Joy Fielding.

Don't Cry Now.

For Owen Laster, With respect, admiration, and love.

1.

She was imagining palm trees. They were tall and brown and bent by decades of high winds, their long green leaves swaying like empty gloves toward a magically clear blue sky.

Rod had mentioned the possibility of her accompanying him to Miami next month. A few days of meetings with the network affiliates, he told her, and then the balance of the week for the two of them to make like Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr on the beach-how did that sound to her? It sounded great, and visions of palm trees had instantly imprinted themselves on the inside of her eyelids, appearing every time she closed her eyes. It meant creating some problems of her own at work-she'd have to lie to her princ.i.p.al, tell him she was sick when she was always boasting that she was one of those disgustingly healthy individuals who were never felled by colds or nasty flu bugs; she'd have to have her daily lessons precisely detailed and laid out in advance so that whoever they brought in to subst.i.tute for her would know exactly what to do and at what pace to proceed. Minor inconveniences when compared to the thought of a romantic week in the sun with the man she loved. Illicit even, were it not for the fact that the man in question was her husband of five years.

Bonnie took a deep breath, readjusting her focus to eradicate all traces of swaying palms. Minor inconveniences, maybe. But how would she go about disguising a decidedly unsickly-looking tan to a suspicious high school princ.i.p.al? How would she be able to look the man in the face without blushing, speak to him without stammering, deal with his solicitous inquiries as to how she was feeling? She hated lying, was terrible at it, valued honesty above all else. ("You're my good one," her mother had often said.) And she was proud of the fact that in almost nine years of teaching, she'd never missed a day. Could she really miss five days in a row just to roll around with her husband on a Florida beach?

"Besides," she said out loud, glancing down at the soft golden doll that was her three-year-old daughter, "how could I leave you for five whole days?" She reached over and stroked Amanda's cheek, her fingers tracing the thin scar that snaked across the child's cheekbone, the result of a recent tumble from her tricycle. How fragile children are, Bonnie thought, leaning over, inhaling her daughter's sweet smell. Immediately, Amanda's blue eyes opened wide. "Oh, you're up, are you?" Bonnie asked, kissing her daughter's forehead. "No more bad dreams?"

Amanda shook her head, and Bonnie smiled with relief. Amanda had awakened them at five in the morning, crying from a nightmare she couldn't quite recall. "Don't cry, baby," Bonnie had whispered, allowing Amanda into her bed. "Don't cry now; everything's going to be okay. Mommy's here."

"I love you, sweet thing," Bonnie said now, kissing her again.

Amanda giggled. "I love you more."

"Impossible," Bonnie countered. "You couldn't possibly love me more than I love you."

Amanda crossed her arms over her chest, a.s.sumed her most serious face. "Okay, then we love each other exactly the same."

"Okay, we love each other the same."

"Except I love you more."

Bonnie laughed, swinging her legs out of bed. "I guess it's time to get you ready for school."

"I can get myself ready." In the next second, Amanda's round little body, all but hidden inside a pink-and-white Big Bird nightgown, was running down the hall toward her room.

Where do they get so much energy? Bonnie wondered, crawling back between the covers, letting her tired body luxuriate in the stillness of the early spring morning.

The phone rang, its shrill sound slamming against her brain with such unexpected force, Bonnie felt as if she'd been rear-ended by a car. Her shoulders tensed, then jerked, contracting at the base of the neck, as if she'd been suddenly shrunk. Who would be calling now, at barely seven o'clock in the morning?

Bonnie forced her eyes open, staring toward the phone on the night table beside the king-size bed, reluctantly pushing herself onto her elbows, reaching over with an impatient hand to pluck the receiver from its carriage. "h.e.l.lo?" She was surprised to find her voice still coated with sleep and cleared her throat, waiting for the voice on the other end of the line to declare itself. "h.e.l.lo," she said again when it didn't.

"It's Joan. I have to talk to you."

Bonnie felt her heart sink, her head snapping toward her chest, as if she'd just been felled by a guillotine. Not even seven o'clock in the morning, and already her husband's ex-wife was on the phone. "Is everything all right?" Bonnie asked, immediately fearing the worst. "Sam and Lauren...?"

"They're fine."

Bonnie expelled a grateful breath of air from her lungs. "Rod's in the shower," she said, thinking it a little early even for Joan to be hitting the bottle.

"I don't want to talk to Rod. I want to talk to you."

"Look, now isn't a great time," Bonnie told her, as gently as she could. "I have to get ready for work...."

"You don't have work today. Sam told me it's a P.E. day."

"P.D.," Bonnie corrected. "It stands for professional development." Why was she explaining anything to this woman to whom she owed no explanations at all?

"Can you meet me later this morning?"

"No, of course I can't meet you," Bonnie told her, amazed at the request. "I'm in lectures all morning. I'm being professionally developed, remember?" Like a photograph, she almost added, then didn't. Rod always complained his ex-wife had no sense of humor.

"At noon then. You must get a break for lunch."

"Joan, I can't..."

"You don't understand. You have to."

"What do you mean, I have to? What don't I understand?" What was this woman talking about? Bonnie looked helplessly toward the bathroom door. The shower was still running. Rod was tearing into a rousing chorus of Take Another Little Piece of My Heart. "Joan, I really have to go."

"You're in danger!" The words emerged as a hiss.

"What?"

"You're in danger. You and Amanda."

The cold hand of panic immediately and instinctively grabbed for Bonnie's gut. "What do you mean, we're in danger? What are you talking about?"

"It's too complicated to explain over the phone," Joan answered, her voice suddenly eerily calm. "You have to meet me."

"Have you been drinking?" Bonnie demanded, angry now despite her best intentions.

"Do I sound like I've been drinking?"

Bonnie had to admit that she didn't.

"Look, I'm doing an open house this morning at Four Thirty Lombard Street. That's in Newton. I have to be out by one o'clock when the owner comes home...."

"I told you, I'm in lectures all day."

"And I told you you're in danger!" Joan repeated, as if there was a period between each word, as if each letter were capitalized.

Bonnie opened her mouth to protest, then decided against it. "All right," she agreed. "I'll try to get there on my lunch hour."

"Before one," Joan instructed.

"Before one," Bonnie agreed.

"Please don't say anything to Rod about this," Joan added.

"Why not?"

Bonnie's answer was the sharp click of a receiver being dropped none too gently into its carriage as the line went dead in her hands.

"Always a pleasure hearing from you," Bonnie said, hanging up the phone, staring at the white ceiling in frustration. What crazy idea had Joan gotten into that confused mind of hers this time?

Although she didn't sound confused, Bonnie acknowledged, lifting her feet out of bed and shuffling toward the bathroom. She sounded clear and focused, as if she knew exactly what she was saying. A woman with a mission, Bonnie thought, washing her face and brushing her teeth, then padding across the plush taupe carpeting toward the walk-in closet. It was probably time to change the closet around for the warmer weather, although what was that silly saying her friend Diana was always quoting? Don't change a thread until April is dead? Yes, that was it, Bonnie remembered, blocking her ears to other, more ominous voices, and exchanging her white nightshirt for a rose-colored sweater dress. You're in danger, Joan's voice insisted again. You and Amanda.

What was Joan talking about? What danger could she and her daughter possibly be in?

Please don't say anything to Rod about this.

"Why not?" Bonnie asked again, smoothing the dress across her slim hips. Why didn't Joan want her to say anything to her husband about her strange proclamation? Probably because he'd think she was crazy. Bonnie laughed. Rod already thought his ex-wife was crazy.

She decided against meeting Joan. There was nothing the woman had to tell her that she wanted to hear. Nothing that would benefit her in any way. Yet even as she was making this decision, Bonnie knew her curiosity would get the better of her, that she'd end up sneaking out of the lecture early, probably missing the best part, and driving all the way over to Lombard Street, only to discover that Joan wouldn't even remember having called her. It had happened before. Drunken calls in the middle of the night, frantic ravings at dinnertime, sad laments at bedtime. None of it recalled later. What are you talking about? I never called you. Why are you trying to make trouble for me? What on earth are you talking about?

Bonnie had indulged her. Despite everything she knew to be true about the woman, about the anguish she'd caused Rod, Bonnie couldn't help but feel some sympathy for her. ("You're a good egg," her mother would say.) She had to keep reminding herself that Joan's problems were largely self-inflicted, that she'd made a conscious decision to start drinking, keep drinking. It was too easy to excuse her behavior on the grounds that it wasn't unnatural for a woman to turn to alcohol after the kind of tragedy she'd endured.

Still, even the tragedy had been largely her own fault. Certainly it could have been averted had Joan not been so careless, had she not left her fourteen-month-old baby alone in the bathtub, even for less than a minute, as she later frantically claimed. She had all sorts of explanations: Sam and Lauren were fighting in the other room; Lauren was screaming; it sounded as if Sam might be hurting her; she'd simply rushed out of the bathroom briefly to find out what was going on. By the time she got back, her youngest child was dead, and her marriage was over.

Please don't say anything to Rod about this.

Why upset him first thing in the morning? Bonnie asked herself, deciding against telling her husband about Joan's call, at least until after their meeting. Rod had enough to worry about at the studio-a difficult afternoon time slot, an impossible hostess, a tired format. How many tabloid talk shows did the public really need? Still, under his expert direction, the ratings had been steadily improving. There was growing talk of national syndication. The convention in Miami next month could prove pivotal.

Again, the palm trees magically appeared, dotting the surface of her lavender bedroom walls like patterns on wallpaper. Imaginary soft breezes followed her to the small vanity table and mirror that sat opposite her bed beneath a muted print of a Salvador Dali nude, a faceless woman sketched in blue, all round hips and elongated limbs, rays of something or other streaming from the top of her bald head.

Maybe baldness was the answer, Bonnie thought, trying vainly to fashion her chin-length brown hair around her narrow face the way her hairdresser had shown her. "Give it up," she told her mirror image, abandoning her unruly hair, deciding that despite the tiny lines around her deep green eyes, she didn't look that bad. She possessed the kind of clean-cut cheerleader good looks that never really went out of fashion, that made her appear younger than her almost thirty-five years. Well-scrubbed was how Joan had once described her.

Multiple images of Rod's ex-wife rudely replaced the palm trees, like an Andy Warhol painting, one of those silk screen images of Marilyn Monroe. Joan, Bonnie repeated, trying to stretch the word to two syllables, to make it more soothing, easier to contend with. Jo-oan. Jo-oan. It didn't work. Joan remained on her lips, as she did in life, resolutely unchangeable, impossible to alter or tone down.

She was a big woman, close to six feet tall, with large brown eyes she consistently referred to as sable, flamboyant red hair she preferred to label t.i.tian, and a bosom that was spectacular in anyone's lexicon. Everything about her was an exaggeration, which was no doubt at least partly responsible for her success as a real estate agent.

What was she up to this time? Why the melodrama? What was so complicated she couldn't discuss it over the phone? What kind of danger was she talking about?

Bonnie shrugged as Rod's shower shuddered to a halt. She'd find out soon enough, she decided.

Bonnie pulled her white Caprice into the driveway of 430 Lombard Street at exactly twelve thirty-eight-there'd been an accident on the Ma.s.s turnpike and it had taken her over half an hour to get there-parking directly behind Joan's red Mercedes. Joan was obviously doing very well for herself, Bonnie decided. Despite the fluctuations in the real estate market, she seemed to have survived the latest prolonged slump quite nicely. But then, Joan was a survivor. It was only those around her who perished.

This house shouldn't be too difficult to sell, Bonnie thought, squinting into the cool sun as she walked past the large sign on the front lawn that announced the open house and mounted the outside steps to the front porch. The house was two stories high and wood-framed, like most of the homes in this upscale suburb of Boston, and it had recently received a coat of white paint. The front door was black and slightly ajar. Bonnie knocked timidly, then pushed the door open farther. Immediately, she heard voices coming from one of the back rooms. A man and a woman. Maybe Joan. Maybe not. Possibly in the middle of an argument. It was hard to tell. At any rate, she wouldn't eavesdrop. She'd wait a few minutes, cough discreetly a few times, let them deduce someone else was in the house.

Bonnie looked around, helping herself to one of the many fact sheets that Joan had left stacked on a small bench in the front foyer next to an open guest register. According to the information on the sheet, the house was three thousand square feet over two floors, with four bedrooms and a finished bas.e.m.e.nt. A wide center staircase divided the house into two equal halves, the living room to one side, the dining room to the other. The kitchen and family room were at the back. A powder room was somewhere in between.

Bonnie cleared her throat softly, then again, more loudly. The voices continued. Bonnie checked her watch, wandered into the beige and cream-colored living room. She'd have to leave soon. As it was, she'd be late getting back, miss the first part of the lecture on how today's schools had to adapt to today's teens. She checked her watch again, tapped her foot on the hardwood floor. This was ridiculous. While she hated to interrupt Joan while she was trying to make a sale, the fact was that the woman had insisted she be here before one o'clock, and it was almost that now. "Joan," she called out, returning to the hall, walking down the corridor toward the kitchen.

The voices continued as if she hadn't spoken. She heard s.n.a.t.c.hes-"Well, if this health plan is implemented..." "That's a pretty lamebrained a.s.sessment."-and wondered what was going on. Why would people-Joan, of all people-be involved in such a discussion at such a time? "I'm going to have to cut you off, caller," the man's voice suddenly announced. "You don't know what you're talking about and I feel like listening to some music. How about the always cla.s.sic sound of Nirvana?"

It was the radio. "Jesus Christ," Bonnie muttered. She'd been wasting her time discreetly coughing so that a rude radio host could finish hurling invectives at some hapless caller! Who's the crazy lady here? she wondered, losing her patience, raising her voice over the sudden onslaught of sound that was Nirvana. "Joan," she called, stepping into the yellow and white kitchen, seeing Joan at the long pine kitchen table, her large sable eyes clouded over with booze, her mouth slightly open, about to speak.

Except that she didn't speak. And she didn't move. Not even as Bonnie approached, waving her hand in front of the woman's face, not even as she reached out to shake her shoulder. "Joan, for G.o.d's sake..."

She wasn't sure at what precise moment she realized that Joan was dead. It might have been when she saw the bright patch of crimson that was splattered across the front of Joan's white silk blouse like an abstract work of art. Or perhaps it was when she saw the gaping dark hole between her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, and felt blood on her hands, warm and sticky, like syrup. Maybe it was the awful combination of smells, real or imagined, that was suddenly pushing its way toward her nose that convinced her. Or maybe it was the screams shooting from her mouth like stray bullets, the unG.o.dly sound creating a strangely appropriate harmony with Nirvana.

Or maybe it was the woman in the doorway screaming with her, the woman with her arms full of groceries who stood paralyzed against the far wall, the bags of groceries glued to her sides, as if they were all that were keeping her upright.

Bonnie walked over to her, the woman recoiling in horror as Bonnie pried the groceries from her arms. "Don't hurt me," the woman pleaded. "Please don't hurt me."

"n.o.body's going to hurt you," Bonnie a.s.sured her calmly, laying the bags on the counter and wrapping one arm around the shaking woman. The other arm reached toward the wall phone and quickly pressed in 911. In a clear voice she gave the operator the address and told her that a woman appeared to have been shot. Then she led the still-trembling owner of the house into the living room where she sat down beside her on the textured tan sofa. Then she put her head between her knees to keep from fainting and waited for the police to arrive.

2.

They burst through the front door like a violent thunderclap in the middle of a storm, expected but terrifying nonetheless. Their voices filled the front hall; their bodies swarmed into the living room, like bees to a hive. The woman beside her on the sofa jumped up to greet them. "Thank G.o.d you're here," she was saying, her voice a wail.

"Are you the one who called the police?"

Bonnie felt the woman's accusatory finger pointing toward her, was aware of all eyes turning in her direction as the room filled up around her. Reluctantly, she forced her eyes to theirs, although initially all she could see was Joan, fiery t.i.tian tresses falling in frenzied ripples around her ashen face, her wide mouth slightly agape and outlined by her trademark fluorescent orange lipstick, sable eyes milky with death.

"Who's been shot?" someone asked.

Again the woman pointed, this time toward the kitchen. "My real estate agent. From Ellen Marx Realty."

Several faceless young men, wearing the white coats of medical personnel, rushed toward the back of the house. Ambulance attendants, no doubt, Bonnie concluded, strangely detached from the proceedings, this sudden detachment allowing her to absorb the details of what was happening. There were at least six new people in the house: the two paramedics; two uniformed police officers; a woman whose posture identified her as a police officer but who looked barely out of her teens; and a big man of about forty with bad skin and a gut that protruded over his belt who was obviously in charge and had followed the paramedics to the kitchen.

"She's dead," he announced upon returning. He was wearing a black-and-white-checkered sports jacket and a plain red tie. Bonnie noticed a pair of handcuffs dangling from his belt. "I've notified forensics. The medical examiner will be here soon."

Forensics, Bonnie repeated in her mind, wondering where such strange-sounding words came from.

"I'm Captain Mahoney and this is Detective Kritzic." He nodded toward the woman on his right. "Do you want to tell us what happened here?"

"I came home..." Bonnie heard the owner of the house begin.

"This is your house?" Detective Kritzic asked.

"Yes. I've had it up for sale...."

"Name, please."

"What? Oh, Margaret Palmay."