Do i know you, p.26
Do I Know You?, page 26
“Yeah, definitely,” he says. “I saw that jackass stick his foot right in front of you. I was gonna go after him, but I figured I’d better check you out first. I don’t know what’s wrong with society these days.”
Not society, I think, the Peases. They’re somehow involved in this. But why would they steal a child?
He asks again if I’m fine and I assure him I am as they leave me be. The lobby a few feet below is empty and a CLOSED sign is on the counter. The docent is nowhere in sight.
I hobble past the front desk and into the fresh air, dejected, scanning the fenced yard on the off chance Mabel has hung around. Nope. Nor is she on the walkway leading to the street. No stalker, either. I pray he’s only after me and not her.
“Is this yours?” A maintenance man in coveralls comes toward me, an object displayed on his palm. It’s my phone. The screen is a glass spiderweb. It must have flown out of my pocket when I fell. “Found it near the lobby floor. Hope it still works.”
Miraculously, it does. Collapsing on a wooden bench outside the tower, I call Erik to deliver the bad news and am almost grateful when I’m sent immediately to voice mail.
There are no words for my frustration. I was so close, close enough to reach her if I’d only hustled. But why did she scream? Mabel and I are buddies. She trusts me. And why was she in that getup? It’s all so bizarre.
I have no idea how I’ll explain this to Sheila and Dave. I wish they’d gone to the police, Caleb’s separation anxiety be damned. If this isn’t an emergency, I don’t know what is.
With heavy dread, I force myself to get off the bench and limp over to Commercial Street, where Sheila is waiting for hopeful word. My eyes ache and my nose begins to swell. If she sees me crying, she’ll know right off something bad happened. I have to get it together.
“Jane!”
Erik’s on the corner across the street at Ryder, waving his arms madly. “We found her. She’s okay!”
Thank god, I think, my bruised knees suddenly wobbly with relief.
He jogs toward me, dodging an oncoming car. “I just tried to call you. The police contacted Sheila. Mabel’s safe and sound at the station.”
What? That’s impossible. “But that can’t be. I saw her in the monument no more than fifteen minutes ago. I ran after her and tripped and when I got up she was gone.”
He frowns. “That’s funny. She wasn’t anywhere near the tower. She was way on the other side of town.”
“I’m telling you what I saw.” I feel like I’m being gaslighted here. I’m near panic. “Look, I hurt my right knee running after her. This guy tripped me. See for yourself.”
He bends down and examines my kneecap. “Doesn’t seem too swollen. You sure you weren’t imagining things?”
Uh-oh. I know what “imagining” means. “No, I’m not imagining things. So where was she?”
“Turns out she went to a drag show. How’s that for spunk?” He laughs, back to being jolly. “For three hours, she was at a bar and apparently that was cool with management. They made her Shirley Temples and spun her on a stool. Figured her parents were in the audience, too, I guess. After the show ended, and the place emptied out, the club owners contacted the police. Sheila and Dave were actually in the station filling out a report when the call came in.”
None of that happened. Mabel McAllister, age seven, did not walk into a cabaret alone and hang out in the dark for three hours watching a bunch of drag queens singing “We Are Family.” That is a lie, and beyond that, one a second grader couldn’t possibly have invented on her own.
So did Sheila lie to Erik or is he lying to me? Or both? “What a blast,” I say with false cheer. “I can just picture her bopping along in her tutu.”
“I know, right? You should have seen her in the police station sitting on the counter licking an ice cream cone in that crazy skirt of hers.”
More lies. She was in a white hoodie and a fancy little dress when I saw her. “So, where are they now? I’m dying to get all the details. You know . . . the ones you haven’t embellished.”
He takes a step back, wary, probably not sure he heard me correctly. “Um, they said they’re going back to get their stuff and go back to Cambridge. Sheila’s pretty thoroughly rattled.”
“She’s not the only one.”
He chucks me under the chin, a normally loving gesture that I now detest. “Heeeey there, why the ’tude? You should be happy. Mabel’s okay and we finally have the place to ourselves. I say we celebrate.”
“I’m not really in the mood,” I snap. “Let’s go back and call it a night.”
“Yeah?”
“Yes.”
We walk in silence to the car. I can tell Erik is bewildered by my iciness. He doesn’t know that I know they set me up. It’s now becoming clear to me that Dave and Sheila, for reasons I can’t possibly begin to understand, put their own young child at risk so I might cause a scene in the monument like I did at Logan. They probably coached Mabel to scream at the sight of me, which is simply unforgivable. No doubt they assured themselves that doing so would be for my own good because by pushing me over the edge, I’d finally break and see a psychiatrist to address what Erik claims are my “unresolved issues.”
I am so furious with him, I can’t look him in the eyes. How could he turn on me like that?
“Do you have the keys?” He’s on the driver’s side. The car seems like a weighty and solid barrier between us. We are over. We are so, so over. I can’t even be sad. Frankly, all I am is numb.
Reaching in my pocket, I pull the keys out and toss them over the roof. That’s when I notice the white envelope under the windshield wiper. It’s sealed and addressed to me.
“What’s that, a ticket?” Eric asks, slipping behind the wheel as I retrieve the envelope.
Doesn’t look like a ticket, considering there’s a note on it written in purple crayon.
Dear Jane—my profuse apology for what I put you through today. Do not blame Erik—or Dave. It was all my (misguided) idea. Will explain later. For now, I thought you might find a use for this. S.
I open the envelope and pull out a thick white card etched with a gray heron.
PLEASE JOIN US AS WE JOYOUSLY CELEBRATE
BELLA & WILL
ON THE EVE OF THEIR NUPTIALS.
LOBSTERS. CHAMPAGNE. SUNSET.
PEASE
&
LOVE.
HERON’S NECK.
7 PM
AUGUST 20TH
REGRETS ONLY, PLEASE.
Thirty-Three
JANE
Name?” asks the security guard in the trademark Pease green shirt at the gate on the wooden bridge to Heron’s Neck as he examines a list on his tablet.
My throat closes. I hope this is the only checkpoint I have to pass. Knowing what the Peases are like, I wouldn’t put it past them to have their guests submit fingerprints in advance. “Sheila McAllister,” I say with false confidence, adjusting my sunglasses so he doesn’t catch a glimpse of my eyes, just in case. No doubt, my face is pasted on a Wanted poster in the guardhouse.
Fortunately, he’s more interested in scrutinizing the list on his iPad. “Mc or Mac?”
“Mc!”
He makes a tick mark with his electronic pencil and goes, “Yup. Got it. Head down the road and take a left past the next gate and up the hill to the right.” With a double tap on the hood of my car, he sends me on my way.
I am in.
I am also late. I don’t care, though, because I’ve fulfilled the mission I set for myself months ago. By hook or by crook—but mostly by Sheila’s guilt-induced invite—I am on Heron’s Neck and have evidence to confront Bella with. After tonight, no one—not the Peases’ powerful lawyer, not Bob, not Erik, not Sheila and Dave—will be able to accuse me of being delusional. On the last night she was seen alive, Kit was partying with Bella. I’ve got the photo to prove it.
At the next gate, I hold my breath, but another staff member waves me right through and directs me up the hill. This is almost too easy. The valet who awaits blinks at my rented Kia, but is well mannered enough not to scoff when he gets in and parks it between a red Tesla and a silver Maserati convertible.
Erik returned to Boston last night with the McAllisters. On the drive back to the rental from Provincetown, I finally let him have it. I told him I’d discovered that Dave and Sheila were the true renters. I didn’t ask him to explain why he’d lied about the cottage. I didn’t want to hear how worried he was about me and how desperate he was to get me into psychiatric care. Didn’t want a lecture about how I should go back on medication or have to listen to his sob story about how he was standing by me, despite my mental illness.
What I said was this: “We are not going to talk. You are going to drop me off at the beach so I don’t have to see the rest of you.” I couldn’t even conceive of Mabel’s emotional state and how confused she must be after her mother’s manipulations. “I’ll give you guys the evening to pack up and you can leave me the rental car. You have forty-eight hours to clean your crap out of my apartment. When I come home Sunday night, I don’t want to see or smell or detect any trace of you.”
To give Erik his due, he didn’t try to turn the tables and accuse me of forcing him to take action for the benefit of my mental health. He simply nodded and wiped away a tear.
Someday I’ll figure out whether he loved me as a person or if I was a merely a fascinating lab rat. When I was Homeland’s super-recognizing wunderkind, he was in my thrall. But he insisted on trying to turn me into a so-called normal person, wanted me to abandon what he downplayed as my “obsession” with Kit. He should have known that like many humans whose genius is concentrated in one particular area—painting, music, math—I am not, and will not, ever be “normal.” I am a freak.
But that’s for another day. For now, I’m here at Ground Zero about to take a wild leap into the unknown. If I’m successful, I will do what a slew of detectives, including Bob, have been unable to achieve. I’ll find out once and for all what happened to my sister. If I fail, well, I’ll probably be spending the night in jail, in Bob’s custody.
Deep breath.
Before heading to the party, I smooth out the wrinkles in my understated floral dress, which is definitely not my usual style. Also not my usual style is my hair, which I clipped short in the bathroom mirror, à la Sheila, and dyed black with an application of Nice ’n Easy, about all I could find at the Stop & Shop. As for the sunglasses, I’m wearing those until the sun sets and I’m assured of more cover. Hopefully, that’ll help me evade Pease security, which probably has committed my face to memory.
Unlit torches stand ready to light the way from the parking area around the house to the beach, a path marked with fresh seashells and lined with rows of planters bursting with blue, white, and pink hydrangeas, tiny candles tucked among the blooms.
Dogs run about, silky Irish setters, and handmade signs meant to be kitschy direct guests toward the secluded cove. Wood smoke and merry chatter rise from the beach as I crest the dune. In the dimming light, I study each celebrity and high-profile guest, most of whom I gather are friends of Eve instead of the bride and groom.
The aging British pop star and his husband are easy to pick out in their matching seersucker suits. So are the multi-Oscar-winning actor with her trademark blond updo and her daughter, the Yale student-turned-runway model. There are at least two or maybe three designers, a couple of young influencers with seventy-thousand-dollar handbags slung over their arms. Also, there’s the bestselling self-help author whose fine features and long legs earned her a modeling contract, too.
Less familiar are the hedge-fund managers—billionaire friends of Chet, I’m guessing. I find it predictable, yet no less disconcerting, that they’re in deep discussions with the governor of a nearby state and a few members of the DC elite, including a US senator and a member of the diplomatic corps. Or, rather, the politicians are in deep discussions with them.
Finally, I focus on the family. Heather, the socialite wife of Jake, looks ridiculous in madras shorts and an untucked pink button-down from the Love & Pease site. An attempt to be casual that’s failing miserably. Dani, in silk pantaloons and a plum silk halter that accentuates her bony shoulders, is standing off to the side nursing a drink and a cigarette with her wife, who I’ve read is the principal of an alternative school in Jamaica Plain. In her beige linen suit, she practically blends into the sandy scenery. Wonder if that’s intentional.
There’s no sign of Madeleine, the groom’s mother. Too bad. I was looking forward to meeting the woman who abandoned her kids for a man who made a killing in energy drinks and owns a private island off Bali.
“Champagne?” A waiter, instantly by my side, displays a bubbling flute on a silver tray.
I decline just as the wedding party arrives from the rehearsal, the guests erupting in cheers.
First there is Eve Pease herself, much taller (and even thinner) than I’d expected. She is in a flowing gown in an exotic print, her hair loose and as wavy as a mermaid’s, her feet bare. She looks just a few years older than the blond woman by her side, who I’m guessing is Megan, her daughter from a prior relationship. You hardly ever see her on the Love & Pease site. They pause at the top of the cedar stairs and wave to the crowd.
“Hey, who invited all of you?” Eve shouts to ripples of laughter. “You’d think we were throwing a wedding or something.”
More laughter and more cheers. I have to say, I can see why Eve is known for putting on a helluva shindig.
She checks over her shoulder. “Whoops. Here they come. Let’s give it up for the couple of the century!”
Just then, my phone dings. Shit. Pulling it out of my pocket to put it on silent, I see a text from Stan:
Erik called. We have to talk. ASAP. Don’t do anything or go anywhere. CALL ME!!!!
Goddamn Erik. My father is my father, not his. Ugh. It’s just like him to run to my dad saying I’ve lost it and am unstable. I waver about replying and decide I’ll deal with him later. Then I put it on vibrate so there’ll be no more distractions.
A hidden string quartet begins playing “Another One Bites the Dust” as Eve and Megan part for the bride and groom. Will is in a white shirt, open at the neck with the sleeves rolled up, and loose tan pants, as if this just another Friday night on Heron’s Neck. I fight a swell of disgust, thinking about how he and Jake might have badgered Kit and turn my attention to his wife-to-be.
Bella leisurely descends the stairs with the grace of an elegant queen, each long, toned, tanned leg an execution in seduction. Her dress is a simple white strapless number, just in case it wasn’t clear who the bride is. Her thick dark hair is tied casually to one side over a shoulder shimmering with what I have no doubt is Love & Pease body luminizer.
Concealed in the cocoon of the dunes, I watch the glowing couple welcome each guest with warm hugs and kisses on proffered cheeks. Will keeps his hand on the small of Bella’s back and glances at her often as he leads her around the party, all the way to the dock and then back to where guests cluster at one of the bars gazing at the setting sun, a ball of fire at the water’s edge sinking, sinking, sinking.
I find safety by insinuating myself into a cluster of chatting guests, nodding and smiling as if I’m part of their group.
Waiters light torches and from somewhere a band starts to play mellow jazz, just enough to add atmosphere until Will holds up his glass and the music stops. This is the part when he delivers his speech, thanking us all for making the effort to come to their intimate wedding, so grateful for the very, very special friends and family members in Eve’s, I mean, their lives.
There is the requisite self-deprecating joke about how this is Bella’s last chance to escape.
She turns her back to Will and pretends to tiptoe off.
“You’re not getting away that easy.” He hooks her waist and throws her back for a long dramatic kiss. More applause as she kicks up a playful heel.
We toast to Heron’s Neck, where he and Bella along with, awkwardly, their brothers and sister created so many wonderful memories setting sail or simply tossing the old pigskin. Guests shift their feet uncomfortably in the sand as Will leads a sentimental memorial to Chet, and then to Queenie Jarvis.
“To Chet! To Queenie!” we chime in unison, glad the sad part’s over.
Waiters illuminate candles at tables situated on fresh bamboo decking under a series of connected pink-and-white-striped tents. Women reach for their shawls as Will says, “Before we enjoy this fabulous food, I want to express not only my gratitude for you all, but for my beautiful bride.”
Bella tilts her head toward her future husband and smiles.
“You know, I hate to admit this publicly, but I thought she was such an annoying little kid when she came to live with us,” he begins, flashing a devilish grin. “Always following me around, asking questions, getting me to build her sled runs and fix her bike, take her waterskiing. Total pain in the ass.”
The crowd is hushed, pretending they’re not sure where he’s going with this.
“Then, years later, when I was at my lowest, I happened to visit Bella in Bogotá and saw that the nerdy bookworm duckling had morphed into a beautiful swan.” He sniffs and blinks. “Sorry. I tend to get kind of emotional when I think of how this gorgeous woman saved me. God, I used to be soooo cocky.”
“Used to be?” Jake teases. The guests roar at this comic relief.
Will raises a hand. “Fair enough. All I want to say is, Bella, I’m awed that you’ve agreed to be my wife.” With that, he goes down on one knee and presses his lips to her fingers. “Don’t ever give up on me, please.”
I fight the urge to gag, but there’s an aww from the crowd as Bella rolls her eyes and motions for him to get up. Another kiss. More clapping and someone yells, “That’s true love, folks!”
While the bride and groom split up to personally welcome each guest, I catch a glance of Megan and am intrigued by her tight frown and sad eyes. Hmm.
And then I freeze. Hovering by the rear entrance to the main tent, supervising her employees with quiet authority, in a tailored pantsuit of champagne crepe, her braids piled high in a sweeping bun, there’s Serena.
