A Scandal at Eastwick Page 4

  “But it wasn’t me!”

  A pregnant silence followed. Paulette stared down Lia, while Harry shuffled beside her. Finally it was Lucas who took the paper from Harry’s hands and gently handed it back to Paulette.

  “It seems like a joke to me,” Lucas said gently. “I don’t think you have anything to worry about.”

  Paulette flushed. The last thing she needed was for men to be telling her what she should and shouldn’t be worrying about. But perhaps the scene itself would deter Lia from her plot—she looked back at the girl, who had locked eyes with Harry now, her expression pleading. Paulette’s gaze snapped back to her son; he looked confused, troubled. “Harry!” Paulette said. “Harry, tell her to back off of this ridiculous scheme.”

  “There can’t be a scheme,” Harry said, bewildered. “Lia, there isn’t—?”

  “I didn’t write that note!” Lia exclaimed. But Harry did not look like he believed her—good boy.

  “Don’t think I’ve forgotten how you used to be.” Paulette sniffed. “Don’t think I don’t recognize exactly the type of behavior I’ve come to expect from you.”

  Lia turned to her, face perfectly molded to “bewildered.” “Are you trying to say I have a history of blackmail or something? Because if so, you’ve gone way off the deep end, Mrs. McKenzie. I know you never liked me, but I didn’t put that note in your purse.”

  “I don’t care what you admit to, so long as you agree to never do it again.”

  “I never did it in the first place!”

  “Okay,” Lucas said, as Harry looked between Paulette and his ex-girlfriend. Paulette was pleased to see that he took a step closer to her, squaring his shoulders against that insufferable girl. “Listen. I really don’t think, Mrs. McKenzie, that you have anything to worry about. Let’s all just go back to the party and agree that this was some sort of stupid joke, okay? And if you hear anything else from this—this person—”

  “I’ll know exactly who to talk to,” Paulette said viciously.

  “Actually, I was going to say, tell us immediately and we can get the authorities involved.”

  “Authorities!” cried Paulette. “No! Not at all!”

  “That’s quite unnecessary,” Harry said, blushing and looking down. Even Lia looked visibly cowed by this suggestion.

  “Well, why not?” Lucas said. “Anyone trying to blackmail you should be stopped.”

  “There’s nothing,” Paulette said, “that is, there’s no reason—there’s nothing at all that needs to be done by the police! The folly of a young girl desperate for money, that’s all. And she won’t see a dime of it.” Paulette shook her head fiercely at Lia, who scowled and shook her head.

  Paulette simply wouldn’t allow it. After all this time, she deserved to be happy. She deserved to have the kind of happy, peaceful life that had always been her due. Why should this interloper come in and ruin it? Just because she had chanced, years ago, during that summer stay before college, upon the knowledge of something Paulette had always taken great pains to hide.

  It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair, and it wasn’t going to happen.

  Paulette wouldn’t let it.

  Chapter 12

  Lia had never meant to find out Paulette’s secret.

  Indeed, she could think of nothing more uncomfortable than knowing something compromising about a woman who might have, in an alternate universe, become her mother-in-law.

  She had not even been looking for it at the time. No, at that point, and indeed, at all points in Lia’s relationship with Harry, Lia had tried very, very hard to get Paulette McKenzie to like her—tried, and failed spectacularly.

  Back then, Lia had fancied herself in love with Harry. He was the nicest boy she had ever met: he opened car doors, he texted her good morning, and he carried her books in school. All trivial little chivalric gestures that told Lia that he liked her liked her, that he was willing to be made fun of and made a fool of simply for her affection. It had made her feel protected—it had made her feel special.

  The problem was, nobody—Lia’s parents included—were fans of high school love growing serious. Her mother had warned her about taking things slow, her father had absolutely refused to meet Harry “until you are both twenty-one,” and Harry’s parents were polite but always cold when Lia ran into them. Harry’s father seemed to like her the more out of the two of them: he told her with varying degrees of sincerity to always feel free to stop by the house if she needed anything, and once said something to the effect that he was happy Harry was dating a “very smart girl.” Paulette, on the other hand, had been unfailingly bland and cold to Lia. She was never rude—Paulette was too smart, too calculating for that, not wanting to turn her own son against her—but she never encouraged Lia in any way, never made her feel like anything more than a stranger who had forced herself on their company for a few hours.

  It might have been better had Harry’s older brother, James, still been at home, but he was then in college on the west coast, the same one where he had met his current wife, whom Lia was sure was much more beloved by Paulette McKenzie, mostly because the girl’s father was a senator.

  The very last time that Lia had been in the McKenzie house had been the summer after senior year. Lia had an acceptance to a university in Vermont, at a school her parents were willing to pay for so long as she got a “practical degree,” which meant something that could launch her into medicine or law or any job guaranteed to pay back their investment over time. To Lia, this was as much as a declaration that she should not go to college at all. Her parents, to her eighteen-year-old mind, were backwards, traditional, well-meaning people who just could not understand that one did not have to be fettered to The System, did not have to send their only daughter to an overly expensive private liberal arts college just to set her up in life. Furthermore, they didn’t understand that her life purpose was to make art, that her success in school dramas and at summer theater camp was not just a passing hobby, something to chat about over breakfast, but a real passion. Her parents didn’t understand passion! And she would show them.

  Such were her self-righteous thoughts at the time, which she translated with only slight censoring to a horrified Paulette McKenzie that summer day. Mr. McKenzie was out on a golf trip, and Harry had sat next to her, strained and a little quiet, until Lia’s story petered out and she looked expectantly at the two McKenzies, waiting for some response.

  “To…Hollywood?” Paulette McKenzie had sputtered, massaging her throat as though she had choked on the word.

  “I can work as a tutor,” Lia had said. “And take community college classes out there—get my basics done, while I’m auditioning.” She didn’t know why she was spewing this bit, which she had used to convince her parents of the idea; Lia had no intention of wasting her time (or money) on community college classes.

  “That’s…very bold,” Mrs. McKenzie said, still in that stilted way. “Well. Um, if you’ll excuse me.”

  “That went well,” Harry said, in a chipper tone, after his mother had left. He slung one arm around Lia as they stared at the remnants of their plates, still seated at the McKenzie’s glass-topped dining table.

  “It didn’t need to go anything,” Lia said defensively. “I don’t care what your mother thinks of my plans.”

  “Then why are you upset?”

  Lia had answered this with a huff. Harry had gotten into a great college on the East Coast, which meant long distance for them, a subject neither of them had broached. Lia could tell that he was withdrawing from her, not texting back, suggesting they meet up less and less, already dropping hints that freshman year would be quite busy for him, and he didn’t know if they’d see each other until Thanksgiving. Lia thought she had a pretty good idea of what would happen: Harry, conflict avoidant, would let the relationship string along until the ignominious Turkey Dump at Thanksgiving, brought on, she had no doubt, by meeting some pretty and perky coed at school, a girl who Mrs. McKenzie would no doubt (as a bonus) app
rove much more of.

  She would have to break it off with him—set him free. It might have been a more emotional event, involving more pining and indulging in noble feelings of self-sacrifice, if Harry wasn’t being such an ass that summer.

  Soon, Mrs. McKenzie called to them that she was going out to run some errands, and that the housekeeper would be there shortly to “keep an eye on them.” Harry rolled his eyes.

  “We have to meet Atul and the girls at the diner,” Lia reminded Harry, once the front door slammed shut. “To plan the camping trip?”

  “You’re serious? You’re going camping?”

  “I can go camping!”

  Harry snorted. “You don’t know the first thing about it. I guess you’ll need me to come, huh? Keep you company under the stars?”

  Now Lia rolled her eyes.

  “Wait,” Harry said. “I’ll show you my gear. The stuff my dad and I pack for one trip.”

  “I think the way we’ll be camping is quite different. And you’re invited, by the way. But we’re all sharing a tent.”

  “Have any of you camped before?”

  “Atul and his family. And Bella, once, when she was in Girl Scouts.”

  Harry just clicked his tongue and moved towards the garage. “Go up to the third spare bedroom,” he said. “There’s camping clothes in the closet—bring down one of the vests? I want to show you what to look for.”

  “I’m not buying special clothes for it.”

  “Mistake number one.”

  “Mistake number a billion, I’m sure, in the McKenzie Guide to Camping,” Lia said. “We’re definitely not going to be doing it to your specifications.”

  “Humor me,” Harry said, winking at her as he disappeared into the garage. Lia checked her watch. Still half an hour until they had to be at the diner to meet Atul, Katie, Bella, and Julia—plenty of time to listen to Harry pontificate on his favorite subject and puff his chest and act the expert before they had to head into town. And, Lia thought, if she was breaking up with him…well, a little extra kindness couldn’t hurt.

  She made her way up the wide carpeted stairs to the second floor of the McKenzie house. The third spare bedroom she found easily; Mrs. McKenzie had labeled the spare, or “guest,” rooms by number, painted in cheery white on the polka-dot doors. Lia slipped inside and over to the large closet, which spanned the entire opposite wall of the room.

  The camping gear was easy to find, but musty. Lia guessed that Harry hadn’t touched his for years: camping was something he had always used to do with his father and older brother, but he’d told Lia that those trips had slowed way down in high school, that his father traveled more and worked more and, he supposed, they were getting a little too old for that kind of stuff. It had always made Lia a little sad.

  She took one of the giant vests out of its plastic holding, another Mrs. McKenzie neurosis that kept everything in tip-top shape.

  But as she did so, the hanger tipped, and a crash sent Lia careening backwards, heart racing.

  When she was sure she hadn’t pulled down the entire rack, or else somehow else permanently damaged the closet, she crept back and peered down.

  She hadn’t meant to look. Truly, she hadn’t. But she had thought something else at first, when she picked up that fallen bag, when she slid it open and pulled out its insides. She was still smiling, still thinking she would take it down to Harry to share the memories.

  It took her just one minute to realize she had been wrong. Another thirty seconds to think to put the bag back together and try to replace everything exactly as she had found it. Just one second to look up at the crack of Mrs. McKenzie’s voice, and try somehow, feebly, to answer her booming question—WHAT ARE YOU DOING IN HERE?

  Lia had never told Harry about what she had found that day. But it had not mattered, or she told herself it didn’t—a week later, she officially broke up with him via text and was on her way to Los Angeles, Mrs. McKenzie be damned.

  And she was most certainly damned.

  Chapter 13

  Lia descended, shaking, to the party.

  She knew there was a reason she had never come back here.

  Though Lia could hardly have expected Mrs. McKenzie to rear her ugly head again. Lia had thought her greatest problems at the party would be reconnecting with her friends, or having one polite conversation with Harry—all of which she seemed to be flubbing anyway.

  She walked immediately to the bar and asked for a vodka soda, lime on the side, a Los Angeles order that replaced her “amaretto on the rocks” the two times she had managed to get into a bar back home with a fake I.D. Los Angeles had changed many of her preferences: Lia now loved green juice, appreciated meditation if not yoga, and had some mild interest in astrological signs.

  She wished that she was back in Los Angeles now. She wished that she could crawl back to some soiled apartment with a broken ceiling fan and a strange-colored mold in the fridge, sipping three-dollar wine from the local grocery store with another of her rotating roommates, perhaps a musician who had released a solo album two years ago before being dropped by his label, or a backup dancer who had performed with some latest pop star and had hilarious stories about what a diva she could be. People who had dreams, ambitions, goals. Who had passion. People who never asked too much about your past, not only because they were often borderline narcissistic, but because they truly didn’t care: they only wanted to know what you were doing now and, if they were feeling ambitious, who you knew “on the scene.”

  Instead, Lia was sipping a carbonated and flavorless alcoholic beverage, in a borrowed and rather itchy dress, trying to look like she hadn’t just been threatened by the mother of her ex-boyfriend.

  Easier said than done.

  She felt someone approach in the corner of her vision, but by some instinct Lia remained still, sipping on her drink, trying to pretend that she was completely fine and unaffected. She was an actress, right? She could manage that.

  Failed actress, a voice in her head whispered.

  “Oh!” the girl said, syrupy sweet. “You must be Lia!”

  Lia turned reluctantly to face her. She found herself confronted with a very pretty dark-haired girl with giant chocolate-brown eyes and a button nose, adorned with pearly earrings and a fine gold chain that screamed I’m wealthy but I don’t like to show off—much. Her face was lit up with a smile, but Lia did not trust it for a second: the girl was there to size her up, to show her that when it came to competition, Lia fared the worst.

  Funny, Lia thought. Harry always said he liked taller girls.

  This girl—“Alyssa. Alyssa Naples!” she introduced herself—was short and petite, curvy in the right spots, devastatingly thin in the others. She was a consultant, Lia learned, just about to start a new job at a top firm that specialized in environmental policy, which happened to be exactly what Alyssa had written her dissertation on while obtaining her master’s in international policy. Lia almost wanted to ask Alyssa to hand her a résumé—the girl certainly seemed to go through enough of her background.

  “Pleasure to meet you,” Lia said, when Alyssa finally came up for air. “How do you know everyone?”

  “Oh! I suppose you wouldn’t know.” Alyssa laughed, her hair swinging perfectly across her shoulders as she did so. “I’m Harry’s girlfriend. Have been, for the past year.”

  Lia was sorely tempted to say something like, Oh! Only a year? just to get a rise out of the girl, but she was afraid that would then be relayed back to Harry in all earnestness, and then the rumors would fly that Lia had somehow tried to intimidate Alyssa at the party. Instead she smiled tightly and said, “Oh, lovely. We used to date ages ago.”

  “Oh, he told me, of course. High school love. So sweet! They always grow up better though, don’t they?” Alyssa laughed.

  “Who grows up better?”

  “Boys, of course!”

  “Ah, well, I suppose anything that kills more of their brain cells helps,” Lia replied lamely. Alyssa gave h
er a quizzical look, like she was half-amused, half-embarrassed for Lia. Lia wished she had those sort of powers, the kind where when she met someone, she was more concerned with what she thought of them than what they thought of her. Even now she could feel the encroaching thoughts—did Alyssa like her, feel superior to her, laugh at her? Had she come over just to flaunt that she was likely more confident, more successful, and more self-assured? For certainly she was: Lia felt like the old model, the test drive that Harry had dabbled in during his youth, to be swapped out at maturity for this sleek, expensive convertible. Oh, dear, she thought. I’ve just compared myself to a car.

  “Alyssa, how goes it?” A young man appeared at Lia’s elbow—she turned to see Lucas, drink in hand, smiling at Alyssa. Of course everyone would like her; Lia remembered that when she had dated Harry, there had been some vocal opposition. She fancied herself a quiet, dramatic, misunderstood theater kid back then, and had been thus moody and taciturn around Harry’s friends, afraid they would not like her and so shunning them first, declaring herself indifferent to their bafflement. She bet Alyssa never played those stupid games: Alyssa seemed like a girl everyone could like, the kind who could go to a party and leave with five new friends, not someone who slouched in the corner and sidled home with a feeling of intense, blissful relief.

  “Lucas,” Alyssa said. “Have you met Lia? She used to date Harry, isn’t that funny?”

  “I know her,” Lucas said, turning his gaze onto Lia. She blushed at it, again willing herself not to feel so viscerally her own inferiority. On a better night, Lia thought, she could have handled it, could have decided that even if she wasn’t as bubbly and successful as Alyssa, she was creative, and unique, and blah blah blah—but being accused of blackmail by your ex-boyfriend’s mother put your mind a bit off-kilter.