Chapter 36
36
THIS PAST SPRING
The question Lisa couldn’t get out of her mind was—what did Aimee know?
There was no way she could ask her friend directly if she was aware that her husband was a murderer and a fugitive. That wasn’t the kind of thing you dropped into the middle of a conversation about which summer camps still had openings for August.
But Lisa knew that she had to figure out what Aimee knew about Scott’s past. If this was Aimee’s secret, too, if she had committed to protecting Scott, well, then Lisa would help her by keeping his secret, as well. It would bond them together even more tightly. Nothing would ever be able to come between her and Aimee. But if Aimee didn’t know, then Lisa was faced with a decision. Doing nothing wasn’t an option. What was the point of carrying around a stick of dynamite if you never used it?
Memorial Day was a scorcher, and the neighborhood pool club’s potluck was packed with families. Armed with a quart of potato salad from Giant, Lisa headed down to the pool with Marcus and Kai. Gwen had shown up right when the pool opened and placed sky-blue-and-white-striped Turkish towels on half a dozen chaises, as well as commandeered one of the few glass-topped tables with an umbrella.
Tasked with guarding the chairs, Lisa took a seat at the table with Aimee while everyone else went to stand in a long, snaking line for the buffet.
Lisa pulled out a bottle of tanning oil and began rubbing it onto her shoulders. She didn’t burn, thanks to her Mediterranean heritage, and she never felt better than when she was bronzed by the sun. Across from her, Aimee sat in the shade of the umbrella and applied a thick white goo on her freckled skin. Lisa had thought for a long time how she might approach the topic of Scott’s history with Aimee to discern if she knew anything. She didn’t want to appear nosy or suspicious, just curious in a friendly way. Striking just the right balance would be key. She did believe that Aimee didn’t know Scott used to live in California—the discussion about visiting the area a while back established that—but that didn’t preclude her knowing Scott was running from something, did it?
“Besides the Outer Banks, you guys have any big plans for the summer?” Lisa asked.
Aimee put on a giant straw sun hat. “Nope. Just the usual. We’ll take a week and go stay with my dad and Deb.”
Lisa nodded. She knew Aimee’s dad and stepmom ran a nursery just outside Baltimore and had a house close enough to the Chesapeake Bay that Aimee had grown up kayaking and boating. Whenever Aimee talked about her childhood, or going back home to visit, Lisa felt a pang of jealousy. She had no home to go to. She had stopped speaking to her mother a few years after college over an incident with some bearer bonds. Lisa had found the bonds in a box in the back of the linen closet and cashed them in to pay for furniture, a cell phone, and professional clothing for her first real office job. It was an impulsive and stupid mistake, but when her mother found out, she didn’t see it that way. She threatened to go to the police. Lisa had no choice but to cut her out of her life. She left Syracuse for Washington and never looked back.
“Sounds beautiful up there,” she says.
“You should come sometime. It’s so nice and relaxing. You can spend the day on the water, and you can also get into Baltimore pretty easily. Go to the aquarium, Fells Point. It’s fun.”
“I’d like that.” Lisa meant it. The trouble was going anywhere in the summer with all of Kai’s sports camps. Even taking one week for the Outer Banks meant him missing out on a week of club soccer.
“What about Scott’s family?” Lisa asked. “Do you ever get down to North Carolina to visit his aunt?”
Aimee shook her head. “Not really. She lives in a small apartment. The last time we visited was a few years ago when the boys were still toddlers. Aunt Kay is kind of a strange woman.”
“Have you been out to New Mexico, where Scott grew up? You must be curious what his childhood was like.”
Aimee’s face was unreadable, hidden behind her glasses and under that big hat. “I’d like to,” she says cautiously. “But Scott’s not that interested. He’s not really the nostalgic type. I love going back to the same restaurants and hangouts from my childhood. I guess it also helps keep me connected to my mother. She grew up in the same town I did, and she’s buried there along with my grandparents. So I like to go back and revisit history. But Scott? Not so much.”
Lisa tries to decipher this answer. She senses some tension in Aimee’s voice—but whether it was from hiding a secret or justifying her husband’s odd detachment from his past, Lisa could not be sure.
Out of the corner of her eye she sees Rafi, George, and one of Aimee’s boys—maybe Max?—hustling over, holding plates laden with food. She’s running out of time. Panicking, she blurts out the first thing she can think of.
“Do you ever go through Scott’s old yearbooks? I’ve looked at Marcus’s and they are hysterical. He had this fade haircut in ninth grade, I swear it was almost as high as that guy’s from Kid ’n Play.” She’s rambling, but it’s a Hail Mary. “Did Scott have any funny haircuts in high school?”
Aimee takes her sunglasses off and shakes her head. “He probably did, but I’ve never seen pictures from when he was a kid. I don’t think he kept his yearbooks from high school. A lot of that kind of stuff got lost when his mom died and he moved from New Mexico to North Carolina to live with Kay.” Aimee grins. “Hey, Benji, where’s Max?”
The conversation was over. Lisa’s heart was racing and she was sweating. She fussed over Rafi and George to burn off some of her nervous energy, helping them open their juice boxes, getting them napkins.
Aimee doesn’t know.
There was no way. She could see how Scott had easily duped her. A childhood in New Mexico, his last year of high school in North Carolina. But what about the in-between? That year, or years—she didn’t know how long—during which he was most certainly in Humboldt County, California. He had conveniently excised that little detour from his life, and Aimee was none the wiser.
When everyone returned to the table with their food, Lisa and Aimee took their place in the now much shorter line. Lisa was amazed that someone could be so oblivious about their own husband. She knew everything there was to know about Marcus, down to the names of his ex-girlfriends and where they lived now.
Lisa couldn’t sleep that night. She was never a good sleeper; it’s why she had a prescription for Ambien. Usually one knocked her right out, but not tonight. She lay in bed in a pre-sleep haze until the flash of an epiphany jolted her awake.
Aimee was in an abusive relationship.
She didn’t know it, of course. She had been duped by Scott—they all had. His charming act, his easy smile. But Aimee was living with a lying, conniving murderer.
But how could she alert her friend to the danger she was in without alienating her? She knew how it would go. Lisa rolled over on her side. When she’d seduced Ruth’s boyfriend in college to show her what a useless jerk he was, Ruth blamed her . No, she wouldn’t make that mistake again. Female friendship was so puzzling to her. It wasn’t enough to love her friends completely, to have their best interests at heart, she had to manage the way she loved them.
She did love Aimee. Needed her.
And Aimee was in danger.
She thought about how she might reach out to the authorities in California. Let them know that Scott-slash-Michael was here. But she thought she knew what Aimee’s reaction might be. If her husband was arrested and her family torn apart, Aimee would blame Lisa. A classic case of shooting the messenger.
There had to be another way, a way to arouse suspicion and drive a wedge between them. The goal was to make Aimee feel so betrayed, so hurt, that she would never forgive Scott, that she would turn to her loyal friend Lisa for succor and support.
It wasn’t going to be pretty, Lisa thought, but it was for Aimee’s own good.