A Mother Would Know (55)

Oh, screw it. I have every right to know what’s going on.

I’m done cowering.

Drawing in a breath, I lift my chin and jog across the street.

“What’s going on?” I ask the minute my feet hit their grass.

Their lips are pursed in suspicion.

Oh, come on.

“Is Leslie okay?” I press.

Beth shakes her head, her eyes filling with tears. “She’s dead.”

My stomach bottoms out. “Dead?”

She nods, her lips trembling. Alex puts his arm around her shoulders.

“Oh, my god. Do they know what happened?” I ask. Two women hurry up behind us, startling me—more members of Leslie’s morning coffee huddle. My approach has clearly emboldened them to leave their yards and come closer, too.

“I went over to check on her this morning,” she says. “Normally we talk every day, but she never came out of her house all day yesterday or this morning, and I was worried. After knocking for a while and calling her a couple of times, I finally dialed 911. When the paramedics got here, they found her unresponsive.” Fresh tears fall from Beth’s eyes. Her husband draws her close, and she sobs into his shoulder.

I stare at Leslie’s house, taking in the stuffed mailbox. “So the last time you saw Leslie was Monday?”

“Yeah.” Beth nods against her husband’s shoulder. The other ladies nod as well. “At book club that night.”

Swallowing hard, I feel queasy.

I might have been the last person to see Leslie alive.



* * *



It’s getting dark, the sky a deep charcoal, tumultuous and cloudy like plumes of smoke. The moon is an eerie bloodred tonight. It seems oddly fitting. Hudson isn’t home, and he’s not returning my texts or phone calls.

Worry churns in my gut.

The television plays quietly in the corner, but I’m too distracted to pay attention to it.

Hudson is usually home by now. Where could he be? Even when he goes out with friends, he comes home to shower and change first. I turn, my face appearing in the glass, ethereal and blurry. Beyond that, Leslie’s house is dark, except for the automatic porch light. It’s that damn light that causes my eyes to well with tears. Something about it still turning on even though the rest of the house is dark fills me with extreme sadness. Even though she’s not there to sit outside and gossip with her neighbors, it still illuminates the space. An ache spreads through my chest.

I’ve always found it odd how life goes on, many things operating like clockwork, even when someone passes away. Even when the lives of those around them are at a standstill.

I picture Leslie the way she looked when I first saw her, young and idealistic, dirt coating her palms and residing under her fingernails. I see her progression over the years, her working in the yard, her sitting on her front porch, cup of tea in hand. The year Heather died, she let all the plants in the beds go wiry and unwatered. James moved out at the end of the summer, dragging his bags across the brown grass.

A tear slips down my cheek, and I wipe it away. We may not have gotten along recently, but we were friends once. It’s hard to accept that she’s gone.

“I haven’t told you everything about that night.” The words Hudson said to me while standing in the middle of Leslie’s front lawn float through my mind.

I pick up my phone and shoot off another text to Hudson: Where are you? Call me. It’s an emergency.

My fear escalates as the minutes tick by. Have the police picked him up? Did he panic—did he bolt?

Have my suspicions about him been justified?

I’m about to try him again when lights appear in the window, sweeping over the pane and then clicking off. I pitch forward, my breath caught in my throat. Hudson’s car parks along the curb. He quickly pops out of the driver’s side and makes his way hurriedly up the front stairs.

Reaching for a tissue, I pat at my damp cheeks and wipe under my eyes. When I pull back my hand, the tissue is streaked with snail trails of black mascara. I sniff as the door is forcefully thrust open.

Hudson shoots into the room, wild-eyed. His shirt is mottled with brown mud, and dirt cakes his forearms and fingers. He stares at me as if he’s checking for wounds.

“Are you okay?”

I don’t know how to answer that. Physically, I guess I am, so I hesitantly nod.

He steps further into the room. “Then what’s going on? You said there was an emergency.”

“There is. It’s just not involving me.”

“Huh?” A breath bursts from his mouth, the rush of adrenaline dissipating.

“Leslie’s dead,” I say, not wishing to delay the inevitable.

“What?” He falls into the couch like his knees buckled.

I nod. “They found her body earlier today.”

“H-how?”

“I don’t know. But on the news, they’re already calling it a homicide.”

He gathers his beard in between his thumb and forefinger, drawing it to a point at his chin. “When did she die?”

“The last time anyone saw her was Monday night.”

His head snaps up. “Monday night? B-but that’s when...” Turning his head, he looks out the window, no doubt remembering how he’d been standing in the middle of Leslie’s yard late that night.