Page 26 of Again with Feeling

I nodded, and I was surprised to find myself explaining, “Here. In Hastings Rock, I mean. We call ourselves the Last Picks, like—”

“The last picks in gym,” Jane said, and she laughed. It was a rich sound, deep like her voice, and full of unexpected delight. “Oh God, Vivienne must have loved that. She hated gym.”

I grinned, but it was as much because of how surreal this moment felt as because of the statement itself. Here I was, witha woman double my age, listening to her talk abouttheVivienne Carver as though she were just another hapless teenager. Which, I suppose, at one point she’d been, but it still felt unreal.

“After Neil and Vivienne divorced, we all wanted to stay friends. Neil’s estranged from his family; he barely made it through high school without getting kicked out of the house, and once he left, he never went back. And he and Arlen hit it off right away. He was the son Arlen always wanted. After the divorce, Neil stayed part of the family.” She stopped and cleared her throat. “I understand it must seem strange that Neil and I ended up together, but it really wasn’t. Richard was gone. Vivienne had moved away. We had always been close.” That unexpected smile turned the corner of her mouth again. There was something…self-aware about the smile. Not quite mocking, but close. “And, of course, I’d had a crush on Neil myself at one point in high school, although at the time, I couldn’t see that he wasn’t interested in me.”

There were so many things I wanted to ask. I picked the first one that came to mind. “What did you mean that Neil was the son Arlen always wanted?”

Jane frowned. Her hands curled protectively around the picture frame, and she seemed to think. “Richard and Arlen’s relationship was…difficult. They fought a great deal. Richard was temperamental. Arlen was stubborn. By the time I knew them, they’d settled into a pattern that was, let’s say, antagonistic. Arlen commanded. Richard defied. Neil, on the other hand, has always been a charmer. As I said, he and Arlen hit it off right away.”

“But you and Richard bought a house next to Arlen and—what was the mom’s name?”

“Betty. She was already dying when Richard and I got married. Lung cancer. Richard wouldn’t talk about living anywhere else, and then, once she was gone, we were settled.Richard had a job at the plant with Arlen, and I was at the teacher’s college. It didn’t make sense to move.”

“They were close, then?”

“Oh yes. Richard was the apple of Betty’s eye. He could do no wrong. Of course, that only made things worse with Arlen.”

“Because he was temperamental.”

“Yes.” I thought maybe she’d stop there, but she sighed and looked past me, or through me, her eyes softening as they lost focus. “Richard was such a beautiful person. Everyone was drawn to him; it’s hard to explain, hard to help someone understand. He was magnetic, to borrow a tired word. He was smart and funny. He made you feel like you were the only person who existed. And he was handsome too; he could have cut a swath through the ladies if he’d wanted to, but that wasn’t his style.”

“Maybe I was projecting,” I said, “but I got the impression that the four of you were your own little group.”

Jane laughed. “That we were unpopular, you mean? No, not at all. Vivienne might have been, if not for the rest of us. No. But we were…self-contained. Even back then, it irked some of our classmates. People tend not to like people who work their way free of the herd, so to speak. But it was impossible not to like Richard.”

“But you fought frequently.”

“Candy’s information again?” she said. “Yes. In the last year or two before Richard went missing, we fought often. I hate to think about it now.” Her voice caught, and she touched the tissue to her eye again. “I hate thinking about all of it. How unhappy we both were. How we took it out on each other.”

“If you weren’t fighting about an affair, what were you fighting about?”

“I’m afraid I was being glib when I said Richard’s stubbornness. We fought about the usual things, of course.There was never enough money; even back then, the plant was cutting hours, and I still hadn’t started teaching. And Richard—” She stopped. “How well did you know Vivienne? Before, I mean.”

“Not well.”

Jane nodded slowly. “She and Richard might as well have been twins. They were what we call Irish twins, as a matter of fact, although I suppose that’s not the polite thing to say anymore. When Vivienne wanted to, she could be just as charming as Richard—she had that same magnetism, for lack of a better word.”

I nodded; I remembered my first day at Hemlock House, and how easily Vivienne had won me over. It had been her hallmark during her years in the public eye—she was always kind, always polite, always witty, always easy to talk to.

“But Vivienne and Richard were never satisfied. They always wanted more. It was hard to see it at the time. When you’re young, you think opportunities are endless, and that the world will give you what you deserve if you work hard enough. As they got older, though, and those opportunities didn’t come to fruition, they changed. They were more jaded about things. They were more insistent. It was like a constant demand for more.” She stopped again, and her eyes seemed to refocus on me. “That was one of the reasons for the divorce. Vivienne wanted Neil to uproot their lives and move to Portland. She was determined to be famous, whatever it took.”

There was a lot packed into those words. In Vivienne’s case,whatever it tookhad included framing an innocent woman for murder and, later in her life, killing two men to protect her secret.

“What did Richard want?” I asked.

“The same thing,” Jane said with that same smile bent out of true. “Only different. Everyone who wants to be famous really just wants to be someone else.”

The sound of the lawnmower cut off, and in its absence, the quiet pressed in on me. I tried to come up with a good way of asking my question, and finally I settled for simple: “What do you think happened the night Richard disappeared?”

But Jane shook her head. “You mean, do I think Vivienne killed him and stole our money and ran off to Portland?”

“I understand Vivienne and Richard were fighting as well.”

“Richard was fighting with everyone. He was…not himself that last year. He was deeply unhappy.” Jane blew out a breath. “I’m not sure what Candy told you, but I think I should say that, like the rest of that family, she’s a deeply unhappy person. Some of that has to do with the fact that Candy has had a hard life, and it hasn’t made things easier for her to watch Vivienne’s success. That must have been very difficult for her. But it doesn’t excuse this kind of behavior.”

“What kind of behavior?”

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