The Book of Someday (12 page)

AnnaLee’s interest has moved to the sign that’s taped to the door. “Why Persephone?” she asks.

“Because I like her,” the girl snarls. Then, with a haughty kind of malice, she adds: “Persephone is Queen of the Underworld.”

“Did you know she was also the goddess of innocence?”

The girl’s face registers a momentary uncertainty before she mutters: “That’s a load of crap.”

“No, it’s true. Look it up.”

AnnaLee is removing the sign from the door, slowly, not wanting to scar the paint. As she’s disposing of the bits of tape and folding the sign into a neat square, she’s asking the girl: “Is that what you’d like to be called…while you’re here this summer…Persephone?”

At first the girl is surprised. Then skeptical. “You’d never do that.”

In the brief standoff that’s blossomed between them, AnnaLee sees the hostility in the girl’s eyes being nudged aside by a trace of what looks like wistfulness, or perhaps a guarded kind of hope.

And AnnaLee says: “I tell you what. No more clove cigarettes…no more music so loud it shakes the walls…and you can be Persephone. All summer long.”

“That’s what you’ll call me? You promise? Really?”

“Really.”

The girl ponders this for several seconds, with the faintest suggestion of a smile. Then the smile vanishes.

The girl looks down. Begins methodically picking cookie crumbs out of her navel—flicking them aside, one by one—and muttering: “That stuff you were telling your kid…that stuff about how much you love her. I heard everything you said.”

When the girl looks up her expression is cold. Vacant. “It made me hate you. And her.”

A chill is spiraling through AnnaLee. A shiver of worry about what strangeness this summer could bring.

Livvi

Flintridge, California ~ 2012

“I’m not comfortable with this. It’s too isolated. No one’s here.” David is in his car. At the bottom of a steep, tree-lined driveway. He’s leaning out of the driver’s-side window. Calling to Livvi, asking: “Are you sure you don’t want me to wait with you?”

“I’m fine, go!” The words come out sounding clipped and rude—not the way Livvi intended them to.

She’s at the top of the driveway, with a sprawling, shade-dappled house looming at her back, and she’s nervous.

David is putting the car into reverse then immediately bringing it to a stop, leaning out the window again. There is unguarded sweetness in his voice as he’s telling her: “I hate to leave you.”

Livvi isn’t really paying attention to what David is saying or how he’s saying it; she’s too distracted. She’s giving him a wave she hopes will look cheery. She sincerely appreciates that David, after driving her to the meeting in Culver City this morning, was kind enough to bring her all the way out here into the hills northwest of Pasadena—to this leafy, affluent town called Flintridge. But now she desperately wants him to go away.

Until David is out of sight, until Livvi is sure she’s alone, she won’t be able to do what she has come here to do.

She won’t have the nerve to climb the wide flagstone steps leading to the front door. Won’t have the courage to remove the spare key from its hiding place behind the potted ficus tree. And slip into Andrew’s empty house. Like a thief.

It seems to take David an eternity to back out of the driveway and disappear from view. When he finally does—Livvi is suddenly afraid.

The quiet that’s surrounding the house feels menacing. And it’s adding to Livvi’s nervousness, her gnawing uncertainty about what, or who, kept Andrew so busy that it took him five hours to answer her call, after the weather vane crashed into her car.

And now doing what she thought she wanted to do, retrieving the hidden key and turning it in the lock on Andrew’s door, is only increasing Livvi’s anxiety. This isn’t who she is. This person who brushed off David, her best friend, without even saying good-bye so she could be left in peace to sneak into her lover’s house. To rummage through his closets and drawers looking for proof that he doesn’t care about her—proof that there’s another woman in his life.

Livvi’s reason for being here is too seedy to even think about. She’s quickly reaching to grab the key out of the lock—intending to close the door, put the key back in its hiding place, and leave. But it’s too late. She’s seeing that the door has already begun to drift open—and her eyes are wide with apprehension.

When she turned the key in the lock she’d forgotten that Andrew’s house has a security system. What if the system’s armed?

Livvi doesn’t know the code. She has only been here a couple of times, and never without Andrew.

Tension-filled seconds are ticking by. Leaving Livvi afraid to move, or breathe. Leaving her waiting for the blare of the alarm and the eventual wail of police sirens.

Miraculously. The stillness remains unbroken.

Without thinking, Livvi ducks inside the house. It’s sleek and flat-roofed. With concrete floors and glass walls. Built on the rise of a hill, at the center of at least an acre of land. Tucked into a glade of trees and ferns. A place that’s quiet and remote.

Livvi closes the door. Locking it and leaning against it. Sighing with relief. And waiting. For her heart to stop pounding.

In the few moments that it takes Livvi to catch her breath, the house remains completely still. Then the stillness is abruptly broken by three staccato notes of birdsong. Coming from somewhere outside. Rapid and shrill, like a warning. Like the sound of danger.

And Livvi is also hearing a second, more muffled noise—one that sounds like a car pulling into the driveway. Immediately she’s convinced that the car is Andrew’s, and she’s panicked that he’s home so early. The plan was for him to meet her here at noon—and it’s only ten-thirty in the morning.

Livvi is glancing around Andrew’s stylish living room. At the cobalt-blue sofa. The low-to-the-ground side chairs upholstered in chrome-colored silk. The glass coffee table shaped like a boomerang. And the steel desk that’s as cleanly sculpted as a knife-blade. She’s embarrassed to the point of tears. Even though she has changed her mind about rifling through his house, Livvi feels petty and guilty. She doesn’t want Andrew to know that the reason she came here early was to spy on him.

It’s July,
she’s thinking.
Last
month
was
the
six-month anniversary of the night we met. Maybe I could say I came early and let myself in to surprise him…to fix a celebration lunch and—

Livvi’s train of thought is interrupted—by what she’s seeing in the center of the room. A recent issue of
Architectural
Digest
. Open and facedown on the coffee table—she’s trying to recall if she’s ever seen Andrew reading
Architectural
Digest
. And on the floor, beneath the coffee table, is a pair of white athletic socks—almost prissy in how immaculately new they are.

Livvi glances toward the front door and listens. Nothing but silence. No footsteps, no key in the lock. She must have only imagined that the sound she heard was Andrew’s car pulling into the driveway.

She goes to the coffee table and looks down through the glass top, to the carpet below—gazing at those immaculate socks. Are they Andrew’s? Someone else’s? There’s no way to be sure.

The possibility that the miraculous world she has found with Andrew might be coming apart is filling Livvi with a searing combination of grieving and dread—an old, familiar emotion.

When she looks up from the coffee table the first thing she sees is her own reflection, in the living room’s glass wall. She’s as pale as paste, except for the skin right above her cheekbones, which is blotchy red. Her eyes are full of darkness. Every muscle in her body is tight and clenched. She looks like a woman she doesn’t recognize. Someone she doesn’t want to be.

Seeing herself this way is putting a sick, sour taste in Livvi’s mouth. She’s turning toward the kitchen. Needing a drink of water. And wondering if David has gotten onto the freeway yet. Hoping it isn’t too late to have him come back and take her home.

While she’s walking into the open area beyond the living room, where the kitchen is, she’s switching her phone on. The battery is low.

She goes to press David’s number—then doesn’t.

On the kitchen countertop, near the sink, are an oversized coffee cup, a half-eaten muffin, and a crumpled paper napkin. Both the coffee cup and napkin are white. Other than a few drops of coffee at the bottom of its bowl, the cup is clean. But on the napkin, there are thin streaks. Little stains. All of them pinkish-red. The color of lipstick.

Livvi’s pain is instant—a knot in her chest as hard and tight as a baseball. For a minute, it immobilizes her. Then she notices, on the other side of the coffee cup, a small dish filled with strawberries. The knot in her chest eases. And she tells herself,
Andrew
could
have
been
eating
a
strawberry, wiping his mouth with the napkin. The red could have come from that.

Yet the uncertainty, the torment of not knowing, is still there. And Livvi is already shredding the red-stained napkin. Stuffing it into the trash. Blindly running toward the bedroom.

In Andrew’s bedroom, Livvi finds exactly what she found in his living room, and in his kitchen—a tease, ambiguity.

A scattering of change on the dresser-top, some credit card receipts. An unmade bed, the sheets lightly rumpled. A pair of boxer shorts on the floor near the bathroom door.

Was
Andrew
alone
when
he
dropped
them
there?
Livvi is wondering.
Or
was
someone
stretched
out
on
the
bed, smiling while she was watching them fall?

Livvi looks back at the bed—at its lightly rumpled bedding. Picturing a woman so sylphlike, so delicate, that even at the height of passion she’s leaving only the slightest imprint on the sheets beneath her.

This image is sending Livvi hurrying from Andrew’s side of the bed to the other. She’s picking up the pillow, burying her face in it. Trying to detect the woman’s scent. Envisioning Andrew’s hands on the woman’s skin. His lips on the side of her neck. His weight lowering onto her. Slowly. Deliciously. The way it lowered onto Livvi, that first time in New York, in the St. Regis. When she’d felt so safe, so sure.

For what seems like endless seconds, Livvi continues to hold the pillow to her face. Her eyes closed and her mind racing.

Then. Without warning. A noise from the front of the house. Loud and insistent. Someone ringing the doorbell.

Livvi drops the pillow and steps away from the bed—inadvertently giving herself an unobstructed view of the living room. A tall, slim woman in lavender shorts and a loose-fitting sweater is outside the house. Flashing past one of the plate-glass panels near the front door.

The bell is ringing again. Louder this time. More insistently.

Livvi is convinced the woman has seen her and that she doesn’t have any choice but to answer the door.

The walk from the bedroom to the living room is agony.
She’s here,
Livvi is thinking.
The
person
Andrew
is
sleeping
with
is
here
and
I
want
to
die.

When Livvi arrives at the door, she can’t seem to remember how to work the lock. It takes several tries before, out of the blue, she manages to release it.

The door swings open—and Livvi is bewildered.

The person on the threshold isn’t the one she was expecting. Instead of a grown woman, Livvi is looking at a young child. A little girl holding a stuffed animal, a small pink pig.

The girl is dressed in a yellow-striped T-shirt, ruffled yellow skirt, and round-toed, yellow polka-dot sneakers. Her hair, which is thick and dark brown, is in a low ponytail pulled to one side of her head, tied with a yellow ribbon.

She’s studying Livvi with intense curiosity as she’s asking: “Who are you?”

Livvi is too confused to respond.

How has this little girl materialized on the doorstep, out of nowhere? And what happened to the woman who was outside the house only a second ago, the one in the lavender shorts?

The child has moved closer to Livvi; she’s tapping on Livvi’s arm, telling her: “I’m Grace.”

Livvi is still trying to figure out what’s going on.

And the little girl says: “Bree brought me.”

“Who’s Bree?” Livvi asks.

The little girl points toward the driveway—toward an elegant BMW sedan.

A slender blond in her early twenties, wearing a loose sweater and lavender shorts, is leaning against the car, murmuring into a cell phone.

“She’s my nanny,” the little girl says.

“Why…?” Livvi asks.

“I don’t know. She just is.”

“No, I mean why did she bring you here?”

There’s a hesitation. The flicker of a frown. Something that looks like worry—or perhaps doubt. Then the little girl tells Livvi: “I want my daddy.”

Micah

Louisville, Kentucky ~ 2012

“Being Daddy is a hard job. To do it good I got to pay attention like crazy.” The young Hispanic driver is talking to Micah while he’s lifting her suitcase from the trunk of the Town Car and putting it onto the crowded curb at the Louisville airport. He has wavy hair and a dimpled grin—and is impeccably neat in his black suit and cream-colored shirt.

He’s opening the car’s rear passenger door, as he asks: “You got kids?”

Micah doesn’t look up from the payment slip she’s signing. She’s thinking about the Laundromat, and Hayden Truitt. About the things she and Hayden said, and all the things they didn’t.

“At first it was crazy,” the driver is explaining to Micah. “Me and my wife didn’t know what to do. We thought, maybe we’re not the right parents for our little guy.”