The Darkest Corners (23 page)

“I have to go now. Please, Mom—”

Maggie cuts Callie off with a sigh. “You leave if Daryl's there, do you hear me? And let Tessa drive you. You're too upset.”

I expect Callie to snarl something like
No way.
She turns, as if she were about to storm up the stairs, but instead she reaches over the banister and hands me the car keys.

“This is my fault,” Callie says. We're on the highway, headed for Samaritan Hospital. It's not the closest hospital—that would be Fayette Mercy—but Callie thinks Mrs. Kouchinsky took Katie farther away from town to avoid questions.

Callie is slunk back in her seat, her feet resting on the dash. “He saw Katie talking to us. He must have figured out what about.”

“Where is Daryl now?” I keep my eyes on the road; I've never driven the Pennsylvania highways before, so I'm on high alert. I had to pull the seat practically right up to the steering wheel; Callie's that much taller than I am.

“I don't know.” Callie shifts and draws her knees to her chest. “Abby said Katie's saying she fell down the stairs. They don't want to involve the police.”

My thoughts circle around each other, landing back on that dog, as they always do when I think of Ariel's father.

“What if he beat her up to keep her quiet?” Callie's words spill out a mile a minute. “People are saying he hurt her the day they found Ari, remember? Maybe it wasn't because he was angry that Katie covered for Ari but because he thinks Katie knows something about him, something that could prove who he really is—”

“Callie, slow down,” I say. “It makes sense, but what are you going to do? Burst into the hospital and interrogate Katie? Accuse her father of killing Ari?” I sigh. “Katie's scared shitless of him as it is. If she knows something, she's not gonna tell us.”

Callie frowns. She obviously hasn't thought that part out yet.

The emergency room parking lot is full, so I find a space in the visitors' section on the other side of the hospital. Callie barely waits for me to shut the engine off before hopping out of the car.

“Your mom is right,” I say as we cross the lot. “If Daryl is there, we get the hell out.”

Callie doesn't say anything. She cracks her knuckles and looks straight ahead.

“Callie.”
I grab her elbow.

“Okay. God.” She shrugs away from me as we step onto the curb by the emergency entrance.

The ER doors open with a
whoosh.
We shift to the side so two EMTs can wheel an elderly man in on a stretcher. His eyes are closed, his mouth open.

I have never been to a hospital. There were no broken bones when I was a kid; riding my bike was the most dangerous activity my mother allowed, and still, all I got from that were some scraped elbows and a scar the length of a fingernail on my knee.

I expected chaos in the emergency room: blood, ice packs, nurses running around with crash carts. But it's quiet, except for the TV in the corner playing reruns of
Dr. Phil.
The waiting room chairs are filled, but no one is visibly sick or injured.

Callie marches to the desk and says we're here to see Katherine Kouchinsky. The nurse types something into her computer.

“She's being discharged,” she says.

“I need to see her now,” Callie says, doing the stubborn flat-lip thing.

The nurse sighs. “Sign in.”

Callie and I take turns writing our names in the ledger while the nurse prints two visitor stickers. I grab both and follow Callie through the door adjacent to the desk after the nurse buzzes us through.

There are rows of curtains on metal racks; some of them are pulled back, exposing beds full of sick people. An elderly woman in a gown coughs and spits into a pink bowl. I've never felt more intrusive in my life, and I wish I'd insisted on staying in the car.

Callie walks straight past the patients, to the desk in the center of the room. She asks where Katie Kouchinsky is. A nurse points to a curtained-off area next to the bathroom.

“She's getting dressed,” the nurse calls out to Callie's back. Callie ignores her and steps around the curtain. I follow, and find myself face to face with Ruth Kouchinsky.

“Oh,” she says, stepping back. On the bed, Katie is pulling on her shirt. She stops, head halfway through the neck hole, to gape at Callie and me.

There are stitches on her lower lip. A bruise blooming on her chin. Her ankle is bound and propped up on the bed. Dizziness washes through me.

“What are you doing here?” Katie demands, yanking her shirt down the rest of the way. She winces. Mrs. Kouchinsky clutches the curtain.

“We wanted to see if you were okay,” Callie says. “What happened?”

“I fell down the stairs.” Katie averts her eyes to the ID bracelet on her wrist. “I'm sorry, but can you please leave?”

Katie looks at her mother to back her up; Ruth Kouchinsky says nothing, her beady eyes brimming with tears.

Callie turns to her. “There are people who can help you both.” Her own voice is choked with tears. Mrs. Kouchinsky looks away. I feel sick.

The nurse from the desk pushes the curtain aside and hands Mrs. Kouchinsky a clipboard with paperwork. While she's hunched over, signing it, Callie leans in to Katie.

“If you know something—something that he doesn't want you telling people,
this
is going to get a lot worse.” Callie nods to Katie's ankle. “You owe it to your little brother and sister to speak up. You owe it to
Ari
—”

“Stop,” Katie says, loudly enough that her mother and the nurse look up. “You don't know anything, Callie, and you never cared about Ari before, so just
stop.
”

Callie flinches in surprise, and I suck in a breath; I've never seen Katie like this before, and I can tell Callie hasn't either.

“You two need to leave.” The nurse points at Callie and me.

Callie gestures to Katie, her hands shaking. “You're not going to do something about this?”

“Come on.” The nurse steps behind us, herding us away from Katie. Callie stops and looks back at the curtain.

“I'll get security if I have to,” the nurse says, holding up a hand.

“Callie,” I whisper. “We have to go.”

“She—her dad did that to her,” Callie says, angry tears in her eyes. “You guys have to call the cops.”

“Honey, we can't call anyone if they don't want us to.”

“She's seventeen, and she—could be in danger,” I cut in, suddenly annoyed by the nurse's apathy. “Isn't there a law that says you have to call?”

The nurse's face softens. “It's a sprained ankle and a cut lip. That girl very well could've fallen down the stairs,” she says. “She doesn't want to press charges. We see this every day, and she's right that you're gonna make it worse for her if you try to get involved.”

Callie's mouth hangs open. The nurse escorts us through the doors and deposits us at the curb. A woman rolls a little boy in a wheelchair, his arm in a sling, down the ramp past us.

Callie and I stand to the side of the doors, neither of us moving to head back to the car. A siren sounds somewhere behind us.

“That nurse had a point,” I say. “If you're right about Mr. Kouchinsky, that he killed Ari and he feels like everything is closing in on him, who knows what he'll do.”

There was a huge story a few years ago in Florida. It happened in a town not far from Gram's. An ex-stockbroker was about to go to jail for embezzlement, so he shot his wife and three kids before setting fire to the house and killing himself. A shudder ripples through me.

“If I'm right about him—” Callie stops midsentence. “Tess, we could have helped stop him from killing again. If we'd said we didn't see the man's face, they would have kept looking for the Monster.”

“You're getting ahead of yourself,” I tell her. “There's no evidence that Ari's dad is the Monster.”

“Does it matter who the Monster is?” Callie starts, the words sticking in her throat. “He could be out there—Lori's killer is still out there—because of us.”

I can't tell her to stop blaming herself for Ariel's death. People do this all the time, I've learned, when they're feeling guilty. They think that maybe if they'd done one thing differently, they could have stopped a chain reaction from starting.

I used to believe that it was a useless way to think. I thought that if you refused to play the role the universe has planned for you, someone else would just step up and take it. I convinced myself that if Callie and I hadn't testified against Stokes, the district attorney's office would have found someone else.

I convinced myself that Stokes would have gone to jail for the other murders even if Lori Cawley had never been killed that night. Being cast in the role of the Monster was simply the plan the universe had laid out for Wyatt Stokes.

I don't know if I believe that anymore. I don't know if I ever truly believed it at all, or if it's just the armor I invented to protect myself from my own guilt.

I never thought Callie would be the one to chip away at the armor. She was always the one who was so sure Stokes had killed Lori, the one who wouldn't even listen to anyone who suggested otherwise.

I don't feel comforted by this. I feel like I'm drifting away from a harbor at night, like someone has snapped the chain of the anchor beneath me.

I suck in a breath, and look over at Callie. “You've got to stay away from the Kouchinskys,” I say. “At least for now.”

“Okay,” Callie says, a little too distractedly. “Can I have the keys?” she asks as we make our way back to the car. “I'm fine to drive now.”

I hand them over without a fight; I'm tired, and I don't feel like navigating the dark highway again. Once I'm settled into the passenger seat, I stick my hand into my pocket and cover my phone, waiting for it to ring.

I keep it there the whole ride home.

I keep it there at dinner, eating with one hand as Callie lies to Maggie and says Katie is just a little scratched up.

When it's time for bed, I put my phone on the pillow next to me and fall asleep still waiting for my mother to call.

Vibrating. My phone is ringing, and I'm so disoriented that I knock it onto the floor.

I lean over to fish it out of the crevice between the nightstand and bed, where it's fallen. I frown when I see the number on the display.

Callie is calling me. Why is she calling me from her room? I look up at the cuckoo clock, which says it's one in the morning.

“Hello?” My voice is gravelly. I swallow twice.

“Uh, hey, Tessa?” It's a male voice. “It's Ryan.”

“Where's Callie?” I sit up, suddenly awake.

“She's with me. There's kind of an issue.”

“What are you talking about?” I whisper-hiss.

“Uh…she's in no shape to drive, but she won't leave without her car—and now she's yelling at me.”

Indeed, Callie is yelling in the background. Another voice—a male's—interjects, trying to calm her down, I guess.

“Where are you?” I ask, panicked, running through the million different ways in which this could turn into a disaster.

Ryan sighs. “A motel off 80. What's it called?” he says, away from the mouthpiece of his phone.

“Doyle Motor Inn,” a muffled male voice says in the background. I know who it belongs to.

“Callie is drunk in a hotel with Nick Snyder?” I hiss.

“I'll explain in person,” Ryan says. “If I come get you, will you help drive her car back? I've got work at five and I can't leave my truck here.”

I look at the clock. “Fine. But you better tell me
everything
that happened. Everything.”

Ryan idles a few houses down from the Greenwoods', since his truck is loud. I jog down the street as soon as he texts me that he's here. I'm still in my sleep shorts, which are little more than glorified men's boxers, and I didn't bother to put on a bra.

Ryan pulls away from the curb before I even have the chance to close the passenger door.

“What the hell happened?” I ask.

Ryan rubs his chin, looking irritated. “We were hanging out around ten, me and Callie. I knew she must've known where Nick was all along; I'm not dumb.” Ryan sighs, grips the steering wheel. “So I made up this story about how my uncle knew where Nick was hiding and the cops were gonna arrest him in the morning.”

“She went to warn him, didn't she?” I ask. Callie is so damn predictable. It's going to get us into trouble.

Ryan rolls his window up as he merges, so he doesn't have to shout over the sound of the highway. “She led me right to his motel.”

“It's not the first time,” I say. “We were there the other night.”

Ryan's jaw hardens, and I feel like a real dumbass for not seeing it sooner. I mean, I saw the signs—Callie calling Ari a whore, Callie dropping everything to help Nick in the middle of the night—but I hadn't actually put it together until now.

Nick was the guy Callie liked but who hooked up with Ari. Nick was the reason they weren't friends anymore.

“Sorry,” I say. “I wasn't thinking. I forgot that you and Callie—”

I come to a full stop right there. I don't have a word for what Callie and Ryan are.

“It's cool,” Ryan says. “We're not…She can do what she wants.”

There's an edge to his voice, though. Before I can probe, Ryan turns on the radio. A classic rock station, WFCN, my father's favorite. His car radio, the boom box he left on the porch—both were tuned to WFCN. I knew all the words to “Stairway to Heaven” before I could read.

When I was really little, like three or four, I would bungle the lyrics to AC/DC's “Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap,” a song the station played at least twice a day. I thought the singer was saying
dry your nuts
instead of
drive you nuts,
which my father found hysterical. When his friends would come over, he'd shout, “Sing ‘Dirty Deeds,' Tessy!” and they'd all laugh when I got to
enough to dry your nuts.
Everyone hooted, clutching their stomachs, except my mother, and I could never understand why she was so mad at me when I was making everyone laugh.