Текст книги "Where They Found Her"

Автор книги: Kimberly McCreight

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Текущая страница: 17 (всего у книги 20 страниц)

JENNA

JUNE 12, 1994

If I had a gun, I’d shoot myself. But I don’t have a gun. And I don’t have any pills. And I can’t stand the sight of blood.

Because all I keep seeing over and over again is Two-Six ripping off my underwear. And all I keep hearing is the Captain saying “Go ahead, you take it” after he lifted my skirt to show my ass to Two-Six like I was some kind of cow.

The Captain wasn’t holding me from behind yet. I guess he thought maybe I’d be okay with it. Maybe even into it. Two guys at once, out there in the woods.

He’d been hinting about me screwing Two-Six all night, said he was depressed and that he deserved a good time. And they were fucked up out of their minds. We were all so wasted.

Then the Captain was like “No, I’m serious, I want you to let him do it.” And when I said, “Fuck no,” he said, “How many guys have you banged? What’s one more?”

And I thought about saying, One—YOU. You’re the only guy I ever banged. But I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction.

Instead, I slapped him. And maybe that was what did it. Because this thing happened to the Captain’s face. Like the lights went out. Like his insides died right in front of me.

Then he grabbed me from behind and lifted my dress all the way up so that even my tits were hanging out there so anybody could see. And I kept waiting for the Captain to come to his senses. And say: No, man, let her go. Especially when I started to scream and then started to cry. And you could still hear the noise even though the Captain had his hand smashed over my mouth.

But he didn’t say stop. No one did. No one said another word.

Molly

“Can I give you a ride somewhere?” I asked Sandy once we were outside Pat’s.

“I’ve got my bike,” she said, motioning to it leaning up against the side of the diner.

The bike. I’d been trying not to picture the scene, but now there it was in my head—Sandy’s body flipping off the bike, the bag strapped to her back with its unimaginable cargo. Her falling explained everything about the suspicious “condition” of the baby’s body. And here she was, still riding around on that bike? She probably didn’t have a choice. There surely wasn’t an extra car sitting in her driveway. But my God. It was hard to believe she was upright after what she had been through. After what she was still going through, with her mom missing.

I had been thinking about Steve, too. And Barbara. I would have thought I’d feel some sort of satisfaction where Barbara was concerned—look at what all your judgment hath wrought. But what I felt for all of them was pity.

“I could drive you home?” I offered, still staring at the bike. “We could put your bike in the back of my car.” Or we could throw it out.

“Yeah,” Sandy said, but not like she was agreeing. She was staring out into the distance at the cars racing up and down Route 33. “We’re, um, kind of in between places at the moment.”

“Oh.” That didn’t sound good. “Where did you sleep last night?”

“My friend Aidan’s house,” she said, then her eyes got wide. “Shit, I forgot, you know his mom. Please don’t tell her. I don’t want to get Aidan in trouble.”

“I won’t tell her,” I said. “Of course not.”

I saw it then when she turned to get her bike, peeking down from the left sleeve of her T-shirt: the thorned stem of a rose. The flower girl.

This was the person Stella had been hiding—Sandy. And not because she was the mother of the dead baby or to protect Aidan. But because Stella was ashamed that her son had picked this girl.

“Why don’t you come to my place for now?” I said. I wasn’t going to let her go back to Aidan’s. God knew what Stella would say if she found Sandy there. “Later I can take you somewhere else if you want. Do you have any other stuff you need to pick up?”

All she had with her was a little backpack. “There’s a couple boxes,” Sandy said after thinking about it for a minute. I was relieved she hadn’t argued, but she didn’t look thrilled. She shifted around uncomfortably, wouldn’t meet my eyes. “I left them back at our old apartment. I guess I should probably go get them.”

“Come on, let’s go, then,” I said, hoping that forward momentum might keep her from changing her mind.

Sandy was rolling her bike toward my car when she got a text. I watched her face tense, reading it. “It’s Hannah’s dad,” she said finally. “I guess he texted me a couple times overnight. I didn’t read them because they were from Hannah’s phone. I thought they were from her and I just—I needed a break. But they can’t find Hannah.”

“Do you know where she is?”

“I’m not sure Hannah knows where she is. A day or two after the baby was born, she started talking about how it was mine, and she’s been acting like that ever since.” Sandy was still staring at her phone. “Wait, I might– Maybe she went down to where—to the creek. I called her that night, not until after I got rid of the bag and the towels in a dumpster behind that tanning salon Highlights. It was the only place that was closed.” Her voice drifted as she looked off, like she was remembering. “I didn’t tell her that I fell or anything, just that the creek was where I—where her baby was.” Sandy shook her head. “Anyway, I think there’s a chance Hannah went down to the creek before. I got this weird text from her once about ‘how beautiful it was.’ She didn’t say what she was talking about and I didn’t ask. I got so many weird messages from her. I didn’t want to know anything else. I just wanted her to remember.”

“Maybe she finally has. You need to tell Steve where she is, Sandy.”

“I know,” she said, already typing out a response.

Sandy showed me the way to Ridgedale Commons, a depressing two-floor rectangle that looked like a motel you’d drive all night to avoid. I pulled up alongside the curb in front, having a hard time believing we were still in Ridgedale.

“I’ll be right back,” Sandy said, opening the door before the car had fully stopped.

“Are you sure you don’t need help?”

“Nope.” She shook her head as she rushed from the car. “It’s not much.”

I watched her walk, wiry and strong, across the browning side yard toward a staircase on the side. She looked around guiltily before squatting down and reaching beneath the stairs. Her boxes weren’t “at” her old apartment, they were hidden under the building stairs. It was excruciating. I swallowed the lump in my throat. Things had been bad for me when I was her age, but not bad like that.

“Do you think, um, I could take a shower?” Sandy asked once we were at my house. We were standing in the little guest room with its excessively fluffy, overly fashionable blue-and-orange-hued bed.

“Of course, yes.” I was relieved for the time her showering would buy me to collect my thoughts. It had been so easy to want to rescue Sandy. Now that I had, I felt overwhelmed and unprepared. “Let me get you some towels.”

When I returned, Sandy was standing right where I’d left her, arms crossed like she was afraid of being blamed for breaking something. I handed her a stack of overly fluffy towels. Everything we had suddenly seemed outsize and unnecessarily inflated. Like I was overcompensating.

“There’s shampoo and everything in the bathroom if you need it.”

“Thanks,” Sandy said, stuck in the center of the room, gripping my towels. “I’ll be quick.”

“Take your time. I’ll call some more of the local hospitals.” I planned to call the ME’s office, too, to be sure there weren’t any Jane Does, but there wasn’t any reason to tell Sandy that. “Can I ask you one last thing?”

“Yeah, sure,” Sandy said, looking like she was bracing for me to set fire to the bridge I’d so carefully built between us.

“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to,” I said, leaning against the doorframe. “But did Hannah ever tell you who the father was?” It seemed unfair that he should be getting out of all of this scot-free, especially if he’d known that Hannah was pregnant.

“No.” She shook her head. “But I think maybe he was a college kid.”

“Why do you say that?”

Sandy shrugged. “Hannah always wanted to go to the Black Cat to study. Sometimes it was like she was waiting to see somebody. Looking out, you know.” She shook her head again, seemed almost angry. “Before it happened, she told me she was saving herself until marriage. But I think that was more what her mom wanted. She took classes on campus last year, too. Part of some super-smart-kid program she was in. Maybe she met him then.”

Shit. The Ridgedale University high school exchange program, supervised by Dean of Students Thomas Price.

“The night she had the baby—before she forgot it was her baby—she gave me all the stuff he’d given her, cards and whatever. In case her parents found out, I guess, and searched her room. I didn’t look at any of it, but I still have it.” Sandy motioned to her boxes, stacked along the wall in the guest room. “She never asked for it back. Maybe she forgot the guy when she forgot about it being her baby. I probably should have tried to shake her out of it. But I was afraid. You know how they tell you not to wake somebody who’s sleepwalking?”

“You did the right thing, Sandy,” I said without hesitating. “You did more than anyone could possibly have expected you to do.”

According to Sandy, Aidan had already checked for Jenna at the Ridgedale University Hospital, but, knowing Aidan, I called again, just in case. I had expected the process of inquiring there and at the four other nearby hospitals to take a while, with multiple transfers to the relevant parties, followed by long periods on hold while nurses referenced what their unidentified patients looked like. Matched them with my description of Jenna. But within ten minutes, I had established that only two of the hospitals had any unidentified patients at all—both male, both elderly. Apparently, actual Jane Does weren’t nearly as common as I’d assumed. When I called the ME’s office, they had no unidentified victims, either. Maybe it would have been different in New York City, but in Ridgedale, people evidently didn’t go unidentified for long, not even a baby. Soon everyone would know whom she belonged to.

When I ended the call with the last hospital, my eyes settled on Jenna’s journal, sitting on the edge of the dining room table. Sandy’s hand had lingered on it for such a long time before she left it for me. She said that I should read it, that there was a chance it would help us find Jenna. But I could tell that part of her also didn’t want me to. That she probably wished she’d never read it herself.

It didn’t take more than a couple pages to realize what would be the worst part of the story laid out in the journal: Jenna’s hope. By the time I’d finished, I knew why Sandy had picked that spot in the woods. And I knew that Harold, for all his obvious instability, had been right about what he’d seen. He’d just been wrong about the visions climbing out of the creek being the same young woman—a ghost separated by nearly twenty years. In fact, they’d been mother and daughter.

The bracelet I’d bartered from Harold. I’d forgotten all about it. Still in my coat pocket, I hoped. I was so glad I hadn’t thrown it out, which was all I’d wanted to do after I’d hung up with Steve in an embarrassed huff.

I went out to the coat rack near our living room door to dig in my pocket. Sure enough, the bracelet was still there—and there was that inscription: To J.M. Always, Tex.

“Um, hi.” When I looked up from the bracelet, there was Sandy wrapped in a towel, black hair wet and brushed back smoothly from her face. Standing there like that, she was even more striking than I’d realized. Truly beautiful. Her mother must have been, too. “Could I, um, borrow something to wear? I think I need to wash my clothes. If that’s okay.”

“Of course.” I jumped to my feet. Clothes: something tangible and straightforward. Simple. That was something I could help with. “Come to my room and we’ll see what might work.”

Sandy looked like any other affluent Ridgedale teenager in my expensive jeans and T-shirt as we drove to the public library in search of Ridgedale High School yearbooks. A yearbook seemed like our best chance—maybe our only chance—to figure out the actual names that corresponded with the nicknames mentioned in Jenna’s journal. It was a long shot, but it was the only one we had.

And I wanted something more before confronting Steve. I had promised Sandy I would ask him about Jenna’s necklace, and I was still planning on it. But I’d be implicitly accusing him of something. And while I was willing to stick my neck out for Sandy in that way, part of me was hoping I wouldn’t have to. That we’d figure out who those boys were in Jenna’s journal. That we’d find them, now grown men, and that they would somehow lead us to her without me having to ask Steve a thing.

Sandy and I sat down at a long table in the back with the yearbooks the librarian had collected for me. The room was crowded with mothers and young children waiting for story time. I caught Sandy watching them with a mix of amazement and longing that I knew too well myself. Maybe even a little anger because I knew that, too. Is that the kind of childhood other kids get? Yes, I thought. Yes, they do. And after raising Ella, I knew that much was true.

“Why don’t you start with these?” I said, handing Sandy the earlier and more likely irrelevant years. “Look for anything that mentions any of the nicknames. Here.” I pointed to a spot under one senior’s name in The Ridgedale Record Class of 1994. “Some of them put their nicknames right with their pictures.”

But no one else seemed to have a nickname listed anywhere. My plan was starting to feel decidedly hopeless until I reached the team pictures at the back of the book—runners, hockey players, football players. Each had a formal group shot with several candids under it. The formal portraits had only players’ full names, but the candids had nicknames, lots of them.

My eyes slid over the wrestling team and then swimming and then the varsity football players. No Captain, no Tex, and no Two-Six. I moved on to basketball, searching the faces of the assorted teenage boys, the skinny, acne-spotted ones and the ones who looked like they got all the girls. There were buzz cuts and mullets and one or two Mohawks. Aside from the snug, dated shorts and all that hair, they were the same kind of boys who could have been found in any current yearbook, in any town, anywhere in the country.

I looked down at a blurry, overexposed candid beneath the basketball team photo. It was impossible to make out the figures clearly—their faces fuzzy and indistinct—but there were two boys, close up against each other; one was shorter, clean-cut, with a square jaw and a flattop, and had his hand on the shoulder of a taller boy with longish hair and maybe a handsome face. In the background, a few feet away, was a much bigger guy, his back to the other two, shooting a basket. And beneath it a caption: Tex showing up Two-Six and the Captain. Even though the boys’ faces in the candid weren’t clear enough to compare to the group photo, their numbers were clear as day.

My heart was pounding as I scanned the team photo. And there they were, standing in a row, right above their names:

The Captain, Number 7, was Thomas Price. The boy Jenna had loved so much and who had brutalized her so.

Two-Six, Number 26, was Simon Barton. The one boy who hadn’t made it out of the woods that night alive.

And Tex, Number 15, was Steve Carlson. The boy whose love had scared Jenna most of all.

Barbara

The doctors were back. They had work to do, and they wanted space to do it. But Barbara wasn’t going anywhere. She was sure the final blow would come the second she left Hannah alone. That her daughter would slip away for good and there would only be Barbara to blame.

Or so Steve would think, apparently. Because he was already punishing her. He’d barely spoken to her since he’d rushed from the house to find Hannah. Had hardly looked at Barbara since she’d arrived at the hospital four hours earlier to find him standing gray-faced and soaking wet at Hannah’s bedside.

How easy it must have been for him to make the whole thing Barbara’s fault. Never mind his sins of omission.

Barbara had since learned the details of what had happened, prying them from a distant Steve one by one. Hannah had been in the water when he finally found her at the creek, flat on her back, her filmy light blue nightgown floating around her like a cloud. Steve actually said that, “like a cloud,” describing it for Barbara as if seeing it all over again. Her eyes had been closed and she’d been dead white. In fact, Steve had been sure his daughter was dead when he’d leaped into the creek—with superhuman agility, one of the other officers had said—to rescue her.

Luckily, Hannah had gotten wedged up against some rocks on the side of the bank; otherwise, they might not have found her in time. Hypothermia was her official diagnosis, and she hadn’t regained consciousness yet. Time would tell the extent of the damage, the doctors said. In the meantime, they were warming her slowly and saying their prayers. It was all they could do.

The only thing that mattered now was that Hannah got better. But it was hard not to think about what else the doctors had quickly discovered upon examination: She’d delivered a baby recently. There would be a DNA test—assuming Hannah didn’t wake up and confess—but Barbara and Steve didn’t need that to know the truth: That baby had been Hannah’s, not Sandy’s.

“I don’t think she was trying to kill herself,” Steve had said straight off. Like he wanted to keep anyone from even hinting at suicide.

“Then what was she doing in the water, Steve?” Barbara had pressed anyway. Because how blind was he going to be?

“Maybe she wanted to be close to her—to the baby.”

“Well, isn’t that romantic?” Barbara had said. “Too bad that didn’t occur to Hannah before she dumped her out there.”

Barbara was supposed to be worried, frantic. She wasn’t supposed to be angry at Hannah. But she was. She was furious.

“For Christ’s sake, Barb,” Steve had snapped. “Let it go.”

How was Barbara supposed to “let it go” when it made no sense? When had it happened, and with whom? How had Hannah hidden some boy so completely—and her pregnancy? It was true that many people had not known Barbara was pregnant right up until the end. Carrying small was probably genetic. And those stupid sweatshirts. How convenient for Hannah, that that was the way she’d always dressed. It was as though she’d been planning it from the start.

“You two should take a walk, get some coffee,” said the older, gray-haired doctor with the big clunky glasses. Barbara had been told several times that this utterly underwhelming man was head of the ER, but she was having a hard time believing it. “It’s important that you take care of yourselves. Stay fresh. Hannah will need you once she wakes up. Right now she’s stable, I can assure you of that.”

“Sorry,” Barbara said, but like she wasn’t very sorry at all. She was gripping the arms of the chair she’d been glued to since she’d arrived. “But I’m not leaving.”

“Really, Ms. Carlson, it would be much better for Hannah if you and your husband could give us some space,” the gray-haired doctor repeated. “Just five minutes or so and you can come right back.”

They were going to do something they thought Steve and Barbara shouldn’t see, change the colostomy bag, move around Hannah’s floppy arms and legs. Something that made their daughter seem much worse off. The doctors had been optimistic but vague. What did “recover” and “regain functioning” mean? That Hannah would be 100 percent back to who she had been? Whoever that even was. In any case, the doctors needed her body temperature up before they would venture guesses.

“Come on,” Steve said to Barbara. His voice was hoarse. He’d been screaming—one of the officers at the scene had told her that, too—screaming Hannah’s name. “Let’s get out of their way for a minute. I could use some coffee.” He put a businesslike hand on Barbara’s shoulder. That was how he’d been the whole time at the hospital: all business.

“Okay, fine,” she said, for Steve’s sake, though, not for the doctors’. “But only for a minute.”

She followed Steve in silence down the hall toward the elevators. Instead of pressing the button for floor two (and the cafeteria), Steve pressed G for the ground floor.

“I thought you wanted coffee?”

Steve was avoiding eye contact. “Let’s take a walk instead.”

And so Barbara followed Steve off the elevator without arguing, even if the last thing in the world she wanted to do was take a walk. Her doing what Steve wanted was a peace offering, though she hardly felt like it was her responsibility to be holding out olive branches.

The hospital doors snapped open and they walked into the bright sunshine. It was warm for mid-March, the sky an unearthly blue that felt so terribly wrong under the circumstances. Steve was walking a bit ahead, more briskly now, as though trying to avoid her potential objections. And he was headed for those awful benches facing an inset patch of grass. It was a peaceful space for quiet contemplation. As far as Barbara was concerned, it was just like the dismal hospital chapel: too funereal.

“They said five minutes, Steve,” Barbara called after him. Anywhere but those benches. “I don’t want to go far.”

“We won’t,” he said. But he didn’t slow down, didn’t look back at her.

We have to talk, he’d said hours earlier. Before the river, before his wet clothes, before Hannah and all those doctors. Barbara had managed to completely erase it from her memory, until now. There was nothing good about Steve saying We have to talk. Barbara knew that from personal experience.

It had been unseasonably warm that night, more like August than June. There was only a week until graduation, and just when Barbara and Steve were about to start a life together, all of a sudden he was pulling away.

More and more Barbara had caught Steve looking at Jenna. Worse, he was trying to hide it less and less. Almost like he wanted Barbara to get so mad that she’d break up with him. It wasn’t just his looking at Jenna that was the problem either. It was the way he was looking—love, that was the look on his face. Which proved how not about Jenna his distance was. Because there was nothing to love about Jenna Mendelson. She was a whore, plain and simple. And now poor Steve was another one of the stupid boys who’d fallen for her wares.

Ignoring his wandering eye had seemed to be working until that night, when Steve had said he wanted to “talk” to Barbara. What teenage boy ever wanted to “talk” to his girlfriend about anything other than breaking up? But that wasn’t happening. Barbara was sure of that much.

“Hi there,” she called sweetly as she climbed into Steve’s beat-up Chevy truck.

“Hey,” he’d said, already unhappy.

Barbara was going to ignore that, too. She’d ignore everything if she had to. Steve was trying to sabotage what they had because he was scared, and Barbara wasn’t having it. They were perfect for each other. And they were going to be together, especially now. Steve would snap out of it once she told him. He was a good guy. He would do the right thing.

Barbara leaned over to kiss Steve in the driver’s seat. She’d worn an extra-short skirt and one of her tighter T-shirts for the occasion, and they both rode up on purpose when Barbara tipped herself over. Steve hesitated but turned and kissed her quickly, more like a lip bump.

“I know I said I didn’t want to go to the woods tonight,” Barbara said. “But it’s the last party, so let’s go!”

“Yeah, maybe.” Steve rubbed at his forehead with his thumb as he stared down at the steering wheel. “I think we should talk first, though.” He shifted in his seat. He wasn’t really going to do this, was he? Break up with her on this night, of all nights? Barbara had to head him off at the pass. Otherwise, they’d be stuck knowing forever what he’d really wanted.

“Okay, Steve, but there’s something I have to tell you, too.” Barbara turned to look out the open window toward her parents’ big, beautiful house, which would someday be their big, beautiful house. “Can I go first?”

“Okay,” Steve said after a long pause. Then he reached over and squeezed Barbara’s knee in a weird “let’s be friends” way. “Shoot.”

Something in him had already switched off, Barbara could feel it. But that didn’t mean it couldn’t be flipped back on. It would be, she was sure of it. She forced a smile, even though her throat felt raw. She hadn’t pictured it this way. But she refused to be sad. What did a perfect moment matter compared to a lifetime of happiness?

Barbara swallowed hard and smiled. “I’m pregnant!” she squealed, grabbing Steve’s hands and pressing them hard against her flat belly, ignoring the way the color had left his face. “Isn’t it amazing, Steve? Six weeks. I know we wanted to wait until we got married. But we can get married right now, there’s nothing stopping us. I don’t need a big wedding. I don’t even need to be a bride. I just want to be your wife.”

Steve stopped near that clutch of awful benches, motioning for Barbara to have a seat—across from him. Not next to him, where he could wrap an arm around her. No, facing her. Barbara perched on the edge of her bench, watching Steve stare down at his hands clasped in front of him, as if he was trying to decide where to begin.

“Wait, you don’t actually think this is my fault, do you?” Barbara asked, her voice rising. That couldn’t be what this was about, but it bore stating. Because Barbara refused to be made responsible for Hannah’s insane choices. “I have done everything right, Steve. I have given my life for my children.”

“I don’t blame you for what’s happened. No, of course not,” he said, though he sounded like he was considering it for the first time. “We made mistakes with Hannah, that’s obvious now. But that’s on both of us.”

So he wasn’t letting her off the hook, he was putting himself on there with her? “What about the father? Are we going to find out who he is? Isn’t it statutory rape?”

Steve shook his head. “Hannah would have been sixteen.”

Barbara crossed her arms and blew out a breath. “But you’ll keep on trying to find him. Right?”

When Steve looked at her, his eyes were glassy. “Of course I will.”

“Good,” Barbara said. “Because crime or not, he’s accountable.”

Steve was nodding, but his attention had slipped away again. Barbara sensed it. He was thinking about something else entirely.

“How long have you known she was back?” he asked finally.

Barbara should have prepared better for this moment. She’d known it would come. But all she’d wanted to do was forget the whole sordid mess. A mess, mind you, that she had no hand in creating.

“Who was back, Steve?” Barbara held herself tight, resisting the way her body had begun to tremble. “And before you answer—is this really what you want to talk about, with your daughter upstairs in a hospital bed?”

Steve didn’t blink. “Tell me what happened between you and Jenna, Barbara. I need to know all of it or I won’t be able to help you.”

And there it was: the truth. This was what he thought of her.

“Help me?” She laughed icily. “Why would I need your help, Steve? What are you suggesting?”

“I know you were at Blondie’s. Jenna’s daughter came to see me. She told me that there was some blond woman with her mother during her last shift. They recognized your picture at Blondie’s, Barbara. You were with her the last time anybody saw her.”

“Yeah, and so what? I talked to Jenna, Steve.” Barbara could feel her temper rising. “I wanted to know why she was back. I wanted to make sure she understood.”

“Understood what?”

And he looked so worried. Unbelievable. Was he still this pathetic after all these years? It was infuriating. Barbara was so angry, her cheeks were burning. So angry that she could have spit—at Steve. How dare he sit there and make her explain herself when all she’d done was protect them.

“I asked her to leave us alone, Steve.” Barbara fluttered her eyelashes and smiled viciously. “That’s all I’ve ever wanted. We’re a family, that’s what I said. A happy family. I told Jenna she couldn’t just come back here after all these years and ruin that.”

Steve was supposed to say that Jenna never could have done that anyway. He was supposed to tell Barbara that he loved her and the kids far too much for anyone to threaten what they had. Not even Jenna. But he didn’t say that. Steve was not a man who lied.

“Barbara, whatever happened, I’m sure you didn’t mean to—”

“‘Mean to’?” Barbara snapped. “‘Mean to’ what, Steve?”

“Barbara, please just tell me what happened.”

“Jenna happened, Steve. That’s what happened.” Barbara stood calmly. She took a breath, steadied herself. Because she wasn’t going to give him—to give Jenna—the satisfaction of getting upset. “If you want to know the truth, our nice talk inside the bar did turn a lot less nice in the parking lot. And you want to know why?”

“Yes, Barbara,” Steve said. “I want to know everything.”

“Jenna said she wasn’t agreeing to anything until she talked to you,” Barbara said. “She’s been here for months, trying to work up the courage. Pathetic.”

But that’s all Barbara was telling Steve. She wasn’t about to recount how Jenna had then started talking all this nonsense about what Steve had done the night Simon Barton died. Barbara hadn’t listened to her lies, because that’s what all of it was: lies. Barbara remembered that night—when she was still blissfully, stupidly unaware of just how many pregnancies never made it past week twelve. She’d been the one riding home in Steve’s truck after he spoke with the police. He told her all about what had happened with Simon. He’d been standing there when it happened. They’d been stupid and drunk and horsing around. To this day, Steve felt awful about it.

But the more Barbara didn’t listen, the more hysterical Jenna got in Blondie’s parking lot, shouting about how the necklace she was wearing was some kind of proof of something. Something about Steve. She just would not shut up. And so Barbara tried to make her. She hadn’t meant to rip the necklace off. She’d only meant to shake it, and Jenna.