Broken

by Karin Slaughter

  Cathy had told Sara as much when she’d first lost Jeffrey. “I’m glad you’ve found something that gives you peace.”

  “I think you’ve found something, too.” Tessa had finished the chicken leg, but she used the bone to spoon up more Cool Whip. “You’re different from when you first got here. You’re doing the work that you want to do.”

  “I don’t know about that.”

  “Where’s Will?”

  Sara groaned. “Please don’t start that again.”

  “The next time you see him, take that band out of your hair. You look prettier with it down.”

  “Please, please stop.”

  Tessa reached out and took her hand. “Can I tell you something?”

  “As long as it’s not advice on chasing after a married man.”

  She squeezed Sara’s hand. “I’m really in love with my husband.”

  Sara gave a careful “Okay.”

  “I know you think Lem is boring and too earnest and too self-righteous, and believe me, he can be all those things, but a thousand times a day, I hear a song, or I think of something funny, or Daddy says one of his stupid puns, and the first thing that comes into my head is ‘I want to tell Lem about this.’ And I know that halfway around the world, he’s thinking the same thing.” She paused. “That’s what love is, Sara, when there are so many things about you that you only want one person in the world to know.”

  Sara remembered how that felt. It was like being wrapped in a warm blanket.

  Tessa laughed. “Good Lord, I’m gonna start crying. When Lem gets home, he’s gonna think I’m some kind of basket case.”

  Sara put her hand over Tessa’s. “I’m glad you’ve found someone.” Her words were genuine. She could see that her sister was happy. “You deserve to be loved.”

  Tessa smiled knowingly. “So do you.”

  Sara chuckled. “I walked right into that.”

  “I’d better get to bed.” She groaned as she stood. “Wash your hands. You smell like chicken and Cool Whip.”

  Sara smelled her hands. Her sister was right. She stared again at the full sink, thinking she might as well start on the dishes so she could go to bed. She groaned as loudly as Tessa had when she got up from the table. Her back was hurting her from leaning over all day. Her eyes were tired. She rummaged under the cabinet for the dish liquid, hoping that her mother was out so she would have a legitimate excuse to leave the dishes until morning.

  “Crap,” Sara mumbled, finding the Dawn behind a full box of dishwashing powder that her mother had never opened. She heard footsteps in the hall. “Did you come back for the Cool Whip?” she asked. Tessa didn’t answer, but Sara was sure that she was there. “Don’t tell me you’re here to help.” She went into the hall and saw not Tessa, but Will Trent.

  “Hey.”

  He stood in the center of the hall. His leather briefcase was at his side. There was something different about him that Sara couldn’t quite put her finger on. He looked the same. He was even wearing the same clothes she’d seen him in for the last two days. There was definitely something wrong, though. He had a sadness about him that cut straight through.

  She waved him into the kitchen. “Come on in.” Sara put the dish liquid on the counter. Will hovered in the kitchen doorway.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “Your sister let me in. I was staring through the window in the door trying to figure out if y’all were still awake. I know it’s late.” He stopped, his throat working as he swallowed. “It’s really late.”

  “Is everything okay?”

  He nervously moved his briefcase from one hand to the other, then back again. “Please tell your mother I’m sorry I couldn’t make it to dinner. We had a lot to do, and I—”

  “It’s all right. She understands.”

  “Did the autopsies—” He stopped again, wiping his forehead with his sleeve. His hair was wet from the rain. “I was thinking while I was driving over here that maybe Jason’s murder was a copycat.”

  “No,” she told him. “The wounds were identical.” Sara paused. Obviously, something awful had happened. “Let’s sit down, okay?”

  “That’s all right, I—”

  She sat down at the table. “Come on. What’s wrong?”

  He glanced back toward the front door. She could tell he didn’t want to be here, but he seemed incapable of leaving.

  Sara finally took his hand and pulled him to the chair. He sat, the briefcase in his lap. “I’m sorry about this.”

  She leaned forward, resisting the urge to hold his hand. “Sorry for what?”

  He swallowed again. She let him speak in his own time. His voice was low in the large room: “Faith had her baby.”

  Sara put her hand to her mouth. “Is she all right?”

  “Yeah, she’s fine. Both of them are fine.” He took his cell phone out of his pocket and showed her a picture of a red-faced newborn in a pink knit hat. “I guess it’s a girl.”

  Faith had given the baby’s weight as well as her name in the message. Sara told him, “‘Emma Lee.’”

  “Eight pounds, six ounces.”

  “Will—”

  “I found this.” He put the briefcase on the table and opened the locks. She saw a stack of papers, an evidence bag with a red seal. He pulled a college notebook with a blue plastic cover from one of the pockets. Black fingerprint powder spotted the cover. “I tried to clean it up,” he said, wiping the grime on the front of his sweater. “I’m sorry. It was in Allison’s car and I …” He flipped through the pages, showing her the scrawled handwriting. “I can’t,” he said. “I just can’t.”

  She realized that Will hadn’t looked at her once since walking into the room. He had such an air of defeat about him, as if every word that came from his mouth caused him pain.

  Sara’s purse was on the counter. She got up and found her reading glasses. She told Will, “Mama fixed a plate for you. Why don’t you eat something and I’ll start on this?”

  He stared at the notebook in front of him. “I’m not really hungry.”

  “You’ve already missed supper. If you don’t eat that food, my mother will never forgive you.”

  “I really can’t—”

  Sara opened the warming drawer. Her mother had cooked for an army again, this time roast beef, potatoes, collards, green beans, and snap peas. The cornbread was wrapped in aluminum foil. Sara put the plate in front of Will, then went back to get silverware and a napkin. She poured a glass of iced tea and found some lemon in the refrigerator. While she was up, she turned on the oven so that she could warm the cherry cobbler sitting on the counter.

  She sat down across from Will and opened the notebook. She looked at him over her glasses. He hadn’t moved. “Eat,” she said.

  “I really—”

  “That’s the deal,” she told him. “You eat. I read.” She stared at him, making it clear that she wasn’t going to back down.

  Reluctantly, Will picked up the fork. She waited until he had taken a bite of potatoes to open the spiral-bound notebook.

  “Her name’s on the inside of the cover with the date, August first.” Sara went to the first page. “‘August first. Day one.’” She thumbed through the pages. “Each entry has the same format. Day two, day three …” She flipped to the back. “All the way to day one hundred four.”

  Will didn’t comment. He was eating, but she could tell he was having difficulty swallowing. Sara could not imagine his frustration over having to have the journal read to him. He clearly took it as a personal failure. She wanted to tell him it wasn’t his fault, but obviously, asking for Sara’s help had taken so much out of him that she couldn’t risk pushing him any further.

  She returned to the first page. “‘Day one,’” she repeated. “‘Prof. C was sarcastic today. Cried later for about twenty minutes. Just couldn’t stop. Was really annoyed in Dr. K’s class because D behind me kept passing notes to V and I couldn’t concentrate because they kept laughing.’”

  She
turned the page. “‘Day two. Cut myself shaving my leg pretty bad. Hurt all day. Was two minutes late for work but L didn’t say anything. Felt paranoid all day that he was going to yell at me. Can’t take him being mad.’”

  Sara kept reading, page after page of Allison’s thoughts on L at the diner and J who had forgotten that they were supposed to meet for lunch. Every notation described Allison’s feelings about the situation, but never in florid detail. She was either happy or sad or depressed. She cried, usually for a period of time that seemed unusually long given the circumstances. Despite the emotional revelations, there was something clinical about the telling, as if the girl was an observer watching her life go by.

  Getting through the entire journal took over an hour. Will finished his supper, then ate most of the cobbler. He folded his hands on the table and stared straight ahead at the wall. He paced until he realized the distraction slowed down her reading. When Sara’s voice started to falter, he got her a glass of ice water. Eventually, he noticed the dishes in the sink, and she read over her shame as he turned on the faucet and started cleaning. Her legs started to cramp from sitting so long. Sara ended up standing by him at the sink, so at least there was the appearance of her helping. Will had made it through all the pots and pans and was starting on the china when Sara finally reached the last entry.

  “‘Day one hundred four. Work was all right. Concentration bad all day. Slept nine hours last night. Took a two-hour nap during lunch. Should have studied. Felt guilty and depressed all day. No word from J. I guess he hates me now. Can’t blame him.’” She looked up at Will. “That’s it.”

  He glanced up from the bread plate in his hands. “I counted all the pages. There are two hundred fifty.”

  She checked the front cover, noting the page count. The girl hadn’t torn out any pages. Sara told him, “She stopped writing two weeks before she died.”

  “Something happened two weeks ago that she didn’t want to write down.”

  Sara put the notebook on the table and grabbed a towel. Will was doing a much more thorough job than Sara ever had. He changed out the water often and dried everything as he went along. There wasn’t much space left on the counters, so he’d made educated guesses about where things went. Sara would have to go back through and put the pots and pans in their proper place, but she didn’t want to do that in front of Will now.

  He saw the towel in her hands. “I’ve got this.”

  “Let me help.”

  “I think you’ve helped enough.” She thought he was going to leave it at that, but Will told her, “It’s been worse today than usual.”

  “Stress is a contributing factor—when you get tired or if something emotional happens.”

  He scrubbed hard at the plate in his hands. Sara saw that he hadn’t bothered to roll up his sleeves. The cuffs of his sweater were soaked. He said, “I’ve been trying to dig a new sewer line to my house. That’s why my laundry is behind.”

  Sara had been expecting a non sequitur, but she’d hoped he could hold off for a few moments longer. “My father built this house with money from people who try to do their own plumbing.”

  “Maybe he can give me some pointers. I’m pretty sure the trench I started is filled in by now.”

  “You didn’t use a trench box?” Sara stopped drying the plate. “That’s dangerous. You shouldn’t go past four feet without shoring up the sides.”

  He gave her a sideways glance.

  “I’m my father’s daughter. Call me when you’re back in Atlanta. I know my way around a backhoe.”

  He picked up a bread plate. “I think you’ve done me enough favors to last a good long while.”

  Sara watched his reflection in the window over the sink. His head was down as he concentrated on the task at hand. She reached back and loosened her ponytail. Her hair fell to her shoulders.

  She said, “Go sit down. I can finish the washing.”

  Will glanced up at her, then did a double take. She thought he was going to say something, but he picked up another plate and dunked it into the soapy water instead. Sara opened the drawer to put away the silverware. Her hair hung down in her face. She was glad for the cover.

  He said, “I hate leaving dishes lying around.”

  She tried for levity. “Don’t let my mother hear that. She’ll never let you leave.”

  “I had this foster mother named Lou once.” Will waited for her to look up in the window. “She worked all day at the supermarket, but she came home at noon to fix me lunch no matter what.” He rinsed the plate and handed it to Sara. “She always got home after I’d gone to bed, but one night I heard her come in. I went into the kitchen and there she was in her uniform—it was brown, too tight for her—and she was standing in front of the sink. It was piled with all the plates and dishes and leftover food from lunch. I hadn’t done anything while she was gone. I just watched TV all day.” He glanced up again at Sara’s reflection. “Lou was standing there looking at the mess in the sink and just bawling. Like, the kind of crying you do with your whole body.” He took the next dish off the pile. “I went into that kitchen and cleaned every single dish I could find, and for the rest of the time I was there, I never made her have to clean up after me again.”

  “Did she try to adopt you?”

  He laughed. “Are you kidding? She left me alone all day except for lunch. I was eight years old. They took me away when the school counselor noticed I hadn’t been to class in two months.” He pulled the drain on the sink. “She was a nice lady, though. I think they let her have an older kid.”

  Sara asked the question before she could stop herself. “Why weren’t you ever adopted? You were an infant when you entered the system.”

  Will kept his hand under the stream of water as he adjusted the temperature. She thought he was going to ignore her question, but he finally said, “My father had custody of me at first. The state took me away after a few months. They had good reasons.” He plugged the drain so the sink could fill. “I was in the system for a while, then an uncle showed up and tried to make a go of it. He meant well. I hope he meant well. But he wasn’t really equipped to take care of a child at that point in his life. I was in and out of his house, in and out of foster homes and the children’s home. Eventually, he gave up. By that time I was six years old and it was too late.”

  Sara looked up. Will was staring at her reflection again.

  He said, “You’ve heard about the six-year rule, right? You and your husband were trying to adopt. You must’ve heard it.”

  “Yes.” Sara felt a lump in her throat. She couldn’t look at him. She dried the saucer again, though not a drop of water was left on the surface. The six-year rule. She’d heard the phrase in her pediatric practice, long before Jeffrey had ever suggested they adopt. A child who had been in the system more than six years was considered tainted. Too many bad things had happened to him by then. His memories were too fixed, his behaviors too ingrained.

  Years ago, someone in Atlanta had heard this warning, too. Probably from a friend or maybe even a trusted family doctor. They had gone to the children’s home, seen six-year-old Will Trent, and decided he was too broken.

  He asked, “Does that journal sound like a twenty-one-year-old girl’s journal to you?”

  Sara had to clear her throat so she could speak. “I’m not sure. I didn’t know Allison.” She forced herself to think about his question. “It seems off to me.”

  “It doesn’t sound like a ‘Dear Diary’ sort of thing.” He started on the last stack of dishes. “It’s more like a long list of complaints about people, professors, her job, lack of money, her boyfriend.”

  Sara admitted, “She sounds kind of whiny.”

  “The point of whining is so other people hear you and feel sorry for you.” He asked, “Does she sound depressed?”

  “There’s no doubt about that. The journal makes it clear that she was having a very rough time of it. She tried to kill herself once before, which points to at least one depre
ssive episode in her past.”

  “Maybe she was in a suicide pact with Jason and a third person.”

  “That’s a pretty awful way to die if you want to kill yourself. Pills would be much easier. Hanging. Jumping off a building. Also, I think if there was a pact, they’d do it together.”

  “Did you find any signs of drug use on Tommy, Allison, or Jason?”

  “No outward signs. They were all healthy, of average or above average weight. The blood samples and tissues are on their way to Central. We’ll get something back in a week to ten days.”

  “Charlie and I were kicking around this theory that Jason could have been involved in Allison’s murder. We’re pretty sure the killer used him to lure Allison to the lake. Or at least his handwriting.” He turned off the water and wiped his hands on his jeans as he walked to his briefcase. “This was tucked inside the journal.”

  Sara took the plastic evidence bag he gave her. There was a note inside. “That paper looks familiar.” She read the words. “‘I need to talk to you. We’ll meet at the usual place.’”

  Will added the phrase from the suicide note. “‘I want it over.’”

  Sara sat down at the table. “Jason wrote Allison’s fake suicide note.”

  “Or, he wrote the entire note to somebody else, and that somebody tore off the bottom half and left it in Allison’s shoe as a warning to him.” He saw the flaw. “But then why did Allison have it in her notebook?”

  “No wonder your brain is tired.” Sara’s head was starting to ache just thinking about it.

  Will took another plastic bag out of his briefcase. “I found this in Tommy’s medicine cabinet. Charlie field-tested it, but he’s not sure what’s inside.”

  Sara rolled the pill bottle around to read the label through the plastic. “That’s strange.”

  “I was hoping you’d know what it is.”

  “‘Tommy, do not take these,’” she read. “I’m not a handwriting expert, but it seems to me that Allison wrote this. Why would she tell Tommy not to take them? Why not just throw them away?”

  Will didn’t offer her a quick answer. He sat back in his chair, staring at her. “They could be poison, but if you had poison, why would you stab somebody in the neck?”