All the Little Liars, Page 3

  After thirty more minutes of hosannahs and a lot of questions we couldn’t answer, we were in the car and driving back to our house. My mother’s excitement, and John’s, had made our own the keener. We were moving out of the stunned phase (which we’d pretty much been in since I’d taken the home pregnancy test right after Thanksgiving) and into the joyous phase. We’d given my mom the green light to tell John’s family—John David, a widower and the father of a toddler, and Avery, married to Melinda. Avery and Melinda had two kids, a little girl and a toddler boy.

  While I heated up the chili Phillip had put out on the counter and made corn bread to go with it, Robin called his mother, Corinne. Corinne had other grandchildren, but she’d given up on Robin producing any since he’d turned forty. She was very happy, too, and asked to talk to me directly. She had all the same questions my mother had had, and I still didn’t know the answers to all of them.

  When dinner (such as it was) was ready, I called my brother Phillip, who emerged from his room. My half brother is blond, a look he enhances, and he has blue eyes. I’m brown and brown. He’s much taller, at least five foot nine to my five foot nothing. Phillip’s a good-looking guy, no doubt about it. But I like to think that we have a certain similarity; maybe in the shape of our faces, the set of our eyes. “Corn bread?” he said, surprised. Evidently corn bread and chili did not go together in Southern California.

  “You’ll like it,” I promised. “We have something else to tell you.”

  “Yeah, I need to talk to you, too,” he said. “But you go first. You look pretty excited.”

  “Phillip, we’re going to turn the bedroom next to yours into a nursery.”

  “Yeah? Why?” he said, his eyes on the pan of corn bread. I deduced that he wasn’t really listening to me.

  “Phillip. Why would we need a nursery?” Robin said.

  My brother’s jaw dropped and he flushed red as a multitude of ideas and images seemed to be hitting him broadside. “For real?” he said in a choked voice. “For real?”

  Robin nodded.

  For one moment Phillip looked very happy. He pumped Robin’s hand enthusiastically, and came around the table to give me a hug. But then the joy collapsed. “So I guess you’ll need me to move back to California?” he said in a very subdued way.

  That hadn’t been my intention at all. “No, you kidding? We need a babysitter,” I said. “Don’t you dare go off and leave us.” (I hoped that was how Robin felt, too, because we hadn’t talked about it; our list of things to talk about grew longer and longer.)

  After supper, while he was loading the dishwasher, Phillip asked if he could tell his friends. After a glance at Robin, I nodded. I was impressed that my brother had enough friends here in Lawrenceton to tell. He’d lived with us a very short time. Maybe he meant his friends in California, too. He’d probably just put it on Facebook. Oh, God.

  Phillip went off to his room again without having told me what it was he needed to talk about.

  I called Amina, my best friend in high school and college, who now lived in Houston with her husband Hugh and their child. Amina started crying, she was so happy. “I saved all my baby clothes,” she said between sobs. “If you have a girl, you’re all set!” I called my friend Angel Youngblood, and though Angel’s emotional range was not as wide as Amina’s, Angel, too, sounded glad. She, too, offered me baby girl clothes. We were covered for pink.

  Robin called his best man, Jeff Abbott, another writer. Jeff, who’d been a father for many years, told Robin, “You won’t know what hit you.” From what I could hear, Jeff sounded pretty pleased with what had hit him. I noticed that Robin looked relieved after he hung up.

  There were more people we could have called, but abruptly, we circled our wagons and spent the rest of our evening reading. Phillip wandered through to get his after-supper supper, which consisted of a bowl of grapes and some fruit dip. “What’s the due date?” he asked. “People want to know. Is that when the doctor guesses you’ll be having the baby?”

  “It’s a little more scientific than that, but close enough,” I said. “July twenty-first.” Robin had turned on the television so he could check the progress of a basketball game, and he and Phillip had a conversation about the score. Phillip vanished again.

  At halftime Robin lowered his book to say, “We’re going to need stuff.”

  I nodded. “And we need to have a long talk.”

  “Ah-oh.”

  “No, we just need to bring up some things and develop a couples policy.”

  “How we feel about something, as opposed to how you feel or I feel?”

  “Right.”

  Robin looked apprehensive, but he nodded. “When you get off work tomorrow?”

  It was my turn to nod.

  * * *

  The next morning, I slept late and had a little trouble with nausea. I finally managed to eat some dry toast and drink some juice, and I got ready for work very deliberately.

  I only caught a glimpse of Phillip before I left. He was staggering toward the kitchen to get his bottle of juice, and he gave me a hug as I was going out the door. “See you later,” he said, and I remembered he wanted to talk to me about something.

  “Okay, we’ll have a heart-to-heart,” I said.

  On my way to work, I stopped by Lizanne’s house. I hadn’t seen a lot of Lizanne since she’d served Cartland (Bubba) Sewell with divorce papers. I’d known Bubba for a few years; but I’d known Lizanne my whole life.

  When she opened the door, I could hear screams from the back of the house. “Breakfast,” she said. “They slept late.” She was in a heavy robe, but barefoot, and she led the way to the kitchen briskly.

  Brandon was doing the screaming; he was a little over three, if I remembered right, and his little brother, Davis, was less than a year. Brandon was protesting some great injustice, and Davis was fascinated by the bellowing. Davis was making a huge mess with some sliced banana and Cheerios.

  Lizanne remained calm. I couldn’t remember ever seeing Lizanne agitated, except the day her parents had died. “Brandon,” Lizanne said, “you need to be quiet.”

  “I want chocolate milk.”

  “You can have plain milk, or juice.”

  “Chocolate milk.”

  “Then, nothing,” Lizanne said sternly.

  “Juice,” Brandon said, his lip stuck out as far as physically possible.

  I sat down across from Brandon and looked at him.

  “So, I hear you’ll have one of these next summer,” Lizanne said as she poured the juice.

  “I knew I couldn’t beat the news here,” I said, disgusted. “I even came by extra early.”

  “You could have come by even earlier,” she said. “These two are up at the crack of dawn.”

  “Are you glad you had ’em?”

  “Oh, yes,” she said fervently. “The minute Brandon popped out, I was a different person. The love hit me like a hammer.”

  “And … Bubba?”

  “I think he’s more in love with the way they round out his picture of himself as a man,” Lizanne said with unexpected acuity. “Bubba loves having them to make pictures with, and he loves taking them to the park so people can see him with his kids and think he’s a great guy.”

  “Daddy?” Brandon asked.

  “You’ll see him tomorrow,” Lizanne said. In a quiet aside, she told me that Bubba had gone back to his widowed mom’s house. “The kids love Bubba,” she said. She sounded sad about that.

  “How did the interview go yesterday?”

  “Pretty well, I thought,” she said. “That Sam is a sweetie, isn’t he? Doesn’t want to talk to anyone, just wants to do the work.”

  “That pretty much sums Sam up,” I agreed.

  “Did he interview someone else?”

  “Yeah, that Tiffany who owns Gotta Dance? Teaches there in the evenings?”

  “The one who wears all the makeup.”

  “Yeah, her.”

  Lizanne smiled. “Then
I bet I get the job.”

  “I know the library doesn’t pay much,” I said doubtfully. “Will it cover the day care fee?”

  “It must be nice not to have to worry about money,” Lizanne said.

  Everyone in town knew I’d inherited money from Jane Engle, a spinster librarian. That was the good thing and the bad thing about Lawrenceton. Though it was changing in character every year, at its core it was still a small town. In ten years, I was sure even that would be transformed.

  Lizanne continued, “Bubba’s sister offered to keep the boys if I found a part-time job. I really need to get out of the house.”

  Lizanne had managed to stay on good terms with Bubba’s family while preparing to divorce Bubba, which was quite a feat. I complimented her.

  “It’s not so much my wonderfulness as the fact that Meredith loves the kids,” Lizanne told me. “And her little guy is just the same age as Brandon.” Lizanne’s cell phone rang. She looked a little surprised, but she answered it. For a wonder, the boys were quiet while their mother talked. Lizanne turned to me with a grin, her thumb going up in a universal gesture of triumph. After a brief conversation, she hung up.

  “So you got the job?” I’d poured Brandon some dry cereal, and I’d refilled Davis’s bottle.

  “Yes. I think I’m going to enjoy working at the library,” Lizanne said, smiling.

  “I’ll get to see you more often.” I was really pleased. “When do you start?”

  “I go in to get the lay of the land this week, but I don’t start keeping regular hours until the New Year,” she said. “Mr. Clerrick was really understanding. Christmas with the kids is pretty hectic, and this year it’ll be complicated.” Bubba had extended family in Lawrenceton, and Lizanne had an aunt and uncle with accompanying cousins and nieces and nephews.

  I looked at the clock. “I gotta go, Lizanne.”

  We hugged each other and I left for work. The last time I’d had a talk this long with my friend, she’d told me she’d been able to see that the writing was on the wall for her marriage, and she’d been laying the groundwork for the divorce by taking the kids to church every Sunday (by herself), squirreling away some money, and visiting a financial planner to develop a way to use her inheritance from her parents’ estate to create an allowance that would help her weather the financial storm. She’d also hired a lawyer who had a great track record and didn’t like Bubba or support his run for state representative.

  Lizanne was a lot smarter than most people gave her credit for being.

  As I drove to the library, I thought about my first marriage. I wondered if it would have lasted, if Martin had survived his heart attack. It wasn’t the first time this question had crossed my mind, and I supposed it wouldn’t be the last. I’d had a sizzling passion for Martin Bartell, and we’d had some great times and moments of true happiness during our marriage. He’d been romantic, thoughtful—and more domineering than I had cared to admit to myself. While it had been flattering and sometimes comforting to be treated like a china doll, it had also been disconcerting. Maybe unhealthy.

  As I always did, I made myself put the speculation away in mothballs. I was someone else’s wife now, and I’d be a mother. I loved Robin; he loved me. It was going to be fine. We had some newlywed bumps ahead, I was sure, but I had faith we’d weather them. We would not end up in a divorce court, like Lizanne and Bubba. Like my mother and my father.

  After I’d stowed my purse in my locker, I passed through the empty secretary’s office to knock on Sam’s door. Sam looked up from the pile of papers on his desk. He seemed relieved that his caller was me.

  Sam was younger than his wife, Marva, who had quit teaching school this past May. Though their daughters were young adults, Sam was in his early fifties and Marva five years older. Marva was a social woman with a flare for doing anything in the craft line. She’d decided to travel on the weekends, selling her merchandise at festivals and craft fairs. She painted coatracks, she made aprons, crocheted scarves, and made signs. In fact, one of hers was hanging on Sam’s wall now. “My job is secure. Nobody wants it.” I shuddered.

  Sam’s desk was neat and orderly, as always. He had a cup of coffee at his elbow, a radio tuned to NPR, and a list of things to do that day. Sam loved his job as long as he was left alone to do it.

  “What do you need, Roe?” he asked. (Note the graceful way he led into it.)

  “I need to know about the maternity policy here, Sam.”

  “It’s in your employee booklet.” He looked annoyed.

  “I’m sure it is. I figured if I asked you, you’d understand that I needed to know that policy.”

  “New mothers or fathers get three weeks,” he said, still oblivious.

  “I know you’ll enjoy working with Lizanne,” I said, changing tactics.

  “She has two boys?” he said.

  “Yes, little boys,” I confirmed, wondering why he’d brought up her family.

  “I like little children,” Sam said.

  I had to remember not to let my mouth hang open. That seemed so random, and frankly, so atypical. “Then you’ll be delighted to hear that I’m having one,” I said.

  “You? You’re having a baby?”

  “I am. In July.”

  “The summer,” Sam said, clearly displeased. Everyone wanted vacation time in the summer.

  “Yes.”

  “Well, we’ll have to make do somehow,” he said, and that was that. Sam bent back to his paperwork.

  I don’t know what I’d expected. A handshake? A pat on the back? Tears of joy? I couldn’t help but smile as I left Sam’s office. I’d worked for Sam, off and on, for fifteen years. I should have known.

  * * *

  My priest and friend Aubrey Scott came in that morning. He was in his civvies, as he called them. No clerical collar, no black. He was doing some research for a series of sermons he planned on the conditions of life in the time of Jesus, and he had visited the library several times to consult some sources.

  When Aubrey stood at the check-out desk, I figured I’d better ask him when he and his wife Emily were going to take their vacation. “When school gets out in June,” he said. “We’ll probably be sorry later in the summer, but Elizabeth—no, Liza—wants to go to Disney World for her birthday. It’s a big vacation for us moneywise, but Liza has had a hard time at school lately.” He’d adopted Elizabeth, Emily’s daughter, soon after they’d married, and he adored her. This year, Elizabeth had announced that she wanted to be “Liza,” and her parents were trying to comply.

  I didn’t want to ask about the hard time, not today. “Disney World will be fun,” I said. “Maybe it won’t be horribly hot then.”

  “Is summer on your mind for some reason? Have you and Robin been planning a vacation?”

  “We’ll be ready to have a baptism in August,” I said.

  Aubrey’s gaze dropped directly to my waistline before he self-consciously looked up at my face. “But that’s the most wonderful news, Aurora! Give Robin my best wishes!” There was no doubt he was sincere.

  “I will,” I said, grinning back at him.

  There were several people within earshot. To my surprise, Perry gave me a hug, and to my even larger surprise, so did Lillian, an older librarian who’d always had it in for me. Baby happiness, apparently, was universal.

  Lillian made the rounds of the other librarians with the speed of light (much more quickly than she did her actual work) and during the morning all of them tracked me down to congratulate me.

  All in all, it was a very happy morning; and I hugged it to myself to think about in days to come.

  I would need that memory.

  Chapter Three

  The next day Phillip vanished, though I didn’t know that until hours afterward.

  My half brother had spent a lot of the evening on Facebook in his room. He hadn’t mentioned the conversation we were supposed to have. He’d only emerged once to heat up a bowl of leftover chili and corn bread. Robin and I had read, a
nd talked about some important things sporadically. We’d been in our own little world. I was sure sooner or later we’d start taking the baby’s arrival for granted, but not now.

  Since I wasn’t due in until noon, Robin and I had taken an hour this morning to talk. We’d settled in his study with the door shut, so Phillip wouldn’t hear, since part of our conversation would be about him.

  “I assured Phillip that he could stay here. I hope I wasn’t just speaking for myself. Do you object to his living with us?” I asked my husband. “You didn’t sign on to support stray half brothers.”

  Robin took a deep breath. “I wouldn’t mind if he went back to his dad or his mom at some point in the future,” he said carefully. “But I’m sure not going to vote for throwing him out. He’s had a rough time, and he’s a good kid.”

  Though I’d hoped that was what Robin would say, I hadn’t been certain. I relaxed; I hadn’t realized how tense I had been, though the two males got along well. Robin loved to help Phillip with English composition.

  “And it’s okay to bring the baby up Episcopalian?”

  “Sure,” Robin said. “Did you think I’d suddenly decide we should be Mormons?”

  “I guess that was silly,” I admitted. “But I wanted to be sure we’re on the same page.”

  “I was talking to Angel a couple of days ago,” Robin said, to my surprise.

  “Where’d you run into her?”

  “At her work,” he said. Angel had recently gotten a part-time job at a big-box sporting goods store halfway to Atlanta. Shelby was able to take the baby to the child-care center at Pan-Am Agra, a program my first husband had instituted while he was head of operations there.

  “You went there why?” Robin, though fairly fit, was no workout fiend.

  “To buy a Christmas present for my sister,” he said. “You know how she loves to go to Pilates. I got her an outfit that Angel promised me was what women want to wear.”

  “And what else did Angel say?” I knew advice about exercise clothes was not Robin’s point.

  “That hospital nurseries all have different ratings, according to what level of emergency they can handle.”