“Damn it.” Beverleygrabs either side of the hedge trimmers and tries to pry them apart. The heat has a hold of everything, making the tool stubborn.
“Don’t force it!” Beverley’s mother hollers from her deck chair, positioned in the center of the front lawn to give her an acceptable view of Beverley at work. Alice takes a sip of her iced tea, crosses her knees, in slim white Jax pants, and peers over the top of her glasses. Her eyes are framed with sweeps of pale blue Avon eye shadow.
“You always force things.” Alice flaps a hand. “They’ll break, Beverley. You need to be more delicate.”
Beverley’s toes clench in her Chanel slip-ons; she can still feel the sand between them from the lake yesterday. She wishes she could do more to find out about Cheryl Herrera and her possible links to the Kings, but, unlike Elsie, she doesn’t have access to an office full of crime reporters to draw on. She does, however, have her scrapbook. Maybe she could look through some of the old articles in there, see if any of them mentions an arrow.
The shears spring open suddenly. Beverley flinches, sighs and then wipes the sweat from her brow with her forearm. She scours the front yard, squinting in the glare of the sun. There’s a lump in the grass, she notices. Meatball, the kids’ pet tortoise, is forging a slow, determined path toward the road. She puts the shears down and gathers the tortoise in her arms, his shell alarmingly hot from the sun. She wishes she could get rid of the animal—Henry brought it home for Benjamin when he was tiny, one of his many impulsive acts, and whenever she sees it she can’t help thinking of him—but you can’t really burn a tortoise in the backyard like she did with the rest of her husband’s possessions.
Alice watches silently as Beverley takes the creature inside and deposits him in the more secure surrounds of the kitchen. She leaves the door open when she returns, so she can hear the radio. The news bulletin will be on soon.
“Do you know what this song is called, Beverley, what they just said?” Alice scrunches her face in distaste. “Bev?”
But Beverley is distracted. The new neighbor across the street—Mr. Appleton, number forty-four, the man Margot joked would ogle Beverley’s laundry—has opened his door and is making his way down his front path.
“Bev!” her mother calls again, incredulous. “It’s called ‘Let’s Go Get Stoned.’ Can you believe that?”
Mr. Appleton reaches his trash can, quickly surveys the street and then pulls the lid open, depositing what looks to be a bundle of blankets inside. He glances up and their eyes briefly meet, alarm flaming in Beverley’s chest. But before she remembers her manners, before she can raise a forced hand in greeting, he has turned, hurrying with hunched shoulders back up the path.
“I’ve a right mind to call the station and complain.” Alice reclines in her seat again, the ice in her tumbler clinking. “It’s uncouth havingthe radio blaring out like this anyway. All the neighbors can hear. I’mtryingto relax.”
Her mother is not relaxing. Her mother has little interest in relaxing when she can observe Beverley’s chores and deliver feedback instead.
Beverley picks up the shears and chews the side of her mouth. Mr. Appleton shuts the door behind him and she allows her eyes to linger on it, waiting to see if he’ll open it again, peer out. But all is still, so she turns her attention back to her own front yard. It’s looking good, neat. All the bushes are cut back, so there’s nowhere for anything, or anyone, to lurk. The neatness, the tidiness, is a ritual she’s been practicing ever since Henry was arrested. Neat and tidy keeps them safe.
“Did you call Ann Ember’s son?” Alice asks, running her fingers over her set gray-blond hair, then checking her manicure. Alice’s beauty has hardened into a brittle mask with age, although she is still clearly a woman who looks after herself, who smells of lotion and expensive perfume even while gardening. Beverley has seen pictures of her mother at her own age. They could be twins. Their smooth, clear skin so pale that their eyelids are almost translucent, laced with delicate purple veins; a dash of freckles across the nose; a sharply bowed top lip; full cheeks. How distressing it must be, Beverley sometimes thinks, when all you have to cling to is your looks, to have your former youth paraded in front of you, a reminder of everything that you have lost.
“I hope you’ve agreed on a date,” Alice says. “He was really looking forward to hearing from you. Ann will be so disappointed if—”
Beverley tunes out the sound of her mother’s voice. Alice has been trying to set her up with men for the past couple of years. She says it’s damaging for the children not to have a male presence in their lives, that the neighbors would respect Beverley more if she had a partner. Beverley knows that it’s wisest not to point out that she herself spentmost of her childhood without a man in the house. Her father was unimaginative in his indiscretions, and before he left, Beverley stumbled upon him, more than once, with other women. A chaotic man, he was reliable in his cheating, and his cheating only. While Alice was busy in the kitchen during dinner parties, seeing to guests, arranging deviled eggs on trays, the skin of her neck blotchy from too many gimlets, he could be found with brassy blondes or feline brunettes in the bedroom he was supposed to share with his wife, trousers around his ankles, cigar dangling from beneath his mustache.
“I really haven’t had a chance, Mom.”
It’s true. Beverley has been preoccupied, and not only with the Cheryl Herrera case. She had a call that rattled her yesterday—the producer from the news channel, following up on his letter, asking if she would appear on their morning show to mark the anniversary of Henry’s arrest. Beverley had no idea how he’d found her number. She was supposed to have been delisted. She had stammered out an apology and slammed the phone down in panic.
Alice heaves a sigh. “You know”—she shifts forward on the deck chair, and Beverley knows she’s in for it—“it’s hurtful that you do not seize the opportunities I present to you, Beverley.”
Beverley takes a breath.
“I’m sorry you think I’m a waste of space and that you don’t need me—”
“I do need you, Mom.” It always goes this way, Alice wounded and Beverley begging for forgiveness.You want me to be unhappy because it means I’ll never leave you.That’s what her mother said once, but Beverley knows that every word of the accusation was a truth about Alice herself.
Mrs. Akerman from a few doors down walks by with her chocolate dachshund. Beverley forces a smile. Alice springs up from her seat, almost curtsying as the woman strolls past.
“Good morning, Mrs. Akerman,” Beverley calls.
The woman glances up, then snaps her attention back to the sidewalk, strides a little faster.
Alice purses her lips. “Now the neighbors know how you treat me.”
Beverley is used to being ignored by the neighbors. They’d clung to her like curious birds in the aftermath of Henry’s arrest. They were so sure, just as Beverley had been, that the police had arrested the wrong man.
Poor Beverley. Here’s a casserole.
Poor Beverley. I’ll just stop by for a cup of coffee, and we can have a good chat about it all.
They wanted gossip, of course, and they gawped wide-eyed as she described helicopter blades, officers streaming in, spreading dirt across the carpets, the mess the cadaver dogs made of the roses in the yard. When it became clear that Henry, the Heatwave Killer, had in fact murdered seven women, the birds retreated. Fast. Beverley was ostracized. If she was passing a neighbor as they were getting out of their car, they’d wait inside until she’d reached the end of the street. If someone was watering their lilacs and Beverley came out of her house to do the same, they’d put down their watering cans and slip wordlessly back inside. Accusations swirled around the street; everyone had an opinion.She needs to go down as an accomplice,she’d hear them whisper.I don’t understand how she’s not as culpable as he is. There is no way in hell she didn’t know.
