The last secret_ a novel - Mary McGarry Morris [123]
Nora feels a little better after her shower. Dinner is in the oven, marinated chicken thighs and carrots. Tomorrow she'll go back to work. It's the last place she wants to be, but this is ridiculous, letting her life go to pieces around her. She can't keep falling apart. It's not fair to her children. They need her to be strong. She measures a cup and a half of broth into a pan, adds butter, sets it on the burner, needing the rhythm, the most mundane tasks to pull her back into normal living. She is in the pantry looking for the box of wild rice, when the bell rings at the side door, leading in from the garage. Odd, she thinks, quickly closing the cupboard. Only the family ever comes in that way, and Chloe is up in her room, listening to music, and Drew is in the family room, playing a video game. Ken. She hurries to the window, peers through the curtain. She doesn't recognize the dark blue car parked halfway into her garage. Again, the bell rings, this time urgently. When she opens the door Robin Gendron is standing in the breezeway The last person on earth she wants to see. The unbelievable nerve. If ever she felt like slapping her it's right now.
“What do you want?” She clenches her fists.
“Nora, please,” Robin says with a wide-eyed gasp, white-knuckled, ringless hands clasped at her chin. “I need you to come out here. Into the garage. Please!”
“No! You want to say something, say it here.” Something in Robin's stare makes her hold the door edge between them. She looks frantic, desperate.
“I can't. Please, Nora, please. I'm begging you,” she whispers, tears running down her cheeks. She's hyperventilating. “Please come out here. I need your help. You have no idea—”
“Nora!” The car door opens and Eddie Hawkins's feet swing out onto the garage floor, but he stays in the car. Now with the light on she can see Lyra's face pressed against the rear window, mouth open, crying. “Seems we got a little mixup here, a little misunderstanding,” he calls out, the pouring rain and his voice such a boding turbulence through the open garage that for a surreal moment she finds reassurance in that mountain of black plastic trash bags piled in the corner. That's what they've come for, Ken's clothes. Tennis racquets, too, probably. They hang on the far wall over his golf clubs, alongside his skis, downhill and cross-country, his helmets and snowshoes, though not the bright green and orange snowboard, ridiculously expensive, like all of Ken's toys. The first and only time he used it he dislocated his knee. He was going to give it to Clay, an excellent boarder, but she was afraid Drew's feelings would be hurt. Annoyed by her interference, he begrudgingly gave it to Drew, who, as predicted, wasn't interested. Never used it. Ken's bicycles hang on hooks from the rafters. All the things he values most are in here. A good time. His lover, their child.
“He's got Lyra,” Robin whispers. “He won't let her go. He made us come.”
“Nora,” he calls again. “She thinks I'm some kinda detective or something. That I'm working for you, like tryna get dirt on her and the boyfriend. Your fine, upstanding husband!” He laughs. “So tell her. Go ahead!”
Nora stares at him for a moment, then looks back at Robin. “What do you want me to do?”
“Tell her!” Eddie shouts, and she realizes he's staying in the car because as long as he's got Lyra, Robin won't leave. Isn't this what Robin just said? Her brain's not working. Worlds have collided and nothing seems real. She's rooted here, on the outside, looking in.
“Help me. Please help me.” Robin's eyes burn into hers.
Like some crazed ringside fanatic, Eddie's insistent