Laura Lippman - I'd Know You Anywhere

Elizabeth Lerner almost certainly had.

Her inspection of her closet done, her bedroom reordered, Trudy trudged off dutifully to her daily walk. It was a glorious fall day, and Old Town Alexandria was its most precious self. Scarlet and gold leaves drifted to the sidewalks, almost as if the town were a theater set and someone was leaning out of the sky with a box of silken fakes, throwing them down at suitable intervals. The day, the neighborhood, shone—shop windows gleaming, delicious smells wafting from the restaurants, people strolling aimlessly, as if they had no greater responsibilities than to acknowledge the loveliness of it all.

God, how she hated it. Had loathed it from the day they had moved here, even though she was the one who had lobbied for the change, and chosen their new location. The boys were gone, disappearing as sons do into their wives’ families, and now the holiday gatherings rotated among their households, so Trudy and Terry no longer needed a big house. It was easier for Trudy and Terry to visit each son—up to Boston, out to Kansas City, down to Jacksonville. Besides, the town house was not only small, but completely lacking in…resonance. The familiar items were there—pieces of furniture with real history, paintings from Trudy’s family, the everyday dishes, the fancy china—but it felt like a set, or one of those re-created rooms in the Smithsonian. She could imagine a tour guide’s nasal spiel: This is where the Tackett family ate (without appetite), this is where they slept (fitfully). It was as much a mausoleum as the one in Hollywood Cemetery.

She checked her watch, noting she had to walk for at least fifteen more minutes to meet her doctor’s expectations, and turned down Princess Street toward Founders Park. It had been a shock when Dr. Garry had lectured her about diet and exercise at her last physical. “I weigh two pounds less than I weighed on my wedding day,” she told him. But, as Dr. Garry had sussed out, she had remained at that weight largely by eating as little as possible and smoking. She had borderline high blood pressure and frighteningly high cholesterol. That is—it frightened the doctor. Trudy wasn’t the least bit perturbed. When she noticed her hair thinning, a possible side effect of the statin he had prescribed, she simply stopped taking it. She wondered how long she was going to get away with that maneuver.

But she was walking, as advised, and doing silly little exercises with soup cans. She was not depressed, despite what her doctor thought, and she was far from apathetic or self-destructive. She happened to like smoking, something the nonsmokers of the world could never understand. She had given it up only to avoid being a hypocrite in her children’s eyes. During the trials, she had started sneaking one or two a day with one of the assistant prosecutors because it was a good time to chat, assess how things were going. Because she never bought cigarettes, only bummed them, she didn’t think of herself as smoking. By the time everything had worked through the legal system, she was a full-fledged smoker again, up to a pack a day. Now she was down to five, and she measured out her days in those slender treats. Number one was puffed in the laundry room, with a cup of tea, shortly after Terry left for work. The second was for early afternoon, after completing the prescribed walk. Number three was at 3 P.M. on the dot, with another cup of tea, but this time in the kitchen, while listening to Fresh Air and blowing her unfresh air out the window. Four was postdinner, back in the laundry room, and five was a quickie in the powder room right before bedtime. Terry knew, of course. He wasn’t stupid, and he hadn’t lost his sense of smell. He knew, and he let it go. She wondered if he would be similarly forgiving should he learn about the Lipitor she had stopped taking, the fact that her cholesterol was above 300, that her blood pressure was 138 over 90 the last time she checked it with the cuff at the local CVS.

She had reached the park. Terry had explained to her once that the marina was in Virginia, but the Potomac, at least here, was considered part of D.C. Who made such determinations? Why did they matter? She thought about the surveyors, moving carefully down the slope, the all-too-apt names on the map: Lost River, Lost City. In the end, they had prevailed, but how she hated Walter Bowman for forcing that exercise on them, for requiring them to prove on which side of the state line he had killed their daughter.

Now, at last, he was going to die. Once that was done, Trudy would decide how much she wanted to live, if she would throw away the cigarettes and reclaim the Lipitor. She had been stashing the pills in a piece of Tupperware, refilling the prescription to avoid discovery. It wasn’t that she was vain, but—She reached a hand up to her hair. It was thicker. That wasn’t her imagination.

On the way home, she varied her route and passed St. Mary’s. She had attended once or twice after they moved here, and people were generically kind. Her preferred brand of kindness, truth to tell. But the rift between her and her church remained irrevocable. Not that her priest back in Middleburg had ever been direct enough to argue against her desire to see Walter Bowman put to death. The Catholic Church may be opposed to the death penalty, but the issue wasn’t a deal breaker, like abortion or same-sex marriage. No, Trudy had been the one who had tried to persuade the priest to change his mind. She hadn’t been delusional enough to think that she could change the church, but it had seemed vital to her that at least one of its representatives should, if only in private, agree with her, endorse her decision on moral grounds. She had converted for Terry’s sake, broken faith with her Huguenot ancestors, borne out the old saying about converts being the best adherents. A little disingenuous affirmation seemed the least the Catholic Church could do for her.

At the time of Holly’s death, Father Trahearne was still in the parish, but he had retired before the trial. (Sent away, whispers had it, another problem priest, but Trudy couldn’t believe his issues went much beyond drink.) His replacement was younger, dull and earnest. Father Trahearne, at least, would have enjoyed the argument. He might have even had a chance of changing Trudy’s mind. No—no, he would not have been able to do that. But he would have understood that she needed to have the conversation, that she was confessing, in a fashion. The new priest squirmed, uncomfortable with a discussion in which he did not have the moral high ground.

Trudy didn’t miss the church, although it had been central to her adult life. She missed Father Trahearne. She missed her church, the specific space, back in Middleburg. She missed the parish activities, which had filled her days. But she didn’t miss The Church, which she felt had denied her empathy. Ah, well, it was composed of a body of single men who had never fathered children, at least not officially. How could they really understand her situation?

When she let herself back into the house, she was startled to see Terry there. Was it Friday? He often ended office hours at noon and played golf on Fridays, but she was pretty sure it wasn’t Friday. Besides, he wouldn’t come home first. He would go straight to the club.

“Is something wrong?” She could not remember the last time she had asked that question. Everything was wrong, always. Wrong was the status quo. Her life was wrong, with little slivers of okay.

“A development over at Sussex,” he said.

He took her hand. Trudy and Terry, Terry and Trudy. How cuuuuuuuuuuuuuuute. They had been. They had been beautiful, with strong white teeth and broad-shouldered sons and the most gorgeous little girl anyone had ever seen. They had been invincible. That was why they called their farm T’n’T—nothing in the world was stronger than they were.