A Mother Would Know (65)

I can’t remember James’s birthday, but I’d be shocked if she used that, anyway. Next, I try the day Heather died. Morbid, I know, but I wouldn’t put it past Leslie. It was a date she obsessed over.

But that doesn’t work either.

I’m out of ideas. The last thing I want is to get locked out. Then whoever goes on this computer next will know someone had been in here. Most likely that will be the police, and if they dust for prints...

Oh, god. I stare in horror at my hands. Gloves. There’s a pair of black leather ones sitting on my nightstand. I’d gotten them out for tonight, but forgot to bring them. I’d made the same mistake at Molly’s.

Ice spills down my spine.

I can’t keep leaving my handprints all over crime scenes.

Panicked, I rush into the bathroom and tear a hand towel off the rack. Returning to the office, I wipe everything that I’ve touched. I have no idea if this will work, but I have to try. Sticking the towel in my sweater alongside the notebook, I walk back out to the family room.

I’m an idiot.

I did all of this and didn’t even get any useful information.

I pause, take a breath. Where do I keep track of what I need to know? And then I think of one more place I can try. Aiming my phone at the carpet, I allow the beam to guide me to the kitchen. Underneath the calendar on the wall, a pad of paper sits on the counter. I snatch it up, read the first page.

Library books due 10/3.

I stare at the date. October. The month Heather died. It hadn’t hit me until now how close Leslie’s death date was to her daughter’s.

Same season. Less than a month apart.

I shiver.

The rest of the pad is blank. I groan in frustration. This isn’t helpful at all. The clock on the wall ticks. I need to get out of here.

After setting the pad down exactly where I found it, I back out of the room, careful to keep the light fixed on the ground. I don’t want anyone seeing it through the window in the kitchen that overlooks the front yard. And while the family room seems safer, its main window faces Beth’s side—even more dangerous.

As I get closer to the entryway, I’m about to turn the flashlight off when I spot something pale in the threads of the carpet. A fleck of gardener’s perlite, or a tiny shell, perhaps? It’s out of place, though, on Leslie’s immaculate rug.

While I’m bending down to pick it up, my eyes catch something else. Something even more familiar just under Leslie’s coral-themed coatrack. Is that...?

The notebook slides forward in my sweater and hits me under the chin. The towel is inching its way out as well. I shove them both back in. Then I pick up the shiny thing, hold it to the light, my mouth drying out.

It’s one of my earrings. It’s from a set Darren bought me years ago.

They were never my style, but I did force myself to wear them occasionally when he was alive. I never wear them anymore. Haven’t since Darren passed away.

Surely it hasn’t been hidden in her carpet all these years. That would be impossible.

So how did it get here now?

A shuffling sound catches my attention. It’s probably the wind or an animal, but I swiftly shove the earring into my pocket and stand. I’ve already been here longer than I should.

Clicking off the flashlight, I’m blanketed in darkness. I stand in the shadows, the notebook poking me in the ribs, the earring nestled in my pocket and a nagging thought deep in the recesses of my brain, telling me that I’ve forgotten something even more important.



* * *



When I get home, I’m too amped up to fall asleep. It’s like when I’d return from a gig, adrenaline pumping through my veins, highlight reel of the evening playing in my mind. Thankfully, Hudson is asleep. I hear his heavy breathing as I bolt past his door. In my room, I change out of my all-black attire and into a pair of cozy jammies.

Sliding under the covers into my bed, I open Leslie’s notebook and fervently read through it. Much of it is what I already know: the start of the kids’ school year in September, the stress of baking cookies for Fall Fest. She wrote something catty about a woman in book club that makes me laugh—I remember Ann Winston from my short stint in the club, and she did begin every opinion with, “Well, when I was at Stanford...” or, “Well, as my PhD professor used to say...” Leslie recounted a few of our conversations, and it’s creepy how accurate they are. She took note of my haircut—the one and only time I got bangs—and apparently she was kind enough not to say to me what she was really thinking. And she mentions Hudson, too, mostly whether he’d come over, if he’d given Heather a ride somewhere.

Leslie’s handwriting has always been distinctive: an odd combination of cursive and print, a method all her own. And I’m years out of practice on reading it, so every page takes me several painstaking minutes to decipher. My eyes are strained and blurry from the effort.

A few weeks before Heather’s death, she writes,

Couldn’t sleep. Got up to get a glass of water at around 4am. From kitchen window, I saw the light flick on in front of Val’s house.

I sit up, remembering how Darren had installed a light with a sensor over the garage.

Val’s front door popped open, and someone slipped inside and shut the door. Couldn’t really make out who. I was worrying whether I should call Val to wake and warn her or the cops to get over right away or if I should rush over to help myself when I saw the light to Hudson’s room turn on briefly before turning off again. Not a burglar, then. Was about to go to bed, but when I took one last look outside I noticed something all over the windshield of Heather’s car and went outside to see.