Apples Never Fall

Should she tell the police about that night? When the police interviewed her she’d told them that her neighbors were a nice, ordinary, happily married couple. This was absolutely true and absolutely not true. There was no such thing as a nice, ordinary, happily married couple. But obviously the fresh-faced police detectives were far too young to get their heads around that.

It was unusual to hear any noise at all from the Delaneys’ house. Of course, years ago, when all those giant children still lived at home, the Delaneys’ had been the noisiest house on the street. Once, Caro had phoned Joy because she’d heard a kind of maniacal screaming as if people were being murdered, but it turned out they were just playing a board game that got out of hand. They were very competitive people. When the Delaney children came over to swim in their pool, Caro’s own children ended up coming inside and watching television. “They’re scary,” her daughter had said to her.

Caro studied the once bright yellow heads of her tulips, slumped over the side of the vase, as if overcome with despair.

When she’d looked over at the Delaneys’ house that night she had been reassured to see the familiar figures of Logan and Brooke under the porch light at their parents’ front door. She’d hurried back inside before they caught sight of her and felt embarrassed about their parents arguing loudly enough for the whole street to hear.

She’d assumed it was just an argument. Caro knew retirement could be stressful. No routine. Just the two of you stuck in your home, stuck in your aging bodies. An argument over a damp towel left on the bed could last for days, and then it often turned out that the argument was not about the damp towel at all but about something hurtful that was said thirty years ago and your feelings about your in-laws.

The newspaper articles were full of innuendo. “There was no history of domestic violence.” Up until now. That was the implication.

Had Joy been in need of a friend and Caro hadn’t been there for her the way Joy had always been there for Caro?

Caro’s son, Jacob, who had come over to mow the lawn, was chatting right now to a young female journalist from the local paper, who was parked outside the Delaneys’ house.

“I’ll see what I can find out,” he’d promised Caro.

Caro bet that if Joy had been young and beautiful the street would have been crawling with reporters.

Joy had been so young and beautiful when Caro moved in across the road from the Delaneys all those years ago. She could remember when she first laid eyes on her neighbors. She was unpacking boxes in her front room when she heard a commotion and pulled back her curtain to see a family milling about, right there on the street. (The Delaneys always treated the cul-de-sac as if it were their own personal property.) A gigantic man, who of course turned out to be Stan, was talking to a young woman wearing very short shorts, her long hair in a ponytail. A fat baby bounced and laughed on her hip, while three older children played tip like it was the Olympics. Caro actually thought Joy was their teenage babysitter until Stan kissed her. Caro could still remember the way he pulled on her ponytail so her head tipped back as he kissed her. It had seemed stunningly erotic to Caro, a man kissing his wife like that right there in the middle of the street, but maybe she’d misread the signs of an abusive relationship. Caro had secretly rather enjoyed Fifty Shades of Grey, but her daughter had explained that the book was about an abusive relationship and Caro had felt foolish because her daughter, who had struggled to learn to read, now had a degree in English literature so she was right and Caro was wrong and she should not have enjoyed that book, how embarrassing.

The past could look very different depending on where you stood to look at it. The fat baby bouncing on Joy’s hip turned out to be Brooke, who was now treating Caro’s sciatica.

“Stop that!” snapped Caro as the cat clawed at her pants leg. Otis stalked off, deeply offended. No doubt he would reappear in a while with a random piece of clothing in his mouth. Apparently cats stole laundry for attention. Caro remembered how she and Joy had laughed when Caro returned the lacy underwire bra Otis had stolen from her clothesline.

“That’s a very sexy bra, Joy,” Caro had said, and Joy retorted, “Well, you know, I’m a very sexy woman, Caro.”

How could Caro live here without Joy across the road? How could she finish their memoir-writing course? How could she cope wit

h the annual neighborhood street party?

“They’ve found a body,” said Jacob from behind her.

The vase of tulips slipped straight from Caro’s hands and shattered on the kitchen floor.

Chapter 43

“We have reports that a body has been found in bushland in Sydney’s north,” said the radio newsreader.

Sulin Ho slammed on the brakes of her car. A car behind her tooted furiously.

“Police are treating the death as suspicious after a bushwalker made the gruesome discovery late yesterday.”

Sulin raised her hand in apology to the person behind her, pulled over, and put on her hazard lights.

“A crime scene has been established and forensic officers are collecting evidence. There is no further information available at this stage.”

“That’s very sad news just breaking there,” said the shock jock in the overly ponderous tone he used to indicate he was being serious now, folks, so listen up. “Obviously we’re all wondering and worrying if it’s that poor missing grandma, and no one knows if that’s the case, but either way, that’s very sad news for some poor family.”

“She’s not a grandma, you stupid egg!” Sulin shouted at the radio, and then she burst into tears, because if it was Joy’s body, she would never get to be one.

Chapter 44

LAST OCTOBER

Logan was the first to arrive for the “family meeting” called by their father to discuss Savannah. He could see Brooke’s car pulling up behind him in his rearview mirror.

“We all need to be on the same page,” Stan had said on the phone, when he called just as Logan was leaving Dave’s apartment, full of good pizza and information. His dad had sounded upset, but he was also clearly in resolute crisis mode. The Man of the House was going to fix this. (How did one develop Man of the House confidence? Did it just arrive automatically with fatherhood?)