Page 93 of The New Year's Party
Allie was a little tempted, in the basement as Jenn poured out her complaints, to reveal her cards. To say,Guess what, Jenn? I’m Oscar’s sister, and you’re about to die.
But ultimately, there was more satisfaction in letting her die like Oscar. Confused. In the dark. And alone.
The blood? The fall down the stairs? That came out of left field. An added bonus, since Jenn would have died anyway from the Jell-O shots—but a lucky distraction. Then Doug confessed, and truly, Allie felt protected by some higher power.
She turned toward the window and lay on her side.
She had high hopes for 2020. Hopes of finding her way to happiness, that elusive golden thing everyone talked about so casually, as if it was as common and attainable as a bunch of bananas at the grocery store.
The thing was, even now, in her amazing relationship with Leigh, Allie couldn’t say she was happy. It was hard to feel happy when the older brother you adored was gone. It was hard to feel happy when your parents hated you. And it was hard to feel happy when you came back to take care of your parents in their decline, but even when you saw them weak and helpless and needy, you couldn’t find any love in your heart, not even an ounce.
It was hard to feel happy. But lots of things in life were hard, and Allie was willing to try on this first day of the new year. Once the sun came up, maybe then it would feel like a fresh start, a clean slate. Maybe, when the sun came up, shecould stash all the bad things she’d done in a dark closet and mentally throw away the key.
But for now, she lay in the dark, wishing with visceral ferocity that she could be the Allie that Leigh saw: the cute kindergarten teacher, curvy and smart, bouncy and fun.
Instead she was a wounded lion, a fucking wounded lion who had feasted on her enemies and let someone else take the fall and hadn’t even felt sorry for a single second.
It was a lesson she repeated to her kindergartners, but they had no idea. Then again, maybe no one ever truly learned it.
Never judge a book by its cover.
She closed her eyes and dreamed of the lion in her closet, invisible, mostly quiet, but scratching at the door, even as the room turned pink in the sunlight of a fresh day, a fresh year, even as Allie opened her eyes and Leigh did too and their gazes met and Leigh kissed her softly on the lips. Always scratching.
Epilogue
Olivia
Six months later
Olivia was deep in concentration doing a final spell-check on an email when the door to the guest room flew open.
“You’ll never guess who I just got off the phone with.”
Olivia looked up from her laptop as Bennett let himself into the guest room, where Olivia was sitting cross-legged on the bed. It was midafternoon, Alex was napping and Rosie and Norah were having their hour of quiet, solo playtime, which had been a lifesaver during the pandemic she still couldn’t quite believe they were in the middle of. Sunshine was streaming through the window and the AC was running.
It took Olivia a minute to refocus her attention.
“Phelps?” she guessed. Bennett and Phelps had been talking a lot more since lockdown, especially after Phelps was laid off.
“Doug,” said Bennett.
Olivia’s gut squeezed. She closed her laptop with a clack. Unpleasant memories washed over her in waves. She had a new strategy though, thanks to her new therapist: let the waves come, open herself to them, in fact, and remember she would still be there when the waves stopped.
“Doug called from jail?” she said.
“Yeah. It was a collect call, and thankfully I acceptedand... you’re not going to believe this, but he wanted to tell me he didn’t actually do it.”
“What?”
“I know. Unbelievable, right? He had this huge convoluted story about an unlicensed gun, and something about Hellie washing her hands, and this whole tangent about Ted’s suspicions about—and you’re not going to believe this—Allieof all people, and—” Bennett shook his head vigorously, like he was trying to clear away the cobwebs Doug had cast. “I mean, if there were any doubts, the toxicology report was the nail in his coffin.”
“Right, the hospice drugs he stole from his grandma. Didn’t that nurse testify she saw him stealing them?”
“Doug says it’s bullshit and she was just a bitter man-hater.”
Olivia shook her head. “Poor Doug. He’s truly living in a different world from the rest of us.”
“Something really screwed him up.” Bennett laughed without humor. “Drugs, I guess. He wasn’t always this way. He’s the one who started this whole New Year’s tradition, remember?”
