Locust Lane(61)

Although her anger had initially been spread evenly over the entire family, she was particularly furious with Celia. Coming here all smiles when she knew the sordid truth. Alice had never been anything more than a diversion for her; the wacky friend whose stories and boho attitude provided a quick jolt, like a midday espresso or a second cocktail. That dismissive remark about Alice not being a real mother should have been sufficient warning. In Celia’s eyes, Alice wasn’t a real anything. But she was going to be something real now. As real as real could be.

The beauty of the thread was that Celia would never know it was her. She had no idea that Alice knew the whole story about what really happened between Jack and Lexi. As far as she knew, Alice was still a member of Team Parrish. And Alice had every intention of making sure Celia kept thinking that, right up until the moment it was her son being held by the cops.

She finished around two in the morning and it was all she could do not to post it then. But that would risk having it swallowed by the night. Better to wait until the bright morning light could shine on it; when those caffeinated, surfing suburban eyes would be open wide and Celia’s reign as queen of this rotten little town would finally end.



* * *



Forty minutes after posting the thread, she walked downstairs. It was, despite everything, time to get Hannah up for school. She paused outside her stepdaughter’s door to make sure her phone was ready to take a photo immediately. The Parrishes would have seen the thread by now. Jack would probably be issuing more directives. She eased open the door. Hannah slept soundly; her phone was in its usual spot. Alice crept forward and touched the home button. The locked screen flared. There was nothing.

“Hey,” Hannah said, a split second after Alice had pulled her hand away from the phone.

Her eyes were still liquid and unfocused from sleep. Alice sat quickly on the edge of the bed, blocking the girl’s view of the still-lit phone.

“How you doing?” she asked.

“No, yeah, okay, I guess.”

Alice reached down to move a strand of hair from Hannah’s face.

“I hate that you’re having to go through all this, Hanns.”

“It’ll be all right.”

“I still can’t get my mind around it. Christopher. Did you ever see any sign of it? He always seemed so gentle to me.”

Hannah rolled onto her back, her eyes now focused on the ceiling.

“I dunno.”

“But can you really see him doing it?”

“Not really. But I guess he did. I mean, we left him there and she wound up dead.”

For a moment, it looked like she was about to say more. But then she caught herself. Stick to the story.

“Hannah, if there’s anything you want to talk about, I’m here. You know that, don’t you?”

Hannah continued to stare at the ceiling.

“I know how close you and your father are, and of course you love Jack, but maybe I can be a little more objective than them.”

“It’s not what people think.”

Alice felt her heart start to churn.

“No?”

“I mean, Eden wasn’t … everybody’s making out that she was this innocent person but she wasn’t.”

“How so?”

“She made a lot of stuff up. These weird fantasies. You could tell half the stuff she said wasn’t true. You know how girls like her can be.”

“Yeah, well, I know how men can be, too.”

“And she had this crazy temper. You hardly ever saw it, but when you did, it was … outta control.”

“So she lost her temper the other night?”

Hannah nodded. Come on, Alice thought. Spill.

“So something did happen before you left.”

Hannah nodded, almost imperceptibly.

“Between Jack and Eden?” Alice asked.

Another nod, this one even fainter than the last.

“Hey,” a voice, Geoff’s, said from the doorway.

Alice closed her eyes for a moment, then turned. He’d clearly just woken as well. Neither father nor daughter had seen the thread yet.

“What’s going on?” he asked.

“Just talking,” Alice said.

“Are you going to school today?”

“Yeah, I guess,” Hannah answered.

“I’ll run you over.”

Alice gave her stepdaughter’s shin a loving tap and tried to make eye contact to let her know the conversation would be continued. But Hannah had turtled back into her shell. And so Alice left the room, meeting Geoff’s inquiring gaze with a benign little smile as she passed him.

She waited until they’d left to call Michel. She needed to see him. Immediately. She needed to explain the Twitter thread, to let him know that Hannah had come this close to opening up to her. Something had definitely happened between Eden and Jack. One more session alone with the girl—she’d bring booze this time—would surely do the trick. Mostly, she just wanted to see him. To hear his voice and be held by him.

He agreed, although not at his house. She suggested somewhere out on Route 9, but he didn’t want to leave town, since word on his son’s fate could come down at any moment. She suggested United Unitarian, where she’d attended that waste-of-time poetry class. In a blatant example of sectarian overreach, the back parking lot was big enough to service a Texas megachurch. It was hidden from the street by the big stone building. Nobody ever went back there, probably not even on Sundays.