THE NIGHT IN QUESTION
I HADN’T SEEN Christie Jones angry before. I’m pretty sure I could have done without it.
“And,” she says, in the silence after Jay stumbles through his explanation. It’s deadly calm, but I can see Rudy scrabbling at the corners of her shadow. I think if we weren’t in front of a crowd, she might be tempted to let him go. “You don’t remember anything.”
“I’m sorry.” Jay’s lower lip is wobbling. He’s so obviously crushed, it’s hard to look at him. “They kept buying me drinks. I know it was someone I knew but—”
“You’re the sheriff’s deputy.” Christie’s voice goes thinner. Next to me, even Cassie flinches. “You know everybody.”
“I didn’t tell them everything.” His voice drops to a whisper. “I just remember wondering what I was going to see. I was so worried I said too much, but I didn’t think anyone would figure it out from just that—”
“I’m not sure I understand.” An elderly woman in the crowd raises her hand. “You’re telling us that this flood will bring back people we’ve lost?”
“It’s not like that.” I’m calm. I think I’m calm. But whatever Alex hears in my voice makes him touch my arm. “You don’t get to choose what comes to you. And even when—even when it’s what you want to see—you can see them, and you can hear them, but they’re not there. It’s worse, I think, than if they weren’t there at all.”
“But someone in this room has decided that it’s worth the risk,” Christie says. “That this town, and maybe even their own safety, is a worthy trade for even an echo of what they’ve lost. And if they won’t come forward and tell us what they know, then we need to find them.”
“So what do you want us to do?” Loreen says. “Or whatever.”
There’s a murmur of agreement. A stronger one than I expected.
“Well,” the Mockingbird says. Her voice is Mom’s again. “You should start by interviewing every woman in this room.”
“Woman?” I echo.
There’s a quick, confusing shuffling across the room—some turn to look at each other, and others turn to us. Felix, with a little triumphant laugh, gets there first. “You do remember what they looked like!”
The Mockingbird’s laugh is a rolling sound, like thunder. “Apologies, clever one. I didn’t trust before that you had my friend’s best interests at heart. I’m afraid I don’t have the eyesight that you humans do. But I can spot a lie from across this desert. My client identified herself as a woman. I did not detect that she was lying.”
“Then I’m sorry to have to do this,” Christie says. “I know you’ve all got packing to do, and I’ll have you out of here as quickly as possible. But I’ll need every woman in this room to stay behind.”
Shockingly, there’s another murmur of agreement. But this one isn’t unanimous. “You can’t know she’s here,” one man calls out.
“Oh, she’s here,” the Mockingbird says. “I doubt I’d recognize her, Madam Sheriff. Your scents are all so tangled now. But I can feel it in this room. That absence of fear.”
She lets that sit for a moment. I sweep the auditorium. If the Mockingbird’s client was a woman, that rules out John Jonas and Loreen.
“We’ll cooperate,” says Adrienne. I meet her eyes. She looks as scared as I feel. I’d really like to believe that she’s as scared as I feel.
“Jay,” Christie says. “I presume you remember where you were that night.”
Jay sniffs. I know he’s the reason we’re here, kind of, but I feel a pang anyway. “Paco’s.”
“Then you’d better hope they still have the security footage,” Christie says. “Because you and I are going to make a list of every person who was there that week.”
“And the vote?” Ace Martin asks. But his heart’s not in it.
We’re still for a moment, save for Rudy. I can see him straining at the edge of the parasol’s shadow. He can see what’s closing around us—closing around Christie, his whole world. One slip of her hand, and the decision would be made for us.
Maggie smiles. It’s tired this time.
“I think I know when I’ve been overruled, Ace,” she says. “But all in favor of my proposal, please. Surprise me.”
There’s reluctance on some of those faces. A few shoulders twitch.
But not a single hand goes up. Even Ace, smiling grimly, keeps both palms flat against his lap.
“Sorry, Maggie,” he says. “If one of us did bring that—that Flood here . . . then Ms. Colter’s right. One more day. They didn’t choose to come here. But they can choose to make this right.”
“And I appreciate that,” Christie says, as we walk briskly to the front of the school, “but you need to head home.”
“I can help Jay,” Alex says.
“Your father’s starting to get worried about all these late nights,” Christie says. “Felix, your father’s out front, too. I’ll send your mother and sisters home as soon as I can.”
“They didn’t do it,” says Felix halfheartedly.
“Well, of course they didn’t,” Christie huffs. “But if the others see me giving out special treatment, they’re not going to be cooperative.”
“I guess that means I’m staying, too,” Sandy says, trailing behind Christie.
Christie smiles hesitantly over her shoulder. “Glad to see you’re still talking to me.”
“For now,” Sandy says. “We’ll chat later about how you didn’t think I could resist the temptation to destroy our town.”
“I didn’t!” Christie goes pale. “I just—”
But Sandy’s already breathing out. “I know. And yes, it would have hurt, choosing not to see my sister again. But I’m an adult, Chris. That’s a choice I can make.”
Christie looks at her a moment, meek. “If it helps,” she says quietly, “I also wanted to spare you the pain of keeping this hot gossip to yourself.”
Sandy looks at her sideways. Her eyes are narrowed. But her lips do twitch. “I would have if it killed me,” she says.
Christie grins. Her nose even crinkles. “Trust me, I know.”
I don’t miss Cassie’s full-body eye roll next to me. As much as she insists she doesn’t see them as family, it’s the look of someone whose parents are flirting in public. “I’ll go with Jay,” she says.
They both turn to look at her. “Honey,” Sandy says, “you should get some rest.”
“In a bit.” Cassie shrugs. “You’re both here. Who’s going to be looking for me?”
Christie gives her a long, searching look. And eventually she sighs. “A couple of hours. Then you’re going home.”
“I’ve still got pastelitos left,” Sandy says. “And I’m not eating them all myself.”
Cassie smiles thinly back. “Yes, ma’am.”
Sandy heads back toward the school, and Jay and Cassie split off across the parking lot. “Give you a ride back?” Felix says to me as he opens the door for Alex.
I shake my head. “I’m going to stay.”
“She’ll take the ride,” Christie says. To me, she adds, “Go with Felix. I’ll call you tomorrow.”
“I can help,” I say quickly. The Flood comes tomorrow. I have to help.
“The biggest help to me right now would be you going back to the house,” Christie says.
I laugh, though it’s not funny. “I’ve been trying to talk to the Flood all day.”
But she doesn’t react to that. She speaks slower, calmer. “What you need to remember,” she says, “is that they’re trying to talk to you, too.”
I let out a long, slow breath. “So what do I do?”
She picks my bag up from the ground and slides it onto my shoulder. She told me earlier she wasn’t sure how to be a mother. But it feels like such a motherly thing to do.
“Go back to that house,” she says. “
And listen.”
* * *
—
THE EARLY EVENING passes in flickers. We pick up drive-thru fast food on the way out of town and eat it on the ride to the Lethe Ridge housing development in complete silence. We pull up to the driveway and watch the houses, shrouded in darkness, for a long moment. Alex is the one who eventually asks if I want them to come in with me. I thank them but turn them down.
I glance around me, into the model house. The living room is a little island of light in the sea of dark—from my seat on the couch, I can see down the bedroom wing hallway, and little shadowy angles of the kitchen.
If there’s a good time to talk, this is it.
“So,” I say. “Here we are.”
I don’t need to feel the shift in the atmosphere anymore to know that they’re hearing me. I swallow.
“I’m not sure if you were listening before,” I say. “But Christie Jones, the sheriff . . . I was telling her I’ve been trying to talk to you. And she said—well. She kind of thinks I’ve talked enough.”
Nothing. I take a deeper breath. “So,” I say again. “If there’s something you wanted to say . . .”
I curl deeper into the couch in the silence that follows. It’s like approaching a cat, I think. I need to let them come to me.
I check my phone again. Nothing from Cassie. Nothing from Felix or Alex, or the sheriff. Nothing from Flora, as promised—presumably that conversation will wait until I give up and call her, and somehow that’s less of a relief than I thought it might be.
Something else buzzes in, though. My little brother’s daily composition practice.
Hi, Rosie, Sammy texted fifteen minutes ago. Today I was very busy. We bought hats and noisemakers for the new year party. I asked Mom to buy one for you in case you came home. She said yes. I’m going to get ready for sleep now.
I run my fingers over the edges of the cracked screen, and I feel as close to crying as I have for months. Even then, it doesn’t happen.
Good night, Sammy, I text back. Closing my eyes, I slide the phone next to the cushion under my head.
I don’t realize I’m falling asleep until a buzzing wakes me up.
* * *
—
THE PHONE WHIRRS, shrill and sharp, next to my cheek. I claw my way up, mouth dry, and for a moment, I have no idea where I am, or what’s shuddering next to me. The web of cracks on my screen look deeper, more numerous, and my vision is blurry at the edges. I pick it up without seeing who the caller is.
“Hello?” I say, my voice crackling.
There’s a wheezing, in and out. Then that voice. The same voice as always.
Rose . . .
I jerk the phone back away from my ear, and I see the screen clearly, now. Time: 1:05 a.m. Caller: Gaby Summer.
And when I scramble to my feet, I see what’s been in front of me the whole time. Gaby—a silvery, unsteady reflection of Gaby—is standing at the door, mouthing along with the voice on the phone.
Rose, are you there?
I hear the rustling, as always, in the background of the call—the male voice, words indistinct. The Gaby in front of me starts and looks over her shoulder. Her posture doesn’t quite relax, but what she sees makes her turn more fully. She didn’t trust Nick, but she didn’t not trust him. She had no reason to not trust him.
I don’t see him there, over her shoulder. But all the hairs on my arms stand on end.
Gaby turns and vanishes into the dark. And even knowing that it’s the Flood who just disappeared through that front door, I sprint after her.
I cross the threshold, and I stop so suddenly that I almost trip. I’m not in the model house’s yard at the Lethe Ridge housing development. I’m standing in the middle of Sutton Avenue.
The next thing I hear, just to my right, is the screech of tires.
I turn away sharply. There’s a hiss and a crunch, and I can smell burning rubber.
“This is cruel,” I whisper, and I know the Flood can hear me. “I don’t need to see this.”
They don’t respond to that, either. Maybe they’re waiting for me to notice. And gradually, I do.
There was no splash. No sound to indicate a car going into the water. And more importantly, where I’m facing, I see the old oak tree looming in the distance, marking the corner of Sutton and Chamblys. The corner of Sutton and Chamblys should be the site of the accident. Which is behind me.
That damp, bitter air hits my lungs again. This time, I recognize it.
Slowly, I turn. I see a car spun off the road and into the grass, half-tipped into a ditch, nothing but rubber burned into pavement to indicate the trajectory the vehicle just took. I hear the whine of steam. And I see someone stumble from the passenger’s seat of the car. Eyes wide.
Holding her wrist. What I looked like in that moment, over two years ago.
This is not Gaby’s accident.
This is mine.
DECEMBER 14, TWO YEARS AGO
NOTE TO SELF: “Don’t get into cars with strangers” is incomplete advice. Statistically speaking, it’s the people you know who hurt you.
“Need a ride?”
Over the next two years, you will imagine a dozen different ways you could have said no. But this is here and now, standing outside Ariella Kaplan’s grandparents’ cabin at the end-of-semester party you didn’t even want to go to. The light gauze of rain and fog won’t let up for hours yet, and this cold snap will last another week. Gaby is home with the flu. Your ride into the woods was Kelly Townsend, currently passed out in the guesthouse bed with her sweatshirt still halfway over her head. Ariella promised to keep an eye on her. All that’s left is to decide between a long walk to the bus stop or using your emergency forty dollars for a cab.
So you turn around and look up at Nick Lansbury, standing over you on the front steps. “Yeah,” you say. “Please.”
He laughs. He’s got the kind of laugh that puts you on guard. But he’s not a bad person, is the thing, and he’s doing you a favor. So you smile and you get in the car. And you don’t say anything when he floors it.
Your fingers curl into the drink holder, but you keep smiling and keep not saying anything. It’s an empty stretch of road, straight and quiet. He’ll slow down when you get to Chamblys.
“Good party,” he says at length.
“Huh?” you say. “Oh. Sure.”
“Really?” You’re not sure you like how he’s smiling at you, like he thinks he knows you. “Didn’t look like you were having a lot of fun.”
You make a noncommittal sound. You promised last week that you’d come with Gaby. And by the time Gaby canceled, Kelly made you promise not to let her drink. There’s not a force in the world that could keep Kelly sober, but you gave it your all.
“Next time you should sit with me,” Nick says. “You’ll like it more when you’re not stuck with Kelly. You’re not like her, you know?”
Nick isn’t a bad person. But here’s the thing about him: he thinks things like that are compliments.
But you don’t have time to tell him Kelly is a first-chair violinist and a chemistry genius. What you have to say instead is “You’re going kind of fast.”
Maurice will tell you one day that you have a talent for understatement. When something crosses the point where you can let it go, there’s nothing “kind of” about it.
But Nick doesn’t know you as well as he thinks he does, and more importantly, he doesn’t know that he is going faster than you have ever felt a car go. He snorts. “Relax. No one here but us.”
As if to prove his point, he accelerates.
In the coming months, you will marvel at all the things that had to come together in these next few moments. The drizzle. The cold snap. The light layer of water and ice against the smooth, flat pavement, and Nick’s foot on the accelerator.
You’ll learn the w
ord later for what the car is doing now: hydroplaning. All you can wrap your head around is the feeling of it, like the moment between when you slip on ice and when you hit the ground, except that would end in a second, and this keeps going.
You’ll learn later that the best thing Nick could do in this moment would be to ease off the accelerator. He slams on the brake. Jerks the wheel. And you’re spinning.
The car slides to the right, hard. You catch yourself against the window, and your wrist crumples under your weight, but something had to take the hit and in that moment it was your arm or the side of your head. There’s a rolling, shuddering shockwave as the wheels slide from pavement to dirt and Nick is yelling, cursing, driving his full weight into the brake.
The dirt has traction, and the traction slows you down, but the first law of motion still applies. It’s not until the back of the car tips up and the front hits something solid that you finally, finally stop.
There’s a bang like a gunshot and a spray of searing heat across your collarbone. The kind of thing someone should flinch at, but you’re frozen. You have to blink a few times to see what’s in front of you: the airbags deployed, pressing you in.
The claustrophobia is sudden, sharp, immediate. By the time you think to move you’re already scrambling backward out of the car. The ground is uneven, you stumble. The car rests half in a ditch. The engine lets out a low keen. You breathe in, the air sharp and wet in your chest.
Your fingers come to rest around your wrist. You finally notice how much it hurts.
“Shit.” Nick throws his door open and stumbles out of the car. He’s clutching at his hair, pacing in short, agitated bursts. You wish he’d stop. The reality of the situation is still hanging, precarious, somewhere beyond your reach. You want to back away from it slowly, quietly, as if too much movement will draw its attention.
“My car,” he’s whimpering. “Shit, shit, shit—”
Eventually, he seems to notice you. “Rose,” he gasps out as he moves toward you, “are you okay?”
Finally, you flinch.
His hands are still hovering, halfway to your arms. “Rose?”
The Valley and the Flood Page 23