Chapter 43 Sara Batcher
Sara Batcher
“When Sara sold InkRose, every employee in the company got a check for ten thousand dollars, on top of any stock options or bonuses. Even the ladies who came in twice a week and watered the plants got one. That was all Sara’s doing, and someone generous like that—they wouldn’t kill somebody.
And trust me, she didn’t need any insurance money. ”
If there was any life left in Sara Batcher, it was scared out by Maggie’s dramatic burst into the study. Her house manager stumbled in, knocking over a lamp in her haste and clutching her chest as if to keep her heart contained. “You’ll never guess who is here.”
“Keanu Reeves,” Sara said dryly, putting a notecard in her journal and closing it.
“No, but let’s continue to root for that.” Maggie set the lamp back in place and pushed her hair away from her face.
“David’s mother.” Sara capped her pen and added it to the cup on her desk.
Maggie grimaced at the thought of the overbearing woman, who had once given her a self-help book on weight loss. “God, no. Willow Morrow.”
Sara looked up, genuinely surprised. “Are you sure?”
“Saw her myself on the gate cam. Definitely her.”
“Willow Morrow is here, at the gate?”
“Well, no, I let her in, so she’s probably walking up the front steps, but yes, she’s here.”
Sara sat back in her seat and stared blankly at Maggie. “Holy shit. I really thought she was dead.”
“You and everyone else.” Maggie grinned. “When I saw her, my first thought was Oh my God, watch David show up next. How morbid is that?”
“Morbid.” Sara shook her head in disapproval and stood up, walking to the window and peering out of the blinds, trying to see down to the driveway. “I don’t get it. Why is she here?”
The doorbell rang, and both women turned toward the sound. “I guess we’ll find out,” Maggie said.
Sara invited Willow onto the back veranda, where they settled in at the seating cluster that overlooked the koi pond.
Dusk had fallen, and as they took their seats, the automatic landscape lighting glowed to life, casting dramatic uplights on the trees and foliage.
Maggie hustled toward them, a lighter in hand, and lit the candles on the table, then fired up the two fire towers on either side of them, turning the flames to low.
They were shielded from the wind by a stone wall that dribbled water in rivulets down its granite surface, but Sara was still appreciative of the heaters, especially with nightfall coming.
“Can I get you anything to drink?” Maggie paused beside them, the lighter gripped in both hands as if she were an acolyte.
“Clase Azul, if you’ve got it. Otherwise . . . surprise me.” Willow ran a hand through her hair and looked around. “Damn, Sara. This is beautiful. Last time I was here, the pool was different, right?”
“Ah, yeah. I redid it a couple of years ago.” Sara nodded to the guesthouse, where Maggie lived. “I removed the rose garden and put in the guesthouse. Maggie uses it.”
“Oh, that’s right; I remember all the blooms.” Willow nodded, almost manic in her energy, and Sara tried to pair this woman with the sleek trophy wife who had disappeared.
Willow Morrow had always been one of the more beautiful women in the neighborhood, a standard that she had taken seriously.
Sara had never seen her look anything other than perfectly put together.
This version of Willow was wildly different.
She was wearing cut-off shorts and a baggy T-shirt with a blinged-out dinosaur on the front, a long knit cardigan over the top, and Converse sneakers.
With big sunglasses perched on top of her head and her hair long and wavy, she looked like one of those bohemian hipsters who hung around all day at the coffee shop.
“Have you been by your old house?” Sara said cautiously, not sure how to bring up the fact that Willow had left all of them hanging when she’d disappeared.
It wasn’t that they had been close—more acquaintances.
But she’d been friendly enough to all their social circle that if she planned to leave, she should have said something to someone.
The abrupt disappearance without any warning—that was what had fueled the rumors.
“Yeah, I went there first. Met Katie.” Willow grinned. “Very different, I gotta say. At least from me. Seems like a sweet girl, though.”
“I haven’t met her,” Sara replied. “So I wouldn’t know.”
“You haven’t met her?” Willow crinkled her brow. Had there not been any Botox wherever she’d gone? She was overdue for a round in the 11’s and an appointment with some tweezers.
Sara tried not to stare at the woman’s overgrown brows. “Ah, no. They don’t entertain. Not like you guys did. I’m not exactly at the top of invitation lists when parties do happen, but I haven’t missed any at your place, far as I’m aware.”
“Oh my God, Mark must be going stir crazy.” Willow looked pleased at the possibility, and her smile widened at the sight of Maggie returning, a tray with their drinks in hand. “But all that aside, Sara, I really stopped by to pay my respects to David.”
Sara’s back stiffened. Pay my respects. She hated the sound of that, hated the interruption of her evening, hated the way that the woman’s voice just dropped to almost a whisper. Was this what was ahead for her? Hours of stilted and polite conversation with people she barely knew?
“I’m surprised you heard.” She forced a smile. “You’ve been in town, what? Just a few hours? And yet somehow you’re the first in line.”
Willow tilted her head and studied her. “You don’t have to make it sound predatory, Sara.
I found out an old friend died, and I stopped in to console his widow.
You know, there aren’t a lot of people in these gates who will see you as that.
Because most of them, right now? Are talking about you as his killer. ”
Maggie, who had been in the process of moving their drinks off the tray, paused, Willow’s glass in hand. The tumbler was heavy, and she shot Sara a questioning look, as if asking whether she should throw the contents in Willow’s face.
Sara’s gaze flicked from Maggie to Willow, and it took every ounce of her self-control to smile. “That’s an interesting assumption from a woman who hasn’t been here in quite some time.”
“David went missing a few months before I left,” she said bluntly, taking the glass from Maggie’s fingers and downing the tequila in one quick sip. “I know what everyone was saying, Sara. What everyone thought. And trust me, it was your closest friends who were saying it loudest.”
“I know what people thought,” Sara said quietly. “But people also thought you were dead, and you’re not. People are wrong more frequently than they are right.”
“You’re taking this the wrong way.” Willow leaned forward, and the candles’ reflections glowed in her irises. “I believe you. I just wanted to say that I’m sorry and that he was a great guy.”
He had been a great guy, at least when he wasn’t in withdrawal. Tears pricked the corners of Sara’s eyes. “You know, he was really funny. That’s why I fell in love with him. He kept me laughing.”
And he had. David’s humor had been what had both attracted Sara and sealed the deal with her. But a marriage couldn’t survive on laughter alone.
Especially since there were some things you couldn’t laugh off.