“Goddammit, Adam,” she shrieked.
Adam touched his wife on the arm, saying something soft and quiet to her. That was a mistake. Lanie snatched up the pitcher of iced tea from the counter and flung it at him. He ducked, and the heavy glass vessel hit the wall behind him with a dull thump, and then fell to the ground, cracking.
“Lanie!” I shouted. “Stop!”
She whirled to face me, her eyes the familiar manic I remembered from her teenaged years, and my blood went cold.
From Twitter, posted September 26, 2015
chapter 16
I struggled to sleep that night, guilt and worry coursing through my veins. After Lanie had thrown the pitcher, I’d offered for Ann to spend the night with us so that Lanie and Adam could work out whatever was obviously brewing between them, but Lanie declined, insisting things were fine even as her face softened back into its Stepford Wife–esque mask. Should I have done something when I saw Lanie throw that pitcher? Years ago, I had learned the best way to handle my sister’s moods while keeping my own sanity intact was to ignore them, but now there was a child in the mix. How much did I really trust my sister? I would never forgive myself if something happened to Ann. I shook Caleb awake at two, and insisted we drive to Lanie’s house and make sure that everything was okay.
He blinked blearily at me. “Are you mad, Jo? It’s the middle of the night.”
“I’m worried. The way she threw that pitcher at Adam . . .”
“Calm down, love,” he said, stroking my cheek. “Your family is under an unimaginable amount of stress right now, your sister included. So she’s got a bit of a short fuse. I’m sure everything’s fine by now. You can call her first thing in the morning.”
He rolled over and fell almost immediately back asleep, leaving me alone to turn over each part of the night, looking for clues. We’ve got to protect your sister, Adam had said. What exactly had he meant by that? It almost sounded as though he knew—or at least suspected—that Lanie had done something wrong.
Lanie’s own words came back to me suddenly: How could I ever admit that now?
I was becoming more and more convinced that my sister was hiding something.
Caleb’s alarm serenaded us awake to “Come as You Are” at seven o’clock. Five months ago, Caleb had discovered he could set his alarm to music, and we had been rising to the same song ever since. (Incidentally, this was one of the few aspects of Caleb’s presence that I emphatically did not miss while he was in Africa. I liked Nirvana as much as the next person, but not first thing in the morning.)
I had only managed to fall asleep three hours before, and was therefore not in the mood for an early alarm. Pulling the pillow over my head, I complained, “Too early, babe.”
“Sorry, love,” he murmured, his voice thick with sleep, wrapping warm arms around my waist and tugging my body against his. “I’ve got a conference call in a half hour.”
“Who schedules conference calls on a Sunday?”
“My boss. And since I haven’t been in the office in weeks, I don’t feel as though I have much standing to argue.” He pressed himself against my back. “But I don’t have to really get up for another fifteen minutes.”
“Wait, honey,” I said as he slipped a hand between my thighs. “Not with Aunt A in the next room.”
“I can be quiet,” he said in my ear, his hand starting to move beneath mine.
“I can’t. You’re just going to have to contain yourself.”
Caleb let out a comical groan. “What I’m going to have to do is take a cold shower.”
“Maybe if you’re lucky, I’ll take that cold shower with you.”
“You’re killing me, love,” he said, shaking his head in jest as he climbed out of bed.
Just a couple more minutes, I thought to myself as I rolled back over to sleep.
When I next awoke, it was ten thirty and I was alone. I shuffled downstairs in search of coffee and found Aunt A seated at the kitchen table, working a crossword puzzle while wearing a floral dress, her graying hair carefully pinned up.
“Good morning, dear,” she greeted me. “Must have been a fun night with your sister for you to sleep so late!”
“Oh,” I said, freezing. From the cheerful, optimistic expression on Aunt A’s face, I could tell she wanted details about the dinner at Lanie’s, but the kind of details I knew she wanted—the hugging, the forgiving of past sins—had been overshadowed by the more ominous aspects that had kept me awake all night. Rather than tell the truth and crush her hope, I hedged. “It was nice of Lanie and Adam to have us over. Ann’s sure a doll, huh?”
Aunt A’s face lit up at the mention of her grandniece, and she began telling me about a dance recital last spring in which Ann—according to Aunt A, at least, hardly an unbiased party—had been the star of the show.
“Caleb seemed pretty taken with her, too,” I said. “Hey, where is Caleb?”
“He’s set up an office in the craft room,” she said, gesturing upstairs. “Poor man, it sounded as though he had a bunch of work to take care of.”
“Yeah, he’s always really busy when he gets back from abroad.” I nodded. “Is Ellen around? When was that Pilates class she was mentioning?”
Aunt A frowned. “Your cousin is off ruining the good looks God gave her.”
“Oh,” I said, suppressing a smile as I remembered Ellen’s morning plans. “The Botox.”
The previous afternoon, Ellen had informed me she had arranged to have Trina Thompson highlight her hair and treat her wrinkles. I had been horrified she was letting Trina—who had been legendary in high school for freaking out during dissection day in Biology—go anywhere near her face with a needle.
“She’s a trained aesthetician,” Ellen had informed me rather huffily. “Besides, Gabby Aldridge got Botox from her, and you saw Gabby the other day. She looks just like she did in high school, if not better. You might want to consider making an appointment yourself.”
I had changed the subject just as her probing fingers reached for my forehead.
“Do you want to come to church with me?” Aunt A asked. “I’m leaving in a few minutes, but I’ll wait for you to shower if you want to come.”
“Oh, you go ahead,” I said, dropping a piece of bread into the toaster. “I need breakfast and coffee before I can even think about going anywhere. Anyway, I need to look for flights back to New York.”