Girls of Glass

by Brianna Labuskes

  It was an hour later when the pop of the blown tire jolted her.

  “Shit,” Zeke muttered as he pulled off onto the shoulder. The car came to a shaky stop, and she blinked hard, trying to make the situation make sense.

  Slamming his palm into the middle of the steering wheel, he swore.

  “I don’t have a spare.”

  And just like that, she was young again. Not sure what to do, what path to take. She wanted to be told the right choice to make.

  It was late. The sun had long ago set, and the sky was that deep velvet blue that spoke of midnight or close to it.

  At best, this would set them back hours. At worst, days.

  She’d have to call someone. There was no longer the option not to.

  Trudy got out without saying anything and paced in the narrow strip of dirt and pebbles that hugged the highway. A pickup passed them but didn’t slow.

  She yelled at the lights as they faded into the distance. She yelled because she had to do something with this rage and desperation and frustration that beat so painfully against her rib cage. She yelled because she was tired of people being shit, and life being shittier. She yelled because little girls shouldn’t have to die.

  It took her a while to realize she was in Zeke’s arms and they were on the ground. Her throat was sore, like she’d swallowed glass, and she thought she might have been yelling a long time. He held her in his lap, rocking her like she was a child, whispering nonsense. Not even to calm her down. It seemed more like he just wanted her to realize she wasn’t alone.

  “We have to call someone,” Zeke said when her sobs turned into hiccups muffled against his shoulder.

  They did. She knew it. Trudy closed her eyes, trying to focus on anything other than the pain. Whom? Whom could they trust? Mellie was useless. Sterling was never, and would never be, an option. Not in Trudy’s world. Hollis was a last resort, at best.

  “Nakamura?” she finally offered.

  He lifted one shoulder. “Up to you. He seemed like an okay guy, but so did Alice.”

  “And cops close ranks,” she said. She also had not earned any trustworthy points in their books over the course of the investigation. Whom would the man believe? His partner or the little shit of a teenager with an attitude problem? No. He was out.

  That left Charlotte, with her haunted eyes and the fragile way she held her shoulders straight, as if she relaxed at all she would fall apart.

  It was the choice she was going to have to live with, though.

  Trudy slid out of Zeke’s lap onto the hard ground and unlocked her phone. She thumbed to the contacts and gave herself to the count of five to change her mind. Then she hit “Call.”

  The line rang and rang and rang. It was late, maybe past midnight at this point, but Charlotte was a light sleeper, and if she saw who was calling, she’d answer immediately.

  When it kicked over to voice mail, Trudy swore and then tried to breathe evenly. If she gave in to the fear and desperation that clawed at the back of her throat, she would be useless. So she bit her lip and watched the little numbers on the clock switch over to the next. She would give Charlotte five minutes and then call her back.

  Just when she decided to cut that short to three minutes, her phone lit up.

  “Charlotte,” she said on a sob that surprised even her.

  “Trudy. Where are you? Are you hurt?”

  She could tell from Charlotte’s voice that the woman was on the edge of control herself. “I’m fine, I’m fine.”

  “What happened? What’s wrong?”

  Trudy froze, unable to put a voice to everything she’d learned. It was too big for her, too big for her small body, too big for her tongue, too big for her thoughts. The power of it, how it would change the world once it was told, scared her. But being scared was her natural state; she understood it.

  If she were actually young, she would have handed the phone to Zeke, had him explain. Or she would have started crying great, heaving gasps that would have left her aunt terrified and helpless.

  Beyond her years. She saw her red-slicked mouth curve over the words in her own mirror. Over and over again until they didn’t make sense.

  She wasn’t young.

  “It was Detective Garner,” Trudy said finally. “Alice Garner. She did it.”

  Silence greeted the revelation. But the line was still open.

  Finally, there was a shaky breath. “Are you sure?”

  Trudy nodded before remembering she was on the phone. “I think so. Sterling apparently had some kind of connection to the man who killed her daughter.”

  Something slammed, like a palm against a hard surface, and Charlotte cursed, low and harsh and unnatural. She sounded like someone Trudy didn’t know.

  Trudy pulled her legs to her chest and bit into her kneecaps in an attempt to control her breathing.

  “All right,” Charlotte finally said. “Trudy, listen to me. Are you listening?”

  And just like that, her aunt was back, her voice steady and even.

  “Yes, I’m listening.”

  “I want you to go to the closest ATM,” Charlotte said the second the agreement left Trudy’s lips. “Take out as much money as you can. Drive until you’re in a different state. It doesn’t matter which. In the morning, when the banks open, find one. Clean out your emergency account. You brought that passport with you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Disappear,” Charlotte said. “Do you understand what I’m telling you?”

  “Yes,” Trudy whispered again. There were already plans in place. Ones laid down to save Ruby. What she didn’t want to think about was why Charlotte was so insistent she go. What was her aunt going to do that she didn’t want Trudy involved with? She didn’t ask the question.

  “Lose the phone immediately,” Charlotte said. “Are you with anyone right now?”

  Her eyes found Zeke. “Yeah. My friend Zeke.”

  “Do you trust him?”

  “Yes.”

  Charlotte paused. “Have him drop you at the closest bus station when you cross the state line. But then you’re going to have to cut ties with him.”

  “Okay,” Trudy said around the small pang. It wasn’t like they were that close. But they’d been in this together. She’d long forgotten what it had felt like to have someone at her back. Just because.

  “Trudy,” Charlotte started. And then stopped.

  There was so much to say in the silence that followed. Everything between them had always been so complicated. But in this moment, this moment when Trudy realized she probably wouldn’t see her aunt again, she wanted nothing more than to apologize.

  Apologize for the resentment and the pain and for every time Trudy had lashed out. Apologize for the world being unfair even though it wasn’t Trudy’s place to do that. Apologize because there had been a time when she’d stopped saying “I love you” and never started again.

  But mostly she wanted to apologize for the fact that she wasn’t the type of person to apologize.

  So she didn’t say anything, and her aunt didn’t, either, and Trudy wished it were different but knew it never would be.

  “Goodbye,” she finally whispered, soft and final. Then she hung up on the quiet breathing that filled the other side of the line.

  “She wants you to run,” Zeke said, his eyes on her face.

  Trudy nodded.

  He tilted his head. “What do you want?”

  What she wanted was for Alice Garner to pay for what she’d done. An eye for an eye. That’s how the woman lived—that’s what shaped her. Why not let it destroy her?

  But it would ruin Trudy, returning to St. Petersburg. There was nothing left there for her other than vengeance. She could let it turn her soul black, but then she would be no better than Alice, blind to anything other than a warped sense of justice.

  Or, she could run.

  She thought of nights spent shaking and bruised and terrified under blankets. She thought of the lifetime of barbed wor
ds that followed. She thought of perfect lipstick that hid cruel truths. She thought of her feet, buried deep in the city’s cement.

  She thought of Charlotte and knew she would mourn that loss. She thought of Mellie and knew she wouldn’t. She thought of Ruby’s grave.

  She thought about choices she could live with.

  The night had gone still as if it were waiting for her answer. Trudy looked at Zeke, met his eyes, let him see the clarity in hers. “How far to Georgia?”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  CHARLOTTE

  August 5, 2018

  Seven days after the kidnapping

  The “goodbye” was soft and fragile and so unlike Trudy that it was jarring to Charlotte.

  Her lips moved to form words, to say something, anything, but even as she tried to give voice to them, she realized it was too late. Trudy had already hung up.

  If this was to be their goodbye, at least it fit them, full of silence and sadness and an unspoken recognition that they had been through too much to speak platitudes now.

  Her brain was too fuzzy anyway. She couldn’t think about Trudy; there was no space for her anymore. There was no space for anything beyond what needed her attention.

  Alice Garner.

  There were flashes of the woman—at the mall, at the beach, at the diner. There had always been something harsh about her face: the slashes of her cheekbones and the thinness of her lips. But her eyes had seemed kind.

  “You helped us,” Charlotte said.

  Alice’s face didn’t soften. “That doesn’t mean I’m helping you now.”

  What had come next? What had the woman said?

  She pulled back onto the road. It was midnight, and she had a gun. But she didn’t have a plan. Not yet. So she drove. Mindless.

  It was only when she pulled the keys from the ignition that she realized where she’d ended up. The small turquoise house was dark, and there were no other cars in the driveway.

  Her knuckles were white against the steering wheel. Was this where Alice had kept Ruby? Was this where she’d died?

  Charlotte was out of the car on her knees, heaving, before her mind caught up with her body. The night air was cool against her sweat-slicked skin, and the sour taste of bile lingered in the crevices of her mouth. She pushed back onto her calves and swiped at the tears that were falling, unchecked, along her cheeks, slipping down her neck, pooling in the dip of her collarbones.

  Ruby.

  Her head throbbed, a punishment for her weakness, for the way her body had seized and rebelled at the sight of the house. Charlotte rocked up to her feet, digging her fingers into her temple as if that would help alleviate the pain.

  She kept her eyes away from the house as she made her way along the private boardwalk over the dunes.

  When she crested the little hill, eternity stretched out before her, an endless ocean.

  The waves, which had turned an inky silver beneath the moon, lapped at the sand, and she thought maybe she could just keep walking until the water swallowed her, until the throbbing agony in her chest burned away along with the oxygen.

  Instead, her knees buckled, and she collapsed on the beach. She was so tired that her very bones felt fragile, brittle, like they could shatter.

  Always falling apart, just like they said she would.

  It wouldn’t take much to find sweet relief from this life, from this pain that felt more real and more constant than anything else she’d ever known. She had a gun.

  But what would everyone think when they found her sprawled in the same location where Ruby had been only days earlier? A headline would flash across a screen; lines would be drawn between facts even if there was no truth to the connection; a man slouched over milky cornflakes would grunt at his spouse, “Didn’t I tell you?” Then they would move on, life would interfere, and forever and always they would think Charlotte Burke had killed her own daughter.

  Did it matter? The answer came easy, like she’d already decided on something.

  Perhaps she had.

  There was the gun. There was Alice Garner. There was a tight heat beneath her breastbone that demanded action. And there was a quiet voice in her head that whispered what needed to be done.

  For once in her life, she was going to be strong.

  What had she said to Alice in the diner? When her thoughts had been loose and unguarded around a woman she’d had no reason to trust.

  “I used to think I had ethics or some sort of moral compass, at least.”

  Alice watched her, unblinking. “And then Ruby . . .”

  “Now I have none.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  ALICE

  August 5, 2018

  Seven days after the kidnapping

  Alice couldn’t take her eyes off the speck of blood. It was rusty brown and sat at the very edge of her nail bed, innocuous as an errant dab of polish. She wanted to rub the splotch into her skin until it disappeared, until it became a part of her.

  She and Nakamura were leaning against the back wall of the study that still reeked of copper while EMTs and techs and officers hovered and tried to pretend they were being helpful. Two young officers stood in the corner, their elbows pointy things as they held themselves rigid and scribbled in notebooks. She couldn’t imagine what they were writing.

  Everyone was so loud even though it was the time of morning that called for hushed voices.

  Nakamura nudged her.

  It took longer than it should have to turn her head, and when she did, she saw concern in the downward tug of his mouth. Had he asked her something?

  “Hmm?” There shouldn’t have been blood. They’d worn gloves, been careful, been safe. She curled her hand into a fist and shoved it into the pocket of her jeans.

  “Are you okay?” Nakamura asked, and Alice couldn’t tell if the delay had been because he was studying her face or because her mind was slow to process the question. She could tell, though, that it hadn’t been what he’d asked moments earlier when his words had been nothing but white noise to her.

  Now they were back to the script. Are you okay?

  “I guess you were right, huh?” Nakamura said when he realized she wasn’t going to respond.

  “About?”

  There was another pause, more worry writing itself into the lines of his face. He was thrown by the emptiness of her voice, by her confusion. She was as well.

  “Sterling being our guy.”

  You were right. The letter had been found just as she’d planned.

  It wouldn’t hold up to anyone who examined it too carefully. Most wouldn’t, though. Most would take the neat admission of murder and graver sins at face value, their minds recoiling from the latter and latching on to the former. It was a good story, one that was satisfying and easy to follow, one that soothed concerns over random predators and kept fears of serial killers at bay. But best of all, it was one that gave them a good bad guy to hate.

  Tell a story. Create a villain.

  It would be a thorn that snagged at Nakamura’s skin, though. For all that he teased Alice about her need for a solid narrative to sell to the jury, he was a veteran cop and a damn good one. It didn’t make sense how the letter laid it out, not with all that he knew about the timeline, the players, the motives. But she’d been planting seeds the whole time. The pictures, the connections, the patterns.

  “Who do you think did it, Alice?” Nakamura asked just like she’d wanted him to.

  “What do you want me to say?”

  “I want you to say what’s in your gut.”

  A beat, a pause. Let the tension build. “Sterling Burke.”

  Nakamura smiled. “And that’s why you’re on the case.”

  All she could hope is that the letter would distract him long enough.

  Long enough for what? It was a dark question that circled and paced and crawled along the inside of her skull, one that she didn’t want to answer.

  Her womb pulsed, and her throat ached from the scream that s
he held tethered inside her body. This wasn’t how she was supposed to feel, not after months of planning, not after years of waiting.

  She pressed her thumbnail against the rough fabric of her jeans pocket. Sterling Burke’s DNA was on her—on her hand, on her skin, on her clothes.

  The muscles in her throat fluttered as if they were going to snap shut; her fingers shook, her jaw ached. The numbness in her bones, it was still there, but beneath it was a panic that pressed greedy hands against the thick fog.

  “I need some air,” she gasped, pushing off the wall. A few gazes flicked her way, but there was no suspicion behind shuttered eyes, no curiosity. She could just leave, walk out of the house, get in the car, and drive away, and not a single person would stop or question her.

  The idea was terrifying.

  On a better day she wouldn’t have been surprised by Bridget. But as it was, she didn’t notice the woman until she’d reached out, long fingers wrapping around the delicate bones of Alice’s wrists.

  “Can I borrow you for a sec, then, kiddo?” Bridget asked, her voice light and easy. There was an undercurrent to it, though, which finally snapped Alice out of her haze. Here. Here was the suspicion that was so lacking in the other room.

  Bridget let go of her once Alice nodded. They both turned, silently making their way along the corridor, through the kitchen, down the back steps of the porch. By some unspoken agreement, they didn’t stop until they reached the shadows by the side of the garage.

  They squared off then, like two boxers who knew well the way their opponent dipped and jabbed and attacked, and the space between them felt like a chasm that would never be bridged again.

  Bridget rubbed at her arm, just over the ink of her tic-tac-toe tattoo, her thumb dragging over the x’s and then the o’s.

  “I don’t know why you did it,” Bridget finally said. “And I don’t want to hear whatever fucked-up justification you’ve come up with.”

  Alice had been expecting it. Ever since the woman had pulled her away from a crime scene when she never pulled Alice away from a crime scene. Ever since the press of a calloused thumb against the delicate bones of Alice’s hand in the hallway. Ever since that call last night. No, they don’t deserve to have their stories told.