Locust Lane(75)

It was decided that Jack would take the day off from school. But this would be his last absence. Tomorrow, he’d be back in the saddle. Normality would return. The time for hiding would be over.

Oliver left for the office. Celia got ready for her monthly meeting of the steering committee for the library’s renovation. She’d been tempted to cancel, but when Jack announced that he was going back to bed, she decided to attend after all. It would be a bad look not to go.

She spent the better part of an hour dealing with fallout from the article’s revelations. First, her mother. Katharine didn’t hold back. Celia must have been out of her mind to get so close to such a malevolent character. She endured five minutes of abuse before pretending that there was someone at the door. She moved on to her friends. These exchanges, thank God, took the form of texts. Nobody had ever really liked Alice. In fact, several people gently criticized Celia for her friendship with her. She took her medicine. The criticism would fade. This would be over soon.

She checked in on Jack before heading out. He was fast asleep. She left him a note in the kitchen, telling him she’d be back for lunch. They could send out. Chinese, Mexican, whatever he wanted.

As she drove into town, Celia tried to focus on the meeting ahead. Truth be told, the town’s massive Margaret Fuller Memorial Library didn’t need renovation. It was a little outdated in its architecture—it had been built in 1979—but the building itself was perfectly sound. Someone had commissioned a study, however, that claimed the institution was “too book-oriented.” The proposed facility looked like the sort of interactive museum where she used to take the boys. It was approved by the selectmen with the proviso that half of the forty-one-million-dollar budget be privately raised. Celia was asked to cochair the committee. She was always being asked to cochair things. She’d joke that was what they’d write on her gravestone. Mother, wife, cochair.

She stopped at the restrooms on the way in. Not the ladies’—she didn’t want to risk a sink-side conversation. Instead, she went into the handicapped one. She was sitting on the railed toilet when her phone buzzed. It was Alice. She was tempted to swipe it away, but that would be unwise. Alice might be wounded, but she remained a danger to the family.

“So you hate me now. I get it. But I couldn’t just sit by and watch Christopher be destroyed. Your son did this, Celia. He raped Eden Perry and then he killed her. And he’s forcing Hannah to help him hide it. I’ve seen texts he sends her and she basically told me as much on Friday before you guys shanghaied her to Boston. You don’t believe me. Fine, I get it. You don’t owe me shit. But do yourself a favor. Ask Jack what really happened. Just do that. Ask why Eden said she was going to make him pay. Look him in the eye and see if you believe him. Because I’m going to keep talking about this until they fill my mouth with dirt.”

Celia closed her phone. My God, the woman really didn’t know when to quit. She flushed the toilet and washed her hands. She glanced at herself in the mirror and that’s when it returned, the feeling she’d had in those feverish days after Jack’s birth. The sense that the world was drifting away from her; that things close enough to touch were suddenly far beyond her reach. She remembered Jack’s face when he came home on Wednesday morning, before anyone knew there was a dead girl on Locust; the same baffled expression he’d had just after Lexi left the house. As if he’d just seen something terrifying, something he couldn’t understand.

She opened the door to a shriveled man in a wheelchair, looking murderously at her.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” she said.

“I presume you can read,” he answered.

“Of course I can read,” she said. “Why else would I be in a library?”

At home, she went straight up to Jack’s room. He was still asleep.

“Jack, wake up.”

It took him a moment to understand where he was.

“What did you do to Eden?” she asked as he sat up.

“What? Nothing.”

“You did something to that girl, didn’t you?”

“Jesus, Mom. You sound like one of those people online.”

“No, Jack, I sound like your mother.”

Her voice was sharp, as sharp as it had ever been. She wasn’t going to be tolerating his temper and swagger. Not today.

“Hannah thinks you did something to Eden.”

“Who told you that?” he asked.

“Alice.”

“And you believed her?”

“Jack, you need to tell me the truth. Right now.”

He was awake now. He understood how serious she was being. The anger and the defiant sarcasm were gone. His voice took on a pleading, almost pathetic quality.

“Mom. Listen to me. Christopher’s lying. Hannah’s crazy-ass mom is lying. I didn’t do anything to Eden.”

“Do you swear?”

“I’ll swear on anything you got.”

She held out her hand.

“Swear on me.”

His face screwed up at the oddity of her request. Or perhaps at something else, something more worrying—the magnitude of the lie he was about to tell. But then he reached out and grasped her hand, holding it delicately from beneath, like it was a wounded bird.

“Mom, I’m telling you the truth.”

She believed him. She had to. He was her son. She’d given birth to him in a fever that almost killed her. She’d raised him. He was her son and you didn’t get to judge your children. You didn’t owe the world justice where they were concerned. You just believed them. You protected them. No matter what. Whatever he was—that was her job.