Page 75 of Little Secrets
His breath is coming faster now. Marin can only hope Sal has both hands on the steering wheel and is focused on the road. She can hardly believe what he’s saying. He’s never said any of this to her before, and he’s certainly nevershoutedit. Marin has always been kind to Lorna, and Lorna to her. She had no idea how the woman truly felt… or how Sal truly felt.
“Leave my mother alone, okay, Marin?”
“Okay,” she snaps, not sure if she’s more angry or hurt. “You don’t have to be an asshole about it. I was just trying to help.”
“Help who?” Sal’s voice is back to a normal volume, but the ice behind it is unmistakable. “You always want everything on your terms, Marin, and it’s not fucking fair. You want to stay married to your husband, but you’re constantly pushing him away. You want me as your best friend, yet you have sex with me when you feel like shit. You want to be known as this successful businesswoman, but you still act like a goddamned trophy wife. You say you can’t bear to live with not knowing what happened to Sebastian, but if you ever find out he’s dead, you’ll jump off a fucking bridge.”
“How dare you bring up—”
“It’s so fuckingselfish.” Sal’s voice breaks. Jesus Christ, is he crying? “Because you don’t live in this dead space by yourself. You suck everybody who loves you down into it with you, and you hold us hostage, threatening to kill yourself if you ever hear the news you don’t want to hear. So you know what, Marin? Fuck you. I’m done.”
Marin can feel her mouth hanging open. She has no idea how to respond to this, and while she’s thinking about it, the call disconnects, giving her no chance to retort, to defend herself.
Lorna once told her that Sal’s father used to hang up on people a lot. It was important for him to always have the last word, and he was well-known in Prosser for slamming down phones, slamming doors shut, and stomping out of rooms. Sal Palermo Sr. was an asshole, and at times the apple didn’t fall far from the tree. Sal Palermo Jr. could be the exact same way when he was upset.
“His father had such a temper,” Lorna had said during Marin’s last visit. The older woman was grinning, as if the memory were funny, as if the wordtemperdidn’t mean that he’d spent their entire marriage beating on her and bullying everybody else. “And J.R. is the exact same, just like his father, when he doesn’t get his way.”
“J.R.?” Marin asked, confused.
And then she remembered.
When he started college, Sal started going by his actual first name. But in his hometown of Prosser, he’d grown up with his mother—and everybody else—calling him J.R. It was easier for Lorna, and the winery employees, for her husband’s and son’s names to sound different.
J.R. was short for “Junior.”
Chapter 27
Still no word from McKenzie Li, and from the looks of things, her roommate is starting to panic.
Marin sits in her office at the salon, munching on one of the bagels brought in for the staff meeting earlier that morning. For the first time in months, she did not receive a good morning text from Sal, asking if she was alive. It feels awful. It’s hard to imagine that their friendship is done, but she doesn’t know what she can do to fix it… or if she even has the energy to try.
She refreshes Tyler Jansen’s Facebook page for the third time. He posted an update about his roommate this morning, and the comments have been coming in steadily for the past couple of hours. The new post includes a photo of McKenzie at the Green Bean, hair freshly pinked, apron tied around her waist, wearing a T-shirt that readsAsk Me About My Feminist Agenda. The Facebook post includes a link.
I’ve filed a missing persons report on McKenzie Li. Here is the official link. If anyone has info, please call the number immediately. And then please call me. She’s been missing for four days now, and given her mother’s condition, I’m the only one looking for her.
Her mother’s condition? Marin scrolls down, reading all the comments, chewing the bagel but not tasting it. The post has been shared over a dozen times already, and it’s up to a hundred comments and counting. Two comments in particular catch her eye, both written by a woman named Pearl Watts, who appears to be a former neighbor of the Li family.
The first is a response from Pearl to someone asking if McKenzie’s mother is even aware that her daughter is missing. Pearl wrote,Unfortunately even if she were told, I doubt Sharon would remember. Her Alzheimer’s is v. advanced. I visit her in Yakima every other week at the assisted living center & sometimes she knows me, sometimes she doesn’t. It’s v. sad.
Yakima? Eastern Washington? That’s not far from the wineries.
The second comment is on its own. Pearl wrote,Kenzie is a lovely young lady & everybody here in Prosser is praying she’s found safe.
Prosser. She’s from Sal’s hometown? What are the chances?
Marin shifts in her chair, suddenly uncomfortable. Something about this doesn’t feel right. Marin had shown Sal a picture of McKenzie, and he hadn’t seemed to recognize her. Mind you, she’d been drinking heavily during that conversation, so her recollection might be fuzzy, but surely her best friend would have said something immediately if he’d recognized a girl from his hometown. He’s nineteen years older than McKenzie, and would have moved out of Prosser for college before she was born, but the town is so small.
Marin ponders it some more, feeling the connection of something about to form… but the thought slips away before she can tie it together.
And what does Derek know? Is he even aware that his lover of six months has disappeared, and that a missing persons report has been filed? It feels like things have officially ended between him and McKenzie, but still, how can he not know? Vanessa Castro’s wordscome back to her:…this makestwopeople in your husband’s life that have disappeared. Which makes him the common denominator.
Now that the police are involved, it’s only a matter of time before they question Derek. In fact, maybe she should give him a heads-up that they might be knocking on the door any day now. But that would mean admitting to her husband that she knows about the affair.
Marin wishes she didn’t know. She wishes she’d never found out. She wishes she’d never started this.
She goes into the App Store, finds the Shadow app, and reinstalls it on her phone. All she has to do is reenter her login and password at the prompt and confirm Derek’s phone number. This time, however, when the app asks her if she wants to shadow all of Derek’s contacts or only specific numbers, she selects “All.” Her husband’s a busy man, and Marin’s phone might very well blow up with notifications, but it’s possible McKenzie has another phone that she’ll use to contact Derek. Or maybe someone else will try to contact Derek about McKenzie.
Marin needs to know what her husband knows. And at some point, she needs to figure out what Sal knows.
