“It was all about you, Ariel. You selfish bitch.” Rachel’s voice trembled with rage. “You took advantage of kids . . . boys. In most states you can be arrested for having sex with a fourteen-year-old.”
“That’s not going to happen here.” Ariel scoffed. “Because you are going to keep your pretty little mouth shut.” Ariel shot a look at Cassie. “Both of you. If anyone finds out about this, I’ll lose all my clients.”
“Ha! And let my son rot in jail to cover your ass? We’ve got to go to Jared’s lawyer with this. It will show his motive. It will help George build a defense.”
“I’m not telling the lawyers anything,” Ariel snapped. “And if you breathe a word of this to anyone, I’ll deny it. Deny, deny.”
Rachel swooped down on Ariel. Her fingers sank into her shoulders, her thumbnails digging into the skin above the clavicle, so temptingly close to her pretty neck. “How dare you?” Her voice was raw with fury. “You would really let my son rot in jail for twenty years to life just so you can maintain your reputation? You made him your pawn. You used your own daughter as a sacrificial lamb. Your own daughter!”
“Stop it!” Ariel wriggled back and forth, trying to wrest free. “You’re hurting me.”
Blinding rage closed Rachel’s fingers around Ariel’s neck as she thought of Jared as a boy, building a Lego creature or diving into her bed on a Saturday morning, and Remy as a little girl singing a song and pedaling her tricycle as her long curls trailed behind her. They had been good kids. They had been on a path to becoming complex, kind adults until Ariel intervened.
“Stop!” Ariel gasped, her eyes bulging.
“Aunt Rachel . . .”
Suddenly, Rachel felt herself being pulled back. Cassie was out of her chair and leaning in, breaking Rachel’s grip, easing her away.
“That’s enough, okay?” Cassie broke the spell. “You.” She pointed to her mother. “You’re going to get dressed. And the three of us are going to the police or the lawyers or whoever we need to see to help Jared.”
“I’m not going.” Ariel’s lower lip jutted out in a pout. Good God, the woman was reverting to five-year-old behavior.
“If you don’t, I’ll bring them the Ariel sex tapes.” Raking tousled curls out of her face, Cassie frowned down at the bed. “I think you might want to own up to a few things instead of having them aired on YouTube.”
Chapter 35
September
Rachel pressed her palms to the conference table in search of coolness. The air conditioner chugged away over the window in the law offices of Rathburn and Hunt, though it did little to break the heat that promised to push the thermometer into the nineties this week. She checked her phone for messages, then went to a crossword puzzle app to pass the time. Over the past three months, she had learned to wait. She’d had no choice.
At last, the door opened and George Hunt trudged in and plopped into a chair.
“That went better than I’d anticipated.” His ruddy face puckered, puffing out his beard. “The prosecutor reduced the charges to manslaughter one, and Jared agreed to a plea bargain.”
“Oh, dear Lord.” Rachel pressed a hand to her mouth, alarm and relief fluttering in her chest at the mixed news. “So there won’t be a trial.”
“Nope. I told you that. And though Jared gets a mandatory ten-year sentence, that’s a heck of a lot better than twenty-five to life, which he’d be getting with a homicide charge.”
She let out a heavy breath. So the legal battle was over.
“Your son is fortunate to have you advocating for him, Rachel. The deposition from Ariel Alexander was a gold mine. It painted a picture of Jared as a preyed-upon youth. Dynamite info. Really filled out his profile. A jury would have at least understood where he was coming from. And since we showed that he was under the influence of extreme emotional disturbance, well, hell, that’s straight out of the Oregon law books. It’s a reason to knock a murder rap down to manslaughter one.”
She nodded. They had gone over these details before, when everything was speculative, pending, tenuous. “How is Jared taking it?”
“Same as ever.” George bounced a fist on the arm of his chair. “He’s holding out hope that he’ll get out in ten and get with Ariel again.” He shook his head. “By then, he probably won’t even want her anymore.”
Not true, Rachel thought. Ariel would still be beautiful in ten years. A stunning, morally vapid bombshell. And Jared? Rachel feared that in ten years her son would be a stunted individual, locked in teen angst, navigating by single-minded desire.
“And it’s good that you got those two young men to step forward,” George went on. “Luchter and Oyama. Graham Oyama was especially convincing. Poor kid. He said that after Ariel seduced him the first time, he booked lessons five days a week, hoping to get with her again.”
“I’m grateful that they came forward.” Rachel had avoided the news accounts of Ariel’s exploits, though she’d picked up enough conversation around the shop to learn of Ariel’s sexual abuse of local children.
“Their depositions helped us. Eighteen-year-olds. When I was that age, hell, I wasn’t quite as savvy as these guys. But even so, it must have been tough for them to testify.” He bumped his fist on the armrest again. “Tough choices all around.”
The past few months had been filled with difficult choices for Rachel. She had decided to sell her house, where guilt and memories of family life seemed to dwell in the creak of the floors and the empty spaces. But she had held on to the shop, where there was a groundswell of community support for her. Her loyal customers did not waver, and a week after the incident she went to work to find them all there, waiting for an appointment, her schedule jam-packed.
“Why, Mae, you were just here a few weeks ago. And, Glinda you’re not due for highlights for another month or two.”
“Then maybe I’ll try something new,” Glinda had told her. “That blue hair. Or maybe purple. My grandkids will think it’s a hoot.”
Customers like Mae and Glinda as well as coworkers like Hilda and Sondra had rallied local ladies to show some understanding toward the woman with the troubled son. Holy Snips would survive the scandal, and the prospect of hot competition in town had waned. Tiffani had moved to Idaho when she couldn’t pull her new shop together.
The disapproval Rachel had sensed did not seem to run deep in the veins of Timbergrove, and the culprit behind the graffiti and broken window had been unveiled. One evening while Rachel was jogging, a white SUV had slowed alongside the trail and pelted her with an egg. This time she got the license plate information, which Mike traced to Tootsie Dover.
“Why are you attacking me?” Rachel asked outright when she got Tootsie on the phone.
“Because you’re going to drag my son into all of this . . . this hornet’s nest of sex. You put the police on him and . . .” In the garbled explanation that followed, Rachel understood. Tootsie feared that Cooper would be revealed as one of Ariel’s “victims.”
Another victim. Rachel agreed not to press charges as long as Tootsie stayed the hell away from her. Mike told her that she didn’t have the authority to drop criminal charges, but he understood. That was the thing about Mike: He got her.
Rachel found herself burrowing into her new home with him, hanging a picture, organizing a cupboard. Each day she tottered ahead, one more baby step. She was starting to move on, beginning to forgive herself for the things she did wrong when she was raising Jared and KJ. Although Jared was still angry with her for going after Ariel, maybe he would soften over time.
She was not going to give up on him.
A lot could happen in ten years.
Stretched out on a lounge chair near the pool, Ariel shielded her eyes from the sun to peer through the glass doors at the movers working inside the house. Just finish, already. It seemed like they were taking an inordinate amount of time moving her things into Stosh’s Sherman Oaks bungalow; she had a feeling that they were dawdling to get an eyeful. Gawkers. She could
have sworn she heard the click of a cell phone camera as she sat by the pool, trying to even out her tan for an upcoming audition.
The pool was the best part of Stosh’s house, an old one-story structure with tacky features like a pink toilet and mirrored closet doors. “Hey, real estate is killer expensive in So-Cal,” he’d told her when she pointed out the deficiencies of the house.
It would be better to sell this place and start over with a bigger place. One with a grand entrance: marble floors and a double staircase that rose from both sides like a celestial cloud. They would get a house like that when she landed a part.
But for now, this definitely topped the life she’d been leading in Oregon. She’d been a fool to want to hang on there when the scandal broke. Although there had been no court testimony, her depositions were public record, and reporters had splashed her statements on every form of media with headlines like “Singing Witch Seduces Boy Warlocks” and “Singing Witch Now Singing Cougar.”
“They’re making me out to be a monster,” she had cried to Stosh when he called her one night. He had begun calling every night, just like old times. “I’m not a bad person. I have my standards.”
“Babe, it’s all good.” Stosh had chuckled, that gurgling sound deep in his chest. “That’s what I’m telling you. The whole suburban-seductress, vocal-coach-vixen thing might get you drummed out of East Bumfart, Oregon, but it totally plays down here. Your star is on the rise. Everyone knows your name again.”
“Then I should be living down there.” It was an offhand remark, but he jumped on it.
“Maybe you should.”
Ariel had rationalized that the move to Southern California was her only means of survival now that her vocal training business had crashed and burned. After the scandal broke, none of her clients had remained loyal to her. Maisy had been excited by the prospects of “moving to Hollywood,” but Cassie had been sad to see her little sister go. That Cassie was always complaining about something.
Trevor had been the only one to balk, desperate to hold on to his friends and reluctant to leave the little town. “This is our home, Mom!” he kept telling her. After many nights of tears, Eli had stepped in with an offer. He would move to Timbergrove—to a small cottage that fit his budget—and Trevor could stay with him. Ariel had declined the offer, unwilling to lose her son. Then, when she saw Trevor jump for joy at the prospect of staying, she backed down. Trevor didn’t want to go with her; she had already lost him. Abandoned, once again.
The slider opened and Maisy popped out, followed by her friend Tessa and Tessa’s father Bruno.
“Mom, can Tessa stay and go in the pool with me?”
“That’s fine.”
The girls cheered in delight and started stripping down to their swimsuits. Apparently, they had planned ahead.
Ariel looked up at Bruno, who definitely was not looking at her eyes. “How did your pitch go?” she asked, lazily stroking back her hair, pleased with its new warm highlight called “Ginger Bite.” “Last time I saw you, Fox was talking to you about your Rehab Rebel idea.”
“They were interested, but not greenlighting anything right now.” Bruno sat down on the chair beside her, facing the girls in the pool. “You know, I could sell a reality show featuring you in twenty-four hours.”
“I’m sure you could.” Ariel adjusted the lounge chair and rolled over onto her tummy. “But I’m not interested.”
“It sucks to have classes when the weather is this nice.” Olivia nudged Cassie, who was sitting beside her on one of the campus lawns. “Hey. It’s so annoying to talk to people who aren’t listening.”
“Sorry. I’m just reading an article online.” An article about Jared Whalen pleading guilty in exchange for a reduced charge carrying a ten-year sentence.
“Is that Jared?” Olivia was leaning in. “What did he do now?”
“Apparently, he copped a plea.” She read a bit of the article to her longtime friend from Timbergrove, one of the few people here at Oregon State who knew of Cassie’s connection to the “prom day murder,” as the media had begun to call it.
“Ten years doesn’t seem like a lot of time for killing someone,” Olivia said.
“The charge was reduced because of mitigating circumstances. That would be my mother.”
“Yeah.” Olivia raked back her ash-blond hair and let it drop onto her back. “Ariel turned out to be flakier than anyone realized.”
“Yup.” Cassie put her phone away, not sure how to feel about the sentence. Jared was definitely messed up, but prison was not going to cure that.
“Are you and Andrew going to the poetry slam tonight?”
“We are. Andrew has a poem he’s going to read.” A love poem. Yeah, it sounded nerdy, but Andrew’s approach was multilayered and highly symbolic and she doubted anyone would recognize her in the piece. Cassie enjoyed her anonymity here on campus. Here she was just another nursing major who liked poetry slams and loved her adorable, geeky boyfriend. It was a very comfortable place to be, and when she wanted a touch of home she visited Trevor and Eli in Timbergrove, sleeping on the futon in the little cottage that backed up to the woods along the river.
She missed Maisy, but it was probably a good thing to get Maisy away from the house, where thick memories of Remy lingered in every corner. Cassie had been home the day the movers came for the furniture, and when she sensed the lingering ghost, it seemed to be a helpful spirit, a poltergeist who helped you find your missing car keys, one who saved children from tripping over a crack in the sidewalk, one who made flowers bloom brighter. More like a guardian angel than a howler.
Sometimes, walking between classes or goofing around with Andrew, Cassie became aware of all the things Remy had missed out on. Remy would never go to college or travel to Europe. There would be no career or family for her. When sadness seeped in, the ache was eased by knowing that Remy would not have wanted people to cry for her. She would have told them to dance.
One night while stargazing in the backyard, Eli mentioned that all people were made of stardust. Since then, Cassie imagined Remy as a star flickering in the distance, watchful, steadfast, shining bright into eternity. A star. Remy would like that.
Chapter 36
February
Outside the sky was a pallid shade of gray, but inside the shop, laughter flowed as Hilda told a story of how she and her sister had sneaked out of boarding school in Germany, changed their minds about meeting older boys in town, and then had so much trouble sneaking back into the school that they ended up ringing the doorbell.
“My sister stood at the door and opened her arms to the headmistress and said, ‘Do with me what you will.’” There was a splotch of rosy color on Hilda’s cheeks as she doubled over in laughter.
Rachel chuckled as she set a customer under the hair dryer with a stack of People magazines.
“I always have such a good time when I come here,” said her customer, an accountant named Diane. “Whenever I tell my husband about it, he gets jealous.”
“Well, he could come here for a haircut,” Sondra said. “I have a few male clients.”
“Ha! Over my dead body,” Diane exclaimed, and they all laughed again.
When Rachel went back to her station to clean up, she saw that her cell phone was rumbling and lit. Assuming it was KJ, who had started an internship at a clinic during his final semester of college, she snatched it up.
“Mrs. Rachel Whalen? This is Lieutenant William Danelski from the Oregon Department of Corrections. Ma’am, there’s no easy way to say this. Your son Jared Whalen was found dead in his cell.”
Her mouth seemed to drop open of its own accord as the broom slipped from her hand and clattered to the floor. She walked down the aisle, past the surprised and curious glances of her friends and coworkers, and strode straight out the door into the sloppy rain of a dull winter day.
No. It couldn’t be true. Jared had hope. He was counting the days until his release. He saw the light at the end of the tunn
el.
She walked briskly down the street, phone pressed to her ear, escaping to nowhere in particular. On her left was World Cycle, the bike shop Jared had adored as a kid when all the boys were going through X-treme mountain bikes with specially shaped helmets and expensive accoutrements for the bike. “Mom, do you think there are bikes in heaven?” he’d asked her. “Why not?” she’d responded. “When I grow up, I’m going to have a job at World Cycle,” he’d said. “And then I can stay there all day long and they’ll pay me.”
Her baby boy. How could he be gone?
“Ma’am?” The officer’s voice mixed with static on the line. “Are you still there?”
“Still here.” Although her pulse was thrumming and her eyes were blurred by tears, she was still here. She would always be here for Jared. Although her logical mind would try to process the fact that he was dead, part of her would always half expect to open the side door to his quiet smile, his gentle hug.
“What . . .” Her voice was breathy, unreliable. “How did it happen?”
“It seems that he tried to hang himself. We will have more information once the autopsy has been done. For now, we suspect that it was a suicide.”
Suicide. The word returned to that familiar groove in her mind like a forgotten adversary, the cool, slick friend who hurts you and laughs at your pain. He laughs, and all you can do is brace yourself and keep moving. She lifted her face to the rain and continued down the street. Keep moving.
“Cause of death: asphyxiation.” Mike put the report on the kitchen table and removed his reading glasses. “The corrections officers seem to think that he hung himself, but the medical examiner also found that he had endured a blow to the head.”
Rachel sniffed back tears. “So someone could have killed him or . . . or rendered him unconscious. And then they set it up to look like a suicide.”
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