The Secret Next Door, page 3
Twenty-two years ago, Bennet had led her by the hand to this exact spot. Back then, it had been nothing but a hardscrabble stretch of dirt, surrounded by even more dirt on every side. There were no homes, no pool, no school, no golf course, no The Enclave at all. Only the Rocky Mountains, and this gorgeous view of those purple majesties.
Bennet had gotten down on one knee, pulled that black velvet box from his pocket, and asked her, a small-town girl from the eastern plains of Colorado, to be his wife. She was twenty-six years old and a low-ranking HR assistant for Sloan Investment Group. She knew exactly what every person in the company would think. But whatever hesitation Bonnie may have felt about marrying Bennet Sloan, the founder’s son, quickly evaporated the moment he opened that box up. The five-carat princess-cut diamond couldn’t help but capture and refract the full spectrum of the Colorado sun high above their heads on that crystal-clear day.
“I thought about doing this at an expensive restaurant,” he said, looking up at her with his dark-brown eyes, a single stray curl of his sandy brown hair falling down over his forehead. “But I thought, wouldn’t it be better to make this promise on the earth that would be our future home?”
It was the promise, she now realized, that had tipped the balance. A commitment that was vital to her. Even if Bonnie, and certainly not Bennet, knew it: security was the central need of Bonnie’s hidden subconscious.
Bennet would take care of her.
Bennet, and his family money, would always take care of Bonnie.
Bennet, and his family money, would always take care of Bonnie, and their children.
No one would ever be scared, or hungry, or have to go to school with a hole in the side of their only pair of shoes.
That five-carat ring, this earth beneath her feet, this home they had built—all of it—the promise Bennet had made to keep them safe.
It was all unraveling.
And Carl Wayland, even if he didn’t ultimately realize it, was pulling at the threads.
It wasn’t lost on her, now forty-eight years old, that at twenty-six, she would have been offended had anyone dare suggest she might want a man to sweep her up and take care of her. Up until Bennet knelt before her, she had always made her own way in the world.
She had long ago left her small Colorado town behind her to attend the University of Colorado Boulder—on a full-ride academic scholarship. She had gotten herself to CU Boulder on her own merit and hard work. Her whole life, no one had ever taken care of anything for her. She had long assumed, and even expected, that was how it always would be.
So no one had been more surprised than Bonnie when Bennet Sloan quietly asked her out for dinner three months after she started working at Sloan Investment. Her original plan had been to work her way up through the Human Resources department. As it turned out, marrying up had been much faster.
And aside from enduring a few snide remarks when their relationship first became public, for the most part, being a Sloan was everything, and so much more than, Bonnie had hoped for.
Until six years ago, when George Sloan Sr., Bennet’s father, had a stroke in the night and passed away in his bed next to Marjorie, his wife of forty-nine years. It was two weeks before their fiftieth wedding anniversary party—a party that was quickly reorganized into George’s funeral.
If Bonnie had never realized how much the Sloan Investment Group’s success depended on her father-in-law’s experience and business acumen, she certainly did now. She was now also painfully aware of how her own husband’s lack of ability in these arenas was driving the company to its knees. And destroying the foundations of that promise he had made her all those years ago.
Sloan Investment was going under.
Bonnie, and life as she knew it, was going with it.
“Mom?”
Bonnie startled at the sound and turned to see her oldest son, George, standing behind her at the now open sliding glass door.
“I have paperwork I need to fill out for Yale; where’s my social security card?”
Bonnie pasted a placidly pleasant expression on her face and headed back toward the house. “In the safe. I’ll get it. Do you need any help?”
George shrugged. “Well, I need help getting my social security card out of the safe. Other than that, I don’t know yet.”
Bonnie took a silent, deep inhale through her nose, her pleasant expression never faltering, and ignored her son’s shitty tone of voice. “Okay then,” she said, following him into the house. “I’ll get the card and bring it up.”
“Thanks,” he barely mumbled as he headed toward the kitchen and opened the refrigerator door.
“Mom?” Gracie called from the couch, now alerted to her mother’s presence.
Shit, Bonnie thought, still not losing that pleasant expression.
“Yes, Gracie?” she called back as she headed back through the family room on her way to the opposite side of the house and the wall-safe in Bennet’s office.
“Mommy!” Gracie yelled. She smiled and stood up on the couch, throwing her arms wide as though her mother had been gone for a week instead of hiding for a couple of Disney-distracted hours.
“Hi, honey.”
Gracie began bouncing up and down on the couch, her messy curls springing around her head. “Play a game with me,” Gracie said. “Let’s play house.”
“What have I said about jumping on the couch?” Bonnie asked.
Gracie executed one more big jump, folded her legs underneath her airborne body, and landed with a thud on her bottom. “House!” Gracie yelled, her missing two front teeth gaping behind her wide smile. “You play the mommy, and I’ll be the baby.”
A shiver ran up Bonnie’s spine. She resisted the urge she had to tell her daughter, in no uncertain terms, that she would maybe rather light herself on fire right now than play house. Instead, she smiled at her. “I have to get George some paperwork. Look.” She pointed to the screen behind Gracie. “Sophia the First is coming on. Why don’t you start that episode while I go get what George needs? I’ll be right back,” she lied.
“Promise?” Gracie asked, narrowing her eyes. She had been fooled by this particular parental avoidance tactic before.
Bonnie raised her right hand. “I swear.”
Gracie raised her left hand, mimicking her mother’s false oath like this sealed the deal, then flounced back into her nest of throw pillows and blankets.
Bonnie slipped away again, wondering for the hundredth time if she should look into hiring a nanny for Gracie. Someone young. Someone fun. Someone who would sit on the rug in their family room and actually play one of the multitudes of board games they had stored away in the cabinet beneath the bookshelf.
She would never say it out loud to anyone other than Bennet, but Gracie had been a colossal accident. When she was forty-two and discovered she was pregnant, Bonnie had wept her way through the entire nine months. She already had her two kids, the most she’d ever wanted or planned for. The sleepless nights, diapers, nursing, constant supervision, and now, Disney shows, had been a thing of her past.
With both her boys long past their toddler years, Bonnie had been looking forward to going back to work of some sort. Doing something for herself and her sanity. At first, the idea of having a newborn again seemed like it would rip that sense of self away.
But when one of the two city council positions in their district was vacated, she found herself, six months pregnant, throwing her hat into the ring anyway. She had already done motherhood one hundred and fifty percent committed, she reasoned. This time, the baby was going to have to spend some time in daycare.
With her husband’s family name, and her extensive community connections throughout The Enclave, Bonnie had won that election by a landslide.
Now, at forty-eight, and with Gracie in school full time, her sights were set even higher—a Colorado Senate seat.
Bonnie Sloan had been playing house for long enough.
She opened Bennet’s office door and stopped short when she saw his car keys tossed onto the middle of his desk. He was home? She hadn’t heard him—he must have come in when she was in the backyard. She maneuvered around his desk and reached for his framed diploma from Berkeley hanging on the wall to her right. Lifting it from the wall mounting, she placed the certificate carefully in the armchair, punched in the twelve-digit combination, and twisted the handle open. She grabbed the folder containing all of George’s essential documents and headed for the back staircase on this side of the house, careful to avoid the living room and her expectant five-year-old.
She was only halfway up the staircase when she heard them. Voices, still too distant to hear clearly, but a knowing dread filled her anyway. Bonnie moved faster up the remaining stairs, and when she reached the top, she turned away from the hall that led to George’s room and toward the one that led to Elijah’s. With every step, the sounds grew louder and more distinct. Every angry word became easier to decipher through Elijah’s bedroom door.
Bennet was home all right, and he was arguing with Elijah—again.
With George’s social security card and birth certificate still in her hands, Bonnie stood outside Elijah’s door. She tried to make out exactly what her husband and son were fighting about.
“You think you get to fucking talk to me like that?” Bennet yelled.
Bonnie closed her eyes—she was already too late. Whatever had started the argument, it had now escalated into one of the rage-filled tirades she worked so hard to prevent.
When she caught them in time.
“When you act like an asshole,” Elijah shouted, “and just expect me to nod my head and—”
“What did you fucking call me?”
Bonnie placed her hand on the bedroom doorknob, ready to make her presence known and hopefully put an end to it.
“Mom?” Gracie’s voice interrupted.
Bonnie turned and saw Gracie, wide-eyed and brow furrowed. She could also clearly hear her brother and father arguing.
“It’s okay,” Bonnie tried to reassure her. “Go back downstairs. I’ll be there in a minute.”
Gracie shook her head, her eyes riveted on the door.
“You’re a fucking asshole!” Elijah screamed.
Gracie lunged forward, clearly intent on rushing into her brother’s room herself, but Bonnie intercepted her. Sweeping Gracie up and into her arms, she held her squirming child the best she could and headed for the stairs.
“Let me go!” Gracie shouted. Her body writhed like a sack of snakes hell-bent on getting loose.
Bonnie held on to her daughter and the banister, trying her best to keep both Gracie and herself from falling. She had managed to get halfway down the stairs when they heard it.
“I fucking hate you!” Elijah screamed.
Then the sound of storming, heavy steps echoed through the second floor right before the thunderous wallop of large bodies that crashed against a wall, the floor—things breaking.
Bonnie let Gracie slide from her arms and ran back up the stairs.
Chapter Five
Alyson stood at the top of her basement stairs, staring down at the closed door below her. As her mind ran through several options before her, a white-hot flame of annoyance ignited in her chest.
When she and Andrew left the house for the pool five hours ago, Justin had waved off coming with them.
“Daaaad,” Andrew had whined, clearly disappointed that Justin would, yet again, not be coming with them somewhere.
“Sorry, dude,” Justin said with a smile and messed Andrew’s hair. “But I need to mow the lawn and fix a couple of the sprinkler heads.”
“Can’t you do it later…or tomorrow?” Alyson had asked, trying hard not to whine herself.
“I just want to get it taken care of today. That way, I can head over to the airport tomorrow and see if there are any open flights for the week.”
Alyson sighed but said nothing. It was true, Justin had limited time away from his job; the weekends really were the only time to take care of all the things around the house beyond her ability to fix. But it was also true that he spent much of his free time, and their limited funds, continuing to work toward his private pilot’s license—a hobby she kept hoping he would one day grow out of.
Andrew, on the other hand, wasn’t put off so quickly. “But you never come,” he complained.
Which was true. Justin rarely joined her and Andrew for trips to the pool, the park, or even the backyard to kick a soccer ball.
“That’s not true,” Justin had countered. “We just went to the zoo.”
Igniting the memory of the zoo trip had stopped Andrew’s argument. Defeated, he dropped his small shoulders and stood before his father disappointed without any further attempts to get him to come along.
“Go grab one of the beach towels from the bathroom closet,” Alyson said, watching as Andrew headed for the stairs. When she was sure he was out of earshot, she turned back to Justin, who was already moving toward the basement stairs. “That zoo trip was four weeks ago.”
“What?” Justin turned back to her, his voice carrying an edge she hadn’t heard when he was making his excuses to Andrew. He faced her, resting his hand on the banister.
“We didn’t just go to the zoo. It was a month ago.”
Alyson watched the space between her husband’s eyes furrow as he processed her words. She could tell, having been married to him for almost seven years, that he was attempting to parse the meaning of her tone from the simple fact she just stated. It was this meaning, they both knew but never spoke of, that was the real topic of this conversation.
“Okay,” he said, either not caring about what she really meant or deciding not to address it straight on. “And?” he shrugged.
She raised her eyebrows so high, she could actually feel the pressure it created behind her eyes. “I just thought you should know, you know, that when your son tells you that you never do anything with us…there’s a reason.”
His nostrils flared. The movement was slight, nearly undetectable, but Alyson knew this man and all his tells. She felt an electric wave of tension rise up between them, and it made the muscles in her back flex painfully up her spine.
He inhaled. “So what? You don’t want the sprinklers fixed?”
“No, I mean, yes…of course I do. Obviously, we have to.” It felt impossible to say what lay just below the surface, to speak outright what she was really thinking. Just lately, she’d had a creeping sense that even if there weren’t sprinklers, dishwashers, or a leaking faucet to fix, Justin still wouldn’t want to spend time with her and Andrew on the weekends. “We just miss you.” She lightened her tone and shrugged, wanting more than anything to avoid an argument that would completely ruin the weekend. “So maybe you could meet us there?” she practically pleaded, and hated it. “If you finish soon?”
Justin turned away from her and headed down to the basement. “Yeah, sure. We’ll see.” He pushed hard against the wood door, and the loud squeak it always made echoed up the narrow stairwell. That sound, every time she heard it, grated on Alyson’s every nerve—yet another home project that needed attention. “Have fun,” he said before disappearing into the basement, shoving the door closed behind him.
And now, five hours later, here she stood again, staring down at that fucking closed door with her husband on the other side. Her husband, Andrew’s father, who had not joined them at the pool and was also not still fixing sprinklers. She was mad, yes, but the anger was an easy cover, a strong emotion that was preferable to the sickening swirl that was churning in her gut.
Fear.
Alyson stared down the stairwell, with both her hands gripped to the handrails, and considered going down there. She imagined placing her hands on that doorknob, pulling the tight door from its frame, seeing for herself why Justin hadn’t come to the pool today, why he chose not to go with them most days.
But even the thought of it, staring head-on into whatever was changing him, changing them—whatever it was that kept him down there so much—caused a flight of panic to take wing in her chest. In her experience, there were often uncomfortable consequences that resulted from facing things.
“Mom!” Andrew called from the family room. “I’m hungry!”
Alyson released the handrails and stood up straight. She tilted her head back and looked at the ceiling above her head. “Be right there!” she called back. She took a deep breath, held it, then let it go as she bent her neck to the left, then to the right. Tension had lately developed into tight bands of constricted muscle and tendons across her back and up her neck. The stretch pulled and caused pain to shoot across her shoulder blades, but not release.
As she walked to the kitchen, she pulled her phone from her back pocket to check the time. Three forty-five—too early for dinner, but Andrew wouldn’t be able to wait until then. His mood would deteriorate, and he would become crankier and more whiny if he didn’t eat soon. She was about to pull open the fridge and think up a healthy snack that wouldn’t spoil dinner when her phone buzzed in her hand.
Alyson glanced at the screen; it was a Facebook notification. She swiped it open.
“Moooommmm!” Andrew called again.
“I’m getting it!” she yelled back. “Just a minute!”
The notification was for The Enclave’s neighborhood page—Bennet Sloan had posted something. Alyson leaned over her white marble-top island and used her elbows to prop herself up while she held her phone with both hands. It was a picture of Bennet and his son George. Big white smiles, Bennet had his arm slung over his son’s shoulders. George held a piece of paper between his hands. The post read: Guess who committed to playing football for Yale next year?
Alyson placed both her thumbs in the middle of the picture and enlarged it on her phone. The blue Yale letterhead, shield, and open-book logo were clear, but the text was too small to be decipherable.
