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“I do. Or, at least, I know Lyla does. She and Lizzie were always at each other’s throats.”
“How so?”
Uncomfortable with sharing too much about Lyla, I defer. “I don’t know, really. They hated each other since the first day Lyla moved in.”
“And Antoinette? Juliette?”
“Toni is handling it well, considering…”
“Considering?”
“They were best friends—sisters—for almost twenty years.”
Harry picks up his tea and takes a delicate sip. “I hadn’t realized they went that far back.”
“Oh, yeah. But Toni…She’s so in control. She’s so guarded all the time. Soperfect. It’s almost…”
Harry nods encouragingly.
“Sad,” I say. “She won’t let herself grieve. She keeps everything so close and everyonejust far enough away to maintain emotional distance.” I think about Toni and her carefully constructed control. “I can’t help but worry that she’s going to break one of these days. Just snap, you know.”
“Does that scare you?”
I think about his question, taking my time to mull it over. “No,” I answer eventually. “Not really. I trust Toni—more than anyone. Even at her worst, I think she’d be better than most.”
“That’s quite an accolade.”
“It’s true. She’s like nobody I’ve ever met before. Juliette is the one I worry about the most.”
“Why is that?”
“You never get over a loss like that. And since Lizzie died, Juliette’s nervous tick has gotten worse.” I don’t mention the added stress of her date with Dylan Duke because I’m sure Juliette will bring it up with Harry if she feels the need to.
Harry nods but doesn’t say anything. Knowing he’d never betray Juliette’s confidence is one of the reasons I feel so safe sharing with him.
“She already carries so much guilt,” I try to explain. “And I worry how Lizzie’s death is going to affect her.”
“That’s a reasonable concern. You care about her.”
“I do—I care about all of them.”
I go on to tell Harry that it feels like a betrayal to admit—especially to each other—that things might just get better now that Lizzie is gone. And if not better, then certainly easier. And, by the time I leave his office, exactly an hour after I arrived, I feel that for the first time in ten days, I can breathe again.
Chapter 10
Aiden
June 23, 2008
I run back through my first interviewwith Antoinette as I pull up to the curb just down the street from the house on Clementine Lane. The informational we conducted almost two weeks ago barely scratched the surface, and today I’m hoping that I can close some of the potential leads we’ve stumbled upon since then. Like what Antoinette’s exact relationship with Suzanne O’Neill is? Who the father of Elizabeth’s baby could have been—and would he have killed her over it? Although I doubt Antoinette even knew about the pregnancy, as the agency’s operator, she’d at least have an inkling of who Lizzie had slept with around the time she conceived.
I get out of the vehicle and start down the block towards the house. The neighborhood is quiet, a little dose of suburbia dancing on the periphery of the chaos that is Los Angeles. Trees of the same height line either side of the street, their roots nested in circular breaks in the sidewalks. The grass of every front yard is green and landscaped to perfection. And, although each house is different and unique, there’s a cohesion to them that is oddly comforting.
I’ve never been a homebody. My apartment is a decent one-bedroom in a two-story building in CulverCity. It’s nondescript. Nothing special. The building tends to draw the younger crowd, the starter couples and singles who are trying to figure out how to live alone and pay rent in Los Angeles. To me, it’s just the place I sleep.
The house on Clementine Lane is different. I could tell it was a home the first time I stopped by. It’s the small tells—the shoes on the floor by the door, the framed photographs of the girls on the walls, the faint tread line in the carpet where feet pass by most often.
The house itself is painted in a neutral cream color, something I imagine Antoinette would have picked out with no fussing over samples. The porch railing, swing, and window shutters are white. The yard is neatly manicured, the only frivolous touch a grumpy garden gnome sitting by the base of the porch steps.
