Part 6
Lena struggled with the sleeve. Margaret took the coat and held it open for her.
The gesture embarrassed them both.
Once Lena had it on, Margaret said, “You are not losing your job.”
“I didn’t ask.”
“You were thinking it loudly.”
Lena looked down at the black-and-white tile.
Margaret continued. “Camille’s account changes each time she speaks. Yours has not.”
“That doesn’t mean you’ll want me here when this becomes public.”
“Why would it become public?”
“Police were in the driveway for four hours. The landscapers saw them. Two delivery trucks saw them. Mrs. Halprin across the road owns binoculars and considers privacy a personal insult.”
Margaret’s mouth moved, almost a smile. “That is true.”
“You can’t control this.”
“No.”
It was the first time Lena had heard her say those words without immediately proposing a method by which control might be restored.
Margaret looked toward the hall.
“Arthur signed papers yesterday.”
“What papers?”
“A revision to the family trust.”
Lena waited.
“He removed Grant as co-trustee.”
The information settled into the mudroom among rubber boots, umbrellas, and the faint smell of wet stone.
“Did Grant know?”
“He was going to be told this afternoon.”
“Did Camille know?”
“I don’t see how.”
“People hear things in houses.”
Margaret’s eyes sharpened. “Did you?”
“No.”
“Did Paul?”
“I doubt it.”
“Who prepared the documents?”
“Tom Bell.”
“The attorney Grant called.”
Margaret turned toward the kitchen.
Lena said, “That doesn’t prove anything.”
“No.”
“Why did Mr. Wexler remove him?”
Margaret’s expression closed.
“That is a family matter.”
The old phrase landed poorly after the morning they had shared.
Lena adjusted the strap of her sling. “Then your family matter may be standing in my blood sample and your police report.”
Margaret flinched.
Lena wished she could take back the sentence. She also knew it was true.
Outside, Paul started the car.
Margaret opened the door for her. Cold air entered the mudroom.
“I will tell you,” Margaret said. “When I know whether telling you places you in greater danger.”
Lena looked at her.
“You’re assuming I’m not already in it.”
That night, Simone slept on Lena’s couch with the television on low and her shoes lined neatly beside the door.
Lena’s apartment occupied the second floor of a brick building in Norwalk. It had two bedrooms, a narrow balcony, and a kitchen drawer that had stuck for six years. Arthur once offered to send the estate carpenter. Lena refused because the drawer belonged to her and could misbehave without becoming a Wexler project.
Simone arrived with groceries, pain relievers, and anger.
“You should sue them.”
“I’ve been home twelve minutes.”
“I decided in the car.”
“You decide most things in the car.”
“It’s where I have uninterrupted time.”
Simone was thirty-two, the same age as Camille, though no one would have mistaken their lives for parallel. She worked as an occupational therapist in a rehabilitation center and kept her dark curls cut short because patients often grabbed them. She had one son, a former husband she described as more useful after divorce, and a habit of cleaning when frightened.
By nine, Lena’s counters shone.
“Stop wiping that,” Lena said.
“It’s sticky.”
“It has always been sticky.”
“That’s not a defense.”
Simone put down the cloth and sat across from her. “Tell me exactly what happened.”
Lena did.
She kept the account factual. She left out Camille’s face when the capsule appeared. She left out Margaret holding her coat. She left out Arthur apologizing. Those details belonged to something she had not yet named.
When she finished, Simone said, “She could have killed him.”
“We don’t know that.”
“She secretly put a drug in a sick man’s drink.”
“We know she put a capsule in it. We don’t know what it was.”
“You sound like the detective.”
“The detective sounded sensible.”
Simone stared at the sling. “Did they fire her?”
“Camille doesn’t work there.”
“You know what I mean.”
“No one has fired anyone.”
“Did they make her leave?”
“Grant took her to their house in Darien after the interviews.”
“Of course he did.”
“What was he supposed to do?”
“Not escort the person who pushed my mother into a luxury car like she had a difficult spa appointment.”
Lena rubbed her thumb against the edge of the sling. “Families protect their own.”
Simone’s expression changed.
“You’re their own when it’s convenient.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
Lena got up too quickly. Pain moved through her arm.
Simone stood. “Sit down.”
“I need water.”
“I can get water.”
“I still know how.”
They faced each other in the small kitchen, both angry at Camille and using each other because Camille was not there.
Lena opened a cupboard with her right hand. A glass slipped against another and chimed.
The sound brought back the carafe breaking.
Her knees weakened.
Simone saw it. She took the glass without comment, filled it, and set it on the table.
Lena sat.
“I’m not staying there forever,” she said.
“You’ve said that since I was in high school.”
“I meant it differently then.”
“When will you mean it enough?”
Lena looked toward the balcony door. The reflection in the glass showed the kitchen behind her, every object ordinary and exactly where she had left it.
“I don’t know.”
Simone slept badly. Lena slept worse.
At six the next morning, her phone rang.
Arthur was calling.
She nearly let it go to voicemail. Then she pictured him pressing the wrong name because his reading glasses were missing.
“Mr. Wexler?”
“You sound terrible.”
“I’m injured.”
“Yes. Margaret said.”
“Then why are you surprised?”
“I am making conversation.”
“At six in the morning.”
“I’ve been awake since four.”
“That doesn’t make it morning for everyone else.”
He breathed into the phone. Lena could hear the small mechanical hiss of the humidifier beside his bed.
“Did you know I was removing Grant from the trust?” he asked.
“No.”
“Did Margaret tell you?”
“She told me after the police left.”
May you like
“Good.”
“Good that she told me or good that I didn’t know?”
