Hints of Heloise by Laura Lippman

cherish. The producers had offered to bring the whole family up, make it a vacation, but she had quickly demurred. “Oh no, that’s hardly necessary.” Her eyes drift upward, to the monitor above the makeup mirror, and she watches Matt Lauer explaining something, his face grave. Utterly relaxed, she closes her eyes at the makeup woman’s instruction, thinking: I could break Matt’s neck like a little twig. If I had to, if it came to that.
    SEVEN
    W hy can’t I walk home?” Scott asks. It is the first day of school, the first day of fifth grade for him, his last first day ever at Hamilton Point Elementary School. Next year he will be in middle school, which means a bus. A bus will take him away from Heloise every morning and return him in the afternoon. It’s the beginning of his leaving her.
    â€œWhy?” he repeats. “Billy does.”
    â€œBilly doesn’t have to cross Old Orchard.” The prettily named street, a monument to a place long gone, a place torn down to make room for the houses there, has the distinction of being the suburb’s most dangerous. Three high school students died in a head-on crash there the last weekend before school started, a tragedy so enormous that it has eclipsed the gossip about Dan Simmons going nuts, trying to rape his neighbor.
    â€œI’ll be good. I’ll look both ways. There’s a crossing guard.”
    Heloise begins to repeat her argument, then says: “We’ll talk about it. Maybe soon. But you know what? I like driving you.”
    She glances in the rearview mirror, sees Scott make a face, but also sees a guilty flush of affection beneath it. “Mom.” Two syllables, verging on three.
    â€œWhat did you learn in school today?”
    â€œNothing, it’s the first day. But I think science is going to be neat. We get to do yearlong projects if we want. Not experiments, but reading projects, where we take on a topic and learn everything about it. I think I want to do nature versus nutria.”
    â€œNurture? Nutria’s an animal, I think.”
    â€œRight, nurture. It’s like, we used to think it was all about how you were raised, but now we think it’s about what’s in your genes.” A pause, a heartbreaking pause. “Why don’t we have any photographs of my dad?”
    â€œI’ve never been much of one for taking photos, except of you. Children change. Grown-ups, not so much. Your father lives in my memory.” And in my scars.
    â€œBut he had red hair, like me?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œAnd he was a businessman, who ran a com-, com-, com—” Bright as Scott is, as many times as they have gone over this story, he stumbles on this word.
    â€œCommodities exchange.” Oh yes, Val traded in commodities. “I never really understood it. Soybeans. And something to do with pork belly futures.” And the bellies and breasts and thighs and cunts of young women.
    â€œAnd he was nice.”
    â€œSo nice.” Especially after he had beaten a girl. He was never nicer.
    â€œBut he had a bad accident.”
    â€œVery bad.” His gun ran into a young man, and the woman he thought loved him made sure the police got hold of that weapon, and if he ever finds out, he will arrange to have her killed just for spite. Unless he finds out about you. Then he’ll instruct his old friends to kill you in front of her and leave her alive, knowing that will be the truest hell he can fashion.
    â€œI wish I had even one memory of him.”
    â€œI do too, baby. I do too.”
    Nature versus nurture. Hector Lewis had two families. Hector Lewis had two daughters. He beat one. She grew up to be a whore. With the other, he spared the rod, blew hot and cold, providing money and love in fitful amounts, and she grew up to be a cold-blooded killer. Just last week, Meghan moved her family to Florida. A fresh start, she said. It was too awkward, she said, living next