Apples Never Fall

“I don’t know,” said Joy slowly. “Probably.” She heard the low timbre of Stan’s voice as he spoke to Savannah in the kitchen.

She walked to the couch, sat down, and picked up a cushion. She caressed its soft tasseled fringe while she monitored her reaction to this revelation. Her heart had quickened but it was certainly not racing. There was really no need for concern here. After all, she and Stan represented only one chapter in Harry’s illustrious career. Harry would simply trot out a more detailed version of the by now well-worn raffle-ticket story: how Harry’s father, Elias, won the private lesson at Delaneys, gave the lesson to his son, first time the kid ever held a racquet, blah, blah, blah.

There would be no further revelations. Harry knew nothing. He’d been a kid, his eyes firmly fixed on his future. His readers wanted to hear what it was like to win Wimbledon. They wanted Harry’s secrets. Not his father’s secrets. Not Joy’s secrets.

She saw Elias Haddad’s handsome face: that slow, sensual wink. It used to make her blood run cold. She’d see him at an interstate tournament and think, Don’t you dare wink at me again, Elias. But sure enough he’d wink at her over the heads of their oblivious children. As if it were all just a joke. Well. She refused to be worried. She would put it out of her mind. It was all so long ago.

“No need to dwell on things,” her mother used to say. Everyone did far too much dwelling these days.

“I must let you go, darling,” she said briskly to Brooke. “I know you’re busy.” She could smell her dinner waiting for her. She replaced the cushion in the corner of the couch. “We’ll see you on Sunday, for Father’s Day. You can meet Savannah then.”

“She’ll still be there?” There was a crack of genuine distress in Brooke’s voice. “On Father’s Day?”

Joy lowered her voice and her head to the phone once more.

“Darling,” she said. There was a myth in Joy’s family, one that Brooke liked to perpetuate, and the myth was that even though Brooke was the youngest, and the one with the debilitating health condition, she was the most robust of the Delaney children, the least sensitive, the one who had her professional and personal life sorted, and that Amy, the oldest, who should therefore have been the most responsible, was the flaky, fragile one who was always getting her feelings hurt, but Joy knew better.

She knew exactly what lay behind the facades her children presented to the world. Yes, Amy had her mental health challenges, but she was as tough as nails at her core; Logan pretended not to care about anything but cared about everything; Troy acted so superior because he felt so inferior; and Brooke liked to present herself as the most grown-up of them all, but sometimes Joy caught the fleeting expression of a frightened child crossing her face. Those were the times Joy wanted to gather her six-foot-one daughter in her arms and say, My baby girl.

“Savannah won’t find somewhere to live by the weekend,” she told Brooke.

“No. Of course not,” said Brooke. She sounded flat and distant now. “That’s fine, Mum. This is a really kind thing you’re doing, and I’m glad you’re getting a break from cooking. I’ll see you Sunday. Love you.”

“Love you too,” said Joy, but Brooke had already hung up.

Joy went into the kitchen, where Stan had put three wineglasses in a row on the island bench: white for Savannah, red for Stan, a spritzer for Joy.

Savannah put a big green salad in the center of the table and angled the good shiny silver salad servers just so. Someone had given Joy those salad servers years ago and she’d never used them, as if no occasion was ever good enough, not even Christmas, but Savannah automatically used all the nicest things in Joy’s kitchen on a daily basis: the good placemats, the good glasses, the good cutlery, and consequently dinner each night felt festive and delightful. She had a knack for setting the table. Joy’s mother used to have that knack, and Joy had not inherited it. Tonight Savannah had even picked a little sprig of cherry blossom and put it in a tiny vase she’d found in the back of a cupboard.

“Music?” Joy held up her phone, head on one side. Asking this made her feel like she was maybe in her thirties, living in a share house like Amy. (She had never in her life lived in a share house.) Logan had helped her set up her Spotify account ages ago, but, like the salad servers, Joy hadn’t found the right occasion to use it until Savannah came to stay.

“Yes, please.” Savannah moved deftly behind her to pick up the salt and pepper grinders from the sideboard.

“This pasta looks delicious, Savannah,” said Stan. He would never have said, “This looks delicious, Joy,” about something Joy had cooked, although occasionally he might grunt, “Looks good,” as he picked up his fork. Stan’s formality was just like the good crockery and cutlery. It added a nice sheen to the night.

He winked at Joy—just a loving, husbandly wink without subtext—and she thought about his hands on her body last night, his voice low in her ear, and as the first notes of Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline” filled the kitchen, Joy let any thoughts about Harry’s memoir and her worry about Brooke fade away as a deep sense of contentment spread throughout her body, as blissful as an extra-strength Tylenol.

Chapter 14

NOW

“Did you kill your wife, Mr. Delaney?”

“Eh?” The old man, huge and hunch-shouldered, with reddish thumbprints under his eyes, lifted his bald head, seemingly bewildered by the question. “What’s that?”

The baby-faced journalist in a natty suit and tie shoved a chunky microphone toward his mouth. “Did you have anything to do with your wife’s disappearance, Mr. Delaney?”

The old man stood on the front lawn of his suburban house, shoulder to shoulder with his four adult children, surrounded by a semicircle of journalists and camera operators. The journalists were all young, in smart-casual brightly colored clothes, no patterns, solid colors, sharp shoulders, their faces smooth and opaque with makeup. The camera operators were older, all men, with ordinary, impassive faces and weekend hardware shopping clothes: jeans and polo shirts.

“Mr. Delaney?”

“That is defamatory. Get away from him, you parasite!” It was one of the old man’s daughters who spoke. She slapped the microphone. A swift, smooth backhand. She was a tennis player, apparently. They all were.

One of her brothers stepped forward, a protective arm in front of his father’s face.

But the other two siblings said and did nothing; they appeared instead to take tiny steps away from their father, and the internet saw.

Minds were made up. Two of his children think he did it.