by Lane Davis
“You know, you can be a real bitch,” I shot at her.
Both of her eyebrows shot up as she surveyed my face. Then she threw her head back and laughed. “Oh, please, Jills. You’re not really upset about this Paris thing, are you?”
“You said we were going together—just us,” I said.
“Well, that’s hardly fair to anyone else, is it?” she said with a glare.
“When have you ever been worried about what’s fair?” I asked.
“Nothing wrong with a little friendly competition, is there?” She was so pleased with herself. That smug, self-satisfied smile on her face made me so furious, the top of my head felt hot under my hair.
“Oh, so now I have to compete to be a better friend to you?” I was almost shouting.
“Why not?” asked Macie with her imperial ice-queen voice. “What do you have to offer me, Jillian? Why should I take you with me?”
Her voice stopped me cold. It was like the cold slap of the ocean water against my face that summer in Cape Cod. Macie Merrick was looking at me and all she could see was the person I saw when I looked in the mirror. The answer to her question rang in my ears: Nothing. I have nothing to offer you.
I couldn’t look at her anymore. My gaze fell back down to the screen, and when it did, I realized I was wrong.
My fingers were shaking as I moved the cursor across the in-box. I could hear something inside me—the voice of an old friend from far away: Don’t do this, it said. This is not who you are. I paused with my finger on the trackpad—the cursor hovered just over the “log out” link in the upper-right corner. One click, and the moment would be over—the possibility would pass. And so would my trip to Europe. The voice in my head seemed to grow more and more faint. I turned to look at Macie again, and something about her gaze made the voice fade away completely.
“What would you say if I offered you complete access to Jake’s email account?” I asked. I spun the laptop around on my lap so that she could see the screen. She glanced from me to the screen and then back to me again.
“You’re shitting me,” she whispered.
I arched an eyebrow and shook my head. “What’s that worth to you?” I asked.
Slowly, Macie Merrick crossed the room staring at the screen on my lap and slumped onto the bed to see for herself.
“That,” she whispered, “is worth a first-class ticket to Charles de Gaulle.”
Then she moved the cursor slowly across the screen, away from “log out,” and clicked Compose.
I slid off the bed and headed to the door of Jake’s room.
“Where are you going?” she asked.
“Paris,” I said.
Then I walked back to my room as I heard Macie start to type.
• • •
After what seemed like hours, Kellan Dirkson finally said, “No further questions,” and Patrick said something I don’t remember, and then I was walking down the long hallway and out of the building.
When I got to Jake’s car, he was already there, buckled in. He stared straight ahead when I slid into the passenger seat. His eyes were swollen from crying, and his face was red and blotchy.
“Don’t talk to me.”
“Jake, it’s not what you think—”
“It is, Jillian. It is what I think,” he said quietly.
“I didn’t know what she was going to write,” I said.
He turned and looked at me and smiled bitterly. “Sure you did, Jillian.”
“I didn’t know that—”
“Stop. Talking. Now.”
Jake’s voice was so quiet and so ferocious that I was scared. His knuckles were white on the steering wheel as he drove us home in complete silence. When we pulled up in front of the house, I saw Mom and Dad were both already home. Mom had promised us steaks on the grill tonight. She and Dad would want to know all about the deposition. We’d have to relive this one more time. Jake was staring at their cars too when I glanced at him. I knew he was thinking the same thing.
Suddenly I was crying. I was so exhausted. I didn’t want to talk about Macie or Leslie or anything anymore. I just wanted us to go inside and sit down with Mom and Dad and laugh and smile and know that everything was going to be okay.
“I’m so sorry, Jake,” I whispered.
He stared out the window at our house and the cars in the driveway. The sun had dropped below the clouds and was shooting flames off the snow on Mount Hood; dark-magenta rays spread across the sky. Any other night it would have been beautiful.
“Let me spell this out for you,” he said without looking at me. “We will live here together until the end of the summer. We will go to college, and we may even see each other over breaks and at Christmas, but you are not my sister anymore.”
“Jake, please—”
He held up his hand. “You are actually worse than Macie Merrick, Jillian.” He tried to go on, but his voice cracked, and he had to stop and swallow. “Macie hated Leslie from day one. But not you—you were actually her friend once. You’re worse because you turned your back on Leslie. You knew that this was wrong, and you went along with it anyway. Every step.”
“Jake, I just want to explain it to you.” The tears were hot on my cheeks, and my chest shook. I could barely form the words.
Jake took off his seat belt and shook his head.
“You could talk from now until the end of time, Jillian, and there’d still be no explanation for this,” he said. “I’m done talking to you, and I’m done listening to you. I never want to hear you say another word.”
30. KATHERINE
“Daysun—this is hopeless. I want to prosecute these girls myself.”
Patrick’s voice was strained and angry. I couldn’t blame him. His week had been ten kinds of torment. After my deposition on Monday, Macie’s had followed on Tuesday before Jillian and Jake’s crash-and-burn disaster Friday.
I slipped off the couch in Daddy’s reception area and listened. The door of his office was partly open. It was Saturday afternoon. Daddy had played tennis with his doubles partner early this morning, and then come into the office to tie up some loose ends on the permitting case. I’d come with him to study for my chemistry exam on Monday in the peace and quiet of the empty firm, but when we walked in Patrick was pacing the hall outside Daddy’s office.
“I’m serious, Daysun. I’m ready to switch sides in this case.”
“Patrick, please.” Daddy’s voice was slow and low. “I know this has been hard, but we don’t have to prove anything here. Burden of proof is on the prosecution. They’ve got to show that there was some sort of responsibility here. And no one has ever been proven guilty of causing someone else’s suicide.”
Through the space between the door and its frame I saw Patrick place his hands wide on Daddy’s desk and lean across the dark mahogany. “Daysun, they are responsible for this suicide. Every one of them.”
When I heard Patrick say this, I remembered walking down the hallway with Daddy on Tuesday afternoon. Mike Merrick had rounded the corner, with Macie, clicking along behind him.
When her dad stopped to shake hands with mine, Macie leveled her eyes at me but didn’t speak.
“How’d it go in there, Senator?” Daddy boomed, pumping his hand.
“Just fine, Daysun. Just fine.” Mike Merrick was smiling like a possum eating briars. Or at least that’s what Aunt Liza would say. “Just can’t thank you and Patrick enough for prepping the kids so well on this.”
“Happy to help.” Daddy smiled. “Just got back from some tennis at the Bellevue Club. Let’s schedule a match when this is all over.”
“You’ve got yourself a deal,” he said and smiled, all charm and teeth and tan.
Macie raised her eyebrows at me and let out a long sigh as if to say she were bored. As her dad held the front door open for her, she turned back to look at me and narrowed her eyes. Then she stepped out the door and slipped her sunglasses onto her face like she was avoiding a group of paparazzi, and walked with he
r father toward the parking deck.
Something about this memory and the sound of the anger in Patrick’s voice made me feel like I was falling. I steadied myself on the doorframe as Daddy eyed Patrick wearily.
“These are not bad kids,” Daddy said. “You remember high school. It all seems very important, and let’s face it: Kids are kids. They include some and exclude others. That’s just evolution. You gather your pack and you survive because of safety in numbers. Leslie Gatlin had her pack just as sure as Macie and Katherine did.”
“Leslie had no pack, Daysun.”
Daddy was quiet for a moment, then said, “Okay, Patrick. So let’s say for a second that you’re right. Let’s say that the evidence here points to wrongful death. What does Kellan Dirkson say that he’s gonna charge Macie Merrick with?”
“That’s just it,” sighed Patrick. “Macie Merrick can’t be charged with civil liability in this case. She’s the only one who didn’t actually do anything that can be proven. You should’ve seen her in that deposition. She was perfect. An ice queen with a warm smile. That girl is the best liar I’ve ever seen.”
“She perjured herself?” Daddy’s voice was sharp.
“She didn’t have to. She got everybody else to do her dirty work. The one email I’m sure she sent was forged from Jacob Walker’s account—on his laptop. There’s no way to prove that she wrote it, and she knows it. So does her dad.”
Patrick was quiet for a moment. “Daysun, this civil case is over. We won, and Dirkson knows it. There’s a single instance in Massachusetts where criminal charges were brought in a suicide case, and that’s been tied up in paperwork for months. There’s just not enough legal precedent to bring a criminal case here.”
“So what are you so worked up about?” Daddy asked. “You won.”
“Then why does it feel like I lost?” Patrick asked quietly.
“The purpose of the law is handin’ out justice, Patrick, not warm, fuzzy feelings.”
Patrick stood up and put his hands in the pockets of his flat-front chinos and looked at the toes of his spit-shined penny loafers. “So how does Leslie Gatlin get her justice?” he asked quietly.
My daddy has made a career of having an answer every time somebody asks him a question. As long as I can remember, folks have been asking Daddy for advice—not just about the law but about everything. Aunt Liza used to say that when God was handin’ out smarts, Daddy was first in line and came back for seconds.
For the first time in the seventeen years I had known him, my daddy answered a question with a deafening silence: There would be no justice for Leslie Gatlin.
Patrick got the quiet answer loud and clear, and turned toward the door without looking up from his shoes. I slipped back onto the couch and opened my chemistry book. When he walked into the foyer, Patrick paused and looked up at me. I held his gaze for a moment, then he shook his head and walked out the door.
I sat in the silence for a moment, then I closed my chem book again and silently walked into Daddy’s office. He was sitting at his desk looking at a picture in a silver frame that he’d always kept next to his computer in every office he’d ever had.
It was a picture Aunt Liza snapped of me wearin’ Mama’s high heels when I was three years old.
He didn’t look up. He just sat and stared at the picture. When he spoke, he didn’t move his eyes away from the frame.
“I wonder what it’s like?” he said softly.
“What?” I asked.
“Knowin’ that the little girl you loved for all those years was downstairs, dead in the garage while you were sleepin’.” There were tears running down his cheeks—something else I had never witnessed in my entire life.
“Patrick’s right,” I said softly, my eyes flooding over like a bathtub with the water running. “It was our fault, Daddy.” I sank onto the leather chair opposite his desk and buried my face in my hands. “Can you ever forgive me?” I sobbed.
Then I felt his arms around me, in a wordless grip so tight that I cried even harder—his second silent answer of the day.
When I had cried myself dry against his shoulder, Daddy reached into his back pocket and handed me a crisp linen handkerchief.
“Katherine,” he said. “I have recused myself from this case because you are my daughter, but it appears that this case is now over.” He stood up and walked to his desk. He sat back in his chair and swiveled sideways to look out the window at the gathering clouds in the afternoon sky. The light was beautiful and his skin glowed the same deep brown as his desk. There was a glint in his eyes when he asked me, “Have you watched all the depositions?”
“I’ve seen them all,” I said. “Except Macie’s.”
“From what I understand, that swim team captain—what’s his name? Dating the Braddock girl?”
“Josh Phillips?” I asked.
“Does he really have that video of Marty Merrick?”
“Yes, sir,” I said.
Daddy pressed the tips of his fingers together, then tapped them against each other while he stared out the window. “Kathy, I’m going to ask you something, and I want the God’s honest truth from you, young lady.”
He swung around in his chair and faced me dead-on. I nodded.
“If the DA were to file criminal charges against Macie Merrick, would Jillian and Beth testify against her? On the stand? Under oath?”
“Yes, sir,” I said. “But, Daddy—won’t you just run into the same problem with not being able to pin anything on Macie? The evidence is circumstantial, isn’t it? It’s our word against hers. How are you going to prove anything?”
“Oh, I’m not gonna be proving anything, sweetheart.” He was dialing his phone. “Yes, hello. This is Daysun Fraisure calling. Is District Attorney Braddock available?” He covered the mouthpiece with his hand.
“You’re sure about Jillian and Beth?” he whispered.
I raised my right hand. “I swear.”
31. BETH
Sitting across the table from District Attorney Graham Braddock, it was hard not to feel like I was in trouble. I kept making lists of all the reasons I shouldn’t be afraid:
1. Katherine’s dad was going to do all the talking.
2. Jillian and Katherine were here with me.
3. Macie didn’t know what we were doing. Yet.
When we got back to school and slid into third period, Macie didn’t bat an eye. She wasn’t really speaking to any of us anymore anyway. Krista was a different story. She kept turning around and staring, making faces, narrowing her eyes, passing notes to Macie, laughing. It was almost comical.
She kept at it all day, but it was easier to ignore her than I had expected it would be because I had Katherine and Jillian to walk to classes and eat with. We didn’t say much. We were just there for one another.
I couldn’t help but think that maybe if we’d all just been there for one another sooner, Leslie would still be alive.
And that was a thought I couldn’t get out of my head. It kept getting louder throughout the afternoon, until it was all I could hear. By the time I got to practice, the volume was turned up to eleven, and as I was opening the first handspring of my third tumbling pass into a full layout, I knew I was going to land out of bounds.
Again.
I’d been running this floor routine the entire practice. The momentum of a tumbling pass that you’ve done about a thousand times in the past three months is a very specific thing. Nailing a double back layout with a twist is something I’d never done in a competition before, and this week I hadn’t even done it in practice. I nailed the landing and stepped back, and before my heel had even landed a full foot past the bounding line, I could see Coach Stevens’s clipboard flying into the bleachers.
“That’s it!” His voice echoed across the gym. “Circle up!”
I felt like I had bricks tied to my ankles as I trudged across the gym to the huddle. I felt like I had as I’d climbed the stairs to the DA’s office this morning. It’s one thing to giv
e a deposition. It’s another thing to sit in a room with a criminal prosecutor and a lawyer and hear the strategy for filing criminal charges against Macie Merrick.
As the other girls on the team ran in to Coach Stevens, he stood there, hands on his hips, silently shaking his head. He didn’t need to yell. He knew I knew. I jumped a couple of times on the spring floor, trying to shake it off. Then I slowly walked over to where he stood in the semicircle, dismissing the other girls.
“One week, team. I need your bodies here, but more importantly, I need your brains in the game. If your head isn’t here, you might as well keep your tricks in your trunk. It’s not enough to just do a routine—even a clean routine. I need your concentration and your focus. If you think Woodinville is going to show up to this meet and just hand over their four-year championship streak, you’ve got another thought coming.”
He looked down at the mat he was standing on, then back up with a smile. “When you guys bring your brains, you’re unbeatable. See you tomorrow.”
I didn’t even turn around to head to the locker room. I knew better. I knew he’d want a word with me. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. I knew it was coming.
But it didn’t.
When I didn’t hear Coach lay into me about the floor routine, I looked up and saw him climbing out of the bleachers where he’d retrieved his clipboard. Then he turned and started walking toward his office.
“Coach?” I asked. My voice seemed tiny in the empty gym.
He stopped but didn’t turn around. “Yeah, Beth?”
“Do I need to . . . Should I . . .” What was I asking?
He turned around and crossed his arms over his chest and looked at me. “Should you what?” His voice was tired.
“I don’t know . . . I just . . .” It felt like I should be talking to him about something. I wasn’t sure it was gymnastics. “What should I do?” I asked.
“About what?” he asked.
I had no answer. I didn’t know where to start. I wasn’t sure what to do about anything. The doubt and lies and exhaustion of the past month came crashing onto me all at once. I felt like I was pinned to the floor by the silence. The air between us was thick with everything I couldn’t say. After a moment Coach shook his head.