Locust Lane(67)

“As if a girl like Lexi would just walk away from this sort of disrespect. As if her mother would let this go without somebody making it worth her while.”

As if. Alice said it all the time. She’d written the Twitter thread, not the Lirianos. Celia could hear her voice in it now. Not just that single telltale phrase, but every word. She’d slandered Jack for the whole world to see. And now here she was, celebrating with her lover, the father of a killer. Pawing each other like rutting animals.

She called Oliver. Her husband was in a meeting; she ordered his assistant to pull him out of it, the first time she’d ever done this. He listened in silence and then said he was coming right home. In the meantime, Celia was to get Jack out of school immediately and ship him off to Boston. When she said that it might be difficult to pry him away from Hannah, he told her to send her along with him.

She called Katharine to set things up. Although Celia had hoped that the old woman’s aversion to social media had kept her from seeing the thread, a friend had been only too happy to read it to her over the phone. After an insinuating pause that suggested this was probably all Celia’s fault, she readily agreed to harbor Jack and his “little friend” while Oliver straightened this mess out. She’d make sure her grandson stayed out of sight. And God help the reporter who came knocking on her door.

Oliver arrived home soon after Jack went to get Hannah. He looked more determined than angry. She told him about what she’d seen, sparing no detail as she narrated the full magnitude of Alice’s betrayal.

“So what are we going to do?” she asked when she finished.

“What are we going to do?” he said, grim and incredulous. “We’re going to expose the woman for what she is.”





MICHEL


Michel called Cantor back as soon as Alice left the parking lot. Christopher would be appearing in court at two that afternoon. Before that, the police would hold a press conference to announce his arrest. Michel, numb and confused, asked if he should be there, but Cantor said that wouldn’t be a good idea. It was best if he continued to remain out of sight.

So, more invisibility. Trapped in his house, phone turned off, restaurant shuttered. Venturing out only to lurk in the shadows with the one person he should not be seeing. His world shrinking with each passing hour. He was beginning to suspect that he would soon reach a point where he no longer existed at all.

As he sat alone in his car, still feeling her and smelling her, a terrible suspicion began to echo in his mind. The affair was the cause. It was the root of it all. Just look at the facts. Christopher began secretly visiting the Bondurant house around the time he met Alice. The killing had happened days after she proposed destroying her marriage. And just now, news of his son’s arrest had come while he was literally in her embrace. The affair was the cause. Which meant he had to stop seeing her. Until he did, the punishment would continue.

But that would deprive him of his best ally. In the last two days, Alice had become what she’d wanted to be all along, what he’d resisted. His partner. She believed absolutely. She was their salvation. What she’d posted this morning on Twitter—that was just the beginning. She was his spy, smart and cunning, moving freely behind enemy lines. She lied and cheated, because she needed to do those things to get to the truth. Their love had always been based on deception. It was time to use the lies to survive.



* * *



The court was in a town west of Emerson, where the houses were smaller and the cars showed their miles. He met Cantor in a nearby coffee shop.

“How is Christopher?” he asked as he sat across from him.

“He’s a tough kid.”

“Is he?” Michel asked, his voice laced with doubt.

“Right,” Cantor said, moving on. “So, today they formally charge him. We plead not guilty, the judge then decides about bail.”

“I can get my hands on a hundred thousand cash.”

“Well, let’s start there.”

“You think they’ll want more?”

“Possible. Or the judge might not grant it at all.”

“Can he do that?”

“He can do whatever he wants. I gotta tell you, I wish your son wasn’t a French citizen.”

“I’m starting to wish we’d never come to America.”

“That’s a sentiment you might want to keep to yourself.”

“Can I see him before it starts?”

“I’m afraid not. This is a big case, Michel. Everybody’s playing it by the book.” Cantor watched him for a moment. “So this thing on Twitter—what do you know about that?”

“Just what I read.” Michel shrugged. “Maybe Lexi and her mother wrote it.”

“I spoke to the mother. That woman ain’t posting anything.” Cantor stared at him more closely. “Be careful, Michel. Stuff like this can blow up in your face.”

It was time to go. They walked through the parking lot to a door at the back of the courthouse. A guard let them in and passed them through a metal detector. The light was too bright in the hallway. There was a dreamlike hum—Michel didn’t know if it was in the building or in his ears. Cantor paused to speak with another lawyer and Michel could barely understand a word they were saying, even though he could hear them plain as day. They wound up in a courtroom that could have been a lecture hall at the colleges he’d visited with Christopher. Cantor directed him to the front bench, on the left side. The wood was hard, like a pew.