April is silent then for the rest of the drive, lost in her thoughts. It makes me a little nervous to wonder what she’s thinking about.
Shady Oaks is surprisingly dreary and depressing. In the past, April has gone on and on about how lovely the nursing home where her mother lived was. But the reality is nothing like that. The walls of the home have peeling paint and flickering lights. If my parents ever needed to be in a home, I never would put them in a place like this.
Of course, Keith and I are far wealthier than the Mastersons. Keith is a partner in his law firm in Manhattan, whereas Elliot works for a dinky firm on the island, where he’s been for the last decade, and they won’t promote him after the mess with Courtney Burns. According to Keith, that incident has left an indelible mark on his reputation, even though he was never charged with anything. Surely this is not the life April imagined when she married an up-and-coming lawyer.
When we get inside, I get another shock when I see Janet.
She looks like an entirely different person than she had when she had watched Bobby and my boys only a few years ago. For starters, she looks twenty years older. Her honey-blond hair is now completely gray, although presumably it had been dyed the last time I saw her. She has a vacant look in her blue eyes. There’s a big glob of drool in the corner of her mouth.
“Hi, Mom!” April encircles her mother in a giant hug. Her mother seems only vaguely aware she is being hugged. “How are you doing?”
Janet doesn’t answer. She just stares distantly at a wall.
The filming is being overseen by a nurse named Peggy. It’s quite obvious from the moment we walk in that Peggy despises April. It’s strange. Most people like April, at least at first. And Peggy seems like one of those nurses who truly cares about her patients, and April is quite doting on her mother.
We record the episode without any difficulties. I have to say, it was a brilliant idea on April’s part. The whole thing is incredibly heartwarming—April concludes the episode by throwing her arms around her mother’s shoulders and planting a kiss on her cheek. I find myself tearing up.
Yes, even the ice queen can cry sometimes.
After we’re done filming, April disappears somewhere and I’m briefly left alone with Janet. Peggy is also no longer in sight, so I feel I should stay with Janet and make sure she’s all right. She was fairly spaced out during most of the episode, but now she is happily eating one of the cookies April made.
“Did you enjoy seeing April today?” I ask Janet.
Janet looks up at me with her bleary blue eyes. She seems like she’s trying to place me.
“I’m Julie,” I say. “I’m April’s friend.”
“April,” Janet repeats. Her gray eyebrows knit together. “You need to tell April to let me out of here.”
I frown. “What?”
“Please…” A tear trickles down her right cheek. “Tell her to let me go home. I won’t tell anyone. I swear. I’ll say she was with me the whole night.”
“I… I don’t understand…”
“The night that girl died.” There’s a spark of clarity in the older woman’s eyes. “I won’t tell the police she wasn’t with me. I promise. I won’t tell a soul.”
“Um, Janet…”
Janet reaches out and wraps her bony fingers around my forearm. She seems old and frail, but her grip is like a vise. I couldn’t escape if I wanted to. And I’m no weakling—I do Zumba twice a week and kickboxing once a week. And I run every morning.
“Tell her!” she shrieks.
Before I have a chance to panic, April comes running over. And then Peggy also joins us. The two of them manage to wrench my arm from Janet’s grip. And then a moment later, Janet seems to calm down. Her shoulders sag and she allows herself to be led away.
April apologizes to me profusely, and she chews Peggy out as well. As I’m gathering up our supplies from the kitchen, I hear April’s voice float down the hall.
“Peggy, is she having episodes like this a lot?”
“Not a lot. But she’s been talking a lot about somebody named Courtney. She goes on and on about it.”
“And what do you do?”
“Nothing. She’s just talking.”
“No. That’s not acceptable. I can’t believe you wouldn’t tell me about this, Peggy. I’ll have to contact Dr. Williams directly to adjust her medications.”
“Mrs. Masterson, I don’t think she needs more medication. She’s already so out of it as it is.”
“Well, you’re not the doctor, are you?”
Peggy is quiet after that. April comes back to help me get cleaned up, but my thoughts won’t stop racing. I can’t get that haunted look in Janet’s eyes out of my head. Janet knows something. She knows something April doesn’t want anyone else to know.
I remember all those rumors about Courtney Burns. Elliot Masterson’s secretary, who killed herself years ago. It was ruled a suicide, anyway. But was it?
I used to be a prosecutor. My job was to put guilty people in prison. If April did something terrible, it doesn’t matter if she’s my best friend. She needs to pay the price.
Chapter 39
I call Riley Hanrahan.
I haven’t talked to him in years. He’s a detective who I worked with very closely when I was a DA. All right, we didn’t just work together—we also had a little fun on the side. What can I say—I was so busy those days, the only men I met were through work. But that was a long time ago. Before Keith. And then just once after Keith. When I first moved out here, he sent me some text messages and tried to call me to convince me to come back to work. I was tempted, but I did what was right for my family. I stayed.
In any case, he hasn’t changed his cell phone number.
“Riley,” I say when he answers the phone. “It’s Julianne… Abrams.” He would only know me by my maiden name. I had always said I would never change my name after getting married, but then it just… happened. I wanted to have the same name as my children, after all.
“Jules!” Riley’s boisterous Queens accent rings out on the other line. Nobody but Riley ever called me Jules. “It’s been… Christ, how long? You back at the DA’s office?”
“No,” I say quietly. “I’m not.”
“Yeah? Where are you working now?”
“I’m still… I’m staying at home with my boys.” I had said that when Leo started kindergarten, I would look into going back. But he’s already been in kindergarten nearly a year, and I’ve made no moves to apply for jobs. In my defense, kindergarten is just half-days. How could I possibly work with that schedule?
“Huh. Well, how you been?”
We spend the obligatory two minutes catching up on our lives. I tell him a little bit about my boys, and he confirms he’s still single. Married to the job, yadda yadda yadda, same way I used to be. As we talk, I feel that deep ache in my chest, remembering everything I gave up when I moved to the island.
“Riley, I’m wondering if you could help me out,” I tell him. “I’m looking for some information.”
“Just tell me how I can help you, Jules.”