The Children (28 page)

“Now I know what's strange. Where are Everett's dogs? They didn't come out when we came home. And they didn't bark. The house is so dark.”

“Everett might be moving,” I said.

“What?” said Spin, laughing. “You're joking, right?”

“No,” I said.

Joan said, “Charlotte, what do you mean? What's going on?” She went and looked out the window at Everett's dark house.

“We had a fight,” I said.

“What happened?” Joan asked. “He took the dogs? Where?”

I couldn't talk without crying, so I just ate my food. I really didn't feel like getting into the whole thing. I just wanted to eat my food and watch Laurel. She gave me a little sympathetic smile and cut into her meat.

“Sweetie, what happened?” Joan persisted.

“I found out last night that I have no idea who Everett is. He's not who we thought he was.”

Again, Spin laughed. “Is this a joke?”

Laurel looked from him to me with an air of detached concern.

“Don't be ridiculous, Charlotte,” Joan said. “I've known Everett since he was in kindergarten. He's not perfect. He could be a little more … industrious, maybe.”

“I don't want to talk about it,” I said.

I finished my dinner but told them I didn't feel like dessert. I went back up to the attic. Now that the blog had been taken down, I needed to close Susan's social media accounts.

When I started accumulating a lot of followers on the blog, I had Susan join Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. She started a Pinterest page. Susan had five thousand Facebook friends, the maximum allowed, and over a million Twitter followers.

I have thirty-one Facebook friends as myself. As Charlotte Maynard. Mostly people from town, old friends from school, some friends of Sally and Spin.

Spin, Laurel, and Joan watched a movie, then Laurel came up to talk to me before she went to bed.

“I just wanted to make sure you're okay,” she said.

“Yeah, I'm fine.”

“What happened? With Everett?”

“He ended up in bed with somebody on the night of our party. She was somebody I know, somebody I considered to be a friend.” I looked her dead in the eyes as I said this. Her calm, sympathetic demeanor made my heart race. I wasn't angry, though. The rush of adrenaline, my hot face, my shaking hands—they weren't caused by feelings of rage. I wasn't angry. I was afraid.

Feelings aren't facts, I reminded myself.

“Oh no,” Laurel said. “How horrible for you. Well, I see why you two can't stay living so close. I think it's for the best. Once he moves his stuff out, we can get somebody in there who really wants to work. It always drove Spin and Perry crazy that he was living there rent-free. And Everett's whole slacker persona? It's an act. I've known guys like him. That glib charm. He takes advantage of others. He's taken advantage of you and he's taken advantage of Spin's good nature for years.”

“I see that now,” I managed to say.

*   *   *

I needed cell service, so I waited until everybody was asleep and then I pushed my old bike across the lawn and onto the road, just as Sally and I had done all those nights in high school. All those nights at Holden. I rode up to the beginning of East Shore Road and looked at my phone. Three bars. There's a little grassy area there at the intersection, and if it hadn't rained all day, I would have sat on the grass, but the grass was soaked. So I stood, my bike leaning against me, and tapped out Everett's number. I got his voice mail.

“Everett,” I said. “I'm sorry. Come home. We need you to come home. You were right about Laurel. She and Spin”—fitful sobbing and snorting here, I was really losing it—“they're … married. Where are you? Come home. Please come home, Everett.”

I shoved the phone back into my pocket and was just about to get on my bike when I saw a car approaching. I could tell by the headlights that it was a Jeep. A lot of people have Jeeps around here, but I knew it was Spin's. I pushed my bike over to the passenger door.

“Oh. My. God. I was so worried about you.” It was Laurel. I knew it would be Laurel.

“Why?”

“Because I heard you leave. I looked outside and saw you riding off on your bike.”

“I like to ride my bike at night,” I said.

“It's dangerous, though. Put it in the back, I'll drive you home.”

I heaved the bike into the backseat of the Jeep and climbed in.

 

TWENTY-FOUR

Whit loved the idea of survival. He had a romantic fascination with the idea that you might overcome any trial offered up by nature or fate, as long as you were prepared. He took every opportunity to teach us children survival skills. We learned how to make a fire without matches; how to collect drinking water from dew; which forest plants are edible and which are poisonous. Navigation was what he loved most—navigating without instruments—and we all knew how to tell which direction was north or south without benefit of a compass or cell phone. On hot summer nights, floating on our backs in the lake, he taught us how to find Polaris. We all tried to be the first to see it.

Polaris. The North Star. It's right there at the end of the Little Dipper, right there at the tip of the handle. If you face Polaris, you're facing north. The most important thing to do, if you're lost at night, is to find Polaris. Pick a landmark while it's still dark. When the sun comes up, Polaris will be gone. Pick a distant hilltop, a cluster of trees; hopefully, you'll see something that's directly below Polaris. That's true north. You can navigate from there.

We live in Connecticut in the electronic age. What scenario could he have possibly fathomed that would involve our needing to know which direction was true north?

Whit showed me once the way a female duck will swim erratically, feigning a broken wing. We were out fishing in the old skiff when we saw one do this. “Watch this,” Whit said. He paddled after her, and suddenly she shot into the sky, as healthy and sound as could be.

“She's got ducklings in the cove. It's an instinctive defense against predators. She was making herself look vulnerable, so we'd go after her and away from her offspring. Then she flew off once we weren't a threat.”

I often wondered why Whit didn't travel more. Why didn't he go on treks in Nepal or Tibet? Why no trips to Antarctica or safaris in Africa? Joan would have been game; she loves anything involving exercise. But he never really left town much after we moved up here. He just built his banjos and made music.

“You're so clever,” Laurel was saying as she pulled the Jeep back onto the road. “Here I thought you were a total shut-in, and instead you're out riding your bike all over the countryside in the middle of the night.”

There's a driveway right there at the end of East Shore Road where you can turn around and drive back, but she just paused at the stop sign, then took a left.

“I thought we were going home,” I said.

“Let's drive around the lake, I hate backtracking,” said Laurel. “I always prefer going forward.”

“Oh,” I said.

“Don't you feel the same?” she asked. “Like when you're hiking, wouldn't you rather make a loop than backtrack?”

“I don't really hike.”

I looked up at the stars. The road straightens out for about a half mile before you turn onto West Shore Road. We started going very fast. A lot of people speed on that stretch because it's so straight. The top was down, so I tilted my head back and looked up at the sky. Where was Polaris?

We sped past the turn onto West Shore Road.

Now we were on Housatonic Road. There are woods on both sides and you can't see much sky there, just the treetops spinning past.

“What's going on, Laurel?” I managed to say.

Each fraction of a mile, each turn of the wheels was tearing at me. We were getting so far from home. I tried to maintain a casual tone.

“I just thought we'd chat,” she said.

She slowed down slightly and veered off onto a dirt road. It was Hunt Hill Road, a steep incline that leads from the lake to the neighboring town of Wakefield. She drove up the road a short distance, until we came to an open field, then she steered the Jeep into the field and turned it around. I thought she was going to take us back to the road, but she stopped the car and said, “Wow, look at that view.”

You can see the lake from there. The storm clouds were rearranging themselves, and for a brief moment we saw the moonlight, pearly and muted, slanting across the lake's glistening surface. Then the wind shifted, a dark cloud settled over the moon, and the lake was lost in the gloom.

“I know you took my phone this afternoon. I know you read my texts and my e-mails.”

I was silent.

“Do you have any questions?”

“Questions about what?” I whispered.

“About what you found on my phone. Don't lie, don't even apologize. I admire you, Lottie. You and all your little sneaky life hacks. So go ahead, ask me anything.”

There was nothing to ask, really. I'd had Matt do some Internet sleuthing that afternoon. He had provided me with information that I hadn't been able to piece together from her phone. Laurel wasn't from Sun Valley. She never had a sister. She had grown up in Breckenridge—that's why she was such a great skier. But she wasn't on any ski team. Her mother was a pothead who cleaned motel rooms. Laurel had been arrested twice, from what Matt had seen. Once for soliciting as a minor, once for extortion. She was thirty-five, not twenty-seven. She had been married to a man named Craig Henley. Matt wasn't able to find out anything about him.

“Why Spin?” I asked finally.

“Why did I fall in love with Spin? He's very lovable, you know that.”

I heard the hollow cry of an owl.

“I don't think you love him,” I managed to whisper. “I know about you and Everett. I know what you did the night of the party.”

“Oh yeah?”

There was the owl again, calling out into the dark.

“I downloaded all the texts and e-mails on your phone. I have them. I can prove to Spin that you're not who you say you are. That you're a user and a fraud. That you slept with his best friend.”

“I don't think you should do that, Charlotte,” Laurel replied. Her tone was casual and breezy. “I think we should all be friends. We're so alike, you and I.”

This made me laugh. “Alike? In what way are we alike?”

“Almost every way. We're both good people, but we're smarter than most. It's unfair that some people are given things in this world that smart people like us should get—like college degrees. So we find a way to get them. I think you love holding court on your blog from your little perch in the attic. I think the whole reason you don't like to leave the property is because you can't face honest people, you're such a fraud.…”

“I've never taken advantage of anybody. I've never lied to anybody about who I am—anybody I know in real life. Does Spin know that you were married before? Does he know how old you are? I downloaded everything on your phone, all your texts to your friends, making fun of Spin—making fun of all of us. I'll show them to him.”

“No, I don't think that would be a very good idea. I'm married to Spin now. You live in our house. I think you should be a little bit more gracious.”

“Why did you send the letters to the police? I liked you. I don't get why you would come in and sabotage everything. You didn't have to fuck Everett. We could have all gotten along.”

“Spin is stuck. I wanted to move things along, get you and your mother to move along. This town is dull. I've made Spin see that. Now he wants to move, but we can't afford it. All our money is tied up in the house.”

“
Our
money?” I blurted out incredulously.

“Yes,” Laurel said.

We were silent for a minute or two. Then I said, “I won't say anything to Spin. About you and Everett. About any of it.”

“I know,” Laurel said.

“Not because of you, but because it would kill him. I wouldn't hurt him that way.”

“I know.”

“Let's go back home, okay?”

“Whose home? Do you have a home now? Did you and your mom and sister finally find a place to live so you're not freeloading off Spin and me anymore?”

“No, I guess I meant Spin's home.”

We sat for a moment.

“Your home,” I said.

Laurel started up the Jeep and drove us to Lakeside.

*   *   *

It was the third day of rain. I waited in my room until I smelled coffee. When I went downstairs, I found Joan pacing around, waiting for it to finish brewing.

“My tennis got rained out,” she said.

“Sorry,” I said.

“I need to run. I can't sleep if I don't run, but it was thundering a few minutes ago.”

“It'll let up,” I said.

She was very still for a minute, then she pulled me close and said, “They're finished painting all the residences at Holden. I wonder when they're going back? It feels a little crowded. I mean, I'm not used to having company for so long.”

“I don't think they're going back, Joan. I don't think they consider themselves company.”

“What do you mean?” Joan asked.

“I think Laurel would prefer to live here.”

“No,” Joan said. “They can't live here. Why would they want to live here with us? It's much more fun living on campus with the other couples.”

According to Laurel, she already did live here. When I'd gone into her phone, the day before, I'd seen the e-mails to the architect in New York. He was the architect Perry and Catherine had used for their house—I recognized the name. She and the architect had made a date for him to come up and look at the house for the “renovation project.” He was coming up the following Thursday. They had several back-and-forth e-mails. Spin was CC'd on all of them.