He was startled to find Laura’s sister there. Abby was a couple of years older than Laura, had two kids as well, married a guy with a trust fund and no personality. He claimed to be a novelist, but mostly he played tennis and golf. Abby had the same clear blue eyes as Laura, had the same swan neck. Instead of Laura’s corkscrew brown curls, though, her brown hair was straight and glossy and fell to her shoulders. She was more reserved, had a more regal bearing, was less approachable. Nick didn’t especially like her. The feeling was probably mutual.
“Hey,” he said, touching her elbow. “Nice of you to come. Julia’s going to be thrilled.”
“It was sweet of Julia to call me.”
“She did?”
“You seem surprised. You didn’t tell her to?”
“I can’t tell her to do anything, you know that. How’s the family?”
“We’re fine. Kids doing okay?”
He shrugged. “Sometimes yes, sometimes no. They miss you a lot.”
“Do they? Not you, though.” Then she softened it a bit with a smile that didn’t look very sincere.
“Come on. We all do. How come we haven’t seen you?”
“Oh,” she breathed, “it’s been crazy.”
“Crazy how?”
She blinked, looked uncomfortable. Finally she said, “Look, Nick, it’s hard for me. Since…”
“Hey, it’s okay,” Nick put in hastily. “I’m just saying, don’t be a stranger.”
“No, Nick,” Abby said, inclining her head, lowering her voice, her eyes gleaming with something bad. “It’s just that-every time I look at you.” She looked down, then back up at him. “Every time I look at you it makes me sick.”
Nick felt as if he’d just been kicked in the throat.
Little kids, big kids running past, dressed up, taut with the preperformance jitters. Someone playing a swatch of complicated music on the Steinway, sounding like a professional you might hear at Carnegie Hall.
Laura’s nude body on the folding wheeled table after the embalming, Nick weeping and slobbering as he dressed her, his request, honored by the funeral director with some reluctance. Nick unable to look at her waxen face, a plausible imitation of her once glowing skin, the neck and cheek he’d nuzzled against so many times.
“You think the accident was my fault, that it?”
“I really see no sense in talking about it,” she said, looking at the floor. “Where’s Julia?”
“Probably waiting her turn at the piano.” Nick felt a hand on his shoulder, turned, and was stunned to see Cassie. His heart lifted.
She stood on her tiptoes, gave him a quick peck on the lips.
“Cass-Jesus, I had no idea-”
“Wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
“Did Julia order you to show up too?”
“She told me about it, which is a different thing. I’d say a daughter’s piano recital falls in the category of a family obligation, don’t you think?”
“I’m-wow.”
“Come on, I’m practically family. Plus, I’m a big classical piano fan, don’t you know that about me?”
“Why do I doubt that?”
She put her lips to his ear and whispered, her hot breath getting him excited: “I owe you an apology.”
Then she was gone, before Nick had a chance to introduce her.
“Who’s the new girlfriend?” Abby’s voice, abrupt and harsh and brittle, an undertone of ridicule.
Nick froze. “Her name’s…Cassie. I mean, she’s-”
I mean, she’s what? Not a girlfriend? Just a fuck? Oh, she’s the daughter of the guy I murdered, ain’t that a funny coincidence? Tell that to Craig, your alleged-writer husband. Give him something to write about.
“She’s beautiful.” Abby’s arched brows, lowered lids, glimmering with contempt.
He nodded, supremely uncomfortable.
“She doesn’t exactly seem like the Nick Conover type, though. Is she an…artist or something?”
“She does some painting. Teaches yoga.”
“Glad you’re dating again.” Abby could not have sounded more inauthentic.
“Yeah, well…”
“Hey, it’s been a year, right?” she said brightly, something cold and hard and lilting in her voice. “You’re allowed to date.” She smiled, victorious, not even bothering to hide it.
Nick couldn’t think of anything to say.
LaTonya was lecturing some poor soul as Audrey approached, wagging her forefinger, her long coral-colored nails-a self-adhesive French manicure kit she’d been hounding Audrey to try-looking like dangerous instruments. She was dressed in an avocado muumuu with big jangly earrings. “That’s right,” she was saying. “I can make a hundred and fifty dollars an hour easy, taking these online surveys. Sitting at home in my pajamas. I get paid for expressing my opinions!”
When she saw Audrey, she lit up. “And I figured you’d be working,” she said, enfolding Audrey in an immense bosomy hug.
“Don’t tell me Leon’s here too.” LaTonya seemed to have forgotten about her sales pitch, freeing the victim to drift off.
“I don’t know where Leon is,” Audrey confessed. “He wasn’t at home when I stopped in.”
“Mmm hmm,” LaTonya hummed significantly. “The one thing I know he’s not doing is working.”
“Do you know something you’re not telling me?” Audrey said, embarrassed by the desperation she’d let show.
“About Leon? You think he tells me anything?”
“LaTonya, sister,” Audrey said, moving in close, “I’m worried about him.”
“You do too much worrying about that man. He don’t deserve it.”
“That’s not what I mean. He’s-well, he’s gone too much.”
“Thank your lucky stars for that.”
“We-we haven’t had much of a private life in a very long time,” Audrey forced herself to say.
LaTonya waggled her head. “I don’t think I want to know the gory details about my brother, you know?”
“No, I’m…Something’s going on, LaTonya, you understand what I’m saying, don’t you?”
“His drinking getting even worse?”
“It isn’t that, I don’t think. He’s just been disappearing a lot.”
“Think that bastard is cheating on you, that it?”
Tears sprang to Audrey’s eyes. She compressed her lips, nodded.
“You want me to have a talk with him? I’ll slice his fucking balls off.”
“I’ll handle it, LaTonya.”
“You don’t hesitate to call me in, hear? Lazy bastard don’t know what a good thing he has in you.”
83
Audrey’s heart broke when Nicholas Conover’s daughter played the first prelude from The Well-Tempered Clavier. It wasn’t just that the girl hadn’t played all that well-a number of note fumbles, her technique not very polished, her performance mechanical. Camille had all but stolen the show with the Brahms waltz, had played perfectly and with heart, making Audrey burst with pride. It was what was about to happen to Julia Conover. This little girl, awkward in her dress, had lost her mother, something that should never happen to a child. And now she was about to lose her father.
In just a couple of days her father would be arrested, charged with murder. The only time she’d ever see her remaining parent would be during supervised jail visits, her daddy wearing an orange jumpsuit, behind a bulletproof window. Her life would be upended by a public murder trial; she’d never stop hearing the vicious gossip, she’d cry herself to sleep, and who would tuck her in at night? A paid babysitter? It was too awful to think about.
And then her daddy would be sent away to prison. This beautiful little girl, who wasn’t much of a pianist but radiated sweetness and naïveté: her life was about to change forever. Andrew Stadler may have been the murder victim, but this little girl was a victim too, and it filled Audrey with sorrow and foreboding.