Locust Lane(65)

Celia’s mother called twenty minutes later. She’d badly twisted her ankle and needed Celia to come help her immediately. Normally, she’d have begged off—the woman was a handful even without injury. But since she was taking Lexi into the city anyway, she decided to give the hobbled old warhorse a hand. She was just texting Jack to tell him to get back home when she heard someone coming down the steps. She froze in confusion. There wasn’t supposed to be anyone up there. Jack entered the kitchen with a puzzled smile on his face.

“I thought you’d gone out,” Celia said.

He shook his head. For some reason he wasn’t meeting her eye.

“But where’s Lexi?”

“She went home.”

“How? I thought I was giving her a ride.”

“Her mom picked her up.”

Celia waited, expecting more.

“Is everything all right?” she asked when there wasn’t.

“Yeah, ’course. What’s for dinner?”

“Whatever you can make for yourself,” she said, annoyed now.

She went to her car—Katharine would be waiting—but was stopped in her tracks by a totally unexpected sight revealed by the garage door’s opening. Lexi stood at the end of the driveway, statue-still, her back to the house. It was a position she appeared to have held for the last half hour. She didn’t turn, even though she’d have heard the door’s seismic rumble. Celia was about to go see what on earth was happening, when a car pulled up. Lexi got in without looking back. The car stayed where it was for a few seconds, and then a woman rose from the driver’s side. She was tall, dressed in scrubs, with a long, severe face. Lexi’s mother. It had to be. Her eyes flashed with anger when they met Celia’s. It looked like she was contemplating storming up the driveway. But then Lexi got out of the car as well. After a brief, sharp exchange, her mother got back in, but not before leveling one last furious look at Celia.

Once they were gone, she went back into the house to ask her son what on earth was going on. Their conversation was conducted over the smoking carcass of a just-microwaved Hot Pocket. But Jack would only say that it was no big deal. They’d had an argument, that was all. And then Katharine was calling.

“I am literally in agony here…”

Celia had no choice but to leave it at that. Forty minutes later she was dealing with her mother, whose injury, not surprisingly, turned out to be less than critical. Celia didn’t get home until after nine. Oliver, looking grim, confronted her as she walked in the door.

“What happened between Jack and Lexi this afternoon?”

“They had some sort of fight.”

“Her mother called just after I got home,” he said. “She accused Jack of behaving inappropriately.”

“Inappropriately?”

“She accused Jack of physically mistreating her daughter.”

Celia remembered that bewildered smile.

“Well, what did he say?” she asked.

“He said he grabbed her arm, but only to calm her down after she slapped him. Which he thinks was a lot more serious than anything he did.”

“Well, isn’t it?”

“Come on, Cee. You know it isn’t.”

She knew. Nobody would think the slender Latina girl from Dorchester, with her straight As and choral group solos, posed any sort of threat to the tall, well-built white boy. Celia understood the damage this sort of accusation could do. It was Jack’s word against Lexi’s. That was not a fight she wanted to wage in the court of public opinion.

“So what do we do?” she asked.

“We can have Jack apologize. Formally.”

“Do you think that would pacify the mother?”

“Frankly? No. The woman was very … adamant.”

“Okay, then what else?” Celia asked.

“We can deny everything. Paint Lexi to be the instigator.”

“Do you think that would work?”

“It depends on what you mean by work. Would it keep Jack out of legal jeopardy? Yes. But as for everything else…”

Everything else, Celia thought. She could see it now. The looks, the insinuations, the conversations that ended abruptly upon her arrival.

“Can we compensate her?”

“Compensate?”

“Yes, Oliver. Pay her off. Slip her hush money.”

He stared evenly at her. She would have sworn that he’d never so much as entertained the idea.

“Look, if we start flinging accusations back and forth, everybody loses,” she said. “Yes, Jack’s damaged, but what do they get out of that? But if we give them something, let’s say for her education, then everybody comes out a winner.”

Oliver frowned, his finger tracing his scar.

“We could try that.”

And so that was what they did. He met Gloria the next day at a coffee shop near the dental practice where she worked as a hygienist. It was decided that fifty thousand dollars would be paid into Lexi’s 529 after both mother and daughter signed NDAs promising never to discuss the matter again.

Celia resolved to forget it, to put it all behind them. And mostly she did. But there was one thing she couldn’t forget. The baffled look on Jack’s face as he came down the steps. As if he’d just witnessed something he couldn’t understand.