Sugar and Spice Chapter 15

 

Chapter Fifteen

October 17 Friday Evening

Clay Franklin’s Home

Boston, Massachusetts 

MARILYN FRANKLIN POURED the heated canned tomato soup into two bowls, one for her adopted son Clay, one for herself. To hers she added half a dollop of Worcestershire sauce. Turning toward the stove, she flipped two cheese sandwiches in a fry pan where she’d melted butter.

Edward was in Maine for two days trying to get a better deal on paper. Granted, between e-mail and the internet, there were a lot fewer paper products used. Edward’s business, All Things Paper, was not being helped by tariffs. Although it had been in the Franklin family for four generations, he was looking for a buyer.

He wasn’t sure he’d told her if he wanted to work anymore. If he could sell the company well enough, he could retire at 57. He talked about golf, moving to their “cabin” in New Hampshire, fish, read, enjoy nature. He said he was tired of living in Boston, no matter how beautiful their Commonwealth Avenue brick house was.

The idea did appeal to her. The frenzy they called their life had to have alternatives. She imagined having a driveway instead of having to park in a pre-paid place two blocks from their front door.

“Clay, supper!”

She caught her reflection in the window. If only all those people who thought she was a trophy wife could see her now without makeup, her brown hair with a few hidden gray strands woven in, pulled back in a sloppy ponytail.

She understood how it happened. She’d nursed the second Mrs. Franklin, a true trophy wife in body, but not in temperament. By the time the woman’s breast cancer was diagnosed, the marriage had broken down. Edward was not the type to leave a dying woman. He only approached Marilyn four months after the funeral.

Clay had been five at the time. Marilyn had been invited to the funeral and to the gathering after. She hadn’t known anyone there and she found Clay sitting under the table. She crawled in and sat next to him. She didn’t remember what she had said, but he had invited her to his room, where he had shown her his new Lego village. During her care for Mrs. Franklin, Marilyn had little time for the boy.

Although Marilyn didn’t know it at the time, Edward was moved when he saw them go up the stairs hand in hand.

She’d fallen in love with Clay before she fell in love with Edward. He was a smart little boy, and mostly sweet. Marilyn has turned the two males into a real family, not one cut from a magazine article or on social media. Edward’s two sons, although busy with their own lives, accepted the newly arranged family.

Edward claimed he spent more time with Clay than he had in all the years together with his other sons, now 26 and 30. He also admitted he’d left Wife No. 1 for Wife No. 2. He didn’t blame a midlife crisis but his own stupidity.

Lately, Clay had been cocky over his star status on the soccer and basketball teams.

“I can’t help it if I’m a natural-born athlete,” Clay had said when Marilyn suggested a little humility might be order.

Marilyn had trouble not to laugh. “Who called you that?”

“Papa.” He’d stopped calling Edward Daddy at the beginning of the school year. She wondered what Clay would be like as a teenager.

As they ate, she reviewed the rest of next week’s activities with him. To the reminder of the piano lessons Monday, he groaned. He smiled when she suggested Friday night, the sacrosanct family night, that they go to a movie.

Marilyn, who had come to know Edward’s first wife, liked her. At the wedding of his older son, Edward had seen the two women talking and came up to them. “There’s the woman whom I was stupid to leave,” he said,” and the one whom redeemed me.” The two women broke into laughter.

Clay came into the kitchen with his iPad.

“Your hour is up,” she said. “Put the iPad away.”

Marilyn was a strict mom, which is what Clay had begun calling her two years ago after the nanny had been let go with a good severance deposit in her bank account. Family life had taken on an almost television fantasy quality.

Marilyn made sure there were traditions like Friday night family night. Only the company burning down would stop them doing things together. Activities could be computer games, Celtics, Sox or Pats games in season, a movie at home or cinema. Edward, no matter how busy he was, was always there on family night. “I won’t make the same mistake I made with my other two boys,” he told her.

“Do you want more soup and another . . .” The doorbell interrupted.

She recognized Dr. Elise Hanson, the headmistress at Clay’s school. She didn’t know the man or woman. Robert Bunker and Samantha Lee introduced themselves and showed her their detective badges.

They asked to come in. Marilyn’s first thought something had happened to Edward. They reassured her.

Clay had wandered in from the kitchen, holding the remainder of his grilled cheese sandwich. “Hello, Dr. Hanson.”

“Hello, Clay.”

Before Clay and Dr. Hanson could get into a conversation, Samantha Lee said, “We need to talk to you, but it should be without your son, Mrs. Franklin.”

“I didn’t do anything,” Clay said.

“No one said you did,” Dr. Hanson said.

“Clay, go to your room. And close the door. I want you on the side with your bed, not the hall.” Marilyn wasn’t sure why she felt she had to add that, but she did.

Clay started toward the hall with the semi-circular staircase to the second floor. “Will you tell me after they’ve left?”

“Go.”

They sat, without saying anything, until they heard a door shut above. Marilyn went half up the staircase to make sure Clay was inside his room. She could see that the door was shut, not just drawn.

“You’re really scaring me,” she said. “If it isn’t Edward . . . and if Dr. Hanson is here then . . . Did Clay . . .”

Bunker started to speak, but Samatha shook her head. “There’s no gentle way to put this, but four girls in the school were involved in a plot to kill your son.”

Marilyn sat without moving before saying, “That’s ridiculous. The school is a private school with good students from good families. It isn’t some inner-city school with kids from the slums.

“I’m afraid it’s true. We’ve learned about it yesterday. Bunker and I’ve spent the day interviewing the girls,” Samantha said.

Marilyn pictured them attacking Clay. “Did you catch them in the . . .”

“…act. A student heard them plotting in the bathroom. She was in one of the stalls and came to me. I called the police.” Elise Hanson said. “That was yesterday.”

“We’ve spent today talking to the girls and their families in formal interviews at the station,” Bunker said.

“Where are they now?” Marilyn found herself twisting her wedding ring, something she never did. ”The girls?”

“With their parents,” Bunker said.

“Is Clay in any danger now? Who are they? Have they ever been here? Clay plays more with boys.”

One by one, the two policemen answered Marilyn’s questions as best they could, which wasn’t very good.