Lie in Plain Sight (6 page)

Trish looked at her. “Are you firing me?”

“No. I'm not firing you. You have other things to attend to. You have to find your daughter. Coming to work every day may not be the best thing for you right now.”

But Trish wasn't buying what Maeve was selling.

“Really. Come back when Taylor comes home,” Maeve said.

“And what if she doesn't come home?” Trish asked, clearly without any hope that the situation would change. Maeve just couldn't figure out why. There had to be more to this story than she knew, and by the look on Trish's face, Maeve wasn't sure she wanted to know.

Jo poked her head into the kitchen. “There's a kid here from the high school who says you have something for him. A donation?”

Trish was silent as Maeve rooted around her desk for the envelope with her donation for the Mississippi trip. “Here. Give this to him.”

“Bye, Trish,” Jo said, making herself scarce, wanting to be part of the drama and eschewing it at the same time.

Maeve turned back to the bereft mother, the woman with the shortest employment in history on record at The Comfort Zone, trying to find some kind of common ground with her. “Trish, you have to have hope. Chris and everyone else in the police department are going to do everything they can to find her.” Now she was defending the Farringville police, who, as a group, sometimes needed a little help in the investigation department. They tried, but for something like this, Maeve suspected that they were all in way over their collective head, something she would never articulate to Chris.

Trish stood next to the counter for a few minutes, looking at Maeve for an uncomfortably long time. “Thanks for nothing, Maeve,” she said.

“Founders Day, Trish. I'll need help.” Maybe in the meantime she would find out that she had lost the money herself, that Trish wasn't to blame. Until then, and only then, she would stand by her decision.

“I don't need help in a few weeks, Maeve, I need help now.”

With nowhere else to look, Maeve looked up at the ceiling, thinking. Having Trish in the store didn't seem like the right thing, particularly in light of the missing cash, not to mention her missing daughter. Trish took the silence to mean that Maeve was standing her ground, that she didn't want her back.

“Thanks for nothing,” she said again.

She needed someone to blame. Maeve could see that. She remembered the advice of the adolescent-expert author and tried not to take it personally, but Trish's anger was ten times stronger than it had ever been from either of her daughters. Like an altercation with a teen, the ones the author claimed had underdeveloped brains, this conversation had gone south quickly, and there was no getting it back on track. Maeve watched as Trish exited the kitchen and got into her car, the engine roaring to life just before she drove away, leaving a trail of exhaust in her wake.

Jo came back into the kitchen. “She's a mess.”

“Understandably so,” Maeve said, wrapping her arms around herself. She looked at Jo. “If I give you a three-dollar an hour raise and you only have to work from eleven to close, will you come back?”

Jo smiled. “I thought you'd never ask.”

 

CHAPTER 7

Heather had the late shift at the grocery store that night, something that Cal knew and tried to take advantage of. He showed up at Maeve's a little past eight, and although she wasn't expecting him exactly, she'd had a feeling he'd show up, despite their last conversation.

She didn't open the door. “I wasn't kidding.”

“Don't worry. We're safe,” Cal said, letting himself in. “Larsson is working the night shift. I saw him at Dunkin' Donuts.”

“Maybe he was just getting a coffee.”

“Or maybe he was getting a doughnut.” Cal shrugged off his sweatshirt and hung it on the newel post. “As cops do.”

“I don't know why you don't like him, Cal,” Maeve said, picking up the sweatshirt when it fell to the ground. “He's a great guy. I love him, actually.”

Cal raised an eyebrow. “Really? You love him? Could you?” He waved a hand in the space between the two of them. “With this going on?” He leaned in and nuzzled her neck. “This is kind of hot, don't you think?”

It had started out innocently enough, a mistake that she wasn't planning on making or repeating. The summer coming to an end, he had come to pick up Heather, forgetting about her job at the grocery store, that on certain nights she worked late. Rather than drive the one mile home to his gorgeous, spacious Tudor, complete with adorable toddler and gorgeous wife, he had elected to stay to wait for his daughter, diving into the bottle of Falanghina that Maeve had opened up for herself and had planned to finish. She was three-quarters of the way through it, her senses pleasantly dulled, when he arrived, telling her things she didn't want to hear. Gabriela didn't love him. It wasn't working. He needed a change. It was all stuff she had heard before, and it bored her, but that night, delicious white wine running through her veins, she felt loose. And he felt familiar. So she had let him kiss her once, and then kiss her again, knowing it was a mistake, understanding that it could never happen again but powerless to stop it. Before she knew it, it was more than she had bargained for, a cry leaving her lungs that she hadn't heard herself utter since her marriage had ended.

She had awoken the next morning with a pounding headache, and had leaned over the sink while filling her palm with water and drinking it down, the thought of what she had done not eliciting the feelings she had expected upon awaking. There was no shame, there was no guilt. There was one strange, unfamiliar feeling, a feeling she shouldn't have had.

Satisfaction.

He had left her so unceremoniously years earlier, and that wound, she had come to find, had never closed. Now, the morning after, the feeling of his chest and his cheek and his mouth all coming back to her, she remembered when it had been good before it had become bad. It wasn't her; it wasn't that she wasn't attractive enough, or adventurous enough, or sexy enough. It was him and what he needed and wanted. And what he wanted right now was her, and that was enough.

She had looked at herself in the mirror the next morning. She looked the same; she smelled the same, with maybe a little more cinnamon about her than a normal woman. She was exactly the same except that now, she was no longer the dowdy ex-wife, the junker that had been traded in for a new model, but the shiny new thing that her ex-husband—him with his self-diagnosed adult-onset ADHD—couldn't get enough of.

“We're done with this, Cal,” she said, pushing him away now. “I was just about to have some leftovers, and you're welcome to join me. But if you're not hungry, then you should go home. To your
wife.
” She pulled the leftover chicken out of the refrigerator, the containers with the mashed potatoes and gravy, the plastic-covered bowl of string beans. She knew that at his house, carbs were never on the menu and gravy was something of an urban legend, served at the local Greek diner but never in the Tudor. Beside her in the small kitchen, she could practically feel Cal salivating over the feast that she was about to prepare, even though it was two days old.

“Where's Devon?” she asked.

“With Gabriela. She's making an effort to get home earlier so she can spend time with him.”

“Really?” Maeve asked. In the child's short life, Maeve had never seen his mother hold him. “Why the change of heart?”

“She doesn't like the baby stage. Now that he's a toddler, she's bonding with him more. He can talk now. Interact. She likes that.”

Maeve prepared two plates of leftovers and put one at a time in the microwave. “And where does she think you are tonight, Cal?”

“Bible study at church.”

“I don't know whether to laugh or gag.”

“You can do both.” He came up behind her and put his arms around her waist. “I'm really bad,” he whispered. “I probably
should
go to Bible study.”

“You probably should. You should throw in a couple of stints in the confessional as well.” Maeve pulled his plate out of the microwave and placed it on the table. She was one to talk. “Here. Eat this.”

He dived into the food like a man on death row eating his last meal. “I forgot how much I love your gravy.”

“It's all about the roux,” she said, pouring them both a glass of wine and joining him at the table with her own plate. “Listen, Cal. I'm not kidding. This has to stop.”

He looked up from his plate long enough to give her a Bronx cheer. “Says who?”

“Says your wife.”

He dropped his fork onto his plate and gave her his undivided attention.

“She had a meltdown during spin class, and someone overheard her telling a friend that she thinks you're cheating.”

“Huh,” he said.

“We're done. The thought of her crying at the gym is not one I want to carry around.”

“You feel sorry for her? After everything?” Cal asked.

“I feel sorry for any woman who is saddled with a lying, cheating asshole for a husband.”

He looked, at that moment, as if he felt coming here had been a huge mistake, the delicious gravy notwithstanding.

“Are you sleeping with someone else? Other women?” Maeve asked.

His denial was so vociferous and swift that it had to be a lie; she knew him well, something he failed to take into account. “No! How could you even imply that?” He pushed his plate away. “You really know how to break a mood, Maeve.”

She didn't believe him but that didn't matter. “It's my gift,” she said. “More potatoes?”

He crossed his arms over his chest. “No. No more potatoes.”

“Lost your appetite?” she asked.

He had the same expression on his face that Heather used to get when Maeve put her in time-out. His plans for the evening changed, he pushed his chair back. “I'm gonna go. Will you bring Heather over later?”

“No.”

“No?”

“No,” she said. “Cal, I won't bring Heather over later because you're in a snit because I won't sleep with you and you refuse to wait for her. I won't bring Heather over because I'm completely exhausted from work and from lying awake at night wondering where Taylor Dvorak may have gone. I won't bring Heather over because it's your responsibility to make sure she gets to your house when she is supposed to be there.” She realized she was yelling. “I won't.”

He grabbed his sweatshirt on the way out. “Remember when I said that you had changed?”

Maeve was halfway between the kitchen and the front door, her hands wound up in a dish towel.

“Well, you haven't,” he said, pulling the sweatshirt over his head. “You're exactly the same.” He slammed the screen door on the way out, not unlike an adolescent being sent to his room.

Maeve watched him drive off in the minivan and, without a second thought, returned to her leftovers, scraping his uneaten food onto her plate and having herself a feast.

 

CHAPTER 8

Jo found a daycare in town that would take Jack for the hours she needed and came to work the next day complaining that her husband, Doug, was none too happy that the stay-at-home wife and mother he thought he married was really someone who, if she spent another minute pushing the baby's swing at the park and didn't go back to work at least part-time, might go completely insane.

“He's kind of old-fashioned,” Jo said, stating the obvious. Maeve had known that from the moment she met the guy, touting Jo's pot roast on her single friend's behalf; that was all he needed to hear to make a beeline for the divorcée, and it wasn't long before they were engaged, getting married, and having the baby Jo always wanted. “But I told him that I would be a better wife if I could get out of the house for a few hours every day.”

Maeve turned and looked at her. “Who are you?” Gone was the free spirit that Maeve had become friends with, and in her place was a woman who promised to become a “better wife.”

“I know, I know,” Jo said, grabbing a bottle of window cleaner and a rag and spraying the glass counter in the front of the store. “I can hardly believe some of the things that come out of my mouth.” She rubbed at a crusted bit of icing. “Hey, this is a nice color. What is it? Is it ‘Fitzpatrick pink'?”

“Yes, it's a cross between Thulian pink and salmon,” Maeve said. “The Fitzpatrick twins are being christened tomorrow. You have no idea what I've been through with Donna.”

“I can only imagine. I run into her at the park occasionally, and it's ‘organic' this and ‘gluten-free' that.” Jo pointed at the smudged icing. “I guess that only counts when cupcakes aren't concerned. I'm surprised she didn't ask you to incorporate the twins' placenta into the batter.” Jo opened the drink case and counted the number of iced teas on the right side. She turned to Maeve. “Thirty-six. I think we're good for a while.”

Maeve rearranged some cakes in the case, making sure that the tart she had made the day before was front and center, so hopefully it would be gone by the end of the day.

Jo had made a few notations about the drink inventory on a napkin that she handed to Maeve. “Anything on Taylor?” Jo asked. “Someone put a sign in front of our house with her photo and a number to call with information. That was fast. I didn't think you could get signs printed that quickly.”

“I only know what I've seen on the news, Jo. And it doesn't sound like there have been any leads.”

Jo stopped what she was doing and stood up straight. “I don't know if I would have understood this as well before Jack. But right now, when I think of that girl and where she might be or what could have happened, I get a little sick.”

“Me, too.”

“A lot sick, actually.”

Maeve knew the feeling. “The last two days have been hell, Jo. I can't stop thinking about where she might have gone.” Maeve pulled a newspaper from the stack by the front door. On the front page of the local paper, Taylor's photo was large and surrounded by text. Maeve was struck by how at first glance, the photo could have been of Heather; the girls had similar looks. Long brown hair. Brown eyes. A grim set of lips. Similar facial bone structure.