Secrets to the Grave

76

“Anne? Why does life suck so much?”

Needing to escape the pall of misery at her own home, Wendy had begged for another visit with Anne and Haley. Sara Morgan, no doubt as at a loss for explanation as her daughter, had dropped her off.

They sat on the couch side by side not watching the movie blabbering to itself on the television. Haley had curled up on one end of the couch pretending to be a cat and had fallen sound asleep.

“I know it seems like it does sometimes,” Anne said.

“Sometimes? All the time,” Wendy said dramatically. “Look at all the bad stuff that’s happened! Tommy’s dad and Dennis Farman and the space shuttle and Chernobyl. And Haley’s mom, and now my mom and dad are getting divorced, and Dennis killed somebody!”

It was hard to make an argument against all of that, but Anne tried to find something positive.

“I’ve had a lot of bad stuff to deal with in the last year,” she said. “But I also met Vince, and we fell in love and got married.”

“I’m never getting married,” Wendy declared. “I don’t know why people bother when they only get divorced in the end anyway. Marissa wasn’t married, and she was way cool. And she had Haley.”

“It’s not easy to be a single parent,” Anne said. “It’s a big job for two people to do it well. What does Haley talk about all the time?”

“Kittens.”

“Besides kittens.”

“Daddies.”

“She’s never had a dad, but she wants one so badly she calls every man Daddy,” Anne said.

“She’ll learn they’re not all they’re cracked up to be,” Wendy said. “I used to think my dad was so cool, but he’s just a jerk. He’s so mean to my mom.”

“Mean in what way?”

“He’s always mad and says mean things and makes her cry.”

“I’m not going to try to make excuses for your dad,” Anne said. “I don’t know what his problem is, but I think it’s safe to say he has one.”

Wendy rolled her eyes. “Yeah. Duh. Like his affairs with other women. I hear them argue. I’m not deaf and I’m not a little kid. I watch Dynasty. Mom thinks he had an affair with Marissa. I hope that’s not true.”

“I hope so too.”

“Marissa was so cool!” Wendy said. “She just loved life and did what she wanted to—but in a good way. She was so nice. She used to ask me about my dreams and what I want to be and all that. And when I told her, she was just like ‘Wow, Wendy! That’s so great! You go for it!’”

“I wish I had met her,” Anne said.

“And she did all this really beautiful art and helped my mom with her art,” Wendy went on. “I don’t want to know if she did bad things. My mom liked her. How could my mom like her if she thought Marissa was having an affair with my dad?”

“I don’t know,” Anne said. “It doesn’t seem like they could have been friends if that was the case.”

It seemed so strange and wrong to be talking about affairs with an eleven-year-old, but Wendy clearly knew what she was talking about—at least to a point. Anne wanted her to feel like she could bring up any subject at all when they talked. If they talked about affairs when she was eleven, what would twelve bring?

“People make life so complicated,” Wendy said on a wistful sigh.

They sat quietly for a moment, Wendy toying with the half-dozen cheap silver bracelets she wore on one arm.

She looked up at Anne again. “Can I sleep over? Please? I don’t want to go home. You and Vince are cool. I could sleep with Haley.”

“What about your mom?” Anne asked. “She’s feeling pretty down right now. Don’t you think you should stay home with her and keep her company? She’s hurting too, and I’m sure she’s feeling very alone.”

Wendy frowned and pulled at a loose thread on her purple leg warmers. “I know.”

Anne put an arm around her shoulders and gave her a hug. She remembered all too well being the one who comforted her own mother when her father was so rotten to her. It had been Anne her mother leaned on in the face of Dick Navarre’s incessant infidelities. Anne remembered thinking how unfair it was that she had to be the adult when she was really just a kid. She had blamed her father mightily. She still did.

She made a mental note to call and check on him just the same—because that was what her mother would have wanted her to do. Dick was never happy whether she called or didn’t call. Finding fault was his specialty. Thank God he had Ling, his nurse, to spar with now.

“Maybe we can try to talk your mom into coming and staying here for a few days,” Anne said.

Wendy brightened at the idea. Thank God there were moments when she still seemed like the child she deserved to be instead of the small adult her world was forcing her to be.

“That would be awesome!” she said. “It would be like we were having a big slumber party—except for Vince.”

“Vince would deal with it.”

Haley stirred on her end of the couch. Anne reached over and pulled her blanket up around her shoulders.

“Are you going to get to keep Haley?” Wendy asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Where else would she go? She wouldn’t get sent to an orphanage or something, would she?”

“No, that won’t happen. First the authorities have to find out if she has any relatives.”

Wendy made a face. “That awful Mrs. Bordain. I pretended not to know her yesterday. She is such a word I’m not supposed to say.”

“You know her from Marissa?”

Wendy nodded. “But she doesn’t know me ’cause I’m just a kid and I might as well be a rock for all she could care.”

“She cares about Haley, though,” Anne said. “Haley is practically a granddaughter to her.”

“What-ever,” Wendy said. “She was always in Marissa’s face. ‘Do this, do that. Don’t do this. Don’t do that.’”

“Really?” Anne said, trying to reconcile what Wendy was saying with Milo Bordain’s portrayal of the grieving near-mother.

“I heard her yelling at Marissa once. She’s all, like, ‘I could take this all away from you!’” she said, doing a wicked impersonation of Milo Bordain. “And then Marissa was, like, ‘So could I, and you know it!’”

“I wonder what that meant,” Anne said.

Wendy shrugged. “I don’t know. Mrs. Bordain saw me then and yelled at me for eavesdropping.”

So could I, and you know it.

What could Marissa have taken away from her sponsor? Herself? Haley?

“How about some warm apple cider?” Anne suggested. “With cinnamon sticks. It’s such a nasty day.”

Anne got up and pulled her sweater around her as she went to the kitchen. The rest of the house was not enjoying the warmth of the fireplace in the family room.

She turned on just the light above the stove and moved around the room gathering what she needed. Even though it was still afternoon, the gloom outside was almost nightlike. The fog had never lifted all day, and the sky seemed only to get heavier and closer to the ground.

She wondered where Dennis was, if he had found a place out of the elements. The sheriff’s office was supposed to call her if they picked him up. How the hell was she supposed to help him now? Twelve or not, he would almost certainly be sent to a juvenile facility now until he was eighteen. She would try to get him sent to one with a good psychiatrist on staff ...

She turned and looked out the bank of windows, a chill going through her. She hated having the shades up when it was getting dark out. More often than not she felt like someone was out there looking in at her.

It didn’t occur to her as she lowered the blinds that someone actually was.