“I was with someone else,” she chokes.
He goes so still. Like her words turned him to ice, and the next thing she says might shatter him. “I didn’t mean—I didn’t want it to happen the way it did.” Stop talking. You’re only making it worse.
“Then why did it?” he mumbles.
“It happened too fast.” Tears slip out from between her lashes. “I didn’t think it through.”
“That’s bullshit,” Michael says thickly. He presses one palm against his eye, and pain shoots through Avery’s chest. She’s so selfish, how does she explain? She thought it was a one-time indiscretion, like Michael’s incident with Claude. Then it was a fling. Then, suddenly, it was a secret. And she never had an excuse to break up with Michael, World’s Best Boyfriend.
“You always have a choice to cheat, Aves. If you didn’t want me, you should’ve dumped me.”
Avery balls her hands. “I don’t want to hurt you—”
“Too fucking late.” He leans against the couch but doesn’t shove her leg off him. Even now he’s thinking about her. But her legs prickle against him and she draws them in until her knees hit her chest. She wraps her arms around them, as though she can ball herself up and escape from the world.
“Just tell me who you’re going to be holding hands with in the halls on Monday. Don’t make me find out the hard way.”
“I . . .” She presses her face into her knees, letting her pajamas grow wet.
“You can do that much for me.” Michael’s voice wobbles, pleading.
“I promised,” she whispers.
“Promised to go behind my back?”
“I promised not to tell.”
Michael stands up and pushes his hands through his hair until they meet at the back of his skull. “Jesus, Aves. We’re past that. I’m officially dumped, okay? I just want two days to come to terms with whoever your new boyfriend is.”
“I promised them I wouldn’t tell,” she says again, lips against her knees.
There’s an ugly pause. Avery risks looking up. Michael’s face is contorted, and she knows he’s picking over her sentence, trying to come to a different conclusion. But Avery Cross knows how to use her words, and when to emphasize the right ones.
“Them,” he says at last.
“Please.” Her words twist and cut inside her, vying to get out. She doesn’t know if she’s begging for him to understand, or listen, or even not to tell.
“Whatever. I’ll see you Monday.” He turns and hurries out of the living room, head down.
She doesn’t go after him. She sits on the couch and keeps her forehead pressed against her knees until she hears the front door latch. Then she dumps the ice pack on the floor and runs upstairs before Mrs. Cross can come in and demand to know what’s going on or say one more word about her stupid cookies.
She flops on the bed. Tears scatter across the quilt. It’s a strange feeling, this hurt. She aches, but not with longing or frustration or anger. She burns mostly with shame. She should’ve broken up with Michael a long time ago.
But then there was the Emma problem, and the relationship that had to stay secret, and Michael’s complete inability to be a jerk worth dumping—
She wipes her eyes. Need to talk to u, she texts, then taps the side of her phone as she waits for a reply.
Through her window she sees Michael’s headlights flicker on, and an angry laugh escapes her. She can’t even wait till he’s gone. He pulls slowly out of her driveway, snow crunching beneath his tires. His silver-blue car disappears in the gloom.
Forget it. Im coming over. She shimmies out of her pajamas and pulls on a pair of thick spandex leggings. She hears Mrs. Cross’s tread on the stairs as she pulls on a sports bra.
The door opens, a sliver of yellow light blocked by shadow. “Aves? Are you okay?” Mrs. Cross asks tentatively, because she knows the answer.
“Michael broke up with me.” Avery’s voice quivers. She grabs a T-shirt. “I’m going for a run.”
Mrs. Cross pauses, trying to sort through all the things she wants to say. She settles on “You’re still grounded, hon.” She sounds sorry, but she doesn’t say it. Maybe she expected Michael to walk out the moment Avery told him about the Valium. Maybe she thinks it’s what Avery deserves. Well, Avery does deserve it. “And anyway, you shouldn’t be out at this time of night right now.” Because what would people think of the Crosses if they let their daughter run around with a murderer on the loose?
“It’s going to put me off my game tomorrow.” She adds a little wheedle to her voice. She knows her parents don’t want anyone asking, What’s wrong with Avery? Why wasn’t she doing her best? “A run will clear my head. I’ll stick to the well-lit streets. It’ll help me focus and keep me from eating my feelings.” She puts a hand on her belly, even though she’s afraid she’ll throw up if she has even a spoonful of post-breakup ice cream.
“What about your ankle?” Mrs. Cross says.
“I’ll go easy on it. Mr. G said I could still do physical activity. Mom, I need this.”
Mrs. Cross looks at Avery suspiciously. “If you say you’re just going for a run, then okay. But if I find out you went anywhere else, you are grounded until you get married.”
“It’s just a run.” Avery doesn’t even blink. She can lie when she needs to.
Her mom stares for a long moment. Avery meets her gaze. “You have twenty minutes,” Mrs. Cross says at last.
“Thanks.” Avery gives her a hard hug, then jogs down the stairs. She pulls on her running shoes, slips her phone into the pocket of her leggings, and lets herself out.
She inhales a freezing lungful of air and coughs out a cloud. She shouldn’t go out without a sweater or scarf or hat, but she doesn’t care. She’ll be fine. She’s got her phone. And she doesn’t have a lot of time.
She bounces on the balls of her feet a couple of times, then takes off. She doesn’t go easy on her ankle. Her pace is cautious, at first, as she scopes out the snowpack and ice with her running shoes. But soon she starts to speed up. She runs like she’s racing for a one-way ticket out of Lorne. She runs like her life is unraveling.
She runs like she ran in the woods, two nights ago.
Her heart drums in her ears. The soft sounds around her transform to footfalls, to the snap of twigs, to shouts behind. She doesn’t look back. She just runs, and prays, and runs, and listens for Anna’s growl as though she can hear it even here.
She races past the shining new fortresses of wealth her father helped build, past apartments ready for the ski industry. As she goes the buildings turn from brand-new to almost new to still nice to dilapidated. Far above, the mountains stand as silent, uncaring watchmen.
An engine rumbles. Too late she sees the black nose of a car, pulling into the driveway to her right. Instead of trying to stop, she leaps and skids on the ice. The car brakes heavily. The door opens.
Avery forces herself to slow and jog back around. She knows where she is. She’s just gone by Emma’s house. And Chief Baines is coming home late.
“Avery?” he calls. “That you?”
Her pulse spikes. He’s the last—no, second-to-last person she wants to talk to right now. But if she keeps running, he might wonder why, might follow her, might start to unravel the long string that led her here.
“Hello, Mr. Baines. I know I’m out past curfew, but—”
Baines waves a hand. He has a scraggly three-day beard and his graying hair shines like moonlight. “So what? Come here.”
She goes over and lets him pull her into a hug. His police jacket is freezing. Snow and mud and pine needles stick to the arms. Mud is splattered all down his front, and up on the hood of his car. His eyes blaze with triumph and hate and tears, even though the rest of him looks like it’s about to fall apart right there on the drive as he lets her go. “You were so good to my girl.” He puts a hand on her shoulder. It feels like a shackle.
“It’s nothing, Mr. Baines.” She wonders if he’s drunk. She wonde
rs if she could outrun him.
“No. It’s not nothing. And you deserve to be the first to know.”
Her heart speeds up, pushing against her ribs. It’s hard to breathe.
“We found the bastard.”
“Um, who?”
“West. Adams West. We’re gonna release a statement tomorrow, but I had to tell you now. He’s never going after you girls again.”
He’s grinning, dazed, squeezing her shoulder hard enough to twist the bone. And Avery’s heart isn’t beating so fast anymore. In fact, she’s pretty sure it’s stopped beating altogether.
She looks at his face, and she knows.
He hasn’t found West.
“That’s great,” she says, maybe overdoing it with the chipper Avery voice. “That’s really great. I’ll look for it in the paper tomorrow and I’ll tell the whole team.”
“Yeah.” He nods. “Yeah.”
“Mr. Baines, I sort of have to get going. . . .” She smiles apologetically.
He lets go of her shoulder with a deep breath. His face still flickers between sorrow and rage and the fierce joy that comes from the hunt.
Avery takes a few steps back and flees.
She runs until she thinks she’s outrun her breath. She runs until her legs are numb. She runs until the fences go from chain link to rotting posts to nothing at all, until the broken windows are nailed over with wooden boards wrapped in plastic. She runs past men who are out late cleaning the streets because the snowplow doesn’t come here, past houses with drooping gutters like eyelids. She runs until she comes to a small, dark one with just one lone light on in the kitchen.
Avery ducks through the neighbor’s part of the yard. In a few hours the snow will obscure her footprints, and she’ll have been nothing but a ghost. That’s what she needs to be: something no one sees and no one cares about.
She raps on the window she wants. Waits until it slides up a fraction. Heat flushes her face. Still, she needs to focus. “We have a huge problem.”
Diary Entry
Emma Baines—September 1, 2018
I have leads. I’m scared shitless, but I’ve got leads.
Foolish Mr. Pendler left his computer logged in while he and Samantha went off-campus for an interview. So I snooped and got the names of everyone who went to the Christmas party and got a pair of boots. A list of suspects.
Next up: cross-reference with alibis. From the list, there are a few who stand out. People who would have signed notes to get Lizzy out of class. People it would have been natural for her to see.
I’m not writing down names until my evidence is watertight. But I have some office sleuthing to do. Because if Lizzy had photos, a secret account, anything—I have to connect them to someone. And then I can make this case public.
It’s gonna burn Lorne down.
A joint statement from the Jefferson-Lorne and Fort Collins Police Departments
In the late hours of Friday evening a body was discovered by hikers at the bend of the Lorne River, half a mile downstream from Anna’s Run. It is presumed to have been deceased since early Thursday morning.
The body has been identified as one Randy Silverman, an on-again, off-again member of the homeless community and an ex-convict with two counts of premeditated manslaughter on his record. Wounds indicate that Mr. Silverman was fatally injured by a gunshot to the head, and officers are currently looking for the weapon. Silverman may have been responsible for pseudonymous blog posts written by “Adams West” regarding the disappearance of Emma Baines, though the police state that this is “pure conjecture” at this time.
Silverman has no recorded next of kin in Lorne. Anyone with information on Randy Silverman, or who has seen a man of approximately six feet in height, 140 pounds in weight, with a black down coat, glasses, and a scar over his upper lip, should contact the police immediately.
24
The Secretive
Claude wakes up and convulses, curling and tugging her quilt over her head. She checks her eyelashes for frost. The temperature must have dropped fifteen degrees last night.
For a moment she pretends that it doesn’t matter, it’s a normal Saturday, she can sleep another three hours and lounge on the couch with Mom, eating doughnuts and arguing about which reality TV show they should hate-watch today.
But as cold as it is here, it’s colder in the woods.
They’re running out of time.
Mom’s on the phone in the living room, and through cardboard-cheap walls Claude hears, “Fine. I think ten is fine. We don’t have anywhere to be today. Thanks, Steve. See you.”
Claude forces herself to sit up. Her little room has posters tacked to the walls: My Little Pony from Jamie, a Bat out of Hell from Mom, a Slipknot poster from when she drove all the way down to Red Rocks to see them with Margot. One bookshelf holds her school supplies and some hand-me-down paperbacks that range from romance to hard science fiction. This, right here, is home. Claude doesn’t love Lorne, but she can’t imagine leaving her mom and the house and everything she has.
But there are no prisons in Lorne. So if she gets caught up in her own web, she won’t have much choice in where she lives.
Mom raises her eyebrows when Claude emerges from her room. “I thought you’d be enjoying your Saturday.”
“I fully intend to.” She flops on the couch hard enough to bounce.
“Watch the spring,” Mom says. The spring’s been broken for five years.
Claude flips up the lid on the doughnut box. Not too far from Lorne is the best doughnut shop on the eastern slope. One day, when the skiiers start to winter here and the contractors are making big bucks, Starbucks will come in and buy them out and replace the doughnuts with shitty prepackaged sugar. But for now, they’re the best thing about Saturday mornings. Mom always gets up early to grab some.
Claude selects a buttermilk glazed and sits back, closing her eyes. “The only thing that would make this more perfect is a cup of coffee.”
“You got long legs. Go get it.” Mom sits beside her, checking her phone with a frown. “You hear they found Adams West?”
Claude vaults up again. “No way.”
“That’s what they say.” She reads the article aloud, then hmms. “I doubt they’ll ever find that gun. Anna’s Run probably sank it.”
“Are they really just going to assume it’s the first improbable hobo who turns up dead?” Claude says.
Mom lifts one shoulder. “As much as I’d like to agree with you about the ineptitude of the police, for her sake I do hope there’s evidence they’re not revealing in the press release.”
“Yeah.” Claude gets up from the couch and grabs a cup, filling it with steaming coffee. She glances over to make sure Mom hasn’t turned toward her, then pours more into a thermos. She shoves it into a corner, then turns and leans against the counter, bringing her mug up to her lips. “Um.”
Her innocent tone immediately rouses suspicion. Mom turns and arches an eyebrow at her daughter.
“When Steve’s done plowing the driveway, do you think I could go out for a little while?”
“It’s been a day and a half since you got arrested,” Mom says. “You need to lie low.”
Claude takes a long sip of coffee. “It’s not a school day. We’re not running the rumor mill.”
“Everyone in town is going to wonder what you’re doing, Claude.” Mom sighs. “Why now?”
“I need to see Jamie.”
She meant to say a different lie, but as the words hang between them, she realizes she means it. Something in her twists like an invisible knife. There are things Jamie deserves to know. Just like there are things he can’t know.
It’s the same with Mom, really. Except the things she deserves to know and the things she can’t know are all muddled up together and Claude can’t figure out how to distinguish them.
“It’s not like you to get worked up about a boy,” Mom says.
It would be trite to say Jamie’s different, so Claude just says, �
�Yeah.” She stares into her cup, and the flush in her cheeks deepens as the silence grows.
At last Mom gets up from the couch. Claude’s the tallest one in the house now, but as Mom wraps her arms around her, the girl folds in, pressing her forehead against her mother’s shoulder.
“Claude, you know I’m here for you,” Mom says. “And Jamie’s nice, and he’d be a great boyfriend. But he can wait to be your boyfriend for another week.”
“It’s not that,” Claude says.
Mom pulls back and puts a hand on Claude’s shoulder. “Then what is it?”
Her brown eyes are serious, piercing. Claude looks down first. “Nothing, I guess,” she says, but a bitterness seeps through her words.
Mom’s hand tightens on Claude’s shoulder, and Claude tenses. “I know you don’t like boundaries. And I know I’ve encouraged you to live your own life and make your own mistakes. But maybe . . . that was the wrong call.”
“No, Mom,” Claude says reflexively.
“You were arrested,” Mom points out. “You’ve been selling pills.”
“It’s not . . .” Claude runs a hand through her hair. Blond is starting to peek out at the root. “It’s not because of you, Mom.” Heat flushes over her body.
Mom’s waiting for her to say something more. But Mom can’t know. Not yet.
For a long moment they stand, waiting for the other one to say something. Claude can’t meet her mother’s gaze. The silence is only broken by the sound of Mom’s phone.
She goes over to it. “Jesus Christ,” she mutters, then answers. “Seriously? On a Saturday?”
Claude can’t distinguish the tinny chatter on the other end, but she recognizes its urgent tone. Mom listens, then sighs. “Fine. We’re snowed in until ten, but after that . . . fine. I’m getting overtime pay, right? Yeah, well, same to you.” She hangs up and tosses the phone on the couch.
“I have to go back in,” she says. “Claude, I’m sorry, but you have to stay home today, please. Do I have to take your keys?”
The Good Girls Page 17