by Jeff Abbott
“Grow up. College is not high school. There are no thrones for you to sit on.”
“Honestly, I thought I was doing you a favor being your friend.”
There is a breaking point in friendships, and Amari Bowman reached hers in that moment. She thought of simply turning and walking away, avoiding the drama, but instead she let the words burning inside her flash into fire. “Kamala. You’ve never made it easy to be your friend,” Amari said. “You had power, and people gravitated to that. But I’d never have called you with a problem or for a shoulder to cry on. And you don’t have the power now. You’re just one of many. There’s a decent girl inside you and you won’t let her out. And I think I outgrew you.” Amari turned her back on her, went to Trevor, who was standing alone on the patio, gave him a hug, thanked him for the invitation. She gave Nana a hug as well. She walked by Kamala like she was a ghost.
Amari hadn’t had a beer or a glass of wine, so she was fine to drive, but she was trembling, her chest thick with the sour feeling that comes after a fight with a friend. She regretted the fight, but not the sentiment. As she got into her car, the phone rang.
She hoped it was Kamala calling, but it wasn’t. A local number. “Hello?”
“Ms. Bowman? My name is Matteo Vasquez. I wrote some newspaper articles a couple of years ago about the Jane Norton/David Hall car crash and I interviewed you then.”
“Yes, I remember.”
“I was hoping I might talk to you again. If you’re not busy, could we meet?”
“Now?”
“Sure, if you have time and I’m not interrupting your Saturday night.”
“My Saturday night flamed out. Are you writing another article about Jane? Because she seems to be doing much better.”
“Have you seen her?”
“Yes. Twice today.” That wasn’t exactly accurate, she hadn’t talked to Jane but had seen her at the party. Talking with Trevor on the patio, alone, something major clearly going down between them.
“Wow, then I really would like to talk to you.”
“Maybe you could leave Jane alone.”
“Are you not aware there have been unusual events—you could even say attacks in two of the cases—against people who were involved in the investigations?”
“Um. Jane mentioned that. But I wasn’t part of the investigation.”
“You were prominent in the case. You passed the class note, you saw them at the restaurant.”
“Are you saying I’m in danger? From Jane?”
“I’m trying to figure that out, but I think you should be aware. I’m writing a new article about it.”
“Can’t you tell me what’s going on?”
“It would be better if we could meet face-to-face.” He was holding out for another interview.
Amari bit at her lip, thinking. “All right.” She gave him her address. “There’s a little coffee shop a block away from my apartment. We can meet at my place and walk there, they never have any parking.”
“All right, I’ll see you in a few. Thank you, Ms. Bowman.”
Amari drove back to the campus, parked her car in the lot of her small apartment building. Thinking. Maybe it wasn’t best to meet with this guy alone. Not that she was afraid of him—he had been polite and professional before. But maybe it wouldn’t be a bad idea to have someone else there when she talked to him. Amari’s mother, Renee, was a lawyer so she called her and explained.
“Have him come up to the apartment and wait for me,” Renee said. “Let’s talk there and then we can see how to proceed. I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”
“All right.”
Amari waited in the lot for Vasquez; he pulled in a few minutes later, a truck driving past him and parking in a No Parking zone, its engine idling.
“Hey,” Vasquez said, walking toward her. “Thanks for meeting me.”
“Instead why don’t I make coffee here, is that OK? My mom wanted to join us as well.”
“Your mom, the lawyer.”
“You do have a good memory.”
“Came in handy writing about amnesia.” The joke fell flat and he saw it. “And I’ve been reviewing all my notes. That’s fine, whatever you’re comfortable with. Do you want us to wait down here for her to arrive?”
She saw someone hurrying across the parking lot, sticking to the shadows. “Um, no,” she said. “I’ll put the decaf on, if you’d like some, and I know my mom will drink a cup.”
“That’s fine.”
They started to walk into the courtyard of the apartment. She heard a distant noise, like breaking glass.
“Did you hear that?”
Vasquez had been asking her what she was studying. “No, I didn’t.”
“Oh. Never mind.” The complex was full of UT students, there was always a bit of noise happening. And then she gave him the rote answer about her studies and her activities, the kind she gave when her parents’ friends asked her how college was going. They walked up to her second-floor apartment.
“So how’s Jane?” Vasquez asked. He’d try to talk to her before her mother got here.
She thought, Jane is a pain. But I remember when I thought she was kind of cool and funny. Spoke her own mind, instead of Kamala speaking it for everyone. But she said instead, “I think she’s doing a lot better.”
“Is that so? Did she approach you to talk or did you call her up for some reason?”
As they walked toward her apartment, Amari saw with annoyance that the lights along the balconies were out. All of them. Stupid landlords, she thought, they need to keep this place up. She stepped into the darkness, Vasquez following, using his phone as a flashlight, aiming it toward the floor. She passed three doors, reaching her own, close to the stairwell.
As she fumbled for her keys, she thought of times when Kamala had gone full Lakehaven princess and she and Jane would exchange the subtlest of eye rolls, and it had made Amari think that perhaps the real friend she should cultivate was Jane.
“There’s glass on the floor,” Vasquez said, shifting the flashlight around, and she saw it then, thought of the noise she’d heard—and some basic instinct told her to get into the apartment, now.
She unlocked her door and pushed it open, when a shadow rushed from the stairwell. She heard a hiss of air as something swung toward Vasquez, and he dropped in silence, the lit phone skittering along the concrete. A spray of wetness struck the back of her neck. She didn’t scream, her focus on just getting inside and slamming the door. But then she heard the hiss again and a sudden agony exploded her between the shoulders. She fell to the tiled floor of the apartment, the air driven from her lungs. She rolled, trying to face the threat, the light from the fallen phone catching the crowbar as it was raised to deliver another blow.
45
JANE HURRIED AROUND to the back window of Adam’s room. Raised the window. Looked in at the stranger who was sitting on the bed she normally slept in, propped up on pillows, watching a movie on a tablet.
“Hello,” she said.
“Hi,” he said, looking up with a smile. “Aren’t you a cute peeping tom?”
“Um, are you Adam’s new roommate?”
“Yeah, just got assigned, I was in off-campus housing, put in a special request.” She noticed he had a leg in a cast, with crutches. “I’m on the lacrosse team, took a bad spill during a game two days ago. Just easier to be on campus for the rest of the semester while I heal up.”
“Of course,” she said. Which meant now she would be on the streets, or in the house with her mother, who had kept secrets from her. “I’m in Adam’s study group, I left some clothes.” She pointed at the bag where she kept her gear. “Would you mind handing it to me?” She didn’t want to climb through the window in her dress.
He hopped over to the bag and gave it to her with a friendly, flirty smile, and she remembered she was still in her nice dress, with her combed hair and her makeup. “I’m looking forward to meeting Adam. What’s your name?”
“Jane.
He’s not here a lot. It’ll be like having a single.”
She turned and walked away, not waiting for his question on how she knew Adam’s living habits.
She had someone else to go see.
* * *
Apartment 23. She knocked. She saw the dot of light through the peephole dim, and brighten again. She waited, and Kamala opened the door with a saccharine smile and an equally artificial greeting. “Did the party not agree with you, Jane? Me neither, once I saw you there.”
“I never thought I’d say this, but I’m sorry. I’m sorry for whatever David and I did to you.”
It wasn’t what Kamala wanted to hear. “It’s easy to say when you don’t remember it.”
“Don’t you want to say anything back to me?”
“Like what?”
“An apology.”
“What the hell for?”
“You planted that note at the car crash scene. My suicide note.”
Kamala stared at her but took a step back. “You are legit crazy.”
“No, it’s the only explanation that makes sense to me.”
“Nothing makes sense to you, damage.”
A hot darkness rose in Jane’s chest.
“The note was written long before the crash. The Halls did a chemical analysis and they kept that quiet. I didn’t write it that night. I didn’t write that because I wanted David dead, because I was pining for him. I wrote it because I missed my dad so much. So much.”
Kamala started to shove the door closed and Jane pushed in and showed her what she’d brought from home: the gun from her mother’s safe. She didn’t aim it at Kamala, she kept it by her side.
Kamala froze. “Jane, oh please, put that away.”
“I just want you to listen. Nod if you will.”
Kamala nodded.
“If when my dad died, I wrote a note like that, and I didn’t destroy it, I wonder: Who is the one person I might have shared such a note with?”
Kamala averted her gaze.
“There’s my answer.” She could barely speak. “How?”
“It was inside your favorite book. A Wrinkle in Time. You always loved it, but you read it obsessively after your dad died. Except the girl in the book loses her dad and then wins him back.” Her voice broke. “You had shown it to me when you wrote it a few months after your dad died. I told you to tear it up, don’t let anyone see it, but you didn’t. Because it was about your dad, in a sad way, and so you kept it.”
“So you put it to”—Jane paused—“good use.”
Now Kamala looked at her. “I was at both your houses the morning after the crash. Bringing food, doing laundry for your mom, helping Mrs. Hall. So I took the book with the note inside from your room and then I planted the note at the scene. No one saw me, it was easy, I’d brought flowers to lay there. No one looked twice at me. And then I drove back to your house, and a bunch of parents were there cooking and cleaning the house for your mom while she was at the hospital with you, so I went to the Halls’ and I put the book on David’s shelf. I couldn’t bear to keep it. We all thought you would die. No one knew you would wake up, and then you did, but you didn’t remember. Then I never got a chance to put it back.” Her voice was very small. “Of course the police found the note the same day I planted it. And that was that.”
“How could you do that to me?”
“How could you be with David?”
“The lake house. Trevor said you went to the lake house. That’s where you saw us.”
Now the shame was gone from Kamala’s face. Now there was only misery. “I found you both. I watched you through the window. You were crying. David took you in his arms. He kissed you, but like he’d never kissed me. He picked you up in his arms. You kissed him back. You—you wrapped your legs around his waist.” Here her voice wavered. “He leaned you back against the wall…kissing you like you were everything to him and I was nothing. My best friend I’d given so much to after her dad died. The boy I still loved. I suppose if I’d stood there and watched, you would have had sex right in front of me.”
The words were like a slap across the face.
“You couldn’t wait to take him from me. Me, the friend who’d been best to you. Who’d let you tag along and be socially acceptable when everyone else found you a bit odd and strange and not that much fun to be around.”
“Well, you’ve paid me back,” Jane said. “Congratulations.”
“Why do you think everyone believed the suicide note? Because you were that person. The depressive, the complainer, the nobody. Sorry your dad died, but life goes on…”
Jane slapped Kamala before she thought about it. A good, hard slap, the kind the giver feels all the way up her arm and the kind the recipient feels in her spine, even though it’s her face that took the blow.
“Clearly we’re both awful,” Jane said. “But you don’t ever talk about my dad that way.”
Kamala said nothing, her shame-dulled eyes on the gun.
“So did you just walk away?”
“David set you down and went into the other room. Probably to find a condom. I came in and you and I argued. You tried to tell me there was a good reason, you begged me to forgive you. Like, there could be a reason for that. I shoved you to the floor. You were screaming. David separated us and told me I had to leave, it was dangerous to stay. Like, you know, there was something else going on. I told the two of you that you deserved each other. I left.”
“You texted Trevor.”
“I knew about you two. I thought maybe sweet, dumb football player ought to know you were putting out for David but not for him. And I texted David’s dad. Just so his parents would stop worrying about where you were, since you clearly weren’t studying.”
“Then what?”
“I left. I went home and cried into my pillow because of all the love and friendship I’d wasted on a whore like you and the love I’d wasted on a jerk like David.”
“Where was the crowbar?”
“What?”
“The crowbar we bought.”
“I have no damn idea, and who cares?” Now the heat was back in her voice. “Are you going to shoot me? Now you know.”
“Why didn’t you tell me this?”
Kamala stared at her. “Why should I? You killed David. You took him from me and then you killed him.”
“I wonder what people would think of you if they knew you planted that note,” Jane said softly. “It’s the kind of thing that spreads fast, like that video of Perri Hall attacking me. ‘Honors Student Frames Accident as Suicide Attempt in Revenge Plot.’ I wonder if the police would like to know how much you interfered with the investigation.” She wanted to scream, to beat Kamala, and she couldn’t. She hid behind the calm in her own voice. “I mean, I was hurt so badly in the crash, you just had to be sure I was hurt even more. Punished even more. Who does that? How did you look at yourself in the mirror?”
Kamala didn’t answer, because the answer was too awful.
“‘Best friends forever,’” Kamala said. “That was a mistake.”
Their mutual betrayals lay between them like a stone wall that could almost be seen.
“The gun is empty,” Jane said. “I didn’t bring any bullets for it. But I know where the bullets are. And maybe I’m crazy enough to use them, because right now it is taking everything I have not to beat you senseless. What I did was wrong, and I’m truly sorry, but it was between you and me. You let the world think the worst of me and then you offered me a shoulder. You made a lie out of what little life I had left. There’s something deeply wrong with you, and that means a lot coming from a wreck like me. You stay away from me. And from my mother.” Jane turned and walked out, the gun feeling like a weight in her hand.
* * *
She had been to Bettina’s apartment once in the time she’d been living in Adam’s dorm room. She knocked, hoping he’d just come here.
Bettina, the German graduate student, opened the door, face bleary with sleep.
&n
bsp; “Hi, Bettina,” she said. “I’m sorry to bother you so late, but is Adam here? I need to speak with him.”
“Why would Adam be here?” Her accent was heavy and she sounded angry.
“Because he’s your boyfriend.”
“He dumped me. Because of you.”
“Me?”
“Don’t play like you don’t know.”
“I promise you I don’t.”
“Well, he’s not here, and he’ll never be here again, because he’s obsessed with you.”
“That’s not so.” Adam was her friend. He wasn’t more than that. But then she thought: the looks he’d given her, the time just tonight he’d taken her hand. Support or something more?
“You can have him, Jane.” And she shut the door.
46
JANE DROVE TREVOR’S truck back to his house. The easygoing party had wound down; only a few people remained. Trevor met her at the door and said, “What’s wrong?” and she said, “I can’t go home right now. Can I just sit out in the backyard? Alone?” She wished her voice sounded stronger. She had felt like her legs would give way on the way back to his truck.
He nodded. She went and sat under the stars and watched the spill of the bright lights across the black sky. The party noise, now down to only a bit of stray laughter, went quiet; she realized Trevor must be easing the few remaining guests out. She sat there, sick with her own betrayal of her friend, sick with Kamala’s retaliation against her, sick with the thought that Adam felt about her in a way she couldn’t return. If only I hadn’t been with David. If only David and I had made a better choice. A more thoughtful choice. If only Kamala had forgiven me. If only she had never found out. If only Adam had just told me. All the possibilities, all the decisions, all the twists of fate. Life, with a hundred different paths.
Nana came out, walked over to her, and gave her a hug as Jane stood. For a second Jane thought he’d told Nana everything, but then she knew he wouldn’t. Nana said, “I’m glad you came here, sweetie. I hope you have a good night.” And then she went back inside the house.
