Last Lie (10 page)

"And is that also why he wanted to talk with you about Walnut?" Lauren is smart. She has a prosecutor's eye for the faint threads that tie seemingly unrelated events together.

I said, "One of his partners wants to include the Walnut building in the deal. Raoul said he thinks it may end up being a crucial component to make everything work."

"I don't get that part."

"Nor do I. But get this--he did tell me that if they can make this happen, he and Diane are buying one of the condos in the new building."

Her face brightened. "Really?"

"The best unit, of course. Top floor, facing the Flatirons. The old West End Tavern view? They want a big terrace for entertaining. Diane wants a friggin' gazebo."

Diane wanting a gazebo in the middle of downtown Boulder made Lauren smile. She said, "I know they talk about moving all the time, but I never thought they would really leave the mountains. I always thought they loved the Lee Hill house."

"Raoul's tired of the long winters up there. They want to travel. They'd like someplace that's easier to leave behind."

The waiter returned to take our lunch orders. Lauren was having trouble deciding between the pastas. The waiter was a chatty man who seemed like a guy who would have been content to talk the wonders of a fresh Bolognese sauce all afternoon. I learned much more about the lineage of the meat and the provenance of the milk than I wanted to know.

Lauren indulged him for quite a while. I zoned out. My thoughts drifted to Burning Man Lady and the guest room. Ultimately, Lauren went with the mushroom fettuccine. I interrupted the waiter with my choice before we learned about the forest where the fungi had grown strong and prospered. He left in search of another patron to school about the menu.

We sat silently for a while. It's possible that Lauren and I had always had long interludes of silence when we were out alone as a married couple, but I didn't think so. We were certainly having them with some frequency since Holland.

The circumstances of Lauren's MS exacerbation in Holland had wounded our marriage in ways I was determined to keep from being fatal. Those circumstances? The exacerbation caused paralysis of her legs that struck, almost biblically, while she was in the bed of the man who had fathered her first daughter sixteen years earlier.

That man, father of a stepdaughter named Sofie whom I'd never met--his name is Joost--was the one who called to tell me that my wife was very ill.

I had tried to convince myself that the silences that hung between Lauren and me in the wake of those events were a form of scar tissue from the serious marital wound we'd suffered. I feared at times that the evidence of the injury to our relationship would never really go away. I believed we could heal, but that the scar tissue would linger and remind. Could we deal with it? Survive it? Most days I believed we could.

Most days are not all days.

Lauren leaned forward. She took one of my hands in both of hers. "I have an idea. Don't go all--It's just an idea. I'm thinking . . . maybe we could do it, too. Buy a condo in the building across the street. I mean, if they can get it done. What do you think?"

"You're serious?"

"Elevators?" she said wistfully. "For me? I know that's selfish, but . . . I would love to live someplace that has an elevator. And us and the kids all on one floor? No maintenance. No snow to plow or shovel or rake off the roof. No lane to level. No critters to fence out. Even if it turns out that you had to sell Walnut, you and Diane could always find another office downtown, and if we were living on Pearl, you could walk to work. Think about that. The dogs would be close to the creek. When my leg gets stronger, I could start walking to work, too. It'd only be four blocks.

"All the restaurants we go to anyway would be right outside our door."

Lauren had obviously given the idea of moving to a downtown condo some serious thought long before I mentioned Raoul and Diane's plans at 11th and Pearl.

The possibility of us leaving our current Spanish Hills house had come up before. After I got back to Boulder from Israel with Jonas, and we learned that Adrienne wished for us to become his parents, Lauren and I briefly considered trying to swing a deal to move into Peter and Adrienne's farmhouse to accommodate our suddenly larger family. We quickly realized that financially it would be a monumental stretch. Even if we could find a way to make the numbers work, the big house was on three floors, with a laundry room all the way down in the walk-out basement. Given Lauren's mobility problems, a three-story home made no sense for us as a family.

"I'm sure that whatever Raoul and his buddies will end up building across the street is way out of our league, Lauren. Financially. You know what the new condos sold for on Walnut and on Canyon. We can't manage that. And this location is even better. And we would need three bedrooms. Or four. I don't see how it could happen."

"Even if we sold Walnut and Spanish Hills?"

"We own only half of Walnut. And we have a healthy second to pay off in Spanish Hills." I reminded her that we did the remodel and the garage with borrowed money.

I took my own temperature. I thought my voice sounded normal. I considered that quite a feat considering that I could feel my heart galloping--the hooves of a passel of horses pounding against my chest wall--at the mere thought of selling my sanctuary in Spanish Hills. Spanish Hills was home. For me, it was special. I'd rented it long before I bought it. Apparently not so much for Lauren. I fought to keep my panic from infecting the conversation.

She released my hand. She looked away briefly. Sipped some tea. Fiddled with her silverware. "What if we sold the rental house, too? The current tenants have been wanting to do a lease/purchase. Could we make it work then?"

The rental house was the bungalow Lauren owned when we met. It was on a quiet street on The Hill, the neighborhood tucked between the university and the sudden rise of the Rockies on Boulder's western boundary. The house was small but in reasonable repair. The block was quiet and far enough from the university that the street wasn't attractive as student housing.

From the time we started living together, we had used the little charmer for rental income. In the intervening years, Boulder's real estate values had skyrocketed. Although prices had stabilized during the grand recession, the housing shock hadn't taken as much of a toll on prime real estate in Boulder as it had in other areas of the state. The financial bottom line was that, despite a small remaining mortgage, there was a lot of equity waiting to be tapped if we sold the house on The Hill.

"You are serious?" I said.

She sat back, folding her hands in her lap. "Our house has become difficult for me. With the stairs especially, the laundry in the basement, and the garage being separate from the house. Grace has started making noises about wanting to move to the other room in the basement to be closer to Jonas. Having both kids down there will make things even harder.

"The kids are growing up. They don't run out to play in the fields anymore. They are doing more and more things at school and in town. We're on the road with them constantly because we live so far out. It would be so much more convenient to be in town."

My most compelling counterarguments, I knew, were sentimental and personal. And they were, ultimately, selfish. I swallowed them. Lauren was telling me something important. I told myself to try to hear it.

Instead of arguing, I said, "This is a lot to consider, Lauren. A lot. You're suggesting we sell everything? The Walnut office, Spanish Hills, your place on the Hill?" We still called it, all these years later, her place. "And then we would use all the money to buy a condo downtown? One we've never seen, that doesn't really even exist except in a developer's imagination." She smiled. I said, "You're talking changing everything at once. New schools for the kids. A completely new lifestyle. Everything . . . would change."

"Not everything," she said. "Just some things. Okay, you're right, maybe most things. A fresh start, Alan."

The prospect didn't cause her the vertigo I was feeling. She was able to consider the upheaval that was on the table without any apparent trepidation. But trepidation is all I felt at the prospect of those changes.

I realized at that moment that Lauren's grand plan wasn't a series of real estate moves. Or a simple change of lifestyle. Or even a practical plan to find a home that acknowledged her disability.

The most important thing she was trying to do was create a fresh start.

For us.

13

W
hen I got back to my office after lunch, I left Diane a note. The old-fashioned kind, in an envelope, affixed to her office door with tape.

It's how she rolls.

E-mail and Diane had been acquainted for years, but they had never become friends. She had gone far out of her way to make certain she was never formally introduced to the convenience of texting. The cell phone she carried was a vintage brick with large buttons. She maintained she liked the big numbers and the substantial feel of the thing in her hand. Any lack of modern features was irrelevant to her.

Her office answering machine was exactly that--a machine. It took up almost a square foot of real estate on her desk. To pick up messages from home she called her office number and punched codes into the phone she was using, codes that would cause the device to erupt from slumber and then to begin to beep incessantly. And nonmelodically. That beeping, in turn, resulted--if things went well--in convincing the black box to start playing back her recorded messages from afar.

Despite copious soundproofing between our offices, I could always hear the infernal beeping whenever Diane would communicate with her machine and it would begin its responsive mating chirps.

Ironic as the thought sounded to my children--keeping up with the two of them was solely responsible for my recent transition to twenty-first-century digital life--I was Diane's resident IT guy. The previous week, Diane had cornered me after she finished a psychotherapy session with a young woman she was treating. She said she had an urgent tech question for me. She didn't actually say she had a tech question. She said, "You need to explain something to me about the Internet."

It wasn't an uncommon occurrence; my IT role meant that I did curbside tech supervision on the fly with Diane with some regularity. I could reliably count on the fact that whatever Diane wanted to know was entry-level stuff. Which, fortunately, was my tech area of specialty.

Recently, since she adores Christopher Walken--were she sufficiently inebriated, I actually think she'd risk all the glorious aspects of her marriage with Raoul for a single night of bliss with the god Walken--I had tracked down a YouTube video of the man preparing a dinner of, well, salt supported on the framework of a vertically roasting chicken.

As I suspected she might be, Diane was enamored with C. Walken, chef. "Wouldn't you like to be able to find videos like that yourself, whenever you want, on your own phone?" I asked.

"Nice try," she'd said. "You know I don't play video games." Everything online that Diane didn't understand was a "video game." One, of course, she didn't play.

THE OLD-SCHOOL NOTE I'd left taped to Diane's door listed the breaks I had in my afternoon followed by "Free to chat?"

She marched into my office shortly after three thirty. She plopped on the sofa, put her feet up on the coffee table, and pushed her skirt down between her spread legs. To my dismay, she asked me how Twitter worked. Despite my better judgment, I began to explain what I knew. She put a quick end to my soliloquy at the moment she was convinced I had moved into deadpan ridicule--she thought I was actually saying
retreating
instead of
retweeting
and accused me of speaking in cartoon voices in an attempt to mock her.

It took me a few moments to clarify my intent. And to convince her that I was not talking in Tweety Bird tones. She recovered quickly, which is one of her strengths. "So what's up? You ready to talk about you and me selling this pop stand for a whole mess of money so that I can start designing my penthouse in the sky? I'll give you fifty-one percent. My final offer."

She was talking about selling the building in which we sat, so that she and Raoul could buy the prime condo on top of the yet-to-be-built structure on the
Daily Camera
site. I did indeed want to talk about those things with Diane, but not urgently. I had already decided that in order to get what I really wanted from Diane, I would employ a give-a-little, get-a-little strategy.

I said, "Did you hear that the Boulder police and the county sheriff were out at your friend's new house on Saturday morning? After the housewarming? The one we weren't invited to."

Diane winced. "I know. I know."

"And?"

"Don't worry. It's going to go away."

"You know that for sure?"

"It doesn't involve you. Believe me, you want no part of it. Forget you know anything, forget what you saw. Everything, anything." She lowered her face so that she was looking down. Then she shook her head again, frantically, like her face was the screen of an Etch A Sketch that she was urgently trying to erase. "God, I was so wishing you didn't know about any of this. You saw the cops?"

"Lauren did."

"I want to curse."

"Then curse."

"I'm trying not to. Self-improvement."

"What's the big deal, Diane? The cops came, they left. They haven't been back. How big a deal can it be?"

I was being disingenuous of course. I knew what the big deal was. I just didn't know the details or the truth. I was determined to learn the details, under the assumption that they would reveal the truth, and I was determined to understand why there was so much secrecy.

My personal stake in the mess was clear, at least to me: if there was someone capable of committing acquaintance rape living or visiting across the lane from my children and my wife, I wanted to know the details.

"I can't tell you why. It'd be the same as telling you what. And if I told you what, you would immediately wish I hadn't told you. Trust me."

I didn't get it. I knew enough to know that I wished what I knew wasn't true, but I wasn't feeling at all as though I wished I didn't know. I said, "You're sure I wouldn't want to know?"

"What I'm sure about is that even if you thought you wanted to know, after you knew, you would immediately see the error of your ways, and you would agree with me about it being better not to know. But then it would be too late. I'm doing my part to save you from all that regret."

Diane smiled. At rare times, she could be as charming as her husband. Most other times it wasn't a contest.

She knew me well. I have more than my share of anxieties and other garden-variety mental health vulnerabilities. She also knew that regret isn't one of the psychological albatrosses I typically lug around. I'm not someone who wastes hours gazing longingly at water that has passed beneath the bridge. I said, "If what happened was insignificant, we wouldn't be having this conversation. I assume the opposite is true. What you're telling me is that what happened is extremely serious."

The game we were playing felt awkward. She thought she was keeping a confidence, I assumed, for a friend. She didn't know that I already knew the critical letters in her Scrabble tray. All I was trying to ascertain was what word she was planning to construct with those letters. I was continuing to hope it wasn't R-A-P-I-S-T.

Diane chose her next words with atypical care. She seemed to be examining each one for bruises, as though she were selecting Palisade peaches for a tart and wanted to be certain each was unblemished. "There is a dispute, a serious dispute--a conflict of opinion, really--between . . . friends. These things happen."

Acquaintance rape is a dispute? A conflict of opinion between friends? In what universe?
I had an uncomfortable thought.
Has Diane taken sides? Does she believe that Burning Man Lady is making a false accusation? She said. He said. And he's right?

I wondered why Diane would come down on that side of the fence. If I knew no other facts, I would guess that Diane's instinctual inclination would be to support the woman's point of view in a rape allegation.

I went fishing. "These 'friends'? They're all old friends of yours and Raoul's?"

"Kinda . . . sorta. It was a big party, but there's a core group of couples who have been friends forever, one couple and us go all the way back to Storage Tech. Long time. Mimi and her ex-husband divorced five or six years ago. Nasty, nasty. Tough on Mimi and the kids. Terrence is now living with a trophy on Grand Cayman. Mimi and Hake have been married . . . eighteen months or so. One of the other couples has been part of the group for a . . . much shorter time. He is, was, a golf pro in Denver. He died not too long ago. His widow was at the party alone."

That, I figured, was Hella's patient. It sounded as though Diane's true friendship allegiance was with Mimi, Hake's wife. Perhaps Diane's defense of Hake had been reflexive. It also seemed likely that Hella's patient, the recent widow, sat at the newest place setting at the table. It was possible Diane hadn't connected with her. Or had a reason to doubt her honesty. I put a lot of weight in Diane's judgment. She had a good eye, little narcissism to color her impressions, and she kept her scales of personal justice in reasonable balance.

"A conflict of opinion? Like an argument?" I said. "What's the big deal? Why would an argument between friends involve a police visit? And all this secrecy?"

She stomped her right foot. She didn't pound it; the move was theatrical. In another circumstance, I might have considered it cute. "See, there you go. Alan, you've proven a dozen times--a hundred dozen times--that you can't leave stuff alone. I'm right, aren't I? You'll stick your nose--I don't need to tell you this--in anything. But this time has to be different. You have to leave this alone."

She took a moment to examine my face for signs of my acquiescence. I was pretty sure that she didn't see what she was hoping to see. "Promise me you won't talk to anyone--I mean anyone, Alan--about this."

"About what?"

"About the cops visiting. About what you think."

"I think I have a right to know if there is something going on with my neighbors that might impact my family's well-being."

"See?
Exactly.
You'll just keep fishing and fishing and fishing. I know you will. The cops were there. So don't talk about that. To anyone, okay? Is that so much to ask?"

"Are you and Raoul involved?"

"Alan." Diane brought her hands together in front of her chest in schoolgirl prayer position. The posture looked as foreign on her as would a tattoo of dripping blood on the side of her neck.

"This isn't like you, Diane. You love telling me shit.
Especially
shit no one else knows. And you know better than anyone that I can be trusted to keep my mouth shut. When I say I won't say anything, I don't say anything."

She stood up. "The stakes are too high. I am protecting people I care about. Okay? This time, trust me. And, just so you know, one of the people I'm protecting is you." She stepped toward the door. Spun back to face me. "Hake played pro football. Big-time. When he was younger. He was a kicker for, like, four games or something at the end of one season for . . . Buffalo, or Cleveland, or Milwaukee--someplace really cold."

"Milwaukee doesn't have a team. You must be thinking Green Bay."

She glared. "Don't correct me. You wanted gossip. I'm giving you gossip."

"That's not gossip," I said. "You're leaving?"

She smiled over her shoulder. "I have to pee."

"I've already talked to people," I said to her back.

She spun again. "You what? About what? With whom?"

"Sam. Lauren."

"I don't know what either of them knows, really. They're not going to tell you anything. They've both already had the fear of God put in them."

"What does that mean?"

"I really have to pee. And then I have a three forty-five. Listen to Mama, Alan."

I thought it was likely Diane really did have to pee. Her bladder was the size of a plum. I decided to take advantage of the fact.

I asked, "What happened to Mattin's hand? His missing finger?"

She lifted her chin so she could look down her nose at me, just a little. "Years ago he drove up to an accident where a car had flipped. He was helping to pull a kid from the backseat when another man yanked the door open. The metal pinched his finger. Crushed it. There was a fire. He was burned."

"Heroic," I said. "The kid?"

"They saved the kid. Is that enough gossip to shut you up?"

I knew I'd pushed Diane as far as I could. I said, "I talked to Raoul about selling the building. He never got around to telling me why it was necessary."

She rolled her eyes at one of us. Or both of us. "One of the partners," she said, shifting her weight, "who shall remain nameless, has his eye on my penthouse. The one I . . . will have. Raoul says the man is open to an alternative. His wife would prefer to own a duplex downtown, with some yard. Something urban and central but with just a little . . . more of a residential feel."

I saw where she was heading. "This building? Really?"

"Hardly," she said. "This location. The idea is that they would scrape and build a duplex--the wife's sister is a single mom and would take the smaller unit. They would end up with an urban town house with incredible views from the top floors and the rooftop deck, and they would also have two things the condo on Pearl would never have: a private garage, and a yard."

"If we sell," I said.

She frowned. "We're not in the business of spoiling dreams, Alan. Anyway, the city is insisting the partnership have control of some nearby land for construction parking and for staging materials for the project. Our land would be perfect."

"You've thought this all through?"

"Uh . . . yeah. We're talking about my dream home."

"I thought Lee Hill was your dream home."

"A girl's only allowed one dream?"