She Lies Alone: An utterly compelling psychological suspense novel, page 9
“No. Thanks,” I said, caught off guard by the gesture. “I’ve got to get back to lunch duty.”
Phoebe looked at me. “Bye, Mrs. Bryson.”
“See you later.” I stepped away, pretending to survey the other students in the cafeteria. A line was forming in front of the shiny new latte machine, which was approximately a thousand times nicer than the filmy coffee maker in the teacher’s lounge. I moved toward the aroma of caffeine, finding a spot to stand in an alcove near a window. My eyes kept landing back on Phoebe and Rowan. I bit back my smile, glancing toward the pair, who took turns pulling chips from the bag. What an unlikely friendship. My gut reaction to Phoebe’s change in clothing had been wrong. These were two lost souls making a connection. It was always better to feel connected than alone. I weighed the idea in my mind, overthinking it, and admitting there might be some extreme cases when it would be better to be alone. Still, no one could deny that Phoebe and Rowan made pretty good lab partners.
Almost four hours later, not much had changed. The bell rang, my seventh-period chemistry class having just completed the third round of experiments. The students pushed and shoved their way toward the door as if their lives depended on escaping my classroom in thirty seconds or less. I wandered toward the back of the room, inspecting the supplies. Someone had done a crappy job of washing out two of the flasks, so I picked them up and carried them toward the sink.
Normally, I would have shoved my way out the door right next to my fleeing students, but this morning Elena, Nick, and I had decided to send an email to our fellow teachers about the Geeks and Goblins fundraiser. Elena had her first meeting of poetry club, and Nick had soccer practice. I was the only one without an excuse. I dried my hands, sat down at my laptop, and began to type.
Dear Teachers,
The annual Geeks and Goblins fundraiser is only a month away. As in the past, each teacher will be asked to display impressive works from three students. The board should also contain a paragraph or two describing the assignment. Our parent contact, Leslie Jackson, and her committee will provide the poster board needed to complete the display and will set up the exhibit in the hallways. Your chosen works are due by October 20. The event is scheduled for the night of Wednesday, October 25. Please contact me, Nick Bell, or Elena Mayfield once you have chosen your works, or with any questions. Thank you.
Jane Bryson.
I read it back a few times, making minor changes here and there. Satisfied, I addressed the email to the Teacher Group and cc’d Albright as proof that we weren’t slacking.
Email sent, I pulled my purse and empty lunch bag from my bottom desk drawer. Elena’s melodic voice rang in muffled tones from the classroom next door. I imagined she was reciting a poem by Robert Frost or Emily Dickinson, although my knowledge of poetry was limited. I wondered if anyone besides Rowan had shown up to listen.
My aching feet carried me out into the hallway, then stopped moving. The ceramics teacher, Annie Babcock, flattened herself against the wall bordering Elena’s classroom as she peered through the narrow window.
I stepped forward. “Hi, Annie.”
She jumped, her eyes widening. “Oh. Hi, Jane.” She separated herself from the wall and smoothed out her skinny black pants.
“Getting a sneak-peek into poetry club?”
A nervous laugh slipped from her mouth. “Is that what this is? I wasn’t sure.”
Stepping next to her, I took my turn peering through the window. Elena perched on the edge of her desk, her tailored pants hugging her sculpted legs, and a turquoise button-down shirt setting off her eyes. A sunbeam floated through the window and glinted off a silver chain with a sunflower pendant. It dangled into the V of her neckline. I’d commented on the necklace this morning, causing Elena’s face to redden as she ran her fingers across the silver flower, admitting it had been a gift from Nick.
Now, she held a book in her hands and pointed to someone. Five students sat in a semicircle facing her, three girls and two boys. I didn’t recognize three of them. Freshmen, probably. Rowan sat in the seat closest to Elena, and next to him… I blinked, thinking my eyes were playing tricks on me, but when I opened them, the same person was still there. It was Phoebe, combat boots and all.
I took a closer look, my mouth going dry. The students reached out and held hands with the people next to them. Elena set aside her book and closed the circle. They took turns speaking, the volume too low for me to hear the words. As Phoebe spoke, her nose twitched, then tears ran down her face. Rowan watched her, tears also gathering in his dark eyes. His mouth moved, all the watery eyes gravitating toward him. The emotionally charged activity seemed more appropriate for a support group or a cult meeting than a poetry club.
“Holy moly,” I said under my breath. Elena’s statement about poetry making the private world public scrolled through my mind.
Elena said something I couldn’t make out, and laughter erupted. Even Rowan chuckled from behind his mop of hair and a plethora of nose piercings. Air rushed from my mouth.
“What’s going on in there?” Annie asked.
“I’m not…” I began. Aware of Annie studying me, I pulled myself from the window. “Have you met Elena yet?” I asked, desperate to divert Annie’s critical stare. I wasn’t sure what else to say to the woman Nick had dated before Elena, the one he’d tossed aside as soon as the thrill of new romance had gone cold.
Annie’s eyes darted to the side. “Yeah. We’ve met. Kind of.”
My hands dug into my pockets. “Was there something you needed?”
“Not really. It’s just that I couldn’t help noticing Elena’s necklace.” Annie tipped her forehead toward the classroom.
I nodded. “The one with the sunflower? It’s pretty, isn’t it?”
“Uh, huh.” Annie swallowed and blinked for longer than necessary. “It’s just that…” She pinched her lips between her teeth and stared at the floor. “Never mind.” She turned away, rigid, as if she was considering running.
“What?” I asked, dying to know what was so hard for her to spit out. “What were you going to say?”
She swung back to face me. “Nick gave me the same gift—the exact same necklace—when we were dating last year.”
I leaned back on my heels. “Oh, that’s weird.”
“Yeah. I don’t have it anymore, of course. It was a cheap piece of junk, and I threw it away months ago. I just thought, you know, it’s not really my place, but someone should warn her. She’s just another number on Nick’s list.”
My fingernails dug into the opposite elbows. “Okay.”
“I know you’re friends with both of them, and I don’t mean to put you in an uncomfortable situation.”
I lowered my chin. “Message received.”
“Thanks. Have a good night.” Annie spun around and practically jogged down the hallway toward the double doors, leaving me cemented in place, jaw slack with disbelief.
My arms stretched to reach a box from the top shelf of the closet, my weight pressing into my toes. The cardboard edges cut into my fingers as I lowered it from the shelf and searched for a space to set it down. Technically, this room was our spare bedroom. Somewhere under all this junk, there was a twin bed, although I couldn’t remember the last time an overnight guest had slept anywhere other than the living room couch. The room had become a catch-all spot for collecting things we didn’t know where else to put. Plastic storage containers packed with holiday decorations lined one wall. A pile of old books towered next to me. A table I’d envisioned as our “game table” when I’d spotted it at a garage sale a few years earlier was now covered with spare parts from a computer hard drive, along with discarded issues of Handyman and Coding magazines. I’d bet money my husband was the only person on the planet with a subscription to both.
The book I was reading on the art of Japanese tidying recommended I put all the clothes in a pile on the bed before holding each item and deciding to keep or chuck it. But the bed was buried with other stuff, so I tackled the mystery boxes in the closet first. I shoved aside rolls of wrapping paper sticking out of a tall box and made a space on the floor for the box in my hands just as it slipped. I had no idea what was inside, but the contents rattled and clanged as it connected with the floor.
A combination of factors fueled my desire to purge our belongings. First, Craig wasn’t home and I needed to get my mind off the weird necklace incident outside Elena’s classroom. I spent the drive home wondering how well I really knew Nick. He’d started teaching at Ravenswood the same year as me. Seven years of lunches in the teachers’ lounge and occasional happy hours, and, still, there was so much I’d never asked him, like why did he buy his girlfriends the same necklace?
The more important catalyst for my cleaning spree was the impending visit with Mia Huang-Jeffries, the woman from the adoption agency. Only three weeks left until she stepped through our front door for the in-home evaluation. My eyes landed on a stack of winter coats and a basket of art supplies. Three weeks to clean up this mess. Three weeks to transform this disaster of a room into something that could pass for a nursery. We needed to present Ms. Huang-Jeffries with a home fit for a baby. I was no Mary Poppins, but even I knew a baby couldn’t live in a storage room.
Opening the box at my feet exposed the glass candleholders and tiny espresso mugs someone had given us for our wedding seven years earlier. We’d never used any of them. I didn’t even know they were inside our house, and I almost felt angry at them for wasting our valuable closet space. I shoved the box to the corner, the first contribution to what would hopefully become a large donation pile.
Moose’s dog tags jingled in the hallway, Craig’s footsteps plodding closer.
“In here,” I called.
Moose trotted ahead, sniffing the box I’d just opened. I scratched him behind the ears.
Craig stood in the doorway, hands on his hips. “Wow. You’re really doing it.”
“I just started. Like, thirty seconds ago. I could use your help.”
“What’s that?” He stepped toward me and pulled back the flap of the box.
“Some old wedding presents we’ve never used. We’re donating them.”
“What? Why would we get rid of these?” He pinched the tiny handle of the espresso mug between his long fingers. “They’re in perfectly good condition.”
I closed my eyes. “We don’t even have an espresso machine. We’ve got to clear this room out. For the baby.”
Craig’s mouth curved downward. “I guess.”
I waved toward the buried game table. “Can you work on clearing off that table? We need to recycle those magazines.”
“I want to save those. Good information.”
I sucked in my breath, heart rate accelerating. Was this what it felt like to have a panic attack?
Craig tilted his head, studying my face. “What’s wrong?”
“We have three weeks to turn this room into a nursery.” I blinked, feeling heat building behind my eyelids. My lip quivered as tears began to leak. I wasn’t an emotional person by nature, but maybe all the crying kids in poetry club had rubbed off on me. It had been a long and draining day, and the thought of losing out on our baby because we were incapable of clearing junk from a room was too much to bear. “We need to be on the same page.”
Craig draped his arm over my shoulders. “Okay. Okay. I get it.” He rubbed my back and kissed my head. “We’re going to get this done. Don’t worry.” He stepped back and narrowed his eyes at the pile. “How about I’ll find a better spot for anything I need to save. I can store the magazines under my workbench downstairs.” He picked up the disassembled hard drive. “And this thing I can get rid of. Where’s the garbage bag?”
The corner of a bag stuck out near my foot. I shook it open, and Craig tossed in the hardware. “See? We’re on a roll already.”
I nodded, wiping the wetness from my cheeks. “Yeah. The room’s practically empty.” I smiled at Craig to let him know that I appreciated him.
We started digging into boxes and sifting through magazines while the heaps of clothing, shoes, paper, and books surrounded us.
“Did you have a good day? I mean, before I got home?” Craig asked.
A chuckle escaped my mouth. “Yeah. I guess.” The box in front of me held old photos from my college days. I pushed it to the side, not having the energy to go through them. “Some weird stuff happened, though.”
I told him about Elena’s first poetry club meeting, briefly describing the handholding and the tears. I paused for dramatic effect before describing how I’d caught Annie peering into Elena’s classroom from the hallway, how she’d been staring at the necklace hanging from Elena’s neck because it was the same one Nick had given her last year.
Craig stepped back and chuckled. “The same necklace? Wow. Nick’s like a reverse Silver Slasher. He gives his victims jewelry instead of stealing from them.”
I tipped my head back, remembering Craig’s dislike of Nick. He’d met Nick once or twice at school fundraisers and had concluded he and the soccer coach would have run with different crowds in high school. “Nick’s not that bad,” I said. “But what am I supposed to do? Should I tell Elena about the necklace? Should I ask Nick why the hell he did something so thoughtless? I’ve known him for seven years. I knew his reputation with the ladies. I mean, he’s good-looking and personable. What woman wouldn’t want to get in bed with him?”
Craig raised an eyebrow. “Well, hopefully, not you.”
I waved him off. “You know what I mean.”
“My advice? Stay out of it. Their relationship will either work, or it won’t. The stupid necklace won’t have anything to do with it.”
Craig’s advice settled in my brain. Of course, he was right. It was common sense. Annie shouldn’t have tried to trap me in the middle. I held up a gray sweater, noting the frayed hem and a hole in the armpit, and tossed it into the garbage bag. My body felt lighter already.
The sorting, trashing, and organizing continued as I told Craig about Phoebe, how the sweet, quiet, preppy girl had traded in her old friends for Rowan.
“She showed up today wearing a black leather jacket, baggy jeans, and combat boots, like she’d taken fashion advice from Rowan.”
“Isn’t that what you used to wear?”
“Maybe.” I flashed him a sly grin. “That’s irrelevant.”
“I guess she likes the bad boys.” Craig flexed his skinny bicep. “That’s how I usually get my women.”
I chuckled. “Phoebe was even at the poetry club meeting today after school. I saw her sitting next to Rowan when I peeked in.”
“Who knows? Maybe Phoebe is just what Rowan needs. Or vice versa.”
“I hope so. I hope it doesn’t go the wrong way for Phoebe.” My shoulders tightened.
“Maybe it’s good for Elena to dig deep into their emotions.”
I shrugged. “Lucky for her that Albright didn’t see.”
“There are plenty of worse things they could be doing than chemistry experiments and poetry readings.”
“Like sex and drugs?”
He winked at me. “Spoken like an expert. What do you say we take a break?” Craig encircled me in his arms and kissed my neck. “We have to make as much time for sex and drugs as we can before the baby arrives.”
Ten
Amy
The stinky-feet odor of twelve-year-old boys after a long day at school permeated the room. Amy breathed in shallow breaths as she approached the doorway, reminding herself that someday she’d miss these so-called disruptions. Ben and Noah lounged at separate ends of the couch, video game controllers in hand, and machine-gun fire echoing in sudden bursts from the TV.
“How about I make some cookies?” Amy asked.
“Yes!” Ben punched Noah in the arm.
Amy wasn’t sure if his outburst was a response to the game or an answer to her question, but she made her way to the kitchen where the oven was already preheating. She ripped open a package of prepared chocolate-chip cookie dough and pulled off the squares, arranging them in neat rows across the cookie sheet. She glanced at the clock as she placed the tray inside the oven. It was nearly 4 p.m. on Tuesday, and Phoebe hadn’t returned from school yet, but she had texted a couple of hours earlier with a surprising message: Staying after school for poetry club.
Poetry club? Was that really a thing? Amy read the message again. Of course it was, she realized as she worked out the tightness in her jaw. The high school had a club for just about everything these days. Posters hung all through the hallways advertising various endeavors—a club for building robots, a club for planting gardens, a club for supporting gay students, a club for ending gun violence, a club for picking up garbage in the parks, a club for cooking spicy food. Amy hadn’t been aware of Phoebe’s interest in poetry, but she would support her daughter’s new focus. It was better than having her holed up alone in her bedroom, wallowing in self-pity.
Great! What time should I pick you up? she’d responded.
I have a ride home.
Amy tucked in her shirt and paced in front of the oven, glad she and Phoebe would have something positive to discuss. She wondered which teacher was sponsoring the poetry club and which one of Phoebe’s friends was giving her a ride home. It probably wouldn’t be Simone. Amy was so relieved that she’d intercepted the horrible notes before Phoebe had seen them. She’d watched the Jeep full of laughing girls across the street on Friday night and was certain Simone and her crew had been responsible. Still, she was willing to put the immature pranks behind them to rescue Phoebe’s friendships.
When Scott had dropped the kids back home on Sunday at exactly 5 p.m., Phoebe had barely spoken, only tucking her hair behind her ears to reveal a new pair of small black earrings.
“Look what Dad gave me. They’re obsidian,” Phoebe said.
“Very pretty,” Amy said, although she couldn’t deny the pang of jealousy in her gut. “What was the occasion?”
