“Does anyone by any chance golf with Nan Smalls?” Jen asked. “Or have dirt on her, skeletons from her past?”
She had expected sympathetic laughter but Harriet suddenly became very interested in the state of her cuticles and Lena abruptly got out of her chair, tripped on Harriet Nessel’s bag, and, for a few tortured silent seconds, worked to untangle her feet from its straps. She hurried out of the room, which was silent but for the sound of her footsteps echoing down the hall.
“Another one bites the dust,” Jen said, but no one laughed.
“What?” Jen looked around helplessly. “What did I say?”
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
Lena had last seen Nan Smalls fifteen years ago, back when she was still Nan Neary.
She and her ex-husband Gary sat together at their son’s funeral, in the front pew of St. Mary’s, so close that Lena could see Nan’s curly hair cascade down Gary’s sleeve.
Lena had read in the local paper about Nan’s wedding to Wesley Smalls six years after that, how the two had met in a grief support group Wes had formed after his own son Danny had drowned at a summer camp, years before Bryce’s death.
The article made their happiness sound like a reward after years of suffering, and it was clear from the quotes of the wedding guests that the couple’s bond was deep and faith-based. Since the accident, Nan had apparently become quite religious.
Gary Neary had moved to Phoenix the year after Bryce was killed. He had established a dental practice in Scottsdale and had remarried—a woman named Margot. A cycling club website had posted a photo of their group, and Gary and Margot were top left, second row, grinning after a metric century.
He looked like a stranger.
They were all different people now.
Nan had cut off all her hair, let it gray completely. Lena guessed that she wouldn’t have recognized her if they had bumped into each other on the street, although Lena had taken care through the years to avoid that very scenario.
Lena had sat down several times to write sympathy notes to the Nearys, but all her drafts were stale with platitudes.
Your tragedy, our tragedy, thinking of you, every parent’s worst nightmare.
The Nearys probably preferred to not hear from Lena anyway, because while there might have been the spark of something between Lena and Gary, in the end it came down to what was between Lena and Bryce, how she had knelt over his lifeless body in the blood-soaked grama grass, with one urgent thought that drowned out all else: Quick, Lena, hide the body so no one finds out. There’s still time.
JUNE
Please join us in a Neighborhood Celebration for Laurel Perley’s graduation.
June 1st at 6 p.m.
5112 Cottonwood Lane
Festive attire
No presents please
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
The meteorologists were falling over themselves in excitement about last night’s freak snowstorm. An inch had fallen between midnight and sunrise, the most in June since 1963, and no one could believe it.
When they started to play that song about snow in June for the third time, Jen switched off the car radio and sat in silence. Main Street was dark and gray and sloshy and as deserted as she’d ever seen it. The leaves of the Tatarian maples that lined the sidewalks drooped under the frost.
She might be excited about the snow, too, Jen supposed, if she weren’t waiting for Nan.
Poor Nan.
Jen hadn’t been able to apologize enough for bringing up Nan at book club. She hadn’t known; she had thought Nan’s son drowned.
Danny Smalls was Wes’s son from his first marriage, Priya explained. Wes and Nan had met afterward, in a grief support meeting.
The other women had told Jen the whole story—how Nan’s first husband, the one who hated gummy candy, was a man named Gary Neary, a local dentist who had moved into Cottonwood after the divorce, how Nan had, before Bryce died, been a bit of a hippie.
When Lena finally emerged from the bathroom, her mascara wilted, Jen apologized some more. And then Lena apologized for making a scene. And Jen apologized again for turning the final book club meeting into apology poker.
Nan Neary seemed like a lovely person, Lena said, and she was sure that Nan would be fair to Abe. When she wished Jen luck for tomorrow, Jen stammered that it really wasn’t important and again, she was sorry.
For a few awkward minutes, no one really knew what to say, until finally Deb Gallegos checked her watch and said, “Can we wrap this up, guys, because the stripper will be here in five minutes.”
It didn’t really make sense, and was more exploitative than funny, if Jen thought about it too hard, but it was an excuse to laugh. When they all filed out, exhausted, they felt a little closer for having burrowed through.