You Deserve to Know

Chapter 21

21

LAST JANUARY

After they had sex for the second time, Lisa and Anton lay in a pile of limbs and throw blankets and pillows on the living room floor, breathless.

Lisa rolled over on her side, propping her head up. “So, am I your first?”

Anton looked at her quizzically.

“I mean, stepping out on Gwen.”

He rolled onto his back, looked at the ceiling, and sighed. “No. But I haven’t done anything like this in a long time.”

Lisa winced. His words hurt. It wasn’t jealousy, not exactly. She didn’t feel possessive about Anton. But she wanted to be special enough that he had crossed a line just for her. It wasn’t a win for her if his marital vows meant nothing to him and he was a serial cheater. She wanted the pain Gwen would feel to be fresh.

She stared at a painting on the wall, an abstract swirl of blue and cream that looked like a first grader could have made, but knowing Gwen, probably cost thousands, and waited for the sick feeling to pass. It felt like a black hole had opened in her soul. The same gnawing emptiness she had felt in college, when Ruth pulled away, made new friends. Lisa had acted rashly then. She had seduced Ruth’s boyfriend one night when he stopped by the room, drunk, looking for Ruth, who was out at the movies. Lisa had done it for Ruth, to show what an asshole her boyfriend was. It was obvious he would screw anything that moved. And yes, a part of her did it so Ruth could taste the poison she had forced Lisa to drink—abandonment. It was the worst feeling in the world.

What she hadn’t foreseen was that Ruth would not just end the friendship but move out of the dorm room they shared. Coming back to the room and seeing Ruth’s things gone, her bed stripped, her poster that listed all of Jane Austen’s books taken down, had activated something in her.

She’d always been prone to rage-tinged loneliness—like when her father left when she was in preschool, or when her mother doted on her younger brothers while turning her into an unpaid servant, making Lisa iron their school uniforms. It arose when girls didn’t invite her to sit with them in the cafeteria, or to come to their parties. It braided itself alongside the shame she felt when the boys she let touch her pretended not to know her when they passed her in the school hallways.

That feeling had soured into something very ugly with Ruth. She had tracked Ruth down in her new dorm room, and, feral with vengeance, had banged on the door, screaming to be let in. The fire she had set outside Ruth’s door was small, but it was enough to set off the sprinklers. Ruth had barricaded herself inside and called campus security.

The police, the lawyer, the quiet transfer out of the school. It had all been so humiliating.

If she wanted to succeed this time, she needed to keep her emotions under control. Lisa reached out a hand and laid it on Anton, twirling her fingers through the curls on his chest. “What would Gwen do if she found out?”

Anton let out a low whistle. “I don’t even want to think about it. That would be the end. I promised I would never do something like this again, and I kept that promise, I really did.”

“Until I came along?”

He turned to face her and smiled. “Until you came along.”

A warm feeling spread in her chest, the feeling of being wanted and desired. Was there any better feeling in the world? This man was willing to risk his wife’s wrath, his standing in this neighborhood, his relationship with his children, all to be with her. His validation made her as giddy as when she crested the top of the Galaxi rollercoaster for the first time when she was twelve.

“Well then,” she said, giggling, “we’ll have to be very, very careful, won’t we?”

Tuesdays and Thursdays became the highlights of the following weeks. She had long grown tired of listening to her coaching clients complain about their lives and had winnowed down her roster to about a half-dozen people. They paid several hundred dollars a phone session, but she had begun to feel like one of those therapists whose patients never make any improvement year after year. She knew she could get more certifications, segue into corporate coaching—there was real money there—but she couldn’t be bothered. Marcus was making so much money now, it was highly demotivating.

Her real passion became getting even with Gwen.

An unexpected side effect of sleeping with Anton was that being around Gwen became more tolerable, fun, even.

Those long games of Pitch, which used to bore Lisa, now thrilled her. Instead of focusing on the cards, her attention was on how she might slip her stockinged foot out of her shoe and rub it up and down Anton’s inner thigh without anyone else noticing.

It was a challenge to keep herself from laughing out loud when he shifted in his seat and closed his eyes in ecstasy while everyone else droned on about the card game or neighborhood gossip.

The clandestine aspect was exciting, but the real kick was knowing how it would destroy Gwen. Having an enemy was like drinking from the fountain of youth. Enemies, after all, were a hallmark of childhood. She remembered how classmates would flit from friend to enemy and back again, sometimes the result of a slow cooling, other times suddenly after a nasty cutting remark.

But most adults didn’t have enemies, did they? And why not? There was something so clarifying about it. Sure, countries had enemies, and so did characters in books and movies. But not individuals, at least not people like her, not upper-middle-class women who drove BMWs and had their roots done every six weeks.

But it energized her.

She found it easier to fake being nice to Gwen now that she knew intimate details about her life. Anton was terrible at keeping secrets. He told her about Gwen’s college battle with bulimia, how she bombed in her creative writing class and was excluded from the social clique of wannabe writers at her college, so she turned to public relations. She made him recount every rejection, hurt, or failure that Gwen had endured, and she held them tight, turning them over in her mind at night in the dark, like little luminescent stones. Knowing Gwen’s perfect facade was an act bolstered her own self-worth.

Anton also started telling her about his marriage problems, how Gwen controlled the finances, poring over every purchase, and how a monthly infusion of cash from her parents was what kept the family going.

In the spring, he became incensed about Scott’s new grill, which Aimee bought him for Father’s Day. At first, Lisa had thought he was joking, but the subject made him furious. Gwen had overridden a grill on safety grounds. We don’t need our own. He recounted her words to Lisa, mocking her. You don’t even like to cook.

“Why should Scott get a grill and I don’t? He doesn’t cook, either. He just wants to flaunt his wealth.”

Anton reminded her of a petulant child, a little boy, irrationally angry when someone else received birthday gifts.

She loved when he was like this. Nasty and petty. She enjoyed nourishing his hate toward others. It made her feel as though they were a team, united against the world. Marcus exhausted her with his self-help optimism and positive psychology. The only person Lisa wouldn’t let Anton criticize was Aimee. She was off-limits. Sometimes after they had sex in his and Gwen’s bed, Lisa would go into the bathroom and lock the door, taking in the luxury of it. A soaking tub, a separate shower, a door that led to an outside deck. She and Marcus had never gotten around to updating their bathroom, which still had the original seafoam-green tiles from the 1930s. Even Gwen’s medicine cabinet was Instagram-ready, with dust-free mirrored shelves laden with only a few bespoke glass bottles that Lisa knew cost a fortune.

Lisa could afford these things, that wasn’t the issue, but she wouldn’t even know where to buy them. Or how to design a bathroom like this. It was no use having the money if you didn’t understand how to spend it. Gwen’s understated elegance made her feel tacky and loud. Lisa had thought her brown Louis Vuitton tote with the small tan logos was the epitome of chic until she brought it once on a girl’s night out and Gwen made some comment. Apparently, in the gospel according to Gwen, one logo was acceptable, but Lisa carrying the bag while wearing a Prada-branded sweater was tacky.

She still burned when she thought of the humiliation.

In April, the entire cul-de-sac and a few adjoining houses had decided to host an Easter egg hunt for all the kids. Even Kai agreed to partake when he heard there were dollar bills stuffed into some of the eggs. There had been some squabbling between Lisa and Gwen about how many eggs to hide. She mentioned to Aimee that Gwen’s penchant for organizing things was veering on OCD.

Later in the afternoon, when the eggs had been found and the kids were playing in the street, the parents gathered in lawn chairs to chat and drink. Lisa went inside Scott and Aimee’s to use the bathroom. When she emerged from the bathroom into the hallway, she overheard them talking in the kitchen. About her .

“… it’s okay if you’ve outgrown your friendship with Lisa,” Scott was saying. “She a bit of a drama queen.”

“You think?”

“You know, you three have nicknames in the neighborhood.”

Aimee laughed. “You’re kidding.”

“Jason told me when we were playing tennis a few weeks ago. Some of the other moms call you three Queen, Lean, and Green.”

“Am I Green?” she asked.

“Of course. And Gwen, well, she’s definitely on the thin side.”

“And people think Lisa’s a drama queen?”

“She’s been known to stir up drama with the other moms, apparently,” Scott said. “And the fact that she wore a leopard-print bikini to the pool.”

“That’s not very nice,” Aimee said. “She has a great body. She can wear what she wants.”

“And this is why I never told you. Because it’s kind of mean.”

People were talking about her behind her back. Drama queen? Maybe she had stuck up for herself—she was no doormat—but that didn’t make her a drama queen. Scott certainly found it amusing. She had no idea that he didn’t like her, that he was poisoning Aimee against her.

“Lisa’s always been such a good friend to me. We used to be so close,” Aimee said. “That’s why what she said about Noa was so out of character.”

Lisa’s heart leapt into her throat. What had she said about Noa to Aimee? She searched her memory for something she could have said that offended her—perhaps she had unintentionally insulted Aimee—but she couldn’t pinpoint anything.

“People outgrow friendships,” Scott had said. “It’s not a crime. If you want to pull back, that’s fine by me. I mean, I like Marcus, but I don’t need to see him every Friday night.”

“Maybe,” Aimee said, sounding dubious. “I’ll see.”

“I just don’t like to see you so upset.”

“Do you think Noa’s an oddball ?”

“Stop. You know I don’t.”

So that’s what it was. A throwaway comment. She remembered now. Noa had interrupted their coffee together and demanded attention, going on and on about orcas or whales or something, just nonstop reciting all kinds of useless information. It was odd. And the way Aimee just indulged her instead of reprimanding her like Lisa longed to. She had made one little off-the-cuff remark when Noa finally left the room. “What a little oddball.” She had meant it in an affectionate way.

And Aimee was willing to trash their friendship over that one silly remark? It was Scott’s doing. He was going to use that one comment as a wedge to turn Aimee against her. Lisa went back into the bathroom to wait until Scott and Aimee went outside. She clamped her hand over her mouth and let out a silent scream. If they hadn’t been right outside the house, she would have smashed the mirror on the medicine cabinet. Scott was trying to come between her and Aimee. What had she ever done to him?

She seethed for the next few days, vacillating between being unable to shake Scott’s words from her mind and worrying over whether Aimee was going to dump her. She was sure Aimee would forgive her if Scott wasn’t in the way. She entertained various plots of revenge against Scott, but none withstood the light of careful examination. She didn’t want to hurt Aimee. She was as much a victim of Scott as Lisa was. The poor thing was being manipulated by that bastard. He was a golden boy, had sailed through life with his smile and jokes and athleticism. But those were the worst bullies of all. Sweet Aimee couldn’t see it, but Lisa could. Aimee needed her then more than ever. What it must be like to be married to someone like that, who gaslights you about your own best friend.

When Marcus noticed her sullenness, Lisa told him she had a sinus headache. On the following Friday, she begged off meeting up for dinner with everyone, sending Marcus and Kai without her, claiming her head hurt too much. Alone in the house, she poured a glass of wine and curled up in bed with her laptop. There had to be some way to get back at Scott. Some weakness or past mistake he had made. Maybe an old girlfriend Lisa might activate and bring back into his life. That could cause a nice rift between him and Aimee, which she could exploit.

But the more she looked, the less she found about Scott. He had no social media at all. His company did, but he was only mentioned by name on the website. There wasn’t even a picture.

The following day, she stopped by Aimee’s just as Scott was leaving. She entered and found her at the kitchen counter, paying bills.

“Oh, hey, did we have plans?” Aimee looked up, confused.

“Oh, no,” Lisa had said, holding a wooden spoon aloft. “Just returning this.” She’d had Aimee’s spoon at her house for weeks, but it was a good excuse to come by and feel out her friend, to try and strengthen their friendship. “I also brought this, for Noa.” She held up The Encyclopedia of Marine Mammals , which she had found in the bargain section of Barnes and Noble.

“Oh, that is so sweet of you! You shouldn’t have.”

“I know how into whales and things she is. She’ll probably be a famous scientist when she grows up!” Lisa wondered if she was laying it on a bit thick, but she needed Aimee to move past the hurt she had caused her. She would address it directly, the oddball comment, but she didn’t want to arouse any suspicion that she had been listening in on her conversation with Scott.

“She is going to love this,” Aimee said, taking the book. “That reminds me, I have Kai’s soccer shirt. The one Benji borrowed? I washed it. Let me get it for you.”

She slid off the seat and went to retrieve the shirt, leaving Lisa alone in the kitchen. Aimee didn’t seem angry, Lisa thought as she peered at the paperwork spread out on the counter. Her eyes stopped on a medical form Aimee had been filling out. As she looked over the form, she saw that a field for Scott’s social security number had been filled in. This was it. Her opportunity to dig a little deeper. Quickly, she took a picture with her phone. That evening, after Marcus was fast asleep, she slipped open her laptop and searched for a reputable company that did the most thorough background checks. If she was going to do it, she was going to spend the money and do it right.

She found one that promised to deliver: address history, a social security number trace, sex offender search, employment history, and other criminal searches. Lisa entered Scott’s personal information and then typed in her credit card.

If there was any dirt in Scott’s past, she was going to find it.