Good Girls (17 page)

But she wasn't going to do that. Not even if Amanda wanted her to. Not even if Joel did. She had promises to keep.

Prying her arms from her body, clamping her mouth shut, and shaking herself as free as she could get from these last horrible hours, she turned toward Jess's house. When the figure stepped out of the shadows of the bank building and grabbed her, she was too tired even to scream. Then it spun her around, and her first thought was Joel, and her second was the guy from the trailer, whoever that had been who had flung open the door of that black truck in the bushes as she and Joel and Trudi fled.

“Rebecca,” Jack said, gripping her so hard that she half-thought he might hoist her in the air, throw her across his shoulders, and make off with her.

She tried to wrench free and failed. Her heart was flailing, and she sucked breath out of the sodden air, which felt like breathing through a pillowcase.

“Jack?”

He looked awful. Pizza sauce—at least, Rebecca hoped it was pizza sauce—streaked the entire left side of his bowling shirt. It was the same shirt from last night. He still had the dart, too; the suction end was sticking out of his pocket like a broken-off antenna, over the cursive
Herman
stitched into the fabric. His hair, face, everything about him seemed rumpled, as though he hadn't slept in his own skin. As though he'd left his skin last night, and now he couldn't get himself properly settled.

“Did Kaylene call you?” he said.

“If you let go of my arms, maybe I can check.”

Glancing down, Jack registered surprise—or something even worse?—and dropped his hands to his sides. “I'm sorry.”

“What's going on?” Rebecca fumbled in her pocket, pulled out her phone.

“So you haven't talked to her?”

“I turned it off so I could sleep.” She pressed the End button and keyed in her passcode. “Wow. She called like twelve times. I forgot to turn it back on. God, Jack, is she okay, what—”

“We were drinking,” he said. “A lot.”

Weirdly, it was the panic in his voice that calmed her. This, it turned out, was the middle of a crisis, and therefore her most familiar place, the closest thing she had left to a home, maybe the closest thing she'd ever had. She clung to that idea as though to the trunk of a tree.

“There was this guy. We were—
she
was—Rebecca, she was kissing me, and I was sloppy drunk when he showed up, and—”

“When
who
showed up?”

“Right. Exactly. That's what I'm trying to tell you. I don't know who he was. I don't even know what happened. I can't quite remember. But I know he … he was grabbing Kaylene, I mean
hurting
her, and I wanted to help, I tried to help, but I couldn't even figure … I mean, I was passing out … I think … and I think she thinks … but I—”

“Jack. Is she all right? Tell me she's all right.” Even Rebecca was surprised by the evenness of her tone. To her amazement, her calm was spreading, settling not only her but also unfolding over Jack like ice across a lake (and suddenly, she understood something else about Amanda, about why she was the way she was, but she filed that thought away). He quieted and stood there a few seconds, just breathing. He hadn't quite been looking at her this whole time—he'd aimed his eyes over her shoulder, or down at his feet—but now he met her gaze.

“That's what I'm here to tell you,” he said. “
She
is all right. And I'm not.”

“You're not okay?”

“Huh? No. Wait. Kaylene's okay. Although I think she actually thinks I … Anyway, she's fine. And I'm…” He grabbed her arms again, as hard as before. “I need you to know I'm not.”

“Ow. Jack, you're—”

“Rebecca, I'm so, so not. I mean, it'd be okay if I was, and I guess maybe I could be, or I could have been, except I
can't
be—”

“Jack, could you please let go and—”

“—because I'm way too into you.”

Everything in Rebecca went from calm to numb: her arms where Jack was clutching them; her mouth, which had taken to blurting out thoughts she wasn't even sure she was having; her ears, where Amanda's parting words still rang like reverberations from a gong.

“What?” she said.

Then Jack did the thing Jack did best, the thing she loved him for: he smiled. The smile looked desperate, too young, helpless, and all the more endearing for that. “Whoops,” he said, sounding so small. “I didn't mean to just announce that.”

For a while, they stood together on the sidewalk. The late-afternoon town-traffic—mostly bikes, the shop owners locking their doors and heading behind their buildings for their cars—rumbled and buzzed around them. The weak, too-warm daylight weakened further without getting cooler, tinting toward gray.
I should kiss him,
Rebecca thought, and her cheeks flared as though she'd lit flames under them. But she made no move to do that. He didn't, either, didn't seem to want to right this second, despite what he'd said. And she was still sorting through this whole insane day. And whatever she was seeing in Jack's eyes right now, it wasn't just hope or affection or attraction or relief.

Was that fear?

In the end, what she told him was, “You look like I feel.”

“Let me come babysitting with you.”

“What? No, I don't think—”

“Jess won't mind.”

“You know Jess? How do you—”

“I asked her.”

“You
asked
her? When did you even…”

There it was again. That helpless, instinctive Jack-grin. A shaft of light, with the dust of everything else dancing inside it. “I'll be back,” he said. “I'll meet you at Jess's. I'm going to get us food. And Operation.”

“Operation?”

“The game. The board game? It's perfect for this night. No one can take
anything
more seriously than it needs to be taken while putting someone's spleen back in their liver.”

“I don't think that's where spleens go.”

“Clearly, Rebecca, you have not played enough Operation in your life. I have a cure for that. See you in a bit. Bye.”

Just like that, he was gone, head down, gaze lowered as he burrowed straight across the street toward campus and his room, leaving Rebecca in the dimming twilight, hands lifted halfway to her ears. It was as though the summer gnats had found a way in there, laid eggs, and now her whole head erupted in noise, in words, her own, her caller's, Trudi's, Jack's, Joel's. Amanda's.

 … because I'm too into you … what losing one costs … people worth talking to, staying up late …

Launching herself forward, Rebecca crossed Campus Ave and continued toward the cul-de-sac where Jess and her family had rented their house. She kept wanting to put her palms over her ears, as though that would help, and the third or fourth time she actually started to do that, she realized she was still holding her phone. She glanced at the screen.

Twelve missed calls, all from Kaylene. What had Jack said? “
I'm not. I can't be. I think she thinks…”
And why had he looked so scared?

She glanced around, hoping to catch sight of Jack, call him back to her so she could ask what on earth had happened. But Jack wasn't on the sidewalk or across the street. At the mouth of the path toward Halfmoon House, the evergreens trembled like just-closed curtains. Jack lived on campus, though; he wouldn't have gone that way.

Raising the phone again, Rebecca finally registered that she was seriously late. “Shit,” she said aloud, and hurried down the block, jamming her phone back in her pocket and willing everybody in her head to
shut up.
All she wanted was to get to work, get her work done, get Jess's baby settled. Then maybe she could figure out what the hell was going on with her and, seemingly, everyone around her. Put her spleen back in her liver.

I'm way too into you.

Her heart hurt, and it just kept pounding.

Late though she was, she stopped, as usual, at the foot of the steps leading up to Jess's porch and took a moment to stare up at the house. It was, in truth, just another two-story clapboard structure, pale blue, essentially identical to all the other clapboard structures in East Dunham and in towns a hundred miles in any direction. The only things that marked it, externally, were the splotchy patches—and Rebecca was convinced there were more of them every time she came, spreading like a rash—where the blue paint had crumbled away, revealing wood that couldn't actually be as blackened as it appeared. And it really was her imagination that the place seemed to be melting, somehow, sagging at the corners and spreading into its own foundations. It had been inspected multiple times. Rebecca knew because she'd asked, and also because she'd gotten to know Jess. And Jess would never have settled her son here, otherwise.

But Rebecca wasn't imagining the sounds. She could hear those even from out here. In fact, she could hear them more clearly out here: that whispering with no words, like wind trapped in the rafters; that rustling and settling; scratch-and-skittering. At least she wasn't hearing any thumps, today. Not yet, anyway. There weren't thumps, most days, although Rebecca had heard more than one over the course of the past few weeks.

“Squirrels,” Jess had said dismissively, the first time Rebecca had asked. Actually, that had been the second time. The first time Rebecca asked, Jess had said, “Hear what?”

“Squirrels in your attic?” Rebecca had prodded. “You're good with that?”

“Squirrels. Mice. Whatever. It's not my house. Don't go up there. It's not safe.”

As opposed to Halfmoon House, at the moment,
Rebecca thought.
Or the Crisis Center. Or her own head, which was the only place she'd been
certain
was safe for most of her life; the one place she'd truly thought she knew.

Operation,
she thought. And,
What have I done?
And,
Jack …

She was still standing there, half-listening to the house, hands crossed over her heart, when the front door opened and Jess appeared. She'd just come out of the shower, apparently, and as usual, hadn't bothered drying her hair, which drooped, limp and dark, down her neck into the collar of her button-up shirt. She had her functional tan work bag—not even remotely a purse—slung over one small, sturdy shoulder. Her pale face looked grooved, as though she'd just been crying. In fact, Jess always looked like she'd just been crying, though Rebecca had never actually seen her do it.

“Rebecca, where have you been? A-mad-da's going to kill me, come on, I'm late. And Eddie's been crying for you. Get in here.”

“A-mad-da,” Rebecca repeated. “That's … the best nickname I've ever heard.” She'd thought she was about to smile, but the smile didn't come. Tears came.

“Rebecca, what on—”

“It's okay,” she said. Jess had to go. And inside the house, Eddie was crying. And it really was possible, Rebecca realized, that he was doing that for her. Sweet little boy. Jess's sweet, lonely little boy.

Blowing breath—and guilt, and hurt, and words, and noise, and whatever else she could rattle loose—out of her mouth, Rebecca nodded. “I'm coming,” she said, and started up the stairs.

 

14

(THREE WEEKS EARLIER)

That whole day after they left Concerto Woods, during their endless, shadeless crawl up the freeways, Sophie crouched as best she could against the passenger door and kept her suffering to herself. But after the eighth or ninth stop so Jess could once again feed Eddie, cuddle Eddie, try once more to shut the poor kid up, Sophie couldn't take it anymore.

“Please,” she said, modulating her voice, trying her best to sound like she remembered herself sounding. As far as she could tell, she got pretty close. “Jess. Can I sit in back? I'll be good. I promise. I mean it.”

“No.” Jess buckled Eddie back in his car seat. He was hiccupping, fussing, but not screaming right that second. That was something, anyway.

“Why not?”

Still leaning into the car, Jess reached out to brush Benny's bushy head with her fingers. Then, for the first time since leaving the grave they'd dug, she looked at Sophie.

“Why?” Her voice came out absolutely steady, not a trace of waver. She didn't even wipe her face as more tears poured down it.

Sophie started to whimper, but curbed that immediately. This was Jess she was talking to. “More shade. Hurts less.”

“Then definitely no,” Jess snapped. But she paused there, bent at the waist like a tipped-over tree that hadn't quite been chopped through. Almost, though. She had a hand on both of her boys and her eyes closed.

In another life, Sophie thought—the one she'd had a month ago—the sight of Jess like that would have broken her heart. Even now, the words bubbling up in her brain seemed to come from some primal place, somewhere so fundamentally
Sophie
that not even her own son's death could drown it. Let alone her own.

I'm so sorry. Mom
.

That's what she thought, and didn't say.

Letting go of her boys, Jess pushed upright. “Know what? Fuck it. I can't stand you next to me anymore.” She moved fast around the front of the car and yanked Sophie's door open. “Unbuckle.”

Sophie did, then stuck out her arms like a little girl asking to be carried. Jess just stepped back, arms folded. Gingerly, Sophie swung down from the seat onto the gravel shoulder of the road, into the merciful shade of an overhanging oak. Only then did it occur to her that Jess might have parked in this spot on purpose, to give Sophie shade. Was that possible?