Liam picks up on the third ring. Uncharacteristic for him to wait so long, but maybe he’s pissed at me. I have two missed calls from him and a text that says simply ?. I’d like to think it’s love-fueled worry, but it’s probably just worry.
“Hey,” he says.
“Hey, yourself.”
I’m lying in my sleeping bag in the tent. JJ left a couple of minutes ago to take a walk. I suspect she’s gone down to the beach to make sure we didn’t leave anything behind. Or that there’s not a blue-shrouded body floating in plain sight on the lake. I shiver and close my eyes.
“Where’d you get to last night?” Liam asks.
“Sorry, there was some major drama.”
“Oh?”
“So it turns out you were right to be suspicious of Jessie. Or whoever she is.”
Liam’s voice tightens. “What happened?”
“I, um, tried to get some information out of her while we went on this epic paddle, but she stuck to her story. So, when she went to take a shower, I went through her stuff in her tent.”
“That’s my girl,” Liam says in a way that should be accompanied by a chuckle but isn’t.
“Aren’t you the one who taught me to do such things?”
“I wasn’t scolding.”
“Oh. Okay, then.”
There’s a mosquito buzzing around inside the tent. Its buzz gets closer, closer, and then stops. I slap it dead against my neck right as I feel it pierce my skin.
“What did you find?” Liam asks.
“She had another set of IDs. Someone named Molly Carter. That was the name she used to buy the ticket to get into the terminal yesterday.”
“Give me the details. I’ll check.”
I wipe the blood from my neck with the edge of my shirt as I rattle off the information I memorized last night when I was buying her plane ticket.
“What happened after you found the IDs?” Liam asks.
“We confronted her.”
“Jess . . .”
“What? What was I supposed to do?”
“You could’ve called me. You could’ve left. You could’ve gone to the police.”
“She would’ve just taken off before you or the police got here. Plus, JJ was here, so it was two against one. I mean, I wasn’t worried she was dangerous or anything.”
“What if she had a weapon?”
“I’d searched her tent and didn’t find anything. We wanted to confront her and get it over with. After all this time . . .”
“What did she say?”
“She denied it at first, but then I remembered that she’d been sending me these threatening texts.”
“What?”
“Oh, right, I haven’t told you about that.”
The sky’s lightening, turning the tent a rosy orange. I can hear JJ shuffling around outside.
“No, you didn’t.”
“Sorry.”
“She was texting you?”
“Well, I started it, out of frustration—telling her I was coming for her, that sort of thing—but then she answered a couple of times, warning me to stay away. It felt like, I don’t know, a game or something.”
Liam sighs. “Continue.”
“Anyway, I sent her a text—to Jessica Two, I mean—and it dinged on Jessie’s phone, so she admitted it then.”
“What? The whole thing?”
“Not the details. It wasn’t like those times in the movies where the bad guy spills the whole scheme. It was more like a lot of yelling, and us asking for our money back, and her refusing, and saying she’d spent it all, et cetera.”
“That et cetera’s doing a lot of work.”
“I’ll give you the blow-by-blow when we see each other.”
“Where is she now?”
“Dunno. She packed a bag and took off.”
Liam sounds tense. “Took off where?”
“JJ thinks maybe Salt Lake City.”
“When did this happen?”
“Last night. It was late, so we decided to wait to go to the police until this morning.”
“They should take it seriously now.”
“They didn’t before.”
Liam sighs again. A double-sigh conversation. This is not looking good for our romantic future. What with me being a killer and the lies growing between us.
“Do it anyway,” Liam says.
“Are you worried she’s going to come back?”
“I don’t know what she might do, and neither do you. You know her secret and the name she’s been using. You know where she lives. Going to the cops is as much protection for you as anything.”
“I see your point.”
“I mean it, Jess. She’s smart. She made it so she could live in plain sight this whole time, created this whole cover story where she was a victim too. She thinks ahead. She knew you were onto her.”
“And yet, she came along for the ride.”
“She probably couldn’t help herself.”
“That’s what she said. Also, she could monitor our progress. Plus, I think she tried to steal money from Five right in front of me at the airport yesterday.”
“That’s very reckless.”
“Dangerous, you mean.”
“Yes. She’s going to be very dangerous now. Please go to the police immediately.”
She isn’t going to hurt anyone anymore, but Liam can never know that.
“Okay, okay, we will.”
His voice softens. “And then come home.”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“Tomorrow, if I can. I promise.”
We say our goodbyes and I lie in the cocoon of the tent for a minute, wishing I could close my eyes and fall back to sleep. But my bladder is full, and my brain is whirring, and I can sense JJ waiting for me to emerge.
I unfurl myself from my sleeping bag and climb out of the tent. It’s a cold morning, and my breath clouds around me as I stuff my feet into my running shoes.
JJ’s sitting on the picnic table cradling a cup of coffee. She’s dressed in a puffy jacket and her wool cap from last night.
“How much of that did you hear?” I ask.
She makes a face. “Your boyfriend talks loud.”
“Everyone has a flaw. Besides, there’s no one camped close to us.” The nearest tent is two sites over.
“You think he’s right about going to the police today?”
“Yeah, we probably should.” I sit down next to her. The wood seat is damp. “Everything’s in place, right?”
“I guess we’ll find out.”
We’re somber on the drive into town. We spent a bit of time vacillating over who we should tell—the Teton County Sheriff’s Department or the Jackson Police. Or I did, anyway. Stalling. While I was googling, I came across a news story about a woman, a girl, who’d been in the park as part of an outdoor initiative. She was from Ohio, like Jessie said she was at the airport. It was an eight-week program with twenty other kids. Cleaning up, mending fences, that sort of thing. On her last day there, she’d posted a picture of herself on Instagram in Jackson, under one of those signs they have in the town square made out of antlers, saying how much she’d learned and how much she was looking forward to going home. Only, she didn’t make the flight. Instead, on the last hike, she peeled off into the woods and disappeared.
There was a massive search. FBI, local police, the Park Service. Friends reminded one another that she’d had wilderness training, that she knew how to survive in the woods if she needed to. She’d be okay. Her Instagram post gathered hundreds of comments, and her parents were understandably frantic. The searchers found no signs of her. People began to despair. And then, three days later, they found her on a side road. Her hair had been cut and dyed a different color. She was wearing new clothes. She tried to run from the police, but they caught her. She was brought to the hospital for a psych evaluation, and someone wrote on her Instagram that she’d done something like this before when she was fourteen.
“And that was it. That was the last thing the story said,” I told JJ as we slowed in the morning traffic on Broadway.
“She probably had a psychotic break.”
“Maybe she was joining a cult.”
“That seems unlikely.”
“Why? My parents did.”
JJ was driving and I could tell that the traffic frustrated her. “Right, but not like that.”
“I’m sure it seemed like that to my grandparents. One day, normal kids. Next day, poof, gone into the Land of Todd.”
“Okay, good point.”
I look out the window. We’re passing Persephone, this great pastry shop. “Hey, park the car over there.”
“Shouldn’t we be getting to the police station?”
“I need something to eat. We might be a long time with them.”
“True.”
JJ turns the wheel and parks the car in a spot down the road. The day has warmed up some, and there’s a line of people waiting out the door.
We get to the end of the line, and JJ says, “Can’t we go somewhere else? Isn’t there a Starbucks over there?”
The person in front of us turns around in horror. “Dude, you do not want to choose Starbucks over Persephone.”
“Okay, sorry. Jeez.”
“It’s pretty good,” I say by way of explanation. Persephone was part of my routine when I was following Five— “Oh, shit.”
“What?”
I lower my voice. “Five. Goddammit. Five. We forgot about her.”
“What’s the problem? Liam said she was okay, right? Plus—”
“He didn’t say. She only got there yesterday . . .”
“Right. I lost track of time.”
I had too. Yesterday feels like a week ago.
“So, what’s the issue?” JJ asks.
I hold up a hand. “Let’s get some food. Then I’ll explain.”
We stay silent as the line moves quickly. When we get inside, I feel ravenous. The air smells like butter and frying bacon and fresh-brewed coffee. There’s an assortment of tables on either side, with a long glass counter at the back that displays the best pastries I’ve ever seen, including in New York. When I get to the cash register, I order a ham-and-cheese croissant, guaranteed to have enough calories for an entire day, and a latte to go. JJ gets the same, and we take our food out onto the patio. There’s an open table in the corner where we can talk in relative privacy.
JJ unwraps her croissant and takes a bite. “Now I get what that guy was talking about.”
“Right?”
“So, what’s all this with Five?”
I open the paper around my croissant and take a large bite. The fats rush into my bloodstream like an opioid. “If we tell the police what we did with her, we’re going to be in trouble.”
“What part, specifically?”
“Tricking Five like that. That was a crime, wasn’t it?”
“Tricking her into a free trip to New York?”
“Not so much that, but all the other stuff. Impersonating her online. Luring her to the airport. It could look like we were trying to scam her with Jessie.”
“Shit. I didn’t think about that.”
“Me neither until just now. She used to come here every morning . . . that’s what made me think of it.”
“So, what do we do? Leave it? Go home and forget this ever happened?”
“No, we need to stick to the plan and go to the police.”
She takes another bite of her croissant. “I never mastered how to make these things. They’re so finicky, and you would not believe the amount of butter—”
“JJ, focus. Come on.”
“Sorry, I’m tired.”
“Me too.”
JJ puts down her croissant and brushes the crumbly bits off her fingers with a napkin. “So, we’re fucked is basically what you’re saying.”
“There must be a solution.”
I look around at the other patrons. Everyone looks so healthy here, like they just went on a ten-mile hike at sunrise and are running a marathon this afternoon.
“You want to ask those people for some input?” JJ asks.
“What? No.”
“What are you staring at, then?”
I look away. “Todd always told us that clean living would make us beautiful. That wasn’t true in Upstate New York, but out here—have you noticed what everyone looks like?”
“You mean the whole Germanic-pod-people thing?”
“I think it might be more Scandinavian, but yeah.”
“I’ve noticed.”
“Do you think they’ll put us in a local jail? That might not be too bad.”
JJ finishes her croissant. “Stop being so melodramatic. You have Five’s number? Call her and ask for help.”
“You think that’s a good idea?”
“Better than the alternative.”
I take out my phone and find Five’s number. She picks up quickly.
“Hey, it’s Jessica.”
“Which one?”
“The OG. How’s New York?”
“Good so far. What’s up.”
“Well . . . Jessie’s gone.”
“What does that mean?”
“We figured out she was the bad Jessica yesterday.”
“What?”
“Yeah . . .”
“Is she coming after me?”
“I don’t think so. But I’ll text you my friend Liam’s number. He’ll keep an eye out.”
“Is that why you called?”
“No, um, we’re going to the police.”
“That sounds like a good idea,” she says.
“Yeah, but do you mind if we keep all that stuff we did with you out of it?”
“The fake contest, you mean?”
“Yes.”
“Why? Because it will make you look bad?”
“Of course.”
“Why should I?”
“You probably shouldn’t, actually, but I’m going to ask you to do it anyway.”
She laughs. “Did you get it?”
“What?”
“Your money back.”
“No. Not yet.”
“Okay, I’ll do it. But if you do, you have to promise to do a scholarship for real this time. Like a local kids’ thing in Jackson or something.”
“I’ll do that. Thank you.”
“No sweat. You think Liam can show me where to get good sushi?”
I shove down the pang of jealousy I have. “Definitely.”
We say goodbye and I walk back to JJ. “We’re all set.”
“She’ll play along?”
“Yes.”
“So . . .” She picks up the remnants of her breakfast and crushes it into a ball. “Time to face the music.”
“Let’s hope we both can dance.”
Chapter 36
Perfect Circle
My mother caught up to me in the cornfield. I never knew there were farms in Connecticut. I always thought of it as the preserve of rich family compounds. But I guess there are farms everywhere, of one kind or another. Regardless, it was a cornfield, and who cared about my stupid misconceptions about Connecticut?
My brain is a prison I have trouble escaping sometimes.
It was early summer, and the stalks were low and bright green. They hadn’t cleared out last year’s crops properly, so there were dead, brittle canes in among the new growth. The property must’ve been a couple hundred acres, and part of me wondered why the lawyers hadn’t gone after this, too, even though it wasn’t part of Todd’s estate. If I told Covington about it, he’d be pissed. But I hadn’t even told him about Kiki yet. I didn’t know if they’d kept in touch while Kiki was away, or what had even happened to them after I saw them exchange a tender kiss on New Year’s. I tried to ask her the next morning, but she just blushed and changed the subject. I knew how hard-won her privacy was, so I let it go.
But I was going to have to tell him, and it was a conversation I wasn’t looking forward
to, like the one I was waiting to have there, on the edge of a cornfield in Connecticut.
The lawsuit, the settlement—they were supposed to make things better. But money wasn’t going to bring Kiki back. Money was the root of all evil, Todd used to say, though we didn’t know that wasn’t an original thought when he said it. I didn’t, anyway. My parents surely did, the idiots.
I hate to agree with Todd about anything, but he might’ve been onto something there.
The sky was a slate gray and the air smelled like rain. The sweater I was wearing wasn’t quite warm enough for the day. I wanted to get back into my car and drive away from that place, and let the only proof that I’d been there be the dust my car kicked up, but something held me back. I had so many questions about my life, my childhood, my parents’ choices. If I didn’t ask for answers now, it felt like I might never get them. So, I waited out in the yard, on the edge of the cornfield, knowing that she’d come speak to me eventually.
And she did.
“You’re right, you know,” my mother said, coming up next to me so silently that I started when she spoke. I wasn’t sure how old she was. Sixty? Sixty-five? No, not that old; she hadn’t been forty when she’d had me. But it was one more thing I didn’t know about my mother, because Todd forbade all birthdays except the eighteenth and his own, of course, where he turned thirty-three over and over, the age of Christ at his crucifixion.
“Right about what?” I said, making an effort to keep my voice unconcerned.
My mother shifted from one foot to another and then settled back into stillness. One thing I always noticed about us growing up was that she and I had the same posture. It wasn’t Todd-imposed either. It was simply the way we both naturally stood when we weren’t paying attention, one shoulder lower than the other, a hand on a hip. There’s a kinship in these things, a reminder of the blood ties that bind. However much I might try to pretend or forget, she was my mother. And I was her daughter.
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