by Jeff Abbott
And now…so many lies. So much hidden from her. She could go back and hide at Adam’s or her mother’s, or she could push the fear off her and do something.
Choose, she told herself.
20
THE AFTERNOON PASSED, and night fell. Jane waited. Her mother didn’t come home. Jane watched the video a few times, she used her mom’s computer to track down Amari Bowman’s home address, and called. Amari’s mother answered and politely agreed to take a message, although Jane could tell from her initial hesitation that she recognized Jane’s name.
On Faceplace she found Brenda Hobson’s page, and an announcement from Brenda that she was staying at her sister’s house. Her son was still in the hospital. She sent a friend request to her, then, impatient, posted a message on Brenda’s page, asking if she could talk to her, that she might have information about the fire. There was no immediate response.
She tried Kevin’s number. To her surprise he answered. Counselors, she had learned before, loved voice mail and usually let calls roll over to that.
“Hello?”
“It’s Jane Norton. I had a memory return today. From the time I’ve lost. Freshman year. Walking home with David Hall. He was joking around about a school assignment.”
“I see,” Kevin said. “That’s very promising, Jane.”
Why are you lying to me? she thought. “I’m wondering why it happened now. Do you think it’s because I started therapy with you?”
“It might be. Or were you in the same spot where the memory occurred?”
“Yes.”
“That might have been the trigger. The anniversary of the crash has put that time at the forefront of your thoughts. You’ve been treading water, Jane, and now you’re swimming.”
She wondered if counselors had a phrase book of reassuring metaphors.
“Perhaps,” she said, “we should increase the frequency of my sessions or perhaps we could visit some of the places related to the crash together. Having you with me would be so helpful, I think.”
“We could try that. Where are you now, Jane?”
“I’m at home. My mother’s home, I mean.”
“I’m glad you’re not just wandering the streets, Jane. I think that you had a memory return with the return of structure—being at home, having counseling sessions. That is a clear sign that structure would benefit you enormously.”
“I’m putting together that time line you asked for. I found notes from the Halls’ private investigator that were shared with my mom’s attorney.” She waited for a reaction from him.
“And?”
It wasn’t much of a reaction. What if it was just coincidence? There were a dozen counselors in that office park. “Well, I’ll have it the next time.”
“Why don’t we meet here at Saint Michael’s, assuming you’re coming back here.”
“I am. I can’t stay in this house for long.”
“All right. We’ll look at the time line and then we’ll figure out where to go to prompt your memories. I’m so pleased, and a bit surprised, that you made such good progress.”
She hung up. You should have just asked him about the office. About why he lied about being a graduate student. But, she thought, if she watched where he led her therapy, maybe she could find out if he did indeed have an agenda. He had mentioned structure. Her need for it. And he’d agreed to visit places on the time line. She would watch him like he watched her.
Jane took a bottle of water from her mother’s refrigerator and twenty bucks she found in the drawer her mother used for petty emergency cash. She wrote “Sorry” on a sticky note and left it in the drawer. She took a raincoat from the closet her mother would never miss, stuck in the back, and walked out the door into the rain, which had started and grown heavier in the past hour. It would be a two-hour walk to St. Michael’s, or she could call Adam or the ridesharing company, but then she thought a walk might do her good. Clear her head. She had learned so much today and she needed a plan. She could always call a car if the rain got too heavy.
She walked past the other houses on the cul-de-sac—all lit with a warm, homey glow—and glanced up at a car turning into Graymalkin Circle. A Range Rover that she recognized as Cal Hall’s. She stood in the wash of his headlights—he had stopped, dead ahead of her—and she felt a bolt of terror as he got out of the car.
Why is he stopping? She felt a sudden, sharp fear of having to deal with him after being attacked by his wife.
“Jane?” His deep baritone voice rang out in the darkness. “Is that you? Are you all right?”
She shivered and stood there as if mute.
“Jane?” Cal left the car running and stepped toward her. The rain pounded. “Are you OK?” he asked again.
“Hi, Mr. Hall. I’m fine, thank you for asking.” Politeness was such a refuge. She half expected him to run toward her, grab her hair, and haul her out of the neighborhood the way his wife had seized her at David’s grave.
“What are you doing walking in the rain? Have you moved back home? That will make your mom happy.”
As if he could care about that. “I’m walking back to school.”
“To Saint Mike’s? That’s miles.”
“Yeah, well, I better get going.” She dodged around him, keeping his big car between her and him, and headed down the sidewalk.
“Jane. Stop. Let me drive you.”
She glanced back at him. “Why?”
“Because no matter what, your father and I were friends, and I don’t want you hiking across Austin in a storm in the dark. If you won’t ride with me, let me pay for a cab at least.”
A cab was such a dad offer. “You know what happened between me and Mrs. Hall at David’s grave.”
“No,” he said. “What happened?” She could hear the slow dread in his voice.
“She hates me so much.”
“She’s hurting. Get in the car and tell me.” He was getting wet, standing there.
She scrambled into the passenger seat, grateful to be out of the rain. He climbed back into the driver’s seat and the rain hammered against the roof. She told him about the cemetery incident. “It was stupid of me not to realize she might be there. I should never have gone. But…” Her voice broke. “I miss David, too. I know I have no right. But I do miss him. I do.” She fought back the sob. She felt raw after the events of the past two days.
“I know you do. I do, too,” he said quietly. “I’ll take you to Saint Mike’s.” Cal turned the car around in the cul-de-sac.
“Sorry to keep you from getting home,” Jane said.
He said nothing until he’d stopped the car at a stop sign. “I don’t live there anymore. Perri and I are separated and we’re divorcing. I was just stopping by to see how she is.”
Jane’s stomach twisted. The Halls’ marriage was next on the list of casualties from the accident. “Sorry,” she said. But then she thought, Surely they’ll sell the house. I could come home. They’ll be gone.
“It’s not anyone’s fault. It’s her and me. I’m trying, but she doesn’t love me anymore, not like a husband.”
She didn’t know what to say. She shivered.
“Are you cold? Do you want a coffee? We could stop. My treat.”
“Yes, please,” she said. Why was he being nice to her? She thought of Kevin, of Adam, of her mother, of their secrets she’d learned. But he had always been nice. David’s dad, easygoing and thoughtful. David’s death had not changed him the way it had Perri. But the note. They’d tested the note; they’d known the truth of it. Maybe Randy Franklin called him and told him about Jane’s visit. Did Franklin still owe the Halls a warning, as a former client?
He stopped on South Congress, not far from St. Michael’s, at a trendy new coffee shop. She sat in a back corner while he got their drinks, texting on his phone while he waited at the counter, eyebrows raised in apology. He brought her a decaf, and one for himself. He sat across from her.
She took a warming sip. “This is weird,” Jane said.
Please don’t talk about David. Or the crash. Tell me a dumb joke, the kind dads always know. Just tell me no lies.
“Jane, it was an accident,” he said.
She could hardly look at him. OK, so no dad jokes.
“An accident,” he said again. “I think Perri and Kamala and some of the football players had a hard time accepting that. We like to think—especially in a town like Lakehaven—that we have such good lives, they couldn’t be broken by a bad moment. But life is fragile. We’re all hostages to fate. Blaming someone makes us think we have more control than what we do.”
She wondered if he would bring up the suicide note, the one he knew was written long before the crash. The one he and his wife let Lakehaven think she’d written that night. So, she thought, let’s see what he says. “I do blame myself. I was at the wheel.”
“But you don’t know what happened. You don’t. Maybe there was another car, maybe someone ran you off the road, being stupid or drunk or reckless.” He studied his coffee. “Or maybe you took your eyes off the road, or maybe my son did something stupid and distracted you. He wasn’t perfect, despite what his mom and Kamala would say.”
“The suicide note. I spoke to Randy Franklin today.”
Now his gaze met hers. She thought, He’s actually bracing himself for this.
“He said there was an analysis done on the ink. That the suicide note wasn’t written that night of the crash, that it was much older. He said you knew that.”
Cal Hall’s gaze didn’t waver from hers. “Yes. But that was when I decided to drop the lawsuit. We thought maybe you wrote it with an old pen, or the analysis was wrong. But it was your handwriting, Jane.”
“Why would I have had an expired suicide note in the car?”
“I don’t know. You hadn’t been well since your father died. You pushed everyone away. I don’t know. But it didn’t matter. The note made no difference.”
“The difference it made was to me,” she said. “What people believed about me, what they said about me, how they treated me. And you let them think this.” And now that she had thrown his cruelty back in his face, her complaint sounded so petty. David was gone. Would telling the school that the suicide note was old have made a real difference to the Kamalas and Parkers of the world? She realized it wouldn’t.
“I don’t know what to say, Jane.” He wasn’t going to say he was sorry, she supposed. That was a bridge too far.
“Did the police ever tell you that David and I were thinking about running away?”
He made a face. “There was something said by that manager at Happy Taco, but that can’t be right. It would have been utterly unlike you both.”
“David had a laptop at Happy Taco. It wasn’t in the car inventory. Do you know where it went?”
He looked uneasy for a moment. “That inventory must be wrong,” he said. “I remember. He did have a laptop in the car and it was ruined.”
Tell me no lies, she thought.
“There has to be a reason we did what we did. Those missing hours.”
He stared at his coffee.
“Someone claims to know the truth. Someone named Liv Danger.” On her phone she showed him the Faceplace page. “Do you recognize the name?” she asked as he read it.
He shook his head. “It means nothing to me. But the words ‘ALL WILL PAY’ were written on David’s tombstone when we visited his grave yesterday.”
Jane remembered now, the cleaners, the cloths, by the grave. No wonder Perri had felt so raw and angry. She told him about the fight.
Cal said, “Who would do this? Who would know something? Maybe we can contact Faceplace, see who posted this, who created the account.”
“I think it’s Kamala Grayson. She still hates me.”
He shook his head. “She wouldn’t deface David’s grave.”
“She would do just about anything to make me look bad,” Jane said. “Don’t be fooled by her sweet exterior.”
“Jane…”
“Look, I’ll tell you one more thing. Did you ever meet the paramedics who responded to the wreck?”
“Meet them? No. I didn’t talk to them. I don’t know their names.”
“Mom found their names out for me because I wanted to write them notes of thanks. I remember seeing the list.” She explained about Brenda Hobson and the strange arson that had torched her neighborhood. “This is on the same anniversary of the crash. That was why I came home. To get a car and drive to San Antonio. But mom’s sold the Toyota and I didn’t want to tell her this, it would upset her. I want to see if Brenda Hobson knows anything. I sent her a note.”
Cal frowned. “Has she responded?”
Jane checked Faceplace on her phone. There was a message from Brenda. Yes, I’ll talk to you. I sent you my address. Jane checked the messages and there was the address.
“I have to get to San Antonio to talk to her. It’s not something I can do over the phone.”
“What’s the address? I’ll go.”
“It’s not your problem, Mr. Hall, it’s mine.”
“You don’t have a car. We’ll go right now.”
Jane was stunned. “It’s a ninety-minute drive each way. We can’t go tonight.”
“Why? Don’t you want to know? And I don’t think you should go by yourself.”
She sipped at her coffee. Three hours round-trip in a car with David’s father. It would kill Perri Hall. But going back and confronting Adam did not appeal to her either. She nodded. “All right. Let me send her a note.” She did so.
He finished his coffee. “Let me make a pit stop, get us a couple of coffees to go, and we’ll head out.”
She nodded while he excused himself. Brenda responded: Yes, we can meet tonight. I don’t sleep well anyway and am anxious to hear what you have to say.
Her phone beeped. A text from Adam, asking where she was. She opened up a text and sent it to Adam: I’m off to San Antonio with David’s dad, to talk with that paramedic.
21
CAL DROVE ONTO I-35 south, the interstate that snaked through the heart of Austin. The traffic wasn’t bad at night, although it seemed like Austin was expanding south and San Antonio was expanding north. Much of the countryside was turning into an endless landscape of shopping centers and housing developments. Cal drove just below the speed limit, which meant every other car blasted by them in the left lane.
They were quiet for several minutes. She felt a sick exhaustion. Her phone buzzed. Probably Adam responding to her text. She didn’t feel like reading it.
“How is it going at Saint Michael’s?” Cal asked, breaking the silence. “Has your amnesia affected your studies? I think it would be so hard.”
She glanced over at him. “I flunked out. I’m sleeping at a friend’s place. I don’t know how to be me anymore.”
“So move home.” His voice was quiet.
“That’s not really an option for me.” She couldn’t say to him, I can’t bear being next door to you, and Mom won’t sell the house, and your wife won’t sell, and I don’t blame her, she doesn’t want to leave a house full of memories of David.
“Are you in counseling?”
“Yes.” Until I see my counselor and he can explain his lying self.
He tapped fingers on the steering wheel. “I went to a counselor for a while after David died. I didn’t want to at first. I thought it was for weak people. I didn’t want to ‘work through my grief’ or ‘find closure.’” She could hear the air quotes around the phrases when he spoke. “I pretty much just wanted to die. But the counselor made me see that my life was going to go on and I could either live it in a way that made David proud or I could curl up and do nothing. I could let him go and love the time I’d had with him or I could hate you. I decided not to hate you.”
His voice caught at the end and he wiped at his right eye, quickly, with the back of his hand. It felt like her chest was going to explode. She couldn’t speak.
“I just wish you could remember. I wish you could tell us. So
we could know his final hours.”
“I’m sorry. I know Mrs. Hall thinks I’m faking it, but I’m not…”
“Nothing’s come back?”
And here she had suggested to a few people that memories swirled around her, trying to form. “I remembered David being silly about a school assignment when we were freshmen. That’s all.” Him braying the lines from Romeo and Juliet.
He veered over into the next lane, jostling her. “Sorry.”
It wasn’t the same as a memory, but she could show him David’s note. It was in her pocket. But she decided to wait, to see how this evening went. She decided to play another card.
“David was overheard saying to me, that night, that whatever he was upset about was connected to my dad.”
Now he glanced at her. “What?”
“I guess something my dad did before he died.”
“Jane, that can’t be right. When he passed, he was going to open his own CPA start-up. It would have been lucrative and steady. I can’t imagine any way remotely dangerous that his and David’s lives intersected. Who told you this?”
“Trevor Blinn.”
“Well, I don’t know what he’s talking about.”
“We’ve never talked about you finding my dad dead.” It wasn’t a statement; it was a request for him to repeat the memory she didn’t have.
“We did when you had your memory. More than once, didn’t your mother tell you?”
“You tell me.” Her voice sounded small. Like a child asking for a story heard many times.
“Your parents both went to run errands, but separately. They left you at our house because you and David loved to draw comics together. And you had one you were working on, so you were going to stay with us for the day because you didn’t want to go with them.”
“Did he say good-bye to me?”
