All Unquiet Things (27 page)

“But if Carly was getting them before she was raped, she would have been on her guard.”

“Not if she thought you wrote them,” I pointed out. “She trusted you not to hurt her. She didn’t know there was somebody else to look out for.”

“So what next?”

“We trail Adam and the Bean. One of them is going to make a move, and when they do we need to be there to follow.”

“Fine.”

“Which one do you want?”

“I can’t believe you even have to ask.”

C
HAPTER
E
IGHTEEN

A
fter Audrey showed me the letters, I went back to Empire Creek Bridge. I didn’t want to go home and face my mother, whose hopeful expressions and mild encouragements were growing more meaningless as the dark mystery surrounding Carly’s murder unfolded. Audrey wanted to be alone, and so did I, free to pace the winding corridors of our minds in search of answers to questions we had just started to learn how to ask. There was only so much that talking about it could do for me, and I was grateful that Audrey understood.

I missed Carly. It was the first thought I had as I stood on that bridge, watching as the sun dipped below the foothills and splashed stripes of orange and pink across the water. As the air
cooled—summer was almost over, and fall was coming—I thought about the last time I had stood on this bridge with her. It was some months after her mother’s death; she was withdrawn and moody, but things were still good between us, or seemed to be. We were looking out on a sunset just like I was now, and Carly was clutching my hand, her head on my shoulder. Without looking at me, eyes trained on the horizon, Carly asked, “What are you going to do, Neily?”

“About what?”

“When you graduate. What do you want to do?”

I shrugged. “College, I guess. Like everybody else. Why? You want to do something different?”

“My dad would kill me if I decided not to go to college.”

“It’s your life, Carly. You should do what you want.”

“That’s not really my style, is it?”

“What do you mean?”

She shook her head. “My mother always had the last word.”

“But she’s gone now—”

“I don’t want her to be gone, I want her to be here!”

“I know,” I said. “I didn’t mean it like that. All I’m saying is that your decisions are up to you now.”

“Stop saying it like it’s such a good thing.”

“I’m not—I …” I took a breath.

“I miss her so much.”

“I know.”

“And I keep taking it out on you—I don’t know why.” There were tears creeping into the corners of her eyes.

“Maybe it’s because you know that whatever you do, whatever you say, I’ll always be here.”

She nodded. “That’s what I’m afraid of.”

“What does that mean?”

“You shouldn’t be with a person who treats you like her own personal whipping boy—you deserve better.”

“You don’t treat me like that.”

“I’m starting to. I’m so angry all the time, every little thing sets me off and I’m afraid that I’ll end up really hurting you. I don’t want that. That’s the last thing in the world I want to do. I don’t want to turn into some kind of a monster.”

“You’re not a monster.”

“I feel like that’s what I’m becoming.” She looked up at me, searching my eyes as if she thought there might be answers in them—or absolution. “Do you know who I am? Because I don’t, not anymore.”

“You’re going through something big. It’s normal to feel lost. But I love you, I believe in you, and I’m not going anywhere, even if you try to push me away.”

“Why
do you love me?”

“I just do.”

She shook her head. “That’s not an answer.”

“Because ever since I was a kid, people have had all these expectations of me, and I’ve always been so afraid I wouldn’t be able to deliver. But you make me feel good enough just the way I am and that means a lot. To me.” I knew I should stop talking, but there was no easy way to say what I felt, so I went for a surplus of words to cover it. “You know me, Carly. You know me in a way that nobody ever has, and it’s just so comforting to be with a person who gets you. Before we met, I felt like there was no place safe where I could think and feel and say whatever I wanted. That’s why I love you. Being with you feels like being home to me.”

She said nothing.

“It’s true,” I said, afraid that she thought I was just making it up.

“That’s a really good answer,” she said. One tear dropped, and then another. I kissed her wet cheeks and she put her arms around my neck, pulling me close. I ran my palms up and down her back slowly, the way my mother used to soothe me when I was ill or upset. We hugged tightly, almost bracing each other; I bent my mouth to hers and we kissed there on the bridge until it was dark.

As I walked back to my car, I thought about the journal Audrey and I had found, and how she was trying to prevent me from reading all of it. She knew what I wanted to read, what I had long imagined Carly felt but had been too afraid or too proud to admit: that she still loved me, that she missed me, that she needed and wanted me in a way that only we could need and want each other. Before meeting Audrey at the diner I had resolved to push her into giving up the journal, to beg or demand as much as necessary to get my hands on it, but she ambushed me with the letters. Now I was afraid to read what Carly had written, because for the first time in a long time I was unsure that any feelings other than pity—or possibly remorse—had lingered in her for me. I decided to drop the matter of the journal for the time being—until I knew that I really did want to read it, whatever it said.

After leaving the bridge, I followed up on something that was bugging me. Audrey was bent on investigating the hell out of Toby Pinto, but the last entry in Carly’s diary was still ringing in my ears:
Now I know that whatever happened to Laura Brandt was because of me. I’m a monster for what I did to her, and I can’t rest until I make things right
. Neither Audrey nor I had any idea who Laura Brandt was, but I was certain that I could find out. All I needed was access to the Internet.

My first search on the name turned up swimming records from a high school in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and the personal Web site of a professor at the University of Florida, but coupled with the name of a local newspaper I got just one hit: an article, dated almost a year and a half ago, about an eighteen-year-old girl living in Lafayette, a town about twenty minutes north of Empire Valley. According to the article, Laura Brandt had been rushed to the hospital after suffering from a cocaine overdose while her parents were away on vacation. The OD landed her in a coma for five days, and when she awoke, parents at her bedside, she refused to give up the name of her dealer. The girl had no priors and was allowed to trade jail time for a voluntary stint in rehab.

How was Carly responsible for Laura Brandt’s overdose? The article asserted that while Laura had never been picked up by the police for possession or driving under the influence, she was a veteran drug abuser. And another question: How had Carly even known Laura Brandt? It wasn’t such a leap to connect them—Laura was a drug addict, after all, and Carly had been dating a drug dealer. Carly clearly felt guilty for something, but as yet it was unclear what. I supposed that the only person who might be able to tell me was Laura herself.

I called 411 and got the number of her parents’ house in Lafayette, but when a man answered and I asked to speak to her, his only response was a sharp “Laura doesn’t live here anymore” before hanging up.

Audrey and I met before school the next day in the senior parking lot, in full view of everyone on our hit list. We hadn’t been particularly careful about hiding our friendship-partnership, whatever it was—convinced that nobody at school gave a damn about what we were doing, but now we were an object of interest. Somebody, maybe Cass or Lucy, had revealed what we were up to. We got stares from all directions, but the most pointed and poisonous of those stares came from the side of the lot where Adam’s posse parked. Cass was not with them; I mentioned it to Audrey, but she just shrugged.

“Why do you think that is?” I asked.

“Let me just consult the schedule he gave me …,” she said, reaching for her bag. “Oh, wait.” I gave her a look and she sighed a little. “I did hear that he and Adam had some kind of falling-out.”

“Who told you that?”

“I overheard some girls talking in the ladies’,” she said.

“Haven’t they been friends forever?”

“You know, I really don’t care. I always thought it would be better for Cass to just stop hanging around Adam, and now he has. Two years too late.”

“Maybe it’s because of you.”

“Why would it have anything to do with me?”

“You told Cass you couldn’t trust him, he knows you don’t
really like Adam, he stops hanging around Adam because he wants to prove to you that he’s serious about giving your relationship another shot,” I proposed. “Or, Adam found out Cass still has feelings for you and told him in no uncertain terms that he’s not to see you anymore—Cass refuses and gets the cold shoulder. You want more? I can do this all day.”

“No, thanks, that’s quite enough.”

I filled her in on what I’d found out about Laura Brandt, and my inability to track her down. “What now?” I asked.

“I guess we try to find somebody who knows her.”