She coughed, a dry and painful rattle, and then took another drag. She’d never smoked a whole one by herself, but today seemed like a good day to start. Her life had begun to spiral the week before, when Sara had confronted her before school. Now, as she watched the river flow steady and grey toward an ocean too far for her to see, she replayed their confrontation for the millionth time.
“I saw you,” Sara had said with no preamble, approaching her on the sidewalk in front of her house. They fell into step together, their squat shadows leading the way.
“You saw me where?” On a different day she might have sensed the impending danger, or seen how dark and troubled Sara’s eyes were, but that morning Eve was fuzzy-headed and focused on other things.
Both girls had their backpacks over one shoulder. Eve carried a banana for her breakfast. She’d slept late and with five minutes to spare before she had to leave for school, she’d thrown on clothes from the pile on her floor. She’d begged a ride from Donna, but her mother had told her that she needed to face the consequences of her lack of responsibility.
So, fine. A banana for breakfast on the walk to school, nothing packed for her lunch, and she would go through the day with her hair unbrushed and wearing yesterday’s clothing. It wouldn’t be the first time.
“I saw you,” Sara repeated, and her tone of voice caught Eve’s attention. Also, Sara never came to her house in the morning. They usually met in front of the Adlers’ because it was on the way to school.
“What are you talking about?” Eve asked more cautiously.
“Last night.”
“Last night?” She feigned confusion while her mind frantically searched for a story that would satisfy Sara’s obvious suspicion.
“Yeah.”
“What do you think you saw?”
Sara stopped walking, grabbed her hand, and turned to face her. “I saw you with my brother.”
“What?” Despite the mental rehearsals she’d done just in case something like this ever happened, her tone and timing were all wrong.
“Stop treating me like I’m an idiot. I saw you together.”
She decided to go on the offensive. “You watched us? That’s private, Sara!” Pretending an anger she was too afraid to actually feel, Eve yanked her hand free and stormed off down the sidewalk, leaving Sara behind.
“Eve!” Sara called after her, but she kept going. Sara was bigger than Eve, but usually moved at a slower pace. She had to shift into a half-jog to catch up, but eventually she did, grabbing Eve by the hand as they reached the front of the school. At that point Sara was red from both exertion and anger.
“I’m not the one doing something wrong, so don’t try this crap on me! I know you well enough to know when you’re being manipulative.”
“Shh.” She looked around nervously. Kids turned to watch them.
“No, I won’t be quiet! I want an explanation, and I want it right now.”
She shook her head, feeling tears start to burn her eyes. “Please don’t tell anyone, okay? We could get into big trouble.”
“But what were you doing with him?” Sara asked, looking both disgusted and horrified.
“What did you see?” she asked miserably, deciding she wouldn’t admit to anything that she didn’t actually have to admit to. Maybe Sara hadn’t seen very much, maybe she could still play it off.
“I saw you,” Sara said, “around the corner from my house, when I was coming home from my piano lesson. I saw my dad’s car parked against the overgrown lot, and I wondered why it was there, so I went over to check it out. It was dark, so I went up really close. And then I saw …” Sara paused, swallowed hard, and looked at her with wide eyes.
“The windows were all steamy. I knew then that I should walk away, but I didn’t. I moved closer instead, and I saw Leigh. I knew he was coming home this weekend, but I didn’t know he was coming home so early. And then I remembered those rumours about him and Annabeth last fall. I wanted to see if they were true, so I moved around to the other side of the car to get a closer look.”
“Oh.” Eve’s body was superheating with a toxic mixture of shame and terror, making her skin prickle and her throat burn, making her want to scream and cry and disappear into the sidewalk beneath her — into the pits of hell, where she surely belonged.
“But it wasn’t Annabeth. It was you. And you … and you were on top of him …”
“Okay.” She held up her hand for Sara to stop talking.
“Why?” Sara cried, and more kids turned to watch.
“Shh,” Eve said again. “Please, Sara, please …”
“Please, what?”
“Please don’t tell.”
“Are you serious? Are you actually serious right now?”
“Shh.” It seemed like half the school had stopped to watch them. From the corner of her eye, she could see them whispering and giggling from behind their hands.
“Someone needs to know. A grown-up, someone,” Sara said.
“Oh no, Sara, please.”
“This isn’t kid stuff.”
“I know, but it … it’s private. People won’t understand.”
“They won’t understand because what you’re doing is wrong!”
She shook her head. “It’s not like that.”
“Eve, it’s wrong.”
“But we love each other.”
Sara looked horrified. “He’s eighteen.”
“He’s going to marry me when I’m old enough. He promised! And then you and I will be real sisters.”
Sara’s mouth dropped open. “Oh, Eve …”
“You can’t tell anyone, okay? Please?”
Sara shook her head, watching Eve like she didn’t know who she was anymore.
“Please.”
Sara turned and walked away.
“Sara! Please!”
Her friend didn’t answer. And she didn’t speak to her again until the night before Eve’s birthday, when she called to ask her to meet the following morning.
Now she sat like a convicted felon, waiting to see if she’d be given the death penalty or merely life in prison. Neither option was good; one was just faster than the other. During that awful confrontation in front of the school, she’d been too terrified, too ashamed, and too shocked to feel any other emotion. But everything had had a week to fester, and now she was angry. She was furious, in fact. How dare Sara threaten her the way she had?
Eve shook her head, trying to give her friend the benefit of the doubt. She was sure that, given some thought, Sara would realize that telling an adult would ruin not just Eve’s and Leigh’s lives, but both their families’ lives as well. It was too high a price to pay.
Taking a final drag on the joint, she flicked it toward the river, where it hissed out against the damp mud. Sara would be there any minute. She was as reliable as death and taxes, as Donna would say.
THIRTY-SEVEN
DETECTIVE BAIRD KEPT YAWNING.
Eve watched him dispassionately, wondering whether there was any point in asking for a lawyer. She knew it was the smart thing to do, but she wasn’t sure there was much point. If Leigh had truly thrown her under the bus, and she didn’t have much trouble believing that he had, then she was in a big steaming pile of trouble. She didn’t have the will to do anything about it at the moment. And really, it was no more than she deserved.
“Is Leigh here? I mean, somewhere in the station?”
Detective Baird gave a small nod, arranging his usual blank notepad and pen on the table beside a large folder that she had to assume was all about her.
“Can I see him?”
“Why would you want to do that?”
“I want to see for myself that he’s all right.”
He blinked at her curiously. “I would think you’d want to scratch his eyes out.”
She sighed. “He’s protecting himself. That’s what he does best.”
Baird yawned widely, his jaw cracking, and then shook his head. “Long day.”
“Why don’t we get this over with, then?”
“All right. Let’s start with Thomas Mahoney.” Baird shifted forward in his seat, his knees a foot away from hers. “Mr. Adler says he came upon you in the forest, and saw you clubbing Thomas Mahoney over the head with a tree branch.”
Eve stared at him blankly. “What?”
“He says that you told him that Mr. Mahoney had exposed himself to you and his sister, Sara, and that you chased him until he tripped over a tree root. At which point you hit him several times over the head.”
“No.”
“He says you begged him to get rid of the body. So he did, in a field of quicksilver plants not far from your home. Which is, of course, where Mr. Mahoney’s remains were found some years ago.”
“I don’t understand. Why would he lie like that?”
“What part of Mr. Adler’s testimony do you disagree with?”
“Well, it’s just … I don’t think that’s what happened.”
“Then why don’t you enlighten me?”
She shook her head. “I don’t remember.”
“Oh, but I think you do.” He leaned close enough that he could have shared her oxygen if she’d still been breathing. “I think you remember everything. Everything you’ve done wrong, everything that’s been done to you.” He reached over and tapped her on the forehead. “It’s all right in there, just waiting to be freed.”
The skin he’d touched burned as though seared by a hot poker.
“Look at me,” he said.
“Please, no.” But she looked.
His eyes. She’d thought his eyes were blue, but she was wrong. They were a deep golden brown. Like amber.
“I can’t do this,” she said, but it was too late to stop.
Remember. See the truth behind your lies.
The bedrock on which she’d rebuilt her life shifted. A chunk of dirt broke loose and fell away, and then another. Small stones followed, and then larger ones, until giant chunks of her foundation joined the landslide. One fragment at a time, bones and memories were exposed.
“Tell me what happened,” Baird said.
Sara grabbed her arm. Her jaw worked in a funny, nervous kind of way. “Keep packing! Pretend everything’s normal.”
“Sara saw the man, um, Mr. Mahoney, watching us from the forest. It scared her. But I thought it was someone else. Annabeth, actually.”
“Annabeth O’Neill? The woman who pressed charges against your husband?”
“Right. She … we didn’t get along with her very well.”
“Why did you think it was her?”
“She threw your scooter into the yard of Groaning House last week. Don’t you want revenge?”
“She and her friends used to sneak around, following us. And they’d grab our stuff if we left it lying around. Sara and I were having a picnic on the edge of that field of quicksilver plants. Everyone calls it the Foil, because of the colour of the leaves.”
The detective made a rolling motion with his hand, encouraging her to continue. He didn’t take any notes; he just stared.
With a warrior-like whoop, Eve flew over rocks and tree roots without feeling the ground beneath her feet.
Her foundation kept shifting beneath her, faster and faster. “I chased him. I mean, I thought I was chasing Annabeth and her cronies.”
Except it wasn’t them. It was a man. His jeans sagged around his hips, and he held them up as he stumbled forward.
She shifted in her seat, wrapping her coat more tightly around herself in a futile effort to get warm. “He tripped and flew through the air, like they do in cartoons. And he hit his head on the trunk of a tree.”
“What part of his head?”
“Around here.” She touched the left side of her head near the temple.
Blood trickled from a cut on his forehead. His pants gaped open, revealing a tangle of black curls and a flesh-coloured tube that shrank back like a snake retreating.
“Leigh showed up, and Sara was coming, and he didn’t want her to see what had happened. He told me to go get his sister and bring her home, and that he’d take care of it.”
“Did you check Mr. Mahoney’s vitals?”
“I was nine.”
“I’ll take that as a no,” the detective said. “What happened then?”
Wiping rain out of her eyes, she took another look at the man on the ground. Did he blink? Turn his head a little?
“What happened then, Mrs. Adler?”
She scrubbed a trembling hand across her face. “Nothing happened. I left.”
“Well.” Detective Baird shifted in his seat and the chair gave a squeal of protest. “The problem with your story, Mrs. Adler, is that the evidence aligns better with your husband’s description of events.”
“What do you mean?”
He pulled a paper out of the file, and held it up for her to see. It was part of an autopsy report. There was a diagram of a skull, with several areas circled in red, and a lot of medical jargon that she didn’t understand.
“Mr. Mahoney died of multiple blunt-force trauma wounds to the head.”
“Multiple?”
“There was an injury consistent with the one you describe, on the left side of the head. But the front part of his skull was also crushed. The medical examiner estimated that he was hit at least three times with a blunt object. Considering the location of the body and the nature of the wounds, the guess was a large branch or stick.”
Hunching against the rain, he lifted a thick tree branch from the ground near his feet. His eyes were bloodshot, but dead sober.
“Did you hit Thomas Mahoney in the head?”
“Go now, Eve.”
Unable to speak, she shook her head no.
“And here I thought we were getting somewhere. Any idea where those wounds came from?”
“I … I swear, I never touched him.”
He tucked the medical report back into the folder. “Not very convincing, Mrs. Adler.”
She lowered her head to the table and closed her eyes. Her mind raced, and the memories came at her faster than she could process them.
“Let’s talk about Sara Adler.”
“Oh, please. I can’t …”
“You’ve lived with this guilt for a long time, haven’t you? Tell me what happened.”
“This wasn’t how I expected us to celebrate your thirteenth birthday.”
“What were you two arguing about the week before her death?”
“About Leigh,” she said. “She saw us in their dad’s car, and she confronted me about it.”
“Saw you doing what?”
“You know.”
“You and Leigh were having sexual relations?”
“Uh-huh.”
His chair squeaked. “When did that start?”
“I was eleven.”
“And he would have been …” The detective shuffled papers.
“Sixteen.”
“Did you ever tell anyone?”
“I saw you. I saw you with my brother.”
She sat up, but kept her eyes closed. It was easier that way.
“Sara was the only one who knew, but not because I told her.”
“Mrs. Adler, you know you could press charges against your husband for statutory rape?”
Eve gave a bitter laugh. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
“Tell me about the day Sara died.”
“She called me the night before and asked if we could meet to talk about things. I’d been waiting all week for the cops to show up on my doorstep.”
“You thought you’d be in trouble?”
“Of course,” she said.
“Where did you and Sara meet?”
“Near the river, just west of the pier.”
“And what did you discuss?”
“She tried to tell me that what was going on with Leigh wasn’t my fault.”
“She was right.”
“I drew pictures of him, dreamed about him being my boyfriend.”<
br />
“Why am I in so many of your paintings?”
“A childhood crush —”
“He said I led him on.”
“You were eleven.”
“Yeah, but I followed him around like a puppy —”
He leaned forward, hands gripping his knees. “You could have ripped off your clothes and jumped on top of him, and it would have been his responsibility to stop you.”
Grief welled in her chest, a giant lump that threatened to choke her.
“Many victims feel guilty because they couldn’t stop the abuse, or they feel like they somehow caused it to happen. And they feel especially ashamed if they ex perienced physical pleasure. But that doesn’t make it the victim’s fault.”
“But, I …”
Her eyes were drawn to the mirror on the far wall of the interrogation room. She wondered if someone watched her from the other side. And if they did, what did they see? A woman or a beast?
“But, what?”
She understood the logic of what he said, but the idea was terrifying. If Leigh was her abuser, then who was she? She’d hurt too many people to be an innocent victim. And what about Gabriel, who was knitted from their cloth? Did that make him an abomination? A sick mistake?
She shook her head. “Sometimes you go too far down a path to be able to change direction.”
He watched her for a moment, and then nodded. “All right. Tell me about Sara. You were arguing about this relationship with her brother. And then what?”
THIRTY-EIGHT
Eve’s Thirteenth Birthday
THE JOINT WAS HAVING an effect on Eve’s head, making everything seem slow and fuzzy, but it hadn’t calmed her nerves one bit. There was a ball of fire in the pit of her stomach, a burning pain that nothing could extinguish.
“Hey, Doodlebug.” Sara approached unexpectedly from the right instead of the left.
The nickname hurt. She squinted at the river, feeling for a moment like a cowboy in one of those old movies Button watched on late night TV — she was Clint Eastwood, hardened by hard days and even harder nights. “Sara.”
After a moment of awkward silence, Sara eased down in the weeds beside her.
The Day She Died Page 22
