Page 28 of Memory of Murder
I realized by then that I had no true friends. There were my colleagues at work who were nice and whom I adored working with, but we were not friends in the true sense of the word. I was getting a little paranoid actually. At least the other worry had passed. The lab results were what I had hoped for. But I won’t talk about that since it worked out for the best. Thank God. I don’t think I could have lived with myself if it had turned out differently.
Still, Neil was considering a new venture for after he graduated next year. It was a start-up company that he felt would explode with opportunity in the near future. He was offered a part-time position starting late July. The trouble was that the company was untried. He would be brand new out of law school and serving as the company’s head legal counsel. It was quite the prestigious offer for him, except for all the reasons I just named.
By then you would have been born and maybe even trying to crawl. But I didn’t want to go back to work that first year. I really wanted to spend some time being your mom. The health insurance was the issue. At the time, my insurance was with my work. Who knew what this new company just starting out would offer. If I took a year off, there might not have been any healthinsurance. That would not have worked. I told myself that Neil would make the right decision.
Carin had not come back, and by this point Eve and I were not speaking. It was awful the way we had fallen apart. All for such stupid reasons…all because of one person.
By that point I realized I should have told Neil the truth when it happened, and this would have been behind us. But I didn’t, and by mid-July I was living with that nightmare hanging over my head. I had no idea what the right thing to do was. I was so young. Neil’s life was so busy with his last year of law school and the decisions about our future. He had no time for distraction.
The best I could do was hope all would work out and we could move forward with our lives and never look back. Even then I had begun to believe we had outgrown our friends anyway. It was time to make new friends. I didn’t want to raise a child with friends like our old ones.
With that in mind, I told myself we would get through it and maybe in a couple of years we would try for another child. It would have been so wonderful to have a boy and a girl. I remember thinking these things. Although I hadn’t had a scan yet, I was convinced you would be a girl. If that turned out to be the case, I planned to name you Marianne. TheMaripart after me, of course, and theAnneafter Neil’s mom. She was such a good mom and wife. Far better than her husband deserved. I hoped I could be half as good as she was. Just so you know, it wasn’t because my mother was a bad one. She just wasn’t the kind of mom I wanted to be. I loved her, but I wanted to be better.
I often sat in our little cottage and wondered if one day we would have a bigger house. I even pondered the idea that I should be thankful Neil was considering that start-up company. If it went the way he believed it would, we could end up very comfortable. Possibly even rich.
Maybe some things were worth the risk.
I had decided to talk to him about it again. Just because we were having a baby we shouldn’t have been afraid to go for a better life.
I was happy with the decision, and I couldn’t wait to tell Neil.
But I had no idea what was coming.
Chapter Eleven
Crystal Lake
Friday, July 11
Latham & Hirsh Law Firm
Virginia Street, 10:00 a.m.
Anne was on edge this morning. She had been since she awakened at five o’clock. Walking the floors of her room for an hour hadn’t helped. Then finally around six or so she’d gone outside and stared at the water in hopes the serenity of its stillness would help her find her center.
Hadn’t happened.
By seven she’d gone back inside and made a cup of coffee. She couldn’t stop thinking about the house where Mary and Neil had lived or the details Beatrice Farrell had shared with her. Specifically, the idea that Neil might not be the father of the child Mary had been carrying.
Her father, Anne amended. She was trying—she really was—to get right with consistently acknowledging the people who had brought her into this world. Not so easy after all these years of resentment and of pretending they didn’t exist or were irrelevant. Growing up, she had learned to turn off those feelings. It was the only way to protect herself.
She pushed aside the thought. That little girl no longer needed protecting. She was a grown woman, and she owed it to herself—and maybe to her parents—to do this. The journal had mentioned some sort of situation Mary had worried about andthat it had been straightened out. Anne had no idea what the problem—or situation—was until yesterday. Obviously it was the concern about paternity.
When Jack knocked on the door to her room this morning and let her know it was time to go, she’d been startled. She had been far too deep in the swarm of new discoveries to notice the passage of time. After the murder, her mother had basically gone through the horrors of her situation alone. Her own parents were long dead. Her friends had abandoned her. She really was completely alone.
For the first time in her entire life, Anne felt sympathy for the woman who had given birth to her. Perhaps those feelings were misguided. After all, being here and talking to the people who had known Mary and Neil made all of it so real. Quite honestly the whole story—what little she had known about it—had seemed like a work of fiction to Anne. Not part of her actual life. Nothing she had actually experienced.
As a child she’d experienced only resentment and disappointment related to her biological parents. But this had changed everything far faster than she could have imagined possible. Had Victoria, the head of the Colby Agency, known this would happen? Was that why she insisted Anne participate in the investigation?
Anne would hold off until this was done before thanking her…or not.
Too many confusing emotions roiled inside her just now to visualize how this would all settle down.
Since today was forecast to be another scorcher, she had selected her lightest-weight blouse and the blue dress pants. It was important to represent herself well at this meeting, given that she was also representing her parents, so to speak.
It really was the oddest, somewhat unsettling urge.
“You ready?”
