Dear Daughter (36 page)

NOAH

You know they tried you as an adult, right?

JANIE

Yeah? So what?

NOAH

So maybe you should act like one.

Janie takes a nervous drag on her cigarette.

JANIE

It’s a defense mechanism. You do understand that word, right? “Defense”?

NOAH

(lazily)

Oh, that’s great. Keep going. Get it all out.

JANIE

I beg your pardon.

NOAH

Get it out—the ironic looks, the snide remarks. Do it here, with me, right now, but then get over it. Because every time you do it in court you lose another heart, another mind, another appeal.

Janie is silent.

NOAH
(cont’d)

Everyone in America has known someone like you. At my high school it was Tamara Peterson. So beautiful she made you believe in a higher power. Until she opened her mouth. Then you realized she had a soul like a sling blade, that she was just biding her time till she could cut you down.

(beat)

Beautiful women—they think they can get away with anything.

JANIE

Not this time, though.

She’s asking a question. Noah gives her the answer.

NOAH

No—not this time.

JANIE

Well.

(beat)

At least you think I’m beautiful.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

I didn’t think, I just ran. Down the stairs, down the sidewalk, around one corner and another and another, until there I was, knocking on Leo’s door.

He didn’t do anything so dramatic as pulling me in or dipping me in his arms or sweeping me off my feet, even though I’m sure that as soon as he saw me standing on his doorstop, he knew why I was there. He just stepped to the side and took a swig of his beer.

“Want a drink?” he asked.

“No.”

“Something to eat?”

“No.”

“You here to watch the game?”

“There’s a game?”

He moved toward me. I tried to tell myself that his lean, weathered face was ugly up close, but we all know that isn’t true.

He reached over and pushed my bangs to the side. “This is one awful haircut,” he said.

I curled my arms around my stomach but stuck out my chin. “I can’t begin to imagine why Renee left you.”

He took my glasses off and examined my face. Then he put my glasses back on. “I think I like you better this way,” he said. “The glasses hide the big black circles under your eyes.”

“Stop, I’m blushing.”

We looked at each other, our chests rising and falling. Not too much, not in some frantic, fish-mouthed, passionate way. Just like normal people breathe: in and out. But in unison.

Leo set his beer down on the nearest flat surface and put his hands—one warm and dry, the other chilled and damp—on either side of my face. I won’t call what happened next a kiss, but the fundamental mechanism was the same. And when he went upstairs it didn’t take too much to make myself go after him.

All in all, it wasn’t nearly as unpleasant as I’d remembered.

•   •   •

“You know why I became a cop?”

I held the sheet to my chest with one hand and plucked the cigarette from Leo’s lips with the other. “I have a feeling you’re going to tell me.”

“I was just out of college—”

“You went to college?”

He snatched back the cigarette before I could take a puff. “You can’t have this, it’s my last one. Now let me tell the story.”

“I wasn’t—”

“You were.” He held up a finger. “Now. I was just out of college, and—”

“What was your major?”

“Irrelevant.”

“Absolutely relevant.”

“No, I mean irrelevant to the job market. I was a music major.”

“God, why?”

“I thought I was the next Jeff Beck.”

“I have no idea who that is.”

“Then you’re part of the problem. Can I continue?”

“Please.”

He took another drag. “So I was driving back home in this shit heap of a car I’d bought from my cousin on Pine Ridge—and I went to college in Indiana, so it wasn’t just a long drive but a boring-as-shit drive—so somewhere around Sioux Falls I was like, fuck it, this bag of weed isn’t going to smoke itself. Then, not ten minutes after I kill a bowl, there’s this cruiser in my rearview mirror. Now, I’m not an idiot, I’m sticking to the speed limit. And, yeah, okay, maybe the tranny on that thing was about to fall out at any second, but you’d better believe those taillights were working just fine. I knew what was what.

“Problem is, I’d never bothered changing the license plates, and as soon as the cop sees it’s a car from the reservation, what do you know, those sirens come on. Now, I got lucky. My record was clean. But if it hadn’t been, if I’d even ever had a parking ticket, I probably would’ve gone away for—I don’t know, a year?”

“So, what, you decided to join the force to, like, right a wrong? To make some kind of a difference?”

He exhaled a plume of smoke. “No, so I’d never get pulled over again.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

He rolled to his side and tapped his cigarette in the ashtray. Then he pulled back to look at me. “I’m telling you so you don’t confuse me for someone who’s on anyone’s side but my own.”

Normally I would have taken him at his word, but after the day I’d had, I decided, perversely, to err on the side of optimism.

“I don’t believe you,” I said. “I think this is just your way of getting out of making breakfast tomorrow morning.”

He rolled onto his back, a smile tugging at his lips.

“What?” I asked.

“I didn’t think it was possible to literally fuck someone’s brains out.”

I went to punch him, but my stupid hand forgot to make a fist and ended up instead curling around his neck with the sort of tenderness you’d expect from a little girl who didn’t know any better.

And I suppose I didn’t.

•   •   •

My hand was wet. My hand was warm and it was wet. Blood. Again. I opened my eyes.

Oh God, Jesus, it’s everywhere.

A scream threatened to fight its way out of my throat.

Then there was a whimper and the nudge of a nose against my palm.

Leo’s bed, I remembered. I was in Leo’s bed. I was clinging to the edge of Leo’s bed, and my arm was hanging off the side and his dog was licking my hand. The scream subsided. I wasn’t covered in blood. Just . . . slobber.

I covered my face with my hands and let out a half-choked half laugh that was maybe also a half sob.

That’s what I get for thinking I could sleep in a bed.

When my pulse settled I peeked through my fingers at the pillow next to me. Leo was sleeping heavily, one knee drawn up to his stomach. I ran a tentative finger down the knobby length of his spine. I wondered if the bones beneath
my
skin could ever mean anything to someone else.

He sighed in his sleep, throwing one arm out toward me, reaching for what his body knew was supposed to have been his side of the bed. It landed just shy of my cheek. I almost moved to meet it. But instead I grabbed the dog and pulled him up onto the bed with me. He nestled his head under my chin.

Dangerous indulgence, all of it, no different than what I’d been doing for ten years or maybe more: disappearing off into some fantasy whenever the world didn’t suit me. Except now it wasn’t just a conversation I was losing track of. It was my whole reason for being here. And instead of doing anything about it, I was in bed with a guy I’d just met. I mean, I hadn’t even checked the news. Trace Kessler could be outside Leo’s bedroom window for all I knew.

Well, that, at least, I could do something about. I set Bones on the floor, opened the drawer to Leo’s nightstand, and dug out the phone I’d seen there the other night. My conscience spasmed a bit, but I ignored it. It’s not like I was going to read the man’s email.

Not right away, anyway.

I clicked the little button at the top of the phone. The screen lit up. And—
wham
—I was hit with a sense memory from twenty years before.

I was seven years old, and that night the cook had served me grouper. Unfortunately, it turned out that this particular grouper had eaten a fish that had eaten some seaweed that had been covered in something called a dinoflagellate. My body did not react well. Headaches, nausea, vomiting, gastrointestinal everything, paresthesia. Hallucinations, too. It was the most physically excruciating and repulsive experience of my life. It took me six weeks to recover.

This moment, though, was indescribably worse.

Because on Leo’s phone was a picture of my mother. But this time it wasn’t of Tessa. It was of Marion.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

I swiped through the phone’s photos, the sick in my stomach frothing up higher with each one. There were dozens of pictures of my mother: from charity events, from gala openings, from black-tie balls. Leo must have trawled every single society column on the Internet. He was obsessed.

Which meant he had to know who I was. He’d probably always known who I was. That’s why he hadn’t arrested me. He wanted me for himself—for God only knows what.

I leaped out of the bed and groped around on the floor for my clothes—ugly sweater, ugly pants, ugly bra, and ugly boots, one of which I had to pry out of the dog’s mouth. As soon as the last bootlace was free, Bones let out a yip of delight and jumped up on my leg to ask for more. I gave him a vigorous scratch behind his ears and thought about taking him with me. I picked him up and held his face very close to mine.

“Do me a solid, sweet doggie, and just shit all over
everything
.”

I grabbed my coat and hurried downstairs and out into the frigid night.

First I went to the inn. The lights were still on. Was Noah still in there? Was he sitting on that couch, waiting for me to return? Was he doing that thing he always did when he was anxious, rubbing his thumb and forefinger down from the corners of his mouth in memory of some ill-considered beard from his past? Sometimes his fingers would get distracted from their purpose and pull together instead, pinching his lower lip so hard it would blanch from lack of blood. Which I knew because for years I’d cataloged his every word and gesture, storing up his details in my memory like butterflies in a jar. Like an idiot.

No, I couldn’t ask him for help now. I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.

I kept walking.

I paused again at the corner of Percy and Main. To my right was Kelley’s store—I’d figured out that she and Renee lived above it. They would let me in, I knew. But once Leo woke up and saw that I’d taken his phone, it was one of the first places he’d come to look. And who was Kelley going to believe, anyway? Me, who she’d met four days ago? Or her big brother?

I continued on until I came to end of the road, to the Kanty house. But here I didn’t even consider stopping. Not with Eli inside.

I rewrapped my scarf around my face and used Leo’s phone as a flashlight. I was heading for the pass.

Finding out, I’d decided, was much worse than not knowing. It was time to leave.

•   •   •

When I started down the trail to Adeline, I never expected to find a party on the other end. But when I emerged from the forest, that’s what I found: the old Kanty house, throbbing with music, overrun with teenagers. The first-floor windows flickered with the intermittent glow of battery-powered light; in the front yard, a fire burned in a metal trash barrel.

I found myself moving toward the fire, hands held out in front of me to catch its warmth.

“Rebeccaaaaaah,” came a voice over the wind.

(“Mrs. Danvers?” I almost whispered back.)

Rue emerged from behind a sagging column at the rear of the porch, a red Solo cup in her hand. Her face was flushed in two perfect circles, like a china doll who’d had her blush airbrushed on. I’m not going to lie: Her boots were pretty cute.

“What are you doing here?” she asked.

“Taking in the sights.”

“You are so weird.”

I looked over her shoulder. Three boys were chucking beer bottles into the fire while their girlfriends cheered them on. “So this is what you do for fun in Ardelle?”

“I know, right? But the more you drink the less it sucks.”

I glanced down the street toward the barn where I’d hidden Kayla’s truck. I coughed and stamped my feet, stalling, hoping that when I looked back Rue’s attention would have been redirected elsewhere. But no, she was still standing there, watching me avidly, like I was a jack-in-the-box with a bomb inside.

Her eyes lit up then. “Oh my gosh, I have the best idea! You should totally come meet my friends.”

Oh,
hell
no.

“Rue, I can’t—”

She pulled at my sleeve. Again, I marveled: for such a little thing she was surprisingly strong.

And also freakishly hard to say no to.

The house stank of liquored-up Kool-Aid and delusions of invincibility. I turned in a slow circle and took it all in. A girl in a tank top and leggings was grinding her ass up against a guy whose feet were far too big for his frame. Her face was the picture of determination; he was just looking around the room with a stupefied
are-you-guys-seeing-this
expression. At the coffee table were two dudes way more into their arm-wrestling match than either of them was probably willing to admit. A couple that wasn’t nearly old enough to have their hands so far down each other’s pants was starting up the stairs.

“Hey!” Rue shouted, reminding me for the first time of her father. “How many times do I have to tell you? Stay the fuck downstairs. The floor up there could collapse at like any minute!”