Blame

by Jeff Abbott

  “It’s a lie. Or it was a lie, until her memory came back. Or she has her own set of Liv Danger drawings and knows the name.”

  “Talented kids,” he said, paging through the images. “Where did you find this, since only Jane knows about this character?”

  “Hidden. On the top shelf of my son’s room. I couldn’t bear to change anything in the room after he died. I never threw out any of his stuff. She must have thought that he had tossed the notebook.”

  He shut the notebook. “Or she doesn’t really remember. I saw her at the wreck. Girl was hurt bad.”

  “Would I bring you this evidence if I was Liv Danger? It points to either me or to the Nortons. It narrows the field. I would only bring this if I’m not Liv.” He could not find out about the postings being from her computer; it would be damning evidence.

  That gave him pause. He drank his tea, watching her. She didn’t like the way he stared at her; he was ten years younger than her, but he watched her with the gaze of the guy in a bar who wants to buy you a drink and you want the floor to swallow him whole.

  “Or you want me to think you’re not Liv.”

  “You could take it straight to the police.”

  He chewed his lip.

  “Listen.” She made her voice stern. “If my husband wanted revenge on you, he wouldn’t steal from you and break up your engagement. He’d get your ass fired from the county; he has friends in high places. He’d plant drugs on you so you’d go to jail for a long time.”

  Shiloh, at this, laughed.

  “But he wouldn’t take your girlfriend away from you. That’s small.”

  “Not to me it’s not,” Shiloh said. “So, you’ve had your tea and you’ve pled your case, Miss Perri-with-an-i. You can go now.”

  “I want your help proving the Nortons are behind this.”

  “Yeah, a girl who’s got amnesia and her mother firebombed Brenda’s house.”

  “Go do an Internet search on ‘Laurel Norton mom blog.’ Laurel wrote this blog on raising her daughter, for years. It will show that this is a woman who is obsessed with her kid’s image. And before the accident, there was another accident: her husband supposedly died cleaning his gun.”

  Now she had his attention. “Supposedly?”

  “Did I stutter?” she said, and his lip curled for a moment. She forged ahead: “I always wondered. How low she would stoop. A woman who writes all about her child’s private moments so she can sell stroller ads and yogurt coupons on her blog. And then she loses her husband, and then her daughter kills my son, and her perfect image of herself, the one she’s broadcast to the world, is shredded. It’s not fair. But it is what it is.” She took a deep breath. “So now her daughter’s homeless, a mental case, and why wouldn’t she want revenge on everyone who’s somehow contributed to her pain?” The more she spoke, the more convinced she became. This was the answer. Maybe Jane had defaced the gravestone and then gone to the cemetery hoping to run into Perri, or planning to wait for her to inevitably show up. She might have bribed the driver to take the video, or maybe it wasn’t really a rideshare car at all but a friend ready to record Perri’s grief and rage. And Perri had neatly put her neck into the noose of their making.

  “So you think my next step is to read a mom blog?” Darkness in Shiloh’s tone.

  “Yes. It’s called Blossoming Laurel. And then you’ll see I’m telling you the truth.”

  “So let’s say I believe you, Mrs. Hall. What then? Why are you telling me this instead of the police?” He asked like he already knew the answer.

  “Well. You wanted to know. You could stop them.”

  “Me. Just little old me.” The lip curled again. She saw that it had been cut, as if by a knife, a thin, pale thread of scar. “What am I supposed to do, camp out on their lawn, follow them around?”

  She took a deep breath. “You could scare them off from any more revenge, I could let you know when they’re around.”

  “They could call the cops on me.”

  “They won’t. Not if we can find evidence to tie them to the fire. Or to your burglary. Or to whatever they’ve done to Randy Franklin.”

  “And I find this evidence?”

  “We do. And then we go to the police.”

  “I don’t like the police.”

  She felt she’d wandered into a twilight zone.

  “I don’t want publicity. This would get publicity.”

  “Yes, I suppose.”

  “I’d rather privately convince them to stop.”

  “You won’t hurt them.”

  The corner of his mouth went up. “Do you care?”

  “Of course I care.”

  “I didn’t get the impression you did.”

  A dark, shameful sensation rose in her chest, like a fist stretching, and she drank her tea and turned away from him for a moment. “I just want them to leave. Move away. She doesn’t want to sell that house because her late husband bought it for her. I won’t sell because of my son. Stalemate.”

  “This would break it. They lose something they want. And we do it so they can’t go to the police.”

  “And no one gets hurt?”

  “Yeah, sure. Hey, I save lives, Mrs. Hall. I’m one of the good guys.”

  “OK, so we have a deal.”

  He stepped closer to her again. “Shall we seal it?”

  “I…I…” The way he was smiling at her. The way the T-shirt strained against his chest. The emptiness in his eyes. “I…”

  “With a handshake,” he said. “What did you think I meant?”

  “Nothing. Nothing.” You’ve made a deal with a devil, she thought. Now you just have to be smarter than this particular devil. “So what do we do?”

  “I reached out to Jane this morning when I was sure you and your husband were the big bads,” he said. “She thoroughly rejected my offer of help. I think she’s afraid of me. But she’s her mother’s weakness, right? Let’s figure out how to make that work for us.”

  “And no one gets hurt?” she asked again. Because she felt that he wanted to hurt someone. He wanted it badly.

  For a moment she thought of David. Of what he would think of this. She had always stressed to him that catchphrase of twenty-first-century parents, “Make good choices,” and she’d said it to him so often—calling it at him every time he left the house, both of them laughing because obviously David would never make a bad choice—that it became a joke between them.

  Make good choices.

  Shiloh Rooke smiled his scarred smile at her again.

  39

  JANE HAD COME home, and spent a pointless two hours searching her parents’ bedroom. There was nothing there that suggested an affair had happened, or was still happening, between her mother and Cal. She could not imagine they were still currently involved; surely the accident and its aftermath ended that. But her mother’s insistence on refusing to sell the house now seemed shaded with other possibilities.

  She had thought of shoving the picture under her mother’s nose, saying, You want to explain this? Asking her about Kevin Ngota, although she thought it better to simply confront her mother at their meeting with Kevin. Otherwise, if she pushed the issue now, there would be no meeting with Kevin, and Kevin was trying to prove he was on her side. And she didn’t want to explain how she’d gotten the file.

  She tried Franklin’s office number. No answer. She tried his cell, nervous that it would leave a record of her call. She didn’t want to be tied to him. But she had to know, so she called, and there was no answer.

  She left the picture in the file and hid the file in her room, in her closet, behind a stack of books on the shelf. She thought maybe it was better to wait and see what hand her mother played in this game between them, to keep the proof of an affair with Cal Hall as a trump card until she needed it.

  Did Dad know? Did Dad know?

  It couldn’t still be going on. It couldn’t be.

  And snooping upstairs meant she didn’t have to go downstairs and ta
lk to her mother about what had happened this morning with Perri and Shiloh, and what else she had learned. What Adam had told her: that the night of the crash he’d found her mother and Perri Hall arguing. Was it about the affair?

  She could hear Laurel downstairs, humming, perhaps delighted that her daughter had announced she had social plans. She really didn’t want to crash the party, but if she could pour a beer down Trevor’s throat and keep him off-balance, maybe he’d talk about his truck being on High Oaks at the time of the crash. He had been willing to talk to her at the coffee shop, but that didn’t mean he didn’t have his own secrets. His own agenda. His own guilt, perhaps. Now that she saw the guilt in others—she had been blinded by her own—she could see what a powerful force it was.

  She kept wondering, Did Dad know? Did he know? Did he die knowing his wife cheated on him? And did I know this and I’m just not remembering? Maybe I didn’t just forget all my regular life. Maybe I forgot my secrets, too.

  “Mom?” she said, coming down the stairs.

  “Yes, sweetheart?”

  Start with the easy part. “Why was Kamala in your office today?”

  “Look, I couldn’t just tell her I wouldn’t work with her sorority. I met with her. It was a courtesy. I know you don’t like her, but you weren’t going to be involved.” She offered a smile, but all Jane saw was her mother in Cal Hall’s arms, her palm against his jaw, like she was savoring his touch. Her mother paying Kevin to pretend to be her therapist, perhaps to help have her committed. Her mother meeting with her worst enemy.

  If she told her mother everything that had happened, her mother would be hauling her off to the psychiatric hospital, “for her own protection.” But Mom was in danger, too, from this Shiloh Rooke if he showed up again. So she had to tell her.

  She very calmly explained about the harasser calling herself Liv Danger, the two paramedics who had been targeted, Shiloh Rooke following her to UT, Perri’s insane certainty that Jane, or Laurel, or both were behind the Liv Danger name, Perri’s attack on her at the grave. But she said nothing about sneaking into Franklin’s office or his files or the photo of Laurel and Cal. She said nothing about Shiloh’s offer to make the Halls pay for their supposed crimes. She said nothing about Kevin or what she’d learned from Adam. She was not ready to go there yet. As she finished, she still expected Laurel to call the psychiatric hospital and inquire about room availability. Instead Laurel stood and hugged her tight.

  “Why didn’t you tell me this before? I’ll take care of it so this man doesn’t bother you again.”

  “What?”

  “Well, I’ll call the police. He followed you. The police need to know.”

  “Yes, and he’ll tell them what? He offered to help me tear down the Halls?”

  “He sounds very trashy. This fiancée is better off without him.”

  “I don’t want to talk about him. I want to talk about you. You had a note that proved that David asked me for help, and you didn’t share it with anyone. Why?”

  The answer was obvious to her as soon as she asked the question aloud. Her mother must have had a reason for keeping hidden the fact that David was in danger: because she was part of that danger.

  The second thought was like hot iron through her brain. It couldn’t be.

  “He was in some kind of trouble,” Jane said. “You found the note he wrote for me. This has always been a story of two notes, two messages. I had that note in my jeans and you got it and you kept it and you didn’t tell anyone.”

  “Honey, the suicide note was the trump card. Nothing beat that. David’s note was real vague. What, exactly, was I supposed to do with it?”

  “Is that why Cal dropped the lawsuit? This note?” Or that you were kissing him? she thought.

  “Water under the bridge, Jane. Go get ready for your party, and I hope you have a lovely time.” End of discussion, her tone said.

  Is this what hurt Dad so? she wondered. Because of Cal Hall? You and his best friend, so he took his uncle’s gun…? And then did my accident mess up your planned new life with him? Is that why you blame me, everyone else, for what’s gone wrong with your life? But she could not form the words, give them breath. She didn’t want to believe it. Her father wouldn’t have left her.

  “I’ll contact the police about this Shiloh person.”

  “And say what?” Jane said. “It could only make me look bad. We point them toward Perri; she blames me.”

  “That video has done her no favors.”

  “I don’t want them investigating me.”

  “Jane?” her mother said. “Are you doing these things?”

  Jane stared at her, turned around, and walked upstairs to get ready. She could answer her mother, she heard her asking the question again, but she thought, Let her wonder. Let her not know. Let me have some secrets from her.

  At least while I find out hers.

  40

  JANE SHOWERED. SHE put on makeup. She hadn’t worn mascara or lipstick in a long time, but she remembered how to do it. Her cosmetics were here, where she had left them when she walked away from her shattered life. She looked at herself in the mirror. Too often in the mirrors at St. Mike’s she looked hunted, lost, forlorn—she couldn’t linger, studying herself in the mirror, and there was nothing to see; now she looked like a well-to-do young woman, going to a social gathering.

  She looked like who she should have been if the wreck had never happened. For one moment she reached out toward her reflection in the mirror. For the girl that was lost.

  But she wasn’t lost. The image of what she could be—hale, whole—was standing right in front of her. She only had to choose to work toward that image.

  There could be another school. One far away. If she had the bravery to move, to pull up stakes. Her decisions had put her into limbo; her decisions alone could break her out of it.

  Laurel stood in the doorway, watching her, an uncertain smile on her face. She pretended that Jane hadn’t walked away from the question of being Liv Danger. “I think you look very nice. Are you sure this is a good idea?”

  She had lied and told her mother that Trevor invited her. “Thanks and no.”

  “Then stay home.”

  She thought, There’s still one card that I could play. One that might drill a hole in the dam of lies. “Adam told me he came here that night. You and Perri were arguing.”

  She shook her head. “No, we weren’t. We were talking but not arguing. About schools, David having troubles with his girlfriend, small things. Adam misunderstood.”

  “What did you do that night?”

  “I went looking for you when it became clear you had lied to me.”

  “Adam said you sent him to look for me.”

  “He offered to run by a few places where you all hung out. My gosh, you are making this into a production. Or Adam is. He does like to be the center of your world.”

  “And what about Cal Hall and lawsuits? You didn’t answer my question.”

  Her mother’s expression didn’t change. “I don’t know what you mean, Jane. If you have something to say, say it.”

  She took a step back. There was a look, a hard look, in her mother’s eyes, one she hadn’t seen before. You’ve told her you know about the note. She’s going to wonder what else you know. “Did you ever have an affair with Cal Hall?”

  “An affair. With Cal.” And she had a look of abject shock on her face, then laughter. “Why on earth would you think that? I never would.” And she took another step toward her daughter.

  “Someone said.” No way was she going to reveal the picture. Not now. She needed a trump card for later. After the Kevin meeting. Or, better yet, during it. When her mother was trying to haul her off for commitment.

  “Kamala?” Laurel asked.

  Sure, why not. She was an easy target. “Yes. She hinted at it.”

  “And how did she think this?”

  “I guess maybe David thought there was reason.”

  She watched Jane for a
long thirty seconds. “I loved your father. I was crushed when he died. I have not been ready to date again and I might never be. So, Jane, the answer is no. I am not nor have I ever had an affair with Cal or with anyone.”

  There. The lie, like a blade cutting into her palm, slowly dragged. Finally a lie from the past that she could disprove when she needed to. She wanted to run out of the house and run and run and run. Instead she smiled and said, “OK, Mom, I believe you.”

  “That Kamala. Honestly.” She said this with a mild frustration that she didn’t fake well.

  “She didn’t say it meanly.”

  “She never does.” She stepped forward and smoothed Jane’s hair. “But don’t listen to her. You sure do look nice. You should dress up more often, Jane.”

  41

  LAUREL DROVE HER and dropped her off. Trevor lived a few miles from her place. There were pockets from Lakehaven’s original development that were all ranch houses from the 1960s and 1970s, and Trevor lived in one of these, at the bottom of a downward-sloping cul-de-sac. Laurel said, “Call me when you want me to pick you up.”

  I hope that’s not in five minutes. She had texted Adam to say, I’m crashing. Forgive me, meet me outside if you’re already there. And she saw with a bolt of relief that he was standing at the end of the driveway. Behind that big black truck of Trevor’s.

  Laurel waved at Adam; he waved back. Jane got out of the car.

  “Wow, you look great,” Adam said. “You look…”

  “Don’t act shocked,” she said.

  “No, I’m not, it’s just…you haven’t looked like this since the accident.” He swallowed, risked a smile. “You look beautiful, Jane.”

  She was sure she wasn’t a beauty like Kamala or Amari, but she made herself smile. “Thanks. Is Trevor going to kick me out?”

  “Not with you looking like that.”

  “I appreciate the objectification.” She watched Laurel driving off. Adam was trying too hard to lift her spirits with the compliments. Everyone, wanting her to be normal again. It made her uneasy.

  “You look nice. That’s all I meant.”