Danny looks embarrassed. “We’re still going to have to take your mom down to the station.” Then he looks around, as if for the first time noticing her absence. “Where is your mom, anyway?”
That’s when the gun goes off.
PART IX
THE HALL
SANDRA
Here’s Caroline:
Gripping Richard Walker’s pistol tightly in one hand, while a man tries to wrestle it away from her; ignoring the crowd of people shouting instructions, pushing past her, calling for the police. There is a small hole in the ceiling, and a fine sift of plaster raining down onto the assembled guests. The front door hangs open like a mouth; standing on the front porch is a woman.
The man with the black hair has Caroline in a bear hug. “No, Caroline. Caroline, stop.”
“What the hell is she doing here?” Caroline’s voice is shrill. “Get her out. I want her out.”
“Mom.” Then Minna comes tearing around the corner, and Trenton, and Amy, until Trenton seizes her around the waist and forces her to stay back. The cops follow, eyes bulging and chests puffed out like they’re about to cream in their pants with importance. Vivian hangs back.
“Move aside,” Danny says, squeezing through the knot of people. “Everyone clear out. Move aside.”
The other guests hang back, conversing in whispers, trying hard not to show their excitement. They look like scavengers tailing a dump truck.
“Mom, come on. Come with me.” Minna puts an arm around her mother. Caroline is trembling like a wire about to snap.
“Get her out.” Her voice crests to a high shriek, like steam out of a kettle. Everyone is frozen and horrified. One woman has a smile plastered on her face, as wide and ugly as a Halloween jack-o’-lantern.
Minna puts an arm around Caroline’s shoulders. “Shhh, Mom. Come on.” Caroline doesn’t budge.
“She shouldn’t be here,” Caroline says. “She has no right, do you hear me? No right.”
“It’s okay, Mom.” Minna glares at the woman on the porch. “Who the hell are you?”
She’s dressed in black, and for a moment, backlit by the sun, her features are all in shadow. Then she takes a step into the hall. She looks like a dog that’s been kenneled and only half groomed: she has a bewildered, panicked look, like she has no idea where she is, and even though she’s dressed for a funeral, the hem of her slip is showing beneath her skirt and her black top is stained. She has dark red hair, frizzy, graying at the temples, hanging in a long braid down her back.
Her jaw is moving soundlessly—up and down, up and down. It takes me a second to realize she’s saying I’m sorry, barely breathing it, so quietly I’m sure no one else can hear.
Danny unhooks a pair of handcuffs from his belt and takes two steps toward Caroline. Trenton steps quickly in front of his mother.
“You must be f**king kidding me,” Minna says.
“I’m sorry, Minna,” he says quietly. “I really don’t have a choice.”
“No way.” Now Trenton steps up.
Amy starts to cry.
“Look.” Danny leans in close to Minna. “I don’t like this any more than you do. But your mother just fired a gun at someone. And we have a complaint about her on file already. I don’t want to have to cuff her. If she’ll just come with me quietly—”
“Screw you, Danny.”
“Don’t make this worse.” Danny moves Minna forcibly out of the way. “Caroline Walker, you’re under arrest for aggravated assault—”
“My fault.”
The two words, spoken quietly from the doorway, make even Danny go silent.
The woman clears her throat and tries again: “It’s my fault. I’m sorry.”
“Who are you?” Trenton says.
Her big eyes keep traveling over everyone, like insects refusing to settle. “My name is Adrienne,” she says. “Adrienne Cadiou.”
PART X
THE DINING ROOM
CAROLINE
“Drink,” Minna said, refilling Caroline’s coffee.
“I don’t want any.” Caroline took her coffee with sugar, cream, and preferably a nip of something stronger. This coffee was black and very strong; Caroline had already forced down a cup, while Danny and Minna watched her with identical expressions of concern, as if she were a child and they were the overattentive parents. Between them was a vast array of used cups and plates smeared with mustard, platters still piled with sandwiches arranged on wilted lettuce leaves.
“Just drink it,” Minna said. Caroline was too tired to argue. She was still drunk, but not drunk enough. The gun in her hand, the sudden, blinding fury that had gripped her, the sound of screaming—it was achieving reality, floating out from the dream-fog in which it had been comfortably encased.
Minna had gotten rid of all the other guests, thank God, and they’d convinced Danny to delay Caroline’s arrest, at least until after they had buried Richard’s ashes. Caroline couldn’t have faced a crowd. She couldn’t bear to see her former neighbors and so-called friends staring at her, whispering, the hiss of their insinuations about Richard and the woman.
The Woman.
Adrienne was sitting on the far side of the dining room. She hadn’t moved or spoken since she had announced her name, except to ask for some water. Caroline should have ordered her out of the house. She should have commanded it. Instead, she was forced to sit and watch Minna try to appease her, offering her cookies or a glass of wine, speaking in the voice she reserved for when Amy was sad or injured: a voice meant to say Please, please, don’t be angry at my mother. She’s harmless, she’s drunk, she didn’t mean to.
But Caroline had meant to.
“So you’re telling me”—Danny and Minna were conversing in low voices, but not so low Caroline couldn’t hear them; they probably thought she was too drunk to understand—“that this is a different Adrienne Cadiou? That she’s not the one your mom’s been calling?”
“She’s not the one,” Caroline said. It was the first time she’d spoken to Danny since he’d attempted to place her in handcuffs, and he turned to her in surprise. She deliberately avoided looking at him.
This was, in fact, the last and final insult: Adrienne was not the Adrienne Caroline had expected. Caroline wished she’d read more about this Adrienne. She remembered only an article she’d barely skimmed—a hit-and-run, a drunk driver. Now she fought vainly to recall details. She had the sense that it would make her feel more secure, less like she was drowning in open air, as if by knowing a person you could avoid being hurt by them. You might at least anticipate which way the blow would fall.