Key Lime Pie (36 page)

“Not
just
a girlfriend,” Larry said. “A girlfriend Eric took up with
before
he divorced Layla.”

Sadie lifted her eyebrows and looked at Eric again. He was shooting such daggers at Larry that she feared he’d lunge toward the other man at any minute. Sadie thought back to Eric’s explanation of how Larry had been angry with Eric when he learned about the divorce, feeling as though he’d abandoned Layla. Perhaps Larry had a good reason to feel the way he did.

Larry continued, directing his words to Sadie. “Let me guess, he told you he was a saint during that marriage, right? That he took care of Layla, did everything he could to help her get better?” The sarcasm was sharp. “The truth is that he resented Layla for not being who he wanted her to be, and he left her with nothing but monthly disability checks that barely paid for a one-bedroom apartment.”

“Larry,” Eric said in a warning tone.

Larry ignored it. “He also said he left
purely
for Megan’s sake, right?” He shook his head before Eric or Sadie could respond, turning his attention to Eric and narrowing his eyes. “Megan’s never believed that, and neither have I.”

Sadie was trying to think of what to say when Eric beat her to it. “I made some mistakes,” Eric said, shaking his head but sounding more angry than repentant. “But no one knows what it was like watching Layla ignore Megan every day. No one can understand how hard it was trying to pretend we were still a normal family.”

“I do,” Larry said. “But even when I reached my breaking point, I didn’t abandon Layla.”

“You didn’t have a daughter to worry about,” Eric said.

Sadie reflected on the words Eric had used when he’d explained things to Sadie: “slowly drowning.” She didn’t doubt that was true, even in light of this new information, but . . .

“That’s not why you left,” Larry replied, his words even sharper.

“I did my best for as long as I could,” Eric continued, but he didn’t meet Sadie’s eyes despite her watching him closely. “And I finally broke. It was no good for Megan, and—”

“No,” Larry broke in. “You
didn’t
leave for Megan. You left for yourself—for Rita, then Karen, and then Naomi. Megan wanted to stay. She told you that.”

“You can’t understand!” Eric practically yelled. “And it was better for Megan to leave, even if she didn’t want to. It was too much for her to try to make sense of.”

“But she could come stay with us on the weekends when you had better things to do?” Larry asked in a mocking tone. “She could spend her summers here when you wanted to hit the beach with whoever your hottie was that season?”

Eric’s cheeks began turning red, and Sadie found herself not wanting to talk about this anymore. She had no reason to know these things about Eric, but wasn’t sure how to segue into something else.

Larry continued, “You can’t have it both ways, Eric. Layla wasn’t good for Megan except when you didn’t want her
cramping your style,
then it was okay for her to have a relationship with her mother.” He waved toward the equipment again. “You think I do this because I like it? Because this is the kind of contribution I want to make to society? I did what it took to make sure Layla was okay, Eric. I risk my future every day to make sure she’s taken care of.”

“But you’re leaving now, too, aren’t you?” Sadie cut in quickly, watching as guilt sprang into Larry’s eyes. “Everything that’s happened has made your situation precarious, so you’re leaving.”

“That’s right,” Eric chimed in, obviously looking for a way to turn things on Larry. “You’re willing to take off and leave now that the heat is on. Some hero you are.”

Larry didn’t have an answer for that, and Sadie wondered if he’d thought through his actions in that light or if he was just in a panic, seeing circumstances closing in around him.

“Megan came to see Layla the night she disappeared, didn’t she?” Sadie asked, worried Larry would clam up if she didn’t keep pushing.

Larry looked surprised but didn’t say anything.

Eric, on the other hand, turned to look at Sadie. “What?” he snapped, as though he had some reason to be angry with
her.

Sadie glanced between both men, one surprised and one confirming her suspicions by the look of surrender on his face. “Megan wasn’t a party girl, and she missed her mother,” she began. “Maybe going away to school was her attempt to break free, I don’t know, but she was suddenly a few hours away from home, feeling insecure, and so she came back to the one thing she wanted more than anything—her mother.”

Both men just looked at her, stunned for different reasons. “How do you know that?” Eric finally asked, sounding offended.

“Megan was twenty-two when she chose to go away to college,” Sadie said, looking him in the eye and silently pleading with him to open himself up to the possibilities. “She visited her mother every chance she could get. She was obviously looking for something, Eric, and running away from it at the same time.” She paused for a breath and glanced at Larry, who was hanging on her every word, before focusing her attention back to Eric. “You said you left Layla because you broke under the pressure. Megan broke too. She broke that night she came back here, but she needed more distance than you did.”

Eric shook his head. “Her car was still at the motel.”

“That doesn’t mean she didn’t leave by choice,” Sadie said, feeling a mixture of frustration and compassion. He needed to accept the possibility that Megan could be
that
unhappy if he were going to deal with whatever else was lying ahead of him. “It wouldn’t have been difficult for someone to return her car to the motel. Her friend didn’t look for it until the next morning anyway.”

She looked at Larry and asked quietly, “She
always
came back to Layla, didn’t she?”

She waited for Larry to refute what she’d said so far. He didn’t. “You said she’d wanted to leave for a long time, and that she knew you could help her. Why did you run out of excuses to help her that night?”

He blinked, but then lowered his head and allowed his shoulders to fall forward—his first sign of defeat. “She
did
go to school in an attempt to get away from her past. She hoped that college would fill her life and help her forget how much it hurt not to matter to her own mother.”

“That’s not true,” Eric cut in, shaking his head. “She went to school because she—”

“I’m the one who talked to her a few times a week, Eric,” Larry said, slapping his own chest for emphasis and squaring his shoulders once again. “You shut her down every time she tried to talk to you about how she felt; you told her not to worry about it so much. You told her that she needed to move on. She
couldn’t
move on, and I was the only person she could talk to about it because I understood—I couldn’t move on either. I couldn’t make peace with what had happened or simply pretend that Layla wasn’t
Layla
anymore.” He looked back at Sadie. “Megan just wanted to sit next to her mom on the couch and watch TV that night—just be close to her. She didn’t even realize she was wearing that stupid bracelet until Layla saw it. Tia called me around two o’clock, freaking out and telling me Megan was hurt. When I got to the house, Tia was holding a bloody dish towel to Megan’s arm—apparently Layla had tried to cut the bracelet from Megan’s wrist.”

“That’s why there were no knives in the kitchen,” Sadie said, remembering the broken rolls they’d had with the barbeque chicken. She also pictured the ugly scar she’d seen on Megan’s forearm that hadn’t been in the police report. “You didn’t take her to the hospital?”

Larry shook his head. “Megan was afraid Layla would get in trouble so Tia and I bandaged up her arm as best we could. Megan was an absolute wreck.” He looked at the floor for a moment as he put his hands in his pockets. “Layla had attacked her, and it caused everything to implode. Megan couldn’t stand it anymore and begged me to help her, begged me to make her into a new person the way I’d been doing for other people. She wanted me to use my contacts and send her somewhere she could start over—
really
start over—and she was willing to leave everything behind to make it work. I couldn’t say no.” He looked at Eric, and Sadie saw the glimmer of him
wanting
Eric to understand. “She was so miserable.”

“You should have talked to me,” Eric said, still angry, still tense. “If I’d known she was struggling, I’d have gotten her help.”

“That’s just it,” Larry said, sounding frustrated. His expression, which had softened moments earlier, hardened again. “You
didn’t
know, but it was so obvious. She planned to contact you when the police had stopped looking for her and she was strong enough to explain what she’d done and why. By the time she was ready, you’d already left Florida and started over in Colorado. Your old numbers were disconnected—it sent a pretty strong message.”

Eric finally got it. He’d been on the defensive, but he now looked as though he’d been punched in the stomach. Sadie wanted to reach out to him, but wondered if he needed to fully face this, no matter how painful it was.

“Don’t you get it?” Larry cried now that Eric seemed to understand what he’d said. “Layla’s abandonment was painful, but it wasn’t something she did on purpose—it was a horrible accident. But you abandoned Megan in a completely different way. When I agreed to help her that night, she didn’t
want
you to know where she was because she didn’t think you would let her go. And because of what you’ve done since then, she still doesn’t trust you. How did you think she’d contact you if she were alive, Eric? Did you even once consider that moving halfway across the country might make it impossible for her to come back? To find you?”

“I thought she was . . .”

“Dead,” Larry finished when Eric didn’t. “And you know what, she wasn’t the only one who thought maybe you wished she was. Maybe you wished you could free yourself of the problem of Megan just like you’d freed yourself from the problem of Layla.”

Eric looked down, and it seemed as though he’d shrunk two inches in the last thirty seconds. His bursts of defensiveness had been spent. Larry had finally made his point, and Eric was reeling, perhaps looking at himself in a new light—a very painful one.

“You kept in touch with her?” Sadie asked Larry, purposely keeping her voice calm, hoping it would ease some of the tension in the room. She took a step toward Eric and reached for his hand. He let her take it, but didn’t return the squeeze she offered him. The other women Larry had mentioned came to mind, but Sadie wasn’t worried about that. She wasn’t Eric’s girlfriend—would never be one of
those
women—but she was his friend, and he needed to know he wasn’t alone.

“Occasionally,” Larry said, and he was the wary one now. “I had to be very careful. As time has gone by, she contacts me less and less. She doesn’t want the connections to her old life anymore.”

“Did you send her to Puerto Rico?” Sadie asked.

Larry shook his head again. “A friend in Texas helped her out in the beginning. Puerto Rico came later.”

“A friend?” What kind of friend helped a man with something like this, Sadie wondered.

“A client,” Larry clarified. “He coordinates documents with me, then helps people become established.”

“Hugo Montez?” Sadie guessed, causing Larry’s eyes to go wide and his mouth to open for only a moment. “The tipster,” she said to Eric as he looked at her with confusion. “His license plate was from Texas, and he was trying to help Megan be found.” He was also somehow related to Megan—well, to Liliana anyway.

Larry looked between the two of them before folding his arms across his chest. “Hugo found her a job at a bakery in Galveston. She worked there while I set up her identity.”

“Lucile Powell,” Sadie said. The name from the driver’s license found with the body.

Larry nodded. “She found friends who didn’t feel sorry for her because they didn’t know they should. She took a lot of pride in her work at the bakery and moved into her own studio apartment. Once she’d been known as Lucy long enough to have confidence in the new identity, she called me and said Hugo had found her a nanny job in Puerto Rico.” He flicked a glance at Eric before turning his attention back to Sadie.

She was beginning to feel a little silly holding Eric’s hand when he didn’t seem to notice, so she loosened her grip and he let her go.

Larry kept talking, and she folded her arms over her chest and listened intently. “She felt Puerto Rico would be the ultimate new start—a new country, a new life altogether, and she wouldn’t even need a passport to get there.”

“Well, she definitely got a new life,” Sadie said, glad she wasn’t the one who would have to feel responsible for what had happened between then and now. It would be a heavy burden to shoulder, and as she looked at Larry, she wondered how he’d managed it so far. “I’m guessing the new employer was Alex Montez, who had two sons and a wife named Liliana.”

Larry couldn’t hide his surprise . . . again. “How did you know that?”

“Megan’s been living as his wife, using his wife’s name—Liliana Montez—and, I suspect, raising her children.” By the look on Larry’s face she could tell he hadn’t known that bit of information. Megan was keeping secrets from everyone it seemed.

Eric was staring at her too.

“I think the body the police found was the
real
Liliana Montez,” Sadie explained. “Hugo must have come to regret the part he’d played, so when Megan came to Miami for this surgery, he started setting things up for her to be discovered—preventing her from returning to Alex. I don’t know how the bracelet ended up with Liliana, but it certainly got the police looking for Megan, didn’t it?”

They were all silent for several seconds. She kept her eyes fixed on Larry, hoping he would keep talking. She wasn’t disappointed.

“When you live off false papers, you have to exist in the margins of typical society. I explained that to Megan when I first sent her with Hugo, and she seemed to understand. When she told me about the job in Puerto Rico, I looked into Alex. He’d had some trouble, but nothing serious. I had no idea he was . . . the man she told me she’d married. She seemed so . . . happy. Just as I wanted her to be.”