Chapter 6
6
NOW
“What is going on?” Lisa answers her door, clutching an immense mint-green water bottle with a straw sticking out. “Is everyone okay?”
Aimee steps inside the foyer and looks around. “Where are the kids?”
“Everyone’s out back. Now tell me.”
“Even Noa?”
“Even Noa. What is going on, Aimee? I’m dying here.”
“We’re not sharing this news with any of the kids yet, okay?” Aimee asks. “Gwen’s going to want to tell her boys, and I’d like to break it to my kids myself later. Let them have fun today.”
“What news? What’s happened?”
“It’s Anton. There’s no easy way to say this, but he’s dead. His body was found early this morning in an alley in Bethesda.”
Lisa’s mouth opens in disbelief.
“The police think he was hit with a car,” Aimee says. “But they’re not sure of anything yet.”
“Like a drunk driver?”
“Maybe. They don’t know much. But Gwen said the police called it a murder.”
“A murder? That’s insane. Are you saying that someone hit him with their car on purpose?” Lisa shakes her head. “I can’t believe that. Who would do such a thing?”
“I don’t know, but Anton is gone. And now we have to focus on George and Rafi and Gwen. Those poor little boys.”
“Do they know? They didn’t seem upset.”
Aimee shakes her head, annoyed. “No. I told you, none of the kids know yet, so please don’t say anything.”
“You can count on me,” Lisa says. “Poor Gwen. How is she holding up?”
“As good as can be expected, which is not great. I think she’s in shock. I’m sure the reality will hit her later. We’re going to need to be there for her.”
“What can we do? My heart breaks for George and Rafi. Can you imagine?”
“I think just pitching in, like watching the kids today, is a huge help. I have to go to work for a few hours, but I’ll pick up pizza on the way home. Do you mind keeping the kids until then? Scott had work, too. Otherwise I wouldn’t ask.”
“Don’t give it a second thought. I’m here for you, Aimee. And for Gwen, and for those sweet little boys. Whatever I can do to help. Should I put something on the Listserv?”
Aimee flinches. “No. Like I said, no one knows about this yet. I know it will end up on the news and on the Listserv soon enough but I think we should all try to keep this quiet until Gwen has a chance to break the news to the kids. We don’t want them hearing it from some random neighbor. So keep the TV off, okay? No news.”
Noa emerges from the shadows of the darkened dining room. “I don’t want to stay here. I want to go to Cathy’s.”
“Noa, honey, I didn’t see you there.”
“I want to see the kittens.”
“Don’t you want to stay here with your brothers?” Lisa asks in a singsong voice, bending forward, hands on her knees. “We can do all sorts of fun things.”
Noa scowls. Aimee knows that Lisa is just trying to help, but Noa hates when adults talk to her in sugary voices. She touches Lisa’s arm. “Give me a minute, okay?”
“Sure.” Lisa looks hesitant. For a moment Aimee fears Lisa is going to start in again on her parenting. On more than one occasion she has implied that Aimee was coddling Noa, almost blaming her for the child’s social anxiety. She’d even begun forwarding Apple News stories about anxious kids, which Aimee had taken to immediately deleting. She is grateful when Lisa heads to the back of the house. She’s not in the mood for sancti-mommy nonsense.
“It’s okay with Cathy if I come.”
“And how do you know that?” Aimee asks. Noa pulls out a phone that Aimee recognizes as her own. “You have my phone?”
“I took it from your pocket when we were at Gwen’s.” Her voice is full of regret, but it lasts all of two seconds before she perks up. “But Cathy said I could come. She said any time before four o’clock was fine.”
Aimee plucks the phone from her daughter’s hand. “What did I tell you about taking my phone without asking?”
“But you were busy,” she wheedles.
“You shouldn’t take my phone, Noa.”
“Sorry.” Noa lowers her head.
Aimee looks at her messages and sure enough, there’s a back-and-forth with Cathy. She inhales sharply.
“Noa Helen Crowder, you cannot do that. Ever.” Aimee’s tone is angrier than she intends. Her daughter recoils.
“But you said you would ask her,” Noa says, quiet but determined.
“No, I didn’t say that. And that still doesn’t give you the right to text people on my phone.”
“Yes, you did,” Noa says with the confidence of the righteous. “You said so. You said, I’ll ask her . You said it this morning in the kitchen.”
Did she? Aimee can’t remember. Maybe she did say that, just to get Noa to stop badgering her. This morning in the kitchen seems a world away. A chaotic, normal world where the biggest problems were childcare, not murdered husbands and fatherless children.
“Anyway,” Noa says. “She doesn’t mind. She said so.”
How can she explain to her daughter that even when people say they don’t mind, they might actually mind? A lot. Noa can be so literal. Literal. Rigid. Those were some of the words that Noa’s teacher had used to describe her.
The youngest of her three half brothers was the same way as a child, and it had befuddled her family until he was diagnosed with being on the autism spectrum. The diagnosis helped him get services at school and opened up new ways for her dad and Deb to support him, but it didn’t change him. He is in his thirties now and still lives at home, in a tiny house they built for him on the back of their property. He works in the family nursery business, in the billing department, and by all accounts is excellent at what he does. But he isn’t independent by any means. Life’s responsibilities, what some people call adulting , just elude him. Her dad and stepmom pay his utilities, shop for his food, and send in a cleaner once a week to make sure things haven’t gotten too bad.
Is that what is in store for Noa?
Aimee shakes the thought from her head. She’s getting ahead of herself. She hasn’t read the report yet. Lots of kids are literal or have impulse issues, and they grow up to live full, independent lives. The news of Anton’s death is affecting her, scaring her. Something so terrible and violent happening in such a safe place has shattered her sense of security. The sound of boys screeching from the kitchen echoes through the house and Noa flinches. She has always been sensitive to loud noises and bright lights. Spending the day here with four boys and with Lisa, who would just tell her to get over it, would be brutal for her. Cathy was a former teacher. She was good with kids. Her house was serene, set on several acres.
“Fine, get in the truck. You can go to Cathy’s.”
“Really?” Noa runs outside toward the truck without waiting for a response. Aimee calls out to Lisa that she is taking off, and that Noa is coming with her. She doesn’t stick around to hear what Lisa has to say. Once outside, she watches Noa climb in on the passenger side. She is halfway to the truck when someone calls out to her. She turns to see the detective emerging from the sedan parked in front of Gwen’s.
“Hey, hold on a minute!” He waves at her, and she stops, only a few feet from her truck.
“Can I help you?” She is alarmed that he was clearly waiting for her.
The detective looks past her at Noa. “Sorry, I don’t mean to hold you and your daughter up, Ms. Stern, but I meant to ask you this earlier. We’ll be canvasing the neighbors to see if anyone has security footage of last night. You know, Ring cameras, that sort of thing. Trying to figure out exactly when Mr. Khoury might have left the neighborhood. Do you have a camera at your house?”
Aimee nods. “We have a doorbell camera.”
“Great. Is it accessible from your phone?”
“You want me to look now?” She glances over at Noa in the front seat.
“If you don’t mind,” the detective says. “I’m interested in nine o’clock on.”
Aimee doesn’t feel she has a choice. She pulls up the app on her phone and then angles the device so the detective can see it. “It records any motion detected,” Aimee says, feeling vulnerable, as if she is about to expose some terrible secret about herself. She clicks on the video from the night before and starts it at nine.
The two of them watch a man Aimee does not recognize walk up the street with a small dog, whom he allows to come up onto their lawn and take a dump.
“That’s not right,” the detective says.
The video skips ahead, showing a man turn up their front path, a little unsteady on his feet. He keeps touching the side of his head. Aimee swallows a gasp. “That’s Anton,” she says. He steps closer to the front door and turns slightly, revealing a bloody gash across his forehead.
A moment later, Scott steps out onto the front stoop. His coat is on, and he pulls the door behind him. Together the two of them head back down the path and disappear out of the camera frame, somewhere on the darkened street.
Then, time-stamped an hour later, the video picks up again with Scott returning. Alone. Aimee is stunned, but she tries to keep the surprise out of her face. Her gut tells her she needs to play it cool. Showing this video to the detective may have been a mistake, but she won’t make it worse.
“Did you know that Anton had come to your house last night?” the detective asks, straightening up.
Aimee shakes her head. “No. I must have been asleep by then.”
“Was that your husband who left with him?”
“Yes.”
“Any idea where they went?”
Aimee jostles the keys in her hand. “I’m sorry, no. Look, I have to drop my daughter somewhere, and then be at work.”
“That’s fine.” He holds his hands up and smiles. “Is your husband at home now?”
“He had to go into work.”
“No problem, I can stop by later. In the meantime, mind emailing that video to me?” He pulls out a card and passes it to her. “My email is in the corner.”
“Sure.” She takes the card.
“Would you mind doing it now?” His tone is gentle, but she gets the message. What choice does she have?