My stomach stirs with jealousy.
A very faint, insecure part of me is worried that Bram will wake up one day and see that he’s made an egregious error and leave me for someone newer and shinier with a lot less baggage. But, in truth, it was our baggage that drew us together, moth to the wicked flame.
Astrid offers a spontaneous applause. “Blackjack, roulette, poker, craps, gin rummy— we have it all. Best fundraiser we’ve ever had at Richard E. Moss. And I should know. I’ve been here for—”
“Eight years”—Tessa finishes for her and winks my way. “She has a six-year age gap between her boys. Two different baby daddies,” she whispers mischievously, lifting her glass my way.
“God, Tess.” Astrid yanks Bridget to her. “You can be so juvenile when you drink. One of these days, I’m going to murder you in your sleep.”
Bridget gives a husky chuckle. “Maybe you should both watch your backs.” She looks to me as she says it, no smile.
My God, some people never leave high school. It’s as if her brain were still imprisoned somewhere between home ec and an arduous gym class where they make you run the mile uphill both ways—and a part of me thinks she’d deserve it. She’s been subhuman to me from hello.
“Ignore them.” Tessa steps in close, that wide face of hers only seems to expand unnaturally as she leans in, the hot breath of scotch steaming my skin. “Ass is just jealous that your husband is way hotter than hers. She actually had the balls to ask me how much a dentist earns. She feels threatened because you moved into the same neighborhood. She’s used to being the richest, and the prettiest, but you’ve upturned her on both counts.” She gives my ribs a quick pinch and belts out a cheerful guffaw.
My cheeks flush at the thought of outshining Ms. Percy Bay herself, but I’d gladly steal both titles if they were true.
“And what about Bridget?” Her name comes out with disdain on my part, my own vodka tonic boozy breath joining the party. In truth, everyone under this seemingly innocent gym roof has a high-octane blood count right about now. We voted in the liquor once we heard that patrons were apt to spend up to three times more than expected if they had a healthy helping of alcohol running through their veins. Astrid pointed out that people were more apt to get laid that way, too, ensuring a good time would be had by all. “She’s so stoically quiet it’s as if she’s hiding something.” I doubt it. She’s not sinister or dark enough in the slightest, just your run-of-the-mill vapid phone-to-ear moron who wears heels for no good reason. If giving dirty looks were an Olympic feat, she could medal. Not to mention she still thinks cliques and popularity scales are a thing.
“Oh, Bridge knows where all the bodies are buried.” Tessa lifts her chin as if driving home the point, and a shiver runs through me.
Not an analogy I want flaunted in a social circle I was desperately trying to inject myself into.
A moment stumps by as Tessa’s eyes remain locked on mine, and I wonder if she’s trying to tell me something. That familiar burn in the pit of my stomach starts in, and I have to get out of here, must get some air.
“I think I’m going to run to the little girls’ room.” I start to head that way, and Tessa pulls me back by the elbow.
Her prairie green eyes shine like quarters in the sun. “We’re all looking forward to the kids’ party on Sunday. Please let me know if I can bring anything.”
A flood of relief washes over me. The normalcy I long for is still within reach.
“Just yourselves, and, of course, your kids. Lilly and Jack are over the moon. Bram’s rented a bounce house, and I’ve got enough cake on order to ensure Smile Wide will have a steady stream of clients for the next year straight.” We share a quick laugh and I’m on my way, breezing through the crowd of glammed-up soccer moms and their paunch-bellied companions, who actually look mildly pleased to be at the quasi-cool school function. It’s a win for the PTA, a win for the dismal fiscal state of the slush fund we’re looking to enrich, and a win for the newly-minted Woods—who might not be out of the woods just yet.
The faint whisper of my name, my full name arrests me. So faint, threadbare, but I heard it. I follow the sound with caution as I head for the back and an arresting spray of sanguine liquid catches my eye. The cleanup committee, the spray paint, it all cycles through my mind in two seconds flat. I bend over and slip my fingers through the greasy mess and sniff it—copper scented. I know this smell, this ruby red sin of a feel—blood indeed. I take a few careful steps into the darkened corridor, and that’s when I see her, brunette, pretty, eyes wide open, a wire cinching her neck to the size of a dime, her left hand mutilated, and I scream.
It seems Bram and I are never really out of the woods.
* * *
A body,a corpse, right there at Richard E. Moss Elementary, and, of course, I had to find her. My bad luck knows no end. The image of the woman stains my brain and I can’t escape her. She lies over my eyes like a film, an overlay that demands I see my own children through her body.
Sunday shows up like an axe-wielding intruder, a threat to my sanity, as I swing around the house in an unreasonable dress with a full skirt like some 1950s housewife, with my turquoise leather flats, my hair curled ridiculously as if I were going to prom circa 1988. I’ve dusted and cleaned, buffed and polished until the house gleams like a river stone.
Lena has been hostage in the kitchen for the better part of a day and a half, making sure the side dishes are just so, cutting the crusts off mounds of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Cooking is her forte, not mine, and it’s times like this I’m grateful for it.
Bram has left to pick up a stack of cheese pizzas, and at the last minute I asked him to throw in a few buckets of fried chicken. Lena has made her signature Chinese chicken salad in a bowl the size of a bathtub. She assures me that all the mothers will devour it before begging for the recipe, and I’m guessing she’s right.
I’m new to the kiddie party scene. Lena is, too. Lena, my older sister by two years, has been dutifully by my side since birth, my only companion for so long, my only friend. Our mother shaved our heads before we could properly walk or talk and kept us glued to wheelchairs we didn’t need, feeding us a pittance of a diet to keep us morbidly thin, sheltering us from the sun to keep us sinfully pale, and that is how she made a living. Donations from churches and her various places of part-time employment proved a nice subsidy for us for a long time. She claimed we were homeschooled, very ill, too ill to venture outside and have a normal life, but she paraded us around when she needed to. But it was Lena and I who taught each other to read, to learn every basic skill in life we could get our hands on. Our father (which I’m assuming were two different men) was nothing more than an enigma to us. Once, my mother mentioned she had met him in a bar, and I figured we were the products of one-night stands. A darker thought had come along, though, and I wondered if my mother was turning tricks at the time. She herself was virtually abandoned. She had one sister who lived nearby, and neither of them had been successful at life.
But, in truth, we were Cordelia Van Lullen’s favorite crutches, living in a bubble of her own making, turning a dollar faster than she ever could off those minimum wage jobs she held. We were a curious burden to her at first, quickly followed by an amusement, and then a very serious source of income. Eventually, Lena and I figured out we were just fine—not one damned thing wrong with our well-functioning bodies, so we moved in with my aunt in high school, but not before we suffered abject humiliation and were run out of town, our pictures plastered all over the news, national media, our mother arrested for a time. Both Lena and I tried our hand at junior college. We were avid readers, self-taught mostly, but as fate and our mother’s selfish agenda would have it, we were not scholastically inclined. Lena works for a local caterer, and I write children’s chapter books in my spare time that I’m hoping to sell one day.
That body. It floats to my mind at all the wrong times—in the shower, on the toilet, making love to Bram. I still see her startled eyes, bulging and crimson. Her pink tongue fat between her lips. And the blood. My God, my stomach turns just thinking about it, and I quickly usher the corpse away.
Instead, I force my gaze to flit out the window. The clouds are dark and fat on this late March afternoon, and the bounce house is steadily wobbling from side to side. Lilly and Jack scream to unholy levels from inside it, screaming with glee, of course. I know all of their whispers and whimpers, and these are of the joyful variety.
I pass the hall, and my eye catches on those framed black and white prints of Isla and Henry, doppelgangers of Lilly and Jack. Those mops of dark heads, those smiling Irish eyes—
it’s all so very eerie.
