Raveled (7 page)

Chapter
9

Allison… present

Kevin was right. Smitty had indeed returned for the high school reunion. Needed to show all his former classmates that he’d made it—into the real world and out of Lavitte. His parents, Elise and Abel Smith, still lived in the big white house with the wraparound porch over on Marshall, so his presence in town wasn’t that unusual. Probably had requisite visits and ultimatums laid out on a schedule by Mrs. Smith. If he didn’t show, she’d threaten to fly to D.C. on her broomstick and cast balls of fire on his evil wretch of a boss.

Smitty’d
brought the family along, too. Twin girls, about six years old, and a pregnant wife, all with wide faces and ringlets of chestnut hair. The wife wore flowery, oversized maternity clothes, as if she couldn’t wait any longer to declare her expectant status to the world. The girls donned matching green overalls with multicolored appliques of rainbows and suns. A perfect unit, as long as Wifey was knocked up with a Smitty, Jr., to complete the picture. I knew of this happy little scene because I was parked outside the Smiths’ house, watching one twin play Frisbee with Mom in the side yard while the other swirled herself in dizzying circles on a tire swing, her hair following behind. As I stepped from the air-conditioned car, the change in atmosphere slapped me like a heavy, slow-motion hand. Humid, compressive and unwelcoming. The girls watched me and waved, as if I were a friendly neighbor come a-calling who might set for a spell and sip some sweet tea. The weight of their perception pressed solidly against the impending reality.
Don’t kid yourselves, girls. If there’s tea to be drunk, it’ll be offered begrudgingly and in a small glass so as to hasten the visit.
They ran off to the back yard, followed by their watchful mom.

I
walked up the wide driveway with barely a loose stone to be found for kicking. Smitty’s dad had laid out some big bucks for this stamped concrete job with the mark of hired labor etched into every inch of the intricate hexagonal design. It made me feel dizzy. Mounting the three steps of the wooden porch, I could practically feel my feet sinking into the thick accumulation of years of white paint. I rang the doorbell, its chime far too ornate for a colonial in Lavitte, even if it was the biggest house on the street. I stared at the bright green welcome mat and waited, uninvited, of course, because no one in town invited a Fennimore anywhere.

Mrs. Smith
came to the door with a dismissive
We gave at the church
line at the ready, until her face coated over in surprise. At least I think it was surprise. It might have been horror. Hard to tell because Mrs. Smith had clearly jumped on the Botox train and was speeding fast towards the wax museum. Her eyebrows would soon be earbrows if she wasn’t careful.

A
lways well ahead on the gossip curve and several steps ahead of the Lavitte hoi polloi in fashion trends, Mrs. Smith had been faux-friendly with my mom before the murders. True to form, she was the first to turn on her after the arrest.

“
Allison Fennimore?” she said. Her mouth moved only up and down as she spoke, as if she were incapable of a pucker. I’d seen it in New York a thousand times. A hint of Botox around the upper margins of the top lip that eventually turned into a full syringe of chemical filler per visit. Helped with wrinkles but was hell on a sip of water. “Why in the world—”

“Hello, Mrs. Smith,” I said, my voice neutral, my expression
polite but distant. “You’re looking… well.”

“
I can’t imagine what you’re doing here,” she said.

Since
all pretense of courtesy was out the door, Mrs. Smith followed in its path. She pushed open the heavy screen door and stepped onto the porch, cringing at the sunlight as if it were a sworn enemy of her eternal youth. Despite her efforts, she looked older than her 55 years. Skinny legs, visible in a short skirt meant for a younger woman, played against flabby arms and a muffin-top waist—visible in a tight top meant for no one. Not bad for someone her age, but the denial of at least two decades of existence resulted in a visually disturbing contrast.

“
Is everything alright with your mother?” she said. “Is there an emergency?”

Yes, because in a family
crisis, the first person I’d turn to would be the woman who treated my father’s trial like an Easter Sunday fashion show, her flowery hat blocking the witness stand for all the unfortunates in the rear who couldn’t score a front-row seat.

“
Just wondering if Smitty can come out to play,” I said, fighting my growing distaste for being close enough to this woman to smell her lemony perfume.

She
tried to frown. Fail.

“Is he allowed out of his room?” I said. “O
r is he grounded again?”

Mrs. Smith, former PTA President,
quickly came to the realization that the Allison Fennimore on her porch wasn’t the same girl she’d known, the gentle one who’d won awards and initiated community projects at the 4H club.

“Why do you need to see John?”

That’s right. Smitty’s name was actually John. John Smith. Mr. and Mrs. Smith’s creative genes must have been firing on all cylinders the day he showed his non-descript mug to the world.

“Is he here?
” I said. “I can come back later.”

Smitty’s
wife and daughters bounded onto the porch, having almost worked up a sweat. The chubbier of the two girls grabbed Mrs. Smith’s hand, then swiped at her wet brow. “Whew! It’s a hot one, Même.”

Seriously
? Mrs. Smith was having them use the French word for grandmother? She really needed to get over herself. Of course, with an exotic surname like Smith, it must have been difficult to avoid embracing one’s international heritage.

The Grande Dame
gestured to her daughter-in-law. “Kendra, allow me to introduce Allison Fennimore.” She uttered my last name as if it were spy code, wanting to flick her brows up and down to be sure Kendra didn’t miss the undertone, but that forehead wasn’t going anywhere. Kendra looked the type to miss most things anyway. She wiped her right hand on her elastic-waist khaki shorts and extended it to me, a bright smile revealing overly large teeth that spanned nearly the full width of her pretty face.

“Hi
, Allison,” she said. “Nice to meet you. You one of John’s friends? Here for the reunion?”

“Sort of,” I said
, letting her take that to answer either question. “I went to school with Smitty.”

“You call our dad
Smitty
?” the thinner twin said with her hands on her hips. “He likes his grown-up friends to call him John.”

I turned to the girls as if finding them adorable. Their dirt-streaked faces stared up at me
with the innocence of puppies waiting to be pet. “Well, I guess I never really grew up. And when I knew your dad, he was Smitty.” I gave a quick glance towards the original Mrs. Smith to make sure she knew the next comment was for her, then returned my attention to the girl. “It was always Bobby, Smitty, and Jasper. That’s how they were known. Your dad was part of a fearsome threesome.”

“How dare you?” Mrs. Smith blasted. “How dare you utter his name?”

She meant Bobby, but the twins wouldn’t know that.

“It’s okay,
Même. Daddy still lets a couple people call him Smitty.”

“Yes,”
Kendra said, a soothing hand on her mother-in-law’s flaccid, upper arm. “I don’t think John would mind too much. Let me go get him.”

Before Mrs. Smith could stop her, Kendra bounced into the house, merrily calling out her husband’s name and announcing that an old friend had come to call. I could hardly wait for the disappointment on his dull face.

Kendra returned with some sweet tea and store-bought cookies. She set them on the porch. Smitty followed her out, his dour expression letting me know that Kendra had shared the name of his visitor.

“
Allison,” he said, extending a polite, practiced hand. “What a surprise.”

He waited,
playing it close to the vest, everything about him measured. He’d been the sanest of the Bobby/Smitty/Jasper trio, not that that was saying much. But if Jasper was high or if Bobby was off on one of his rants, Smitty had been the voice of reason on the few occasions any existed behind their teenage antics.

I took in the adult Smitty. Still
plain. One of those guys who you’d identify immediately from his baby photo because he hadn’t changed. The type who could commit a crime and be described a dozen different ways by a dozen different eyewitnesses. I would have gone with
weak chin, straight nose, brown hair, rectangular face, eyes either brown or green, and faded eyebrows. Average build. No distinguishing characteristics. Like a grocery clerk—no reason to look at him unless the credit card scanner isn’t working.
I’m sure the officer taking that statement would have rolled his eyes, crumpled the notepaper, and tossed it over his shoulder. But behind Smitty’s ordinariness, wheels spun as they always had. Even in elementary school, he’d recognized Bobby’s potential. The looks, the athleticism, the balls, and the utter disregard for others. He knew it would be better to have Bobby as a friend than an enemy so he’d latched on early and well. Whether or not he’d actually liked Bobby, no one would ever know. Would they still have been friends today? Hard to tell from the generic man staring at me who meted out emotion so carefully.

Mrs. Smith grabbed Smitty’s
elbow as she turned her physician-enhanced profile to me. “I’ll need your help with the oven in a few minutes. It’s been acting up again.”

Kendra
’s confused expression indicated her mother-in-law might be losing it. “It was okay a little bit ago, Elise.”

Mrs. Smith shot a reprimanding glance at
her daughter-in-law.
Idiot
. But Smitty’s curt nod to his mother indicated
Message Received
. The entire exchange was intended for my benefit:
Keep it short
.

Kendra, finally catching on to the tension,
aimed her eyes in my direction with more scrutiny. Worried, maybe, that I was an old girlfriend, but too jittery to say anything. She pivoted back and forth before making a decision. With her hands knotting around each other, she announced enthusiastically, “Well, I’ll let you two catch up. Come on, girls, we have cookies to bake.” Then she frowned. “Although, I guess we’ll have to see what’s up with that oven.”

All of them, including Mrs. Smith, disappeared inside.

Smitty, seemingly delayed in noticing that we were alone, took a moment to scan the street for passersby—or anything more appealing than talking to me. Unrewarded with a decent distraction, he finally gestured to a set of green Adirondack chairs at the end of the porch where Kendra had set the refreshments. The splintering wood of the chairs had been painted over, rather than sanded. Smitty’s dad was either lowering his standards or had decided he no longer gave a shit. It would be nice if it was the latter, to know that some assholes matured into apathy.

We took our seats and I helped myself to a glass of tea.
“Thanks for seeing me, Smitty. I remember when you’d be out here every summer sweating and painting this porch.”

Smitty looked like I’d just declared I saw him masturbating every Thursday through his bedroom window.
He cleared his throat. “I’m curious about the purpose of your visit, Allison. I knew your brother a bit, but he was older than me, and I’m not sure you and I exchanged two words in high school. You were two years behind me, weren’t you?”

The implication being that I wasn’t here for any reunion.

“That’s right. I’m in town visiting my mom.”

“How
is your mother?” he asked.

“Fine,” I said, not wanting to give him the satisfaction of her
deteriorating status. “Thanks for asking.”

“And Kevin?
” he said. It wasn’t really courtesy. Smitty was getting the lay of the land, trying to figure out my angle.

I
didn’t want to tell him the truth, but didn’t want to lie in case he knew Kevin’s status—
it’s complicated
—from the tangled web of on-line social networks.

“
Kevin’s figuring things out,” I said. “Still working construction all over the place. You’re at the Pentagon, I hear.”

“That’s right,”
said Smitty, who then shot air through his nose like a rocket lifting off. He whirled to me suddenly. “And you serve drinks in New York. And your dad shot my best friend. Let’s drop the pretense, Allison. What do you want?”

Just as suddenly, I remembered Smitty’s reputation. A two-headed snake, one head boring, the other infuriated. A short fuse on the former made the latter appear more
often than he would have liked.

“
Must be the Department of Defense you work for, Smitty.”

His
glower at least gave his face some character. “It’s hard enough coming back to this hole-in-the-wall dustbin my parents still live in,” he said. “It doesn’t help to rehash ancient history with you about the most miserable time in my life. And I can’t imagine you’re here for any other reason.”