The Neighbor's Secret(9)

By the time Jen got to Harriet Nessel’s house, a long line of cars extended far down the street. She pulled behind a dark SUV. Its door opened and Priya Jensen, one of the club’s core members, stepped out, tall and gorgeous as ever. She tossed her silky black hair over her shoulder, waved at Jen, and went inside.

If Priya or any of the others knew that book club was Jen’s “one thing,” they would probably stage an intervention, albeit one with themed finger sandwiches and a gift bag stuffed with lavender-scented hand lotions and candles.

Priya and the rest of the book club group regulars—manic Janine Neff and Deb Gallegos, who did the elaborate drinks, and Annie Perley, who reminded Jen of a plucky kid sister from a situation comedy—were constantly planning Fun Events: cocktails and tailgates and ski weekends. All of their kids seemed to be friends and most attended Sandstone K-8, the local public school.

Before their move, Jen had flown out to visit schools on Abe’s behalf. At Sandstone, she had been struck first by the blindingly aggressive level of activity: everyone—teachers and students—seemed to be kicking balls, or singing and dancing, or hurrying through the halls while talking and laughing. They were shiny-haired, white-toothed, zipped up in brightly colored fleece jackets.

Jen had walked out before the tour began.

Foothills Charter School was out-of-district, which had been inconvenient at the time, but was now a blessing. The women of book club wouldn’t have heard any gossip about Abe’s expulsion.

After Jen’s first book club meeting, Janine made it a point to invite Jen to a barbecue, so Abe could meet the other kiddos his age. While Jen had felt a bizarre pride that she’d faked normalcy convincingly enough to be asked, she had ultimately declined. Abe had no place at a barbecue in this neighborhood.

Jen wasn’t embarrassed by Abe, but she knew that he invited judgment. The slouch, the slightly forced smile, the intense and stony stare. He was that kid.

But Abe was so much more than that kid!

When people put him in a box or alienated him or she saw that inevitable flicker of derision across their faces, Jen burned like a devil doused with holy water.

Jen wasn’t one of those moms, the kind who insisted her child was perfect, but there was so much hypocrisy. Everyone preached tolerance to difference, but nobody practiced it.

She was stalling.

Jen took Scofield’s card from her jeans pocket and held it between her thumb and forefinger. He’d bet big on himself and sprung for the expensive card stock: the thing didn’t even buckle.

This shouldn’t surprise. Scofield was all about image, with that slicked-back gelled hair and that pungent cologne, probably to mask the odor from those bare feet shoved into loafers. He was immature and brusque and mansplainy and hadn’t let Jen get a word in.

Jen knew now that it was flat-out wrong to label a child as young as Abe. They could probably find several respected doctors who would agree it had been malpractice.

Someone must have sued Scofield by now, or maybe his license had been revoked. But even if he was still practicing, Scofield certainly wouldn’t remember Abe.

And here was Jen, carrying his card from state to state, like some sort of groupie. She considered calling him every time she read the newspapers after a horrific mass assault. The assailants were very frequently a young man, teens or early twenties, isolated and in pain. Inevitably, there had been signs from childhood that he hadn’t fit in, and Jen could not stop herself from reading those signs as a road map, a point of comparison to Abe.

Jen reminded herself that she, not Scofield, was the world’s foremost expert on Abe.

She would agree with anyone that Abe’s disposition wasn’t particularly sunny, but Abe wasn’t cruel. And as far as the hamster story went, Jen reassured herself that Abe had always been fine with their cat—if not affectionate, then at least neutral.

He wasn’t like those young men in the news, Abe just needed to learn how to cope a little better, but—

What if he never did?

What did people say about the young man who had taken hostages in the supermarket and the other who had brought assault weapons to the fraternities he had been rejected from?

They had been loners, too.

Forgotten shadows in the back of the class, most likely. At root, desperate to connect.

When Jen read about these lost souls, she felt for them as much as the victims (which was warped: empathy shouldn’t extend where they’d gone). Mostly, though, she felt for their poor parents. What warning signs, what chances to intervene had they missed?

Two other women walked past Jen’s car, Lolita copies in hand, but she couldn’t let herself go inside until she called Scofield.

Call him. Nothing else has worked.

It rang. Once and then again. When the message switched to voicemail, there was his voice—still so young!—and a beep.

“Dr. Scofield, hello. My name is Jen Chun-Pagano and you saw my son about seven years ago. Long enough ago that you probably don’t remember us.”

Jen gave her number, cut herself off, hung up.

Just a rule-out, she told herself. Just to confirm that Scofield was as unhelpful as she and Paul remembered him to be.



* * *



The women were already circled around Harriet Nessel’s living room when Jen creaked open the screen door. Thirty heads turned to stare.

“Jen, sweetie,” Janine said, “grab yourself a glass of Lolita Lemondrop from the kitchen and come on back.”