The Perfect Stranger (28 page)

Now, as she puts things back where they belong, she finds that every piece invokes a memory. Mom always served Christmas cookies and Valentine’s Day brownies on the red oval platter. The big cut-glass bowl had held fruit salad at every Easter brunch. And she’d just seen the white ceramic pedestal plate a few weeks ago, holding the cheesecake she’d picked up at a bakery on her way into town. She’d been planning on baking one from scratch, using Mom’s own recipe, but she and Keith had gotten into a monster argument the night before and she didn’t have the time—or the heart—to putter in the kitchen.

She remembers wistfully watching her parents that day, thinking their marriage seemed idyllic compared to her own.

Well, whose wouldn’t?

Is it possible her perspective was skewed because of her own miserable life with Keith? Was she just imagining that her parents were happily married? Was there something brewing beneath the surface, something she should have noticed; something she could have stopped in time, had she only known?

No. Dad had nothing to do with what happened to her. He loved her. That was that.

And yet, another memory nibbles away at the edge of Beck’s consciousness; one she’s been trying to keep at bay.

Too worn-out to fight it this time, she lets it in.

About a month ago she’d called in sick to work and driven into town on a weekday to have lunch with an old high school friend, now a lawyer, about the possibility of a separation agreement. She wasn’t going to tell her parents she was coming; the last thing she wanted was for them to worry about her—and her marriage—on top of their financial mess, now that Dad had lost his job.

Miranda, Beck’s lawyer friend, said she had to stay fairly local because she had a meeting right before lunch and another right after. Beck chose a chain restaurant she knew her mother hated, figuring there was no way in hell she’d run into her parents there. She didn’t.

She ran into her father.

He was walking out just as Beck was hurrying in—late—to meet Miranda.

She was so flustered seeing him that she started stammering—but so, she remembers now, did he.

“What are you doing here?” they asked each other.

Beck told a semi truth—that she’d taken the day off to have lunch with an old friend—and was planning to pop into the house afterward to surprise him and Mom if she had time.

“But I was afraid I wouldn’t,” she said, “so I didn’t want to disappoint anyone.”

“I won’t tell Mom. If you have time, stop over. If you don’t, your secret is safe with me.”

That was when the woman came out of the ladies’ room and walked right up to her father—almost as if he’d been waiting for her.

Maybe he had, Beck realized, when the woman said to him, “All set?”

“Louise,” he said, “this is my daughter, Rebecca. Beck, this is Louise Falk. She’s been helping me with . . . some financial paperwork.”

Beck and Louise shook hands, and then Dad said, right in front of Louise, “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t mention this to Mom. I don’t want her to worry. You know how she is.”

Beck knew.

At the time, she was so thrown off by having run into her father that she didn’t think to question whether he’d been telling the truth about Louise.

No, it hadn’t occurred to her to question it until her mother lay dead and the police were asking her whether her father might be capable of terrible things.

She’s sworn to them—and herself—that he wasn’t.

Because he isn’t.

He—

“Is the coffee ready?”

She jumps, almost dropping the big white platter, as her father comes up behind her.

“Oh—it’s ready,” she realizes. “Sit down, Dad. I’ll pour you a cup.”

“Thanks.”

Watching him go over to the table and pull out a chair—his chair, the one he’s been sitting in at family dinners for as long as she can remember—she wonders what he’d say if she asked him, now, about Louise.

About whether she really was a . . . financial consultant, or whatever he’d implied.

But if she asks, then he’ll think she has doubts . . .

Do you have doubts?
she asked herself.

Yes. Maybe she does.

But even if Louise wasn’t—even if she was his—

Mistress? Dad with a mistress?

The thought seems ludicrous. But even if that were the case, it still doesn’t mean he had anything to do with Mom’s death.

So she can’t ask him. She just can’t. Somebody has to be on his side.

I’m all he has right now
, she thinks as she sets the cup of hot coffee in front of him.
And he’s all I have.

“We should have just teamed up and rented one car yesterday,” Elena tells Landry on Sunday afternoon as they meet up inside the airport terminal after returning their respective rental cars. “That way, we could have come and gone together.”

“I know! Why didn’t we do that?”

“Because we were both secretly afraid the other one might be a lunatic psycho in person.”

“Oh. Right. I forgot that part.” Landry smiles at her, marveling at how quickly she grew to feel comfortable with Elena in the past twenty-four hours. “I’m really glad you’re not crazy after all.”

“There are so many people in my life,” Elena tells her as they pull their bags along toward the security area, “who would find that comment amusing.”

“Like . . . ?”

“My brother, for one.”

“Why is that?”

“He thinks I’m crazy,” she replies with a wry smile.

Elena, Landry realizes, never really writes much about her family, and she’s barely talked about them at all this weekend.

Meanwhile, I’ve talked about nothing but. She must be sick of hearing about Rob and the kids . . .

But I can’t help it. I miss them.

“The thing is,” Elena says, “I kind of had a hand in raising him.”

“Your brother?”

“Right. And our childhood wasn’t exactly—well, you know we lost our mom when we were pretty young.”

It was a terrible train accident. That, Landry remembers. Elena had mentioned something about it last night, when they were talking about Meredith, how they hoped she hadn’t suffered.

“I bet she never knew what hit her,” Elena had said. “Like my mother.”

“That would be a blessing,” Kay agreed. “It’s what she would have wanted. It was dying that she dreaded. Not death itself. Dying.”

“Don’t we all?” Elena had asked.

Landry didn’t say that she dreaded all of it. Dying. Death.

Because of her family. Rob, and the kids . . . she couldn’t bear to think of them left here to muddle through without her.

Meredith would have understood that. But Kay and Elena don’t have husbands or children; Kay doesn’t have any family at all, and Elena isn’t close to hers. They don’t have to worry about leaving behind people who still need them desperately.

Maybe I’d feel different if I were completely on my own.

“After our mother died,” Elena is saying, “our father kind of . . . checked out. He was a good dad before she died, but afterward, he . . . well, he couldn’t cope with losing her.”

Landry nods as if she understands, and she’s trying to. If something were to happen to her, there’s no telling how Rob—also a good dad—might react.

Nothing can happen to me. He needs me. The kids need me.

Back when she was first diagnosed, that thought ran through Landry’s mind all day, every day. She used to pray that she could at least see her kids through childhood. Now that it’s nearly over—Addison is on the brink of eighteen!—she knows that’s not nearly enough time.

I want to be here for all of it: their high school and college graduations, their wedding days . . . I want to be a grandma; I want to grow old with Rob, I want—

She wants what anyone wants. What Meredith wanted.

To be
needed.

Those were the wants and needs she’d written about in that blog, the one they were talking about yesterday.

The TSA agent standing by the roped-off security checkpoint interrupts Landry’s thought process and the conversation. “I need to see your boarding passes and IDs, please, ladies.”

They show their paperwork.

As they roll their luggage into the long line snaking toward the body scan machines, Elena resumes talking about her family. “My dad drank. A lot. And when he did—which was all the time, basically—he kind of left us to our own devices. Sometimes I tried to mother my brother; other times, I was a wild child who should have been reined in. Only nobody did that for me.”

“Are you close to your brother now?”

“I might be if he weren’t overseas. He’s in the military. The nice regimented lifestyle he always craved, poor kid.”

“And your dad?”

“He doesn’t live far from me.”

“Do you see him?”

“Not really,” is the answer, delivered in a case closed tone. “So listen, about next weekend . . .”

Right. Next weekend.

Elena and Kay are coming to Alabama: they’ve already bought their tickets online.

Elena stops pulling her bag to consult her boarding pass, then an overhead sign. “I have to go that way. I’m boarding in a few minutes.”

“I’m going that way.” Landry points in the opposite direction. She’s not boarding for well over another hour, but there seemed to be no reason to hang around the hotel alone—and there’s no reason to follow Elena to her gate.

“I guess this is good-bye then, for now.” Elena throws her arms around her. “I don’t really want to go back.”

“Hang in there, with the Tony thing,” Landry says, remembering.

Last night Elena told her and Kay that she’d blocked his number on her cell phone, so at least he can’t call her anymore.

“Ugh, don’t remind me,” she says now. “I dread seeing him at school tomorrow morning. I really hope this week flies by. Not just because of Tony, or because it’s my last week of work before the summer, but because I can’t wait to see you and Kay again.”

“Same here,” Landry says hollowly, hoping that by then there will have been an arrest and they can all put this nightmare behind them.

Long distance driving, for whatever reason, is somehow easier for Kay today.

Maybe because she’s once again accustomed to being at the wheel after yesterday’s long journey.

Maybe because the funeral—and all the accompanying dread—is behind her now, just as the outskirts of Cincinnati have fallen away in a rearview mirror, showing nothing but the road she’s already traveled.

Or maybe it’s simply because she’s surprisingly well-rested.

After wrestling with her thoughts—and uncooperative, unfamiliar bedding—into the wee hours, she’d managed to finally fall asleep, and stay asleep, for a full eight hours, and then some.

She was still sound asleep in her room when Landry called to tell her they were going to breakfast.

“Come on down and join us,” she said.

“I’m not even dressed yet.”

“We’ll wait.”

“I don’t want to hold you up.”

“You’re not. We don’t even have to leave for the airport for a few hours. Come on. Breakfast for three.”

Over pancakes and coffee, they again discussed Meredith, and the Jenna Coeur business. But they managed to laugh a lot, too, and made plans for next weekend. Decadent desserts, Netflix movies, a beach day.

“I can’t wait,” Kay told them. “I’ve never even seen the ocean.”

“And here I was afraid you were going to back out,” Elena said.

“Why would I?”

“You’re afraid to fly.”

“I know, but you’re my friends. Who knows how many more opportunities we’ll have to see each other?”

“Lots more opportunities,” Elena said firmly.

Kay allows her hands to tighten on the steering wheel. Again she wonders,
What if . . . ?

No. Nothing can happen to the others, to any of them. It’s going to be fine, from now on. Forget cancer. Forget Jenna Coeur, whoever, wherever, she is. Forget Tony, crazy Tony, Elena’s so-called stalker. Nothing bad is going to happen, not to any of them. Not ever again.

“Whatever you do,” Landry told them before they parted ways, “please don’t mention next weekend to any of the other bloggers and don’t post anything about it online. Just in case . . . you know.”

Yes. They know.

They promised her they wouldn’t say anything.

“I just wish I hadn’t told Jaycee,” Elena mentioned yet again.

“If Jaycee is just Jaycee, we have nothing to worry about,” Kay pointed out.

“And if she’s not . . .”

“We still have nothing to worry about. It’s not like she has any reason to hurt any of us. And it’s not like Elena gave her your address.”

“It wouldn’t be hard to find.”

“But why would she want to?” Kay asked. She shook her head. “I really don’t feel like she’s a threat to any of us. Even if she is Jenna Coeur. That might be a bizarre coincidence, but it’s not like it puts us in danger.”

By the time they parted ways, the others seemed reassured.

Seeing a blue rest stop sign looming through the windshield, Kay puts on her right turn signal. She’s feeling pretty good, but she’s got a long trip ahead and it’s probably a good idea to stop and stretch for a bit.

What a difference a day makes. Now, anything seems possible. Anything at all, as long as she has her friends.

When Landry arrives at the gate for her flight, she sees that there are only a few passengers waiting in the boarding area—and Bruce Mangione is one of them.

He’s sitting reading a newspaper, with empty seats on either side of him. It would be awfully bold of her to walk right over there and take one of them. What if he gets the wrong idea?

He won’t if you tell him about the case.

Her feet are already propelling her toward him, but guilt dogs her when she thinks about Rob. He doesn’t know about the Jenna Coeur twist yet. She was going to tell him when she called home this morning, but the kids were right there, wanting to talk to her, too, and they were all headed for church. By the time they got back, she was having breakfast with Elena and Kay.

She probably could have snuck in a quick call home, but it wasn’t really something she wanted to get into on the phone with limited time. She’ll tell him as soon as she lands, of course.