Perfect Lies (27 page)

Probably not. And yet… since Friday evening, the thought of Abe had been lingering behind everything else she’d been going through. She could taste him on her lips. Feel his touch on her cheek, his breath in her hair. Of course, he knew that she’d been through hell lately. She’d been afraid. They were friends. He cared about her, no doubt. He’d kissed her as a way of reassuring her that everything was going to turn out all right. He had simply been trying to be kind. And he’d probably be horrified, Meg decided as she finally got out of bed, if he realized the kind of passionate response he’d aroused in her.

There was one other person in Red River who Meg knew for sure would not be at Francine’s Sunday morning service. For several years now, Meg had been hearing about Matt’s refusal to so much as put a foot inside the First Congregational Church.

“He has to hear her preach every day of his life,” Ethan had said last Christmas when Lark was bemoaning Matt’s behavior. “That’s more than any human being should have to endure.”

The rectory sat up on the hill above the church, its western property line bordering Lark’s and Ethan’s extensive acreage. A roughly cut path through the woods joined the two households; it meandered along the riverbank and then climbed along the side of the hill. It was a shortcut that Lark and Francine often took when they visited each other. Meg easily found her way along it that morning through the still, leafless woods.

Like most of the houses in Red River, Francine’s had been constructed in the mid-1880s of clapboard, though an effort had obviously been made to give this important residence some extra degree of elegance. Gingerbread woodwork decorated the front porch and eaves, and a diamond-shaped stained-glass pane graced the tiny window in the attic.

Meg rang the doorbell on the side entrance three times before she heard any movement from within. Finally, there was the thumping of heavy steps on the stairs. A clomping down the hall. The door was wrenched open.

“What do you want?” Matt fixed her with a heavy-lidded stare. His upper lip, smudged with a fuzzy attempt at a mustache, was twisted into a sneer.

“A moment to talk with you,” Meg said. “I wanted to know how things went with Lucinda yesterday.”

“Didn’t get to see her,” Matt retorted. “We just dropped the stuff off. That’s all Francine really wanted, you know. Make the big gesture.”

“Did your mother know you were sleeping with Lucinda?” Meg asked as he began to close the door. He stopped.

“How did you know?” he demanded, his deep voice straining with emotion.

“Actually, I guessed. I’ve spoken a lot to Lucinda since all this happened. We talk on the phone—at least once a week. Your name comes up just a little too often for me not to wonder what was going on.”

“That so?” Matt stepped out on the porch and lit a cigarette, inhaling deeply.

“What about Francine?” Meg persisted. “Did she know about you and Lucinda?”

“Despite my mother’s do-good posturing, she actually considers Lucinda beneath contempt. I’m sure you can understand why I wouldn’t confide in her about having sex with Lucinda.”

“But you could have been the father of Lucinda’s baby. You could have spoken up and told us what was going on. You knew Ethan wasn’t involved.”

“That’s true. But almost every other boy from here to Montville could have gotten her pregnant.”

“She did imply that she was seeing a lot of guys,” Meg agreed, but something in Matt’s tone intrigued her. She thought she detected anger under his carefully modulated words.

“That’s an understatement,” Matt went on. “It was like her way of being validated, as Francine would phrase it. She knew what Ethan thought of her—and that really hurt her. Sleeping around was her way of showing him that guys found her attractive. That she was worthwhile, you know.”

“And you thought she was?”

“That’s none of your business, is it?”

“I’m making it my business,” Meg said. She looked out across the monotone landscape of trees, rooftops, chimneys, and the rolling hills beyond and tried to think how she could reach the boy beside her. Though the more she listened to him, the more she realized how close he was to being a man. There was a depth, a maturity to Matt that she’d missed at first. She also sensed that he could be an important ally in her battle to get Lucinda a fair hearing.

“How is she?” Matt asked after a long silence.

“Scared stiff. How would you be?” Meg said, and then added more softly, “You care about her don’t you, Matt?”

“I did at one point,” he replied, looking away. “I thought the feelings were reciprocated.”

“Are you sure they weren’t?”

“Yeah, I’m sure. I was a jerk, okay? It meant a lot to me—more than I should have let it—being really close to someone, making love, talking half the night. People think Lucinda’s so tough, but she isn’t. She’s just not a hypocrite like almost everybody else in this damn town. She’s totally honest. You know, I would have given anything to have that be my kid. To have it live. Be a dad. I never knew who my dad was.”

“I’m sorry. Francine has never told you who …”

“I think she likes to believe it was an immaculate conception. I mean, if she can’t actually
be
God, bearing Her child might be the next best thing.”

“I’m not convinced Lucinda murdered Ethan.” Meg turned to face Matt.

“I see. Lucinda told you otherwise? Explained away some crucial evidence? She can be very persuasive when she wants your help.”

“She
needs
my help, Matt,” Meg told him. “Our help. I’m trying hard to understand why everyone’s so willing to convict her. There are plenty of questions in my mind about exactly what happened in the studio that morning. Lucinda was not Ethan’s only visitor.”

“What do you mean?”

“Janine identified two cars, at two different times, not long before the murder.”

“Yeah, well Ethan was working there, right? If he had visitors, they probably just had some business with the studio.”

Meg had been hoping to enlist his sympathy and support, but she sensed a real determination on his part not to be drawn in. She tried a different tack. “There are plenty of people in Red River who aren’t particularly devastated that Ethan’s gone.”

“Exactly,” Matt said, flicking the butt of his cigarette off the porch.

“What do you mean by that?”

“Why not lay it on Lucinda?” Matt replied. He turned back to the door. “Why not let everyone think that Lucinda killed her stepfather because he got her pregnant. They all hated Ethan. Thought he was capable of anything, even that. This town despised them both—father and daughter. Blame this thing on the two of them and don’t look back. Don’t look closer. Everybody knows how many people had it in for Ethan. Maybe everyone’s afraid that someone close to them might have flipped out and done it.” Matt nodded across the lawn and woods to the rooftops of the town. “Any one of us could’ve done it,” he said, stepping back into the house and closing the door on further conversation.

No one had actually lied to Meg, at least, not as far as she could tell. And yet, everywhere she turned in Red River, with everyone she talked to, she had the feeling that no one was exactly telling the truth. A flicker of the eye. An intonation that was off. An emphasis that felt forced. As she rode with Lark and the girls down Main Street later that afternoon on the way to the general store to pick up groceries, Meg saw a town that was intent on keeping its secrets, protecting its own. Of course, everyone gossiped, talk was cheap. But when you got down to it, when you asked the hard questions, you got a shrug, a mumble, an excuse.

When she walked into Yoder’s behind Lark and the girls, suddenly, for the first time in Meg’s memory, the chatter around the deli counter stopped. Meg felt the looks. She sensed what was being thought, and probably said. Meg was that outsider who was going around stirring up trouble. Suggesting they all consider
Lucinda’s
side of things, for heavens’ sake. As though they all couldn’t see right through that viper’s story. Lark’s own sister, can you beat that?

But if Lark sensed any of the town’s hostility, she didn’t show it. And if she was aware of Meg’s growing belief that Lucinda deserved a fair hearing, she pretended not to know it. Meg now realized how often her sister willfully did not see what was right in front of her face. How good she was at living in a world of her own making. It was, after all, what Meg had taught her to do as a child.

“Thank you so much for coming up this weekend,” Lark told her, giving Meg a hug as she was leaving later that afternoon. Abe was waiting for her in the car outside. Lark had been too preoccupied with her own concerns to have noticed—or at least commented on the fact—that Abe hadn’t stopped by all weekend. “And for listening to me. And for just being there, big sister. Love you.”

“I love you, too,” Meg said, holding Lark in her arms, and then pulling her close. It had always been her role to be the responsible one, to think for them both. Now, for the first time in her life, she found herself torn between protecting Lark once again—and doing what she thought was right.

“Remember that, baby,” Meg said as she stepped away. “No matter what.”

“W
ould you like to come up for some dinner?” Meg asked Abe when they pulled up to the side entrance of her apartment house. It had been a strained, strange ride back to the city, with fits and starts of conversation that never went anywhere and long uncomfortable silences that neither of them seemed able to fill. Meg had spent most of the trip swept up by the insecurities that surfaced every time she started really caring about a man. Successful as she might be in business, she was a proven failure with romantic relationships. Not that Abe had that in mind when he kissed her the other night, she reminded herself. Not that he wanted anything more from her than an easygoing friendship—one she was in the midst of screwing up with her own ridiculous concerns.

When she wasn’t dwelling on her limitations, she was brooding about Ethan and Becca’s affair—one so serious that it had devastated Abe’s marriage. And yet, despite everything she’d poured out to Abe about her problems with Ethan, he’d never bothered to mention this disastrous episode in his life. Was he too hurt by Becca’s betrayal? Wasn’t this just confirmation that he still was in love with his ex-wife?

“You actually cook?” he asked, putting the car into park. “Last time I was at your place there was nothing but a jar of olives and a half-eaten yogurt in the refrigerator.”

“Don’t worry, I didn’t say that I’d make it,” Meg replied, releasing her seat belt. “I live in the best neighborhood in the world for take-out. I was thinking of Thai.”

“I’m there,” Abe said. “If I can find a parking space.”

She was being utterly ridiculous, Meg told herself, as she hurried through the apartment, straightening up. She spent another five minutes in the bathroom, brushing her teeth and hair and in general behaving like a teenager. She was still rummaging through her drawer of take-out menus when he rang her front doorbell.

“I stopped at the corner and brought some decent beer, which you never seem to have,” Abe said, walking down the hall as she locked up. He’d acted as her lawyer when she purchased the apartment and had helped her negotiate the mortgage. He’d been there many times for parties and dinner since, but for the first time Meg was sensitive to his opinion of it. She glanced around the living room, seeing it through his eyes, and decided that the little throw pillows had to go.

Abe came back from the kitchen with the beer. “Is everything okay? You’ve been so preoccupied.”

“I’m fine,” she said, reaching for her drink. But he put both bottles down on the side table instead and took her hands in his.

“I’m not kidding anybody here, am I?” His face was no longer friendly. She felt the strength of his grip.

“What do you mean?”

But he answered by kissing her. She felt the automatic kick-start of desire. She realized how much she had been wanting this—needing this—how he could be so tender and yet feel so tense, holding back, as if she were some fragile thing. He slipped his arms around her, pressing her up against the back of the couch. He kissed her lips. Then the tip of her nose. Then both earlobes.

“What’s your radar tell you?” he whispered in her ear.

“What do you mean?”

“That sense you claim you don’t have about reading men,” he said, kissing her neck as he spoke. “Can you pick up any signal right now?”

“There’s a scratchy kind of sound,” Meg replied, smiling at him. She’d never seen his face so alive and open. “But it could be just my sweater rubbing against the couch fabric.”

“We could always just take it off,” he said, leaning away to get a better look at her.

“Abe! I’m not sure I’m ready for any of this,” Meg said, more than a little nervous now that things had gotten this far. She couldn’t help comparing her perfectly fine body to Becca’s absolutely perfect one. But it wasn’t just Becca that made her pause. She knew Abe so well in so many ways. There was already a sense of intimacy between them that made their coming together that much more intense. And she always failed at this game, she reminded herself again. Only this time she had more than just a new romance to lose, she had a treasured friendship as well. She should really have him stop right now, she told herself, as she felt him brush against her, already aroused.

“That’s okay,” he said, his lips finding hers again. “I’m not ready for it either.” He ran his hands through her hair, down her shoulders and arms, around her waist, pulling her gently toward him. His kisses were deep and slow. He kept touching her—hair, shoulders, cheeks—as though not quite believing that she was really there.

Experience could be a dangerous thing when it came to sex, Meg knew. All too often, the shadows of former lovers would hover in the corners of her mind, reminding her of past pleasures or suppressed frustrations. No matter how much you liked someone, she realized, no one arrived in a relationship with a guarantee of satisfaction. Timing could be tricky. The one’s turn-ons could be the other person’s turn-offs. Often with Meg the whole thing seemed too much of a gamble. So it was her tendency to take over, as she did in business—guide the proceedings and carefully monitor the outcome.