Locust Lane(6)

“I’m her mother.”

“Could you be a little more specific?”

“I guess you can say that Eden and I were taking a time-out. I mean, saying that, it sounds worse than it was. It was just, you know, after twenty years, I think we decided a break might be in order.”

“Oh,” Gates said, as if the thought had just occurred to her. “Where were you last night? I know you said you talked to her at seven…”

Danielle knew it was only natural that they would suspect her. They didn’t know her. She knew how she looked, with the tats and the dyed-black hair. But still.

“I was at home.”

“Doing what?” Procopio asked.

“I had dinner and then I watched a movie and then I went to bed.”

“What movie was that?”

“It had Julia Roberts in it. She pretends to fall in love with a gay guy to get another guy jealous. I can’t remember the name.”

“My Best Friend’s Wedding,” Procopio said immediately.

The two women looked at him. Gates turned back to Danielle.

“You didn’t go out at all?”

“No.”

“Okay. Good to know.”

They spoke for a while longer. The chief left them to it. Gates asked her about Eden’s ex-boyfriends and her habits and if she said anything more about her weeks in Emerson. They asked about her daughter’s moods, which was a bit like asking about the flight plan of a housefly. Danielle knew she wasn’t being much help. They started repeating themselves.

And then the chief reappeared, summoning the detectives for an urgent conversation outside the door. After that, they couldn’t get rid of her fast enough.

“Can I see her now?” she asked.

“Tell you what. We’ll let you know as soon as possible.”

“That will be today, right?”

“They got their own way of doing things over there. But should be.”

“Thank you.”

“We’ll get an officer to take you home now. Is there someone you can be with?”

“I’ll be all right.”

“Are you sure? There are people we can call.”

There was only one person she needed to be with. For a long time, there had only been one.

“I’ll be all right,” she repeated, even though she suspected she’d be anything but.





CELIA


She’d spent the morning waiting for Alice to answer her text. It was odd. She usually responded right away. But it had been almost three hours. Of course, it was possible that she was still asleep. Alice was not exactly a morning person. It would be a shame if they were unable to meet. They really needed to talk about the kids.

She also had to get out of the house for a while. The builders were making much more of a racket than she’d anticipated. They’d started to destroy the patio just after seven. By doing so, they were violating the Emerson ordinance that prohibited yard work before eight. Not that it mattered. Nobody was going to complain about noise at the Parrish house at any hour. After all, it was Oliver who’d drawn up the rules.

There were four workmen in all. One wielded a jackhammer. Another drove a backhoe. The remaining two watched with analytical expressions, like Olympic judges. Celia was already sitting in her sunny kitchen nook when they arrived, a cup of coffee in front of her. Oliver was away and she found it hard to sleep past dawn when alone. She’d felt a brief shudder when they started cracking the corrupt stone, not unlike the feeling that accompanied the first snip of a major haircut. But then there was no turning back and she could think about the next thing, which this morning happened to be her youngest son. Specifically, his nightlong absence from the house. He’d texted just after midnight. Staying at Hannah’s. She’d asked if he meant the entire night. He’d responded, eventually, with a simple yeh, thereby putting her in a difficult position. She could try to continue the conversation by text, although that would go nowhere. She could call him, but he was with his girlfriend, and that would cause trouble. Provided he even picked up. No, she’d simply have to wait for him to return.

And so she let it be, then woke early the next morning and perched in her favorite place in the house, the kitchen alcove, which afforded her a panoptic view of the house’s front, garage, and French doors. When all the boys had still been living at home she’d felt like an air traffic controller, directing landings and takeoffs on multiple runways. With Jack, her youngest, leaving at summer’s end, she supposed she’d soon feel more like the lighthouse keeper in some sad movie. She caught herself immediately. Where on earth had that dreary thought come from? He was going to Dartmouth, not Afghanistan. She’d still see him plenty, as she did Drew and Scotty. Just not in the daily manner that had her doing things like waiting for him to get home at the crack of dawn.

What exactly she intended to say when he stepped through the door remained an open question. She wasn’t ready for this. A sleepover. With a girl. It wasn’t expressly forbidden, but only because it had never been discussed. Hannah was Jack’s first actual girlfriend, provided you discounted last year’s entanglement with Lexi Liriano, which Celia was only too happy to do. She knew they were doing the deed and it didn’t bother her. She’d already raised two sons. She was neither a fool nor a prude. She hoped she never got too old or too jaded to forget what it was like, the unrepeatable bliss of those early lovers. Giving every inch of yourself over to someone else. In her case it had been Teddy Vier in the chalet at Killington while their families were off on the slopes. Doing just about every last thing they’d been warned against. Teddy, with his mop of unruly blond hair, his muscular arms encased in sheaths of baby-soft skin.