there . . . those were tears of guilt.

I could call the police and tell them that the cardboard’s in June’s recycling, but they’re not going to make it here before the recycling truck does. It’s already less than a block away.

I could take a picture or take the cardboard out of June’s recycling, but it’ll really just be my word against hers. She’ll deny it, of course. I know she’s an excellent liar. The neighborhood will take her side. She’ll have a block full of character witnesses, one of them a cop, and I’ll have nobody. Maybe not even my own husband.

I need to turn the tables somehow. I just can’t let her, or anyone else, know that I’m onto her.

The AV is where people know everything about their neighbors, where there are no secrets. So somewhere on this block, someone must have the goods on June. They have what I need. I’ll just have to get it out of them.





CHAPTER 35

Doug told me that his manager gave him the day off today, after seeing yesterday just what a toll everything has taken on him. Another lie, but I’m not going to call him on it right now. I don’t have the energy for a come-to-Jesus conversation about our marriage.

What matters right now is protecting Sadie, and the fact that he’s inside, sleeping, with her down the hall means I can start my mission. I’m going to level the playing field. June thinks she knows me; well, I’m about to get to know the real her. And why she’s after me.

At seven a.m., I start going door to door with my petition. Ostensibly, it’s to increase funding for children’s hospitals; really, it’s to get samples for a handwriting analysis. The notes are my only real clue. I imagine that no one will check whether Proposition 29 is for real; no one reads fine print.

I figure it’s early enough that everyone’s up and getting ready. I plan to knock as insistently as everyone else does in the AV.

Raquel steps outside in a robe, closing the door behind her. I go into my spiel, explaining what great care Sadie received and how everyone should be able to get the same care, regardless of their economic means. Raquel doesn’t listen or ask for any particulars, and she signs without hesitation, telling me how happy she is that Sadie’s all right. “I was so worried!” Then she grabs me in an impromptu hug. I thank her and extricate myself quickly, asking if Bart is home and would be willing to sign.