Apples Never Fall

by Liane Moriarty

(She would be that sort of grandmother. Grandchildren would be her second chance to get it right. Now she had the time and the eggs to spare, and she would be present with her grandchildren. When she looked at photos of her children when they were little, she sometimes thought, Did I notice how beautiful they were? Was I actually there? Did I just skim the surface of my entire damned life?)

She was Joy’s confidante and confessor, as bound by secrecy as a priest or lawyer, but if Joy missed her next appointment, Narelle would go to the police and hand over thirty years of secrets. She’d tell them about the betrayals. The ones referred to obliquely and the ones discussed in frank detail. She’d give the police everything they needed to convict her husband. She would say, Here is one possible motive and here is another, because any marriage of that many years has multiple motives for murder. Every police officer and hairdresser knows that.

A Strange Girl There is A Strange Girl In the house where I grew up Sleeping in my discarded Bed Wearing my discarded Clothes Making lasagna for my Discarded Mother And my mother had to go In the middle of my call (I still had things to say) Because the Strange Girl Called out her name

In two syllables As if she had the right My mother’s name is Joy And when she answered The Strange Girl Her voice was full of Joy Amy languidly drew thick rectangles over various words in her poem as if she were a wartime censor, tore out the page, crumpled it up, and ate it.

It was interesting to observe her mother’s personality changing after retirement. She’d always been the busiest person Amy knew, impatient and distracted, and now she’d become so uncharacteristically reflective, willing to engage in very long, meandering conversations about topics she would have once deemed frivolous.

Once you’ve hit a ball there’s no point watching to see where it’s going. You can’t change its flight path now. You have to think about your next move. Not what you should have done. What you do now.