The Best Kind of People (31 page)

Sadie floated around, feeling soft-skinned and smelling like expensive vanilla extract. After the spa, Jared showed her around the neighbourhood, bought her a vanilla bean cupcake, and they walked back to the apartment.

“Do you know why Andrew doesn’t want me to come home, to help out more with the case?” he asked, his voice squeaking out, as he unwrapped a chocolate cupcake and took a messy bite.

She shrugged. “I dunno. I just assumed you were too busy,” she said.

“No, I keep offering to come. He doesn’t want me to.”

“He’s always been a bit of a lone wolf, and he hates Avalon Hills, so I’m not entirely surprised.”

“Why does he hate it so much?”

“I’m not sure. Because it’s boring?”

“That can’t be the only reason.”

Her phone beeped again, and she couldn’t help but check. She’d responded to Kevin’s email — that she couldn’t wait to read his book and was happy to know that he was coming back because she missed him. “I miss you.” She just wrote it like that, straight ahead. Why not be bold? She didn’t mention anything about Jimmy, and signed it with three
xxx
’s. Later she thought maybe that was immature-sounding. She kept rereading the line “smart and beautiful.”
He thinks I’m smart and beautiful! My whole life I’ve been told I’m smart, but never beautiful.
Pretty, her dad used to say. Cute. Hot, Jimmy used to mumble while trying, always semi-successfully, to unhook her bra.
Beautiful
was a grown-up word. Her mom always associated being pretty or too interested in fashion with weakness. But this compliment felt good.

WHEN THEY GOT
back to Jared and Andrew’s building, a forty-something woman was standing in the entranceway. She had blunt-cut bangs and a white fur coat cut at the waist. She stared at them in a way that made it seem as if she was trying to place them.

“Excuse me,” she said. “I’m trying to find Andrew Woodbury. Do you know him?”

Jared looked at her curiously. “I do,” he said.

“I’m his sister,” offered Sadie, in her small-town way.

“Oh.
OH
,” she said awkwardly. “Do you mind giving him this?”

The card said
Sarah Myers, Starling Crafts 
—
 ethical repurposed handbags
with an email address and phone number.

“What is this about?” Jared asked.

“It’s a little bit complicated,” she said, “but we used to know each other, a very long time ago.”

She turned and ran back out onto the street, walking with purpose.

“That was weird,” Sadie said.

“Totally,” Jared said, opening the front door and climbing the stairs.

When he handed the card to Andrew, he seemed confused and shoved it in his pocket.

“I have to talk to you alone,” said Andrew, giving Jared a serious look.

“What’s up?” asked Sadie.

“Adult stuff,” he said, pulling Jared into the bedroom and closing the door.

“Where’s Mom?” she called, but they didn’t answer.

IN ANDREW AND
Jared’s bathroom, the room started to spin again, and Sadie crouched down on the floor. She’d run out of weed. She opened the medicine cabinet and saw a bottle of clonazepam prescribed to Andrew. She googled the name on her phone and thought, well, that will do. She took two and went back to the kitchen, where Jared had made her a cup of hot chocolate.

She smiled at him, feeling the absence of any bad feeling, feeling safe. She knew she must be high, but this was definitely better than any high she’d felt before in her life.

THIRTY

JOAN AND CLARA
drove away from New York City, hitting non-stop holiday traffic, and quickly realized they weren’t going to make it to see George in time for visiting hours. Clara pulled Joan’s car over to gas up and Joan leaned against the ice machine outside the station, begging the charge nurse on his floor to make an exception, but she wouldn’t. Joan was able to get more specific information about his condition, though.

“He’s conscious now, though barely,” she told Clara as they stood in line at the cash. “He has serious bruising on his neck. Apparently the guard intervened and saved him.”

“He’ll be okay?”

“He can’t talk due to the laryngeal fracture. They were able to insert a stent, and things should heal up. But right now he is in a lot of pain and will require monitoring for several days. He’s handcuffed, and mostly sedated.”

Clara booked a double room in a hotel near the hospital while Joan paced the parking lot, letting Andrew know what was happening.

When they pulled out of the service station, Joan’s phone buzzed from its spot in the console between the front seats. Joan read the text from Bennie out loud for Clara. “‘Book a room and get some sleep. He’ll be fine. He’s out of the woods. Meet me first thing in the morning.’”

“I made us a reservation at a hotel. It’s going to be okay.”

“Waiting feels like I might lose it completely. I have no patience left to draw on,” Joan said as Clara skirted around a slow car.

“You have no choice. And you have to tell Sadie,” Clara said, muting the annoying robot voice of the
GPS
.

“No, I’m hoping she won’t see it. I’ve asked Andrew to try to keep her away from the news until she gets home tomorrow and I can deal with it. I’ll call her first thing. I just wanted her to have a fun holiday without worry. I couldn’t even do that.”

“Well, sometimes bad things happen and there’s never a good time for it. Get some sleep and I’ll drive you to the hospital early in the morning,” Clara said.

WHEN JOAN WOKE
up the next morning, she was confused about where she was until Clara came bustling through the door of their shared hotel room with a tray of coffees and a newspaper.

“It’s hit the local papers, but luckily some dimwit shot his wife and kids yesterday, so it’s below the fold.” She held up the paper. Indeed, the article was smaller than the large printed
MAN
SHOOTS
FAMILY
THEN
SELF
. It read simply,
ALLEGED
SEX
OFFENDER
ATTACKED
ON
CHRISTMAS
DAY
WHILE
INCARCERATED
.

THIRTY-ONE

KEVIN HAD A
Skype meeting with his agent early in the morning on the day after Christmas. He propped the laptop on a side table in the guest bedroom of his sister’s cabin. His niece and nephews were running around outside the door screaming, playing with the boxes their toys came in. Kevin was hungover from drinking too much Scotch with his brother-in-law the night before. He took a sip of the warm beer he’d apparently fallen asleep drinking, and pressed the Call button.

His agent’s face appeared a bit fuzzy in the half screen. He shuffled papers for a few moments before he cut to the chase.

“This isn’t the draft, Kev. It’s good in parts, you know, but George is too clean. He’s not a villain. I need the abuse in detail.”

“Well, I don’t have any details. The girls involved in the case aren’t allowed to talk to me.”

“Well, you’re a writer — imagine it. We can’t have a book where the monster is actually a sweet old guy everyone defends. There needs to be more conflict. Don’t be afraid to be imaginative. Use your fictional storytelling devices. It’s going to be
based on
the true story, right? You can take some liberties.”

“Really? Did James Frey teach us nothing?”

“He’s too empathetic so far, and it’s too confusing. This is a novel, but we need some black and white facts here. Write the rape scenes. Go wild!”

Kevin nodded. The screen froze. He got up and drained his beer.

KEVIN LAID THE
victim impact statements out on the bed, beside the three sexual assault memoirs he’d taken out of the library and skimmed. He had to nail the voice of the girls.

Write the rape scenes
.

He pictured private-school girls, how they would dress and talk, writing a list of the possible sensory details, what a ski lodge looked and smelled like. He remembered his private-school crush on Karen Ridgley, the way she’d stand at the end of her driveway waiting for the school bus across from his house. She always pulled her skirt up higher right before the bus arrived. One day, when he was home sick from school, he watched her sneak home in the middle of the day with a boy, and he stood in the window of his bedroom with the binoculars, trying to see what they were doing, even though he was feverish. He caught a glimpse of them making out on the couch, and returned to bed, imagining what they were going to do.

He lay back on the bed and tried to picture Karen, getting turned on the way he had as a young man. He imagined her shirt unbuttoned, her skirt tossed aside, and then her being prey to someone like George Woodbury. As soon as the imagining got too real, he lost his hard-on. He stared at the blank screen of his laptop, the hangover overwhelming him. He used to always be ready to go, but now it seemed, the closer he got to forty, that was no longer the default. Then he got an email response to the group query he’d sent to all the girls involved in the case whom he’d been able to find on Facebook. Miranda was the only one who had replied. But she was the main girl. He pumped his fist in the air, took a deep breath, and opened her message. He took notes in his flip book as he read.

—
Parents not supportive of her going to cops.

— Former party girl, sober since ski trip.

— Lonely?

By the end of the email, he knew she wasn’t lying. Too many details, all of them convincing. She had all the money in the world, but she’d lost a lot by coming forward. He googled her name. An old Twitter feed with cleavage selfies, white girls throwing gang signs, silent since the arrest of George Woodbury, and several Facebook groups and Tumblr pages that, politely put, disparaged her credibility, with comments more cruel than anything any critic had ever said about Kevin’s books.

He got in his car and drove back to Avalon Hills, to the room at the Hilton that was getting expensive but was starting to feel like a home of sorts, to finish the draft.

THIRTY-TWO

ANDREW INSISTED ON
waking Sadie up so early on the day after Christmas that he was able to drop her off at Jimmy’s house by ten. She slept most of the drive from New York, thanks to the second pill she’d stolen from the bathroom when she woke up sweating and alarmed at 3 a.m. Andrew was moody and drove too fast, but she barely noticed.

She realized that Jimmy was one of the only friends she had left in Avalon Hills. The sympathy any of her other friends had displayed after her father’s arrest had faded away, and mostly she was a social pariah at school.

She used the key Elaine had made for her, and found them in the kitchen making pancakes. It looked like a scene from a commercial where a company is trying to convince you to spend more quality time with your family by using their products.

“Hey honey!” Elaine exclaimed, coming over to offer Sadie a powdery hug. Jimmy was more reserved, just nodding, but he couldn’t contain his smile. His relaxed demeanour and lack of immediate jumping on Sadie made her like him again for a moment. It was as if he had heard the universe telling him to calm down.

“How was New York City?” Elaine asked.

“It was great,” she said. “Relaxing.”

Elaine began pouring the batter into a cast iron skillet. Sadie worked up the nerve to ask what she wanted to know.

“How’s Kevin? When is he coming home again?” She tried to make it sound casual, like small talk.

“He’s already back in town,” said Jimmy, eyes rolling.

“Where is he?”

Elaine paused and ran some warm water over the top of the maple syrup bottle in the sink.

“Kevin and I are having some problems.”

Jimmy snorted. Sadie was ashamed to admit that her heartbeat sped up a little. Maybe he’d confessed he had feelings for someone else?

“Right now he’s staying at the Hilton while we’re talking through some … grown-up issues.”

Elaine rarely used terms like that; she was usually more straight-up.

Jimmy put down his mug. “Mom, what the hell do you mean? Did he cheat on you or something?”

“No, of course not, nothing like that.”

“He’s supposed to be doing so well. He apparently sold his new book for, like, a million dollars or something. I read it online.”

“That’s true, Jimmy. We should all be happy for him in that way. Now help me with these pancakes,” she said, motioning towards the plates.

“What, now that he doesn’t need you to depend on, he’s not going to stay anymore?” Jimmy was visibly upset, taking a plate of pancakes over to Sadie. “Doesn’t he want to stay here anymore? Now he has money, he doesn’t need you?”

“You’re acting like he was a kept man, Jimmy, and that is ridiculous and not at all true.”

“So what is it then?”

“Jimmy, for the last time, it’s private, between Kevin and me, and you do not get to know every detail.”

She sat down at the table with her own plate but didn’t touch her pancakes. She watched as Sadie and Jimmy took a few bites while she sipped her coffee.

“Look, I’m sorry if this is upsetting, but you’re going to have to live with the uncertainty for a few days until things get sorted. It’s not my intention to have Kevin leave, and it’s not what I want. But there are some things you cannot control, as we have all learned — especially you, Sadie — these past few months.”

Sadie’s head was racing with possibilities. Maybe he was brushing Elaine off, and wasn’t telling her why. Or maybe he’d even told her — but then why would Elaine be so nice to her right now?
Maybe she knows he has feelings for someone but doesn’t know it’s me.
Kevin was a smart guy; he’d know to keep his mouth shut on this.

Sadie got up and went to the bathroom so she could text Kevin.
I hear you might not be home as planned. What’s up? Xo

He responded immediately.
Oh, it’s a long story and it has to do with my book. Elaine can fill you in.