The things we don’t know, the things we don’t understand.
I did the only thing I could do. I got out my checkbook and wrote one more check for my father’s refurbishment project. I even wrote “interior design consultation” in the memo line on the check. I told Eloise Schumann that she had to report the income, but that’s between her and the IRS. My only job now is to take care of my family. I’m a SAHM and a SAHD-stay-at-home daughter.
Oh, there’s nothing to keep me from practicing law again one day, aside from my willingness to indulge in that little bit of implicit extortion. I assume that’s why AJ killed himself, so I wouldn’t have to figure out if my brother needed to be charged for soliciting Nita Flood’s murder. He was trying to save my career. Or maybe he was trying to save his reputation. He died-oh that word-beloved.
At any rate, I’ve lost my taste for the legal profession. It is too serious to be treated as a competition, too flawed to be a calling. Even with the twins now in fourth grade, days are easier to fill than one might think. From sunup to well past sundown, I go and I go and I go. I could have sent Teensy off into a well-remunerated retirement, but neither she nor my father would have liked that. If the fates are kind, he’ll be giving her a ride somewhere and they’ll overshoot the driveway and plow into Wilde Lake together. Of course, Teensy being Teensy-that is, endlessly perverse-the more I do around the house, the more she does; even the spacious kitchen is not enough to keep us from bumping into each other as we battle for housekeeping supremacy. Homemade rolls? I’ll see that and top you with pasta made from scratch, not even using a machine. The more dishes we dirty, the more time I have to spend cleaning the kitchen at night, my form of meditation.
When the house is clean, the voice of my father’s television finally silenced, I sit in the living room and drink a glass of wine or three. On windy nights, the fake lake is stirred into action and I can hear its wavelets smacking the shore. AJ, the lake says. Noel. Rudy. Mary McNally. Ben Flood. Adele Closter Brant. Gabe. How many deaths can one family hold in its ledger? It’s as if death begets death. It was practically the family business. My only hope is to free my children from its legacy. That’s why this investigation, donated to the Howard County Historical Society, is to be sealed for one hundred years-not unlike the papers of H. L. Mencken, to cite another man who shocked future generations by being a man of his times. Let strangers pore over them one day, piecing together my family’s history. My children don’t need to know any of this. They, at least, are blameless. How long can I keep them that way? Does anyone get through life blameless?
They certainly don’t need to know their father was with another woman when he died. A woman who called me several weeks later, apologizing profusely as she sobbed, begging me to understand that they were IN LOVE, but they never wanted to hurt anyone. A woman who says she was with him earlier that night, but swears he was alive when she left. Who knows? Love, she kept sobbing to me. They were in love. She never would have hurt anyone; she and Gabe spoke often of how much they loved their partners, but-love. Love, love, love. I offer this story only because I think it provides context for some choices I have made since then and for the scant information I have offered about Penelope and Justin. This is not their story. This is not their legacy.
I told that woman never to call me again. On good days, I think she was a liar, a troublemaker, someone who thought she would be offered money to go away. On bad days-well, at any rate, she didn’t get any money from me.
I tell the story here so I may never tell it again. My childhood was made up of stories and so many of them were false. Is that because the true stories were unendurable?
Just last week, I ran into my childhood friend, Randy Nairn, at Wegman’s. We were both buying sushi-grade tuna. He owns a wholesale liquor distributor and he has the look of a marathoner: lean, almost too lean, as his face is a little weathered, ten years older than his body, but then-his body looks great. He’s married, happily I assume, because he didn’t flirt at all and I might have given him an opening, mentioning the time he asked to kiss me. I might have touched his elbow. He glided right past that, instead recalling Thanksgiving dinner at my house, that opened bottle of crème de menthe he brought as a gift. He laughed at himself with the ease of someone who knows he has transcended the foibles of his past, a trick I’ll never master. I still get mad when people tell the story about my golf caddy back-to-school outfit. That is, I would get mad, if there were anyone left to tell it. Maybe I will tell Penelope and Justin, and they can tell it back to me. The Brants have a few stories left that can still be told.
“Your house was like a castle to me,” Randy said. “It was like you were living in some palace, high above everybody else. I thought you were royalty.”
We did, too, Randy. We did, too.
AFTERWORD
Where to begin? I am indebted to Alison Chaplin and Molli Simonsen, who did everything in their power to help me get things right. Alafair Burke, Calvert County State’s Attorney Laura L. Martin, and Jane Tolar provided much-needed expertise on legal matters. New City Upon a Hilclass="underline" A Brief History of Columbia and the “You Knew You Grew Up In Columbia” Facebook page filled in the gaps in my knowledge about the place where I lived and attended high school, 1974-1977. I appreciate the support of everyone at William Morrow, particularly my editor of twenty (!) years, Carrie Feron. Also with me for twenty years, my agent Vicky Bijur.
Those who know Howard County politics will know that Lu Brant is not, in fact, the first female state’s attorney, but I gave her that distinction for the purposes of the novel; Marna L. McLendon served back in the 1990s.
I am lucky to have a spouse, David Simon, who can answer stray questions about homicide investigation. My daughter, Georgia Rae, is eager to contribute illustrations to my books, but says that must wait until she finishes school in twelve years. The FLs keep me sane even as they encourage my worst impulses.
But in the end, all errors are my own-and some are deliberate.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Since LAURA LIPPMAN’S debut in 1997 she has been heralded for thoughtful, timely crime novels set in her beloved hometown of Baltimore. Now a perennial New York Times bestseller, she lives in Baltimore and New Orleans with her family.
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