ONE YEAR EARLIER
“Do you want to hear some incredible gossip?” Kathy Tanner asks.
I hate myself for how excited I am about this. A piece of good gossip? That’s the highlight of my week. This is what my life has become. It is ten o’clock on a weekday morning, and I’ve been sitting in Kathy’s kitchen for the last fifteen minutes, drinking coffee and complaining about having stepped in a pile of dog crap right outside her house.
(Although honestly, what sort of psychopath lets their dog crap right on the sidewalk and then doesn’t clean it up? We live in a society, for God’s sake!)
“Of course,” I say.
Kathy flashes me an evil grin. “Are you sure? It’s about your BFF April.”
It doesn’t surprise me that the gossip is about April. People love to gossip about April, maybe because she’s the closest thing we’ve got to a celebrity in this town, thanks to her little YouTube show. It isn’t even that popular, which goes to show how little we have to talk about.
Also, Kathy doesn’t like April. It’s not entirely clear why, but it likely has something to do with the way her husband Mark is always flirting with April and staring at her breasts. To be fair, my husband always stares at April’s breasts too. Yet somehow it doesn’t bother me as much.
“Tell me,” I say.
Kathy giggles. “Okay, this is a good one. So you know how April sometimes talks about how she went to culinary school, but she decided it wasn’t for her?”
“Yes…”
“Well,” she lowers her voice, “I heard from a very reputable source that April did not leave culinary school voluntarily. She was kicked out.”
I clasp a hand over my mouth. “No…”
“Yes!” Kathy squeals. “And this is the best part. It’s because she was having an affair with one of her professors!”
I take a sip of my coffee, letting this little detail percolate in the back of my head. Somehow, it doesn’t surprise me that much. It seems like the sort of trouble April might get herself into. Maybe not now, but when she was younger.
Or maybe now. Hard to say.
“God, I can’t wait to tell everyone,” Kathy muses. “April acts like she’s such a big deal. This will totally put her in her place.”
I pick up my spoon and stir my coffee, even though it’s black. When I worked at the DA’s office, I got into the habit of drinking a cup of bitter black coffee every morning to wake me up, even though I hate the taste. And now I can’t break that habit. “Maybe you shouldn’t go around telling everyone.”
She rolls her eyes. “Come on. April deserves it. She’s awful. You know it better than anyone.”
I have some idea what she’s talking about. Obviously. That incident at the preschool—which we both got into, incidentally—was just the tip of the iceberg. April has an edge. Most people who know her well enough find out about it. Although most people just think she’s very sweet.
“I just think,” I say, “it’s better not to mess with April.”
Kathy snorts. “Please. If there were anything she wanted to do to me, she’d be doing it. I’m not worried.”
I can’t help but think that she’s wrong. She should be worried.
Today April and I are on our way to see her mother at the nursing home.
I met Janet Portland a few times before she became ill. She reminded me a lot of April. Very sweet and friendly and pretty for her age, with a similar build to April, even though she was thirty years older. One night a few months after I moved to the neighborhood, April and I went for drinks while Janet stayed behind to watch our boys, and I completely trusted her. She seemed very sensible and trustworthy.
That’s why I was surprised when barely six months after I moved in, April tearfully told me she had to put her mother in a nursing home. “The
doctors diagnosed her with early-onset dementia,” she says. “She just can’t be alone anymore. I had to get power of attorney.”
April ends every single episode of her show by telling her mother goodnight. It’s very sweet. It even melts my own icy heart a bit.
Now Janet lives at Shady Oaks, a nursing home about forty minutes away from where we live. We’re driving down there because April got the brilliant idea to include her mother in an episode. I have to admit, she has a lot of clever ideas. That’s why her show has taken off as much as it has, although it’s not nearly as successful as she likes to pretend it is.
“You remembered the extra butter, right?” April asks as we merge onto the highway.
“Check,” I say. April cooks with a horrifying amount of butter. It’s one of the reasons why I try not to eat her delicious treats anymore. Just because I don’t go to work anymore, it doesn’t mean I’m okay with not fitting into any of my suits.
She turns the radio down a notch as she glances at me. “Have you heard the horrible rumor Kathy Tanner is telling everybody about me?”
I toy with a loose thread on my blouse, debating whether I should tell the truth. “Yes. I heard it.”
April lets out a huff. “The nerve of her! It’s not true you know.” “Uh-huh.”
“It’s not,” she says more firmly. “It’s pure fiction Kathy made up just to make me look bad.”
“Right. I assumed.”
She flashes me a grateful smile. “I knew you wouldn’t believe it.
Honestly, I don’t know why Kathy hates me so much.” “She’s jealous,” I reply honestly.
“Well, she’s horrible.” April speeds up a bit to pass an SUV. “I don’t understand what Mark sees in her. She’s so vile, and he’s such a hottie. Don’t you think so?”
“I guess so.” Vaguely, I’m aware that Mark Tanner is attractive. At least, I know all the other mothers think so. But it’s not something I think about.
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.
