by Jeff Abbott
“Jane…” her mother called. Jane slid the keys into her pocket. Kamala followed Laurel out of the office.
“What?”
“Kamala and I will finish our meeting later. I can tell you’re upset.”
“Does everyone have to talk to me like I’m a toddler?”
“I’m not.”
Jane pulled the keys out and gave them to her mother. “I was going to borrow your car, but you’ll need it.” She glanced at Kamala. “Are you going back to campus?”
“Um, yes, I am.”
“Jane, let’s talk,” Laurel said.
“No, not right now.” She turned her own wavering smile onto Kamala and decided to dose her with her own medicine. “Would you be an absolute gem and give me a ride to UT? There’s someone there I need to see.”
For the barest moment Kamala stared as if Jane had spat on her. For just a millisecond Jane thought she saw behind the smiling armor. Then Kamala nodded and said, “It would be my pleasure.”
“Who are you going to see at UT?” Laurel said.
“I’ve had more memories returning,” Jane said. “Dr. Ngota suggested I talk to a researcher there.” The lie was easier than breathing.
“Isn’t that wonderful,” Kamala said. “Fingers crossed that soon you’ll be normal!” And she crossed her fingers and held them up and Jane thought, They look easier to break that way.
“Great. I’ll talk to you later, Mom. Thanks, Kamala.”
* * *
Kamala’s ride was an Audi, new, elegant, midnight black as her heart, Jane thought. Kamala drove along the winding length of Old Travis back toward Austin.
“Why are you really going to UT? Did you get chased off campus at Saint Mike’s?” Her voice thrummed like a wire, ready to break. The mask didn’t have to stay on so securely when it was just the two of them.
She’d heard. Jane thought maybe people in Lakehaven would have found new topics for gossip.
“I didn’t, but thanks for asking.”
“No, really, why are you going to UT?”
“Why were you meeting with my mother?”
“We told you.”
“Bull. There are any number of charities around town for you to impress. My mom’s too small for your network.”
“I just want to help people, Jane.”
“You’re an inspiration.” Jane looked heavenward. “If only I could be as good as you.”
“Jane, look. She sent out an e-mail to people you knew in high school”—Jane noted the word friends wasn’t used—“because she is worried about you. She is trying to help you, believe it or not.” And now, stopped at a red light, Kamala looked at her without pretense. The way she had when they had been friends, laughing, watching TV together, sharing books, doing math and writing papers and battling through Spanish. “Why don’t you let your poor, scared mom do something to actually help you?”
“Like you wanted to help me.”
“I’m not your mother. She’ll never see you for what you are. She’ll never believe you tried to kill yourself and you messed it up, so David died. She doesn’t know what you really are—the piece of trash I know you to be. She has nothing left but you, and that sucks for her, but maybe you should just let her help you. Instead of wandering around Lakehaven looking ridiculous, looking like a laughingstock.”
“What did I do to you?”
The world’s least-patient eye roll. “You killed David.”
“No. No. This is something between you and me. Has nothing to do with anyone else.”
“I didn’t realize amnesia sharpened intuition. It seems to dull everything else.” She steered onto MoPac, the main ribbon of highway that ran along Austin’s west side, and headed north, zooming over the bridge that spanned Lady Bird Lake.
“I don’t remember what I did,” Jane said, “and you seem to take a sadistic delight in that.”
Kamala was silent.
“It’s just the two of us. No one else. You can take off the mask.”
Kamala glanced at her. “I don’t have a mask.”
It was, Jane thought, a sad confession. “You must be a little afraid of me, then.”
“I’m not. I’m the one driving and the cliffs are to our west.” She took the exit for Windsor, which would turn into Twenty-Fourth Street and take them straight to the Texas campus. “Fine. You were a real bitch after your father died.”
“I was grieving.”
“You don’t even remember it. I’m sorry your dad died. He was a sweet man. He was a second dad to me.” Here her voice trembled. “David and I and all your friends tried to do everything for you. Anything to help you. You wouldn’t take it. You shoved everyone away. You were horrible to me, and you can either believe that or not. Except David. You just used your father’s death to eclipse everything in David’s life. You just turned into this…huge sucking neediness and he thought he had to be the one to fix you.” She wouldn’t look at Jane. “Yeah, grief, whatever. Does it take over everyone else’s life? My parents told me I had to be such a friend to you. I spent all this time with you and you never got better. I get it, your dad, OK. But my grades suffered. I couldn’t sleep for worrying that you were going to hurt yourself. I’m not a therapist, I was a kid. Your mother was useless. It was the rest of us, trying to hold you up, and never once did you say thank you or I’ll try to be happy again or anything. That’s why David stepped back from you, finally.” She stopped, the words at an end like she’d run out of rope.
Jane’s throat felt like concrete. “I don’t know what to say.”
“You won’t believe me, fine. Whatever. It’s all done.”
“Why didn’t you tell me before?”
“Because you lost your dad. Because I’m not a total bitch. And because…it doesn’t matter. You took so much from me. I lost you, and I loved you then, and I lost David. I didn’t study, I spent so much time being your amateur therapist. I didn’t get into Stanford. Or Harvard. I slipped from valedictorian. My parents were so upset. I’m just a checklist to them. Accomplish this, win this…and I’m supposed to take over the world and yet I’m still supposed to be your crutch, I’m supposed to still fix you. Well, fix your damn self.” She stopped the car in the middle of the road. Horns honking behind her. “Fix yourself. Either put a gun to your head like your dad did or throw yourself off the cliff, but this time alone, or get off the stupid streets and make a life for yourself.”
Cars honking, voices raised in anger.
“OK,” Jane said, not knowing what else to say. Jane felt sick with rage, but Kamala was talking like she never had and Jane needed to press her. Kamala drove forward.
“You were trying to find us that night. I saw the text message Randy Franklin collected for his report. Did you find us?” Jane asked.
Kamala didn’t answer. She did, Jane thought. She did.
“You want me to stop being such a leech and move forward. I think knowing that might help.”
“Great. Let’s help. I found you,” she said, her voice like a dead thing. “Yep. Sure did.”
“Where?”
“I found you kissing him.”
“No. I don’t remember kissing him.”
“You took him from me and then you killed him. You screwed him when you knew, you knew, that I was in love with him and I’d dated him for two years and it doesn’t matter that he lived next door to you or that you knew him first. What kind of friend does what you did?” She stopped; they were on the campus now, and she eased close to the sidewalk. “You don’t remember what kind of person you are? That’s your blessing. You were horrible.”
“So why did you pretend to care? Why did you play so nice?”
“Helping you made for a good college essay. Get out of my car.”
Jane did, trembling. She walked away, setting the backpack on her shoulder. She stopped and glanced back toward Kamala, but she was gone.
Was it all a lie? It would be such pure Kamala to say all that, just to be horrible.
&nbs
p; She and David. That Kamala wouldn’t lie about.
David and I were like brother and sister, she’d once said recently. To Trevor. And he’d said, Well, that’s not quite accurate.
Had he known as well? Is that why he’d been so uncomfortable with her? Was everyone afraid she was going to remember she was in love with the boy she’d killed? Why keep this secret from her? Or did only Kamala know, and Trevor just made a comment that she was misreading?
Was that why we were going to run off to Canada? To be together, and away from everyone? Like some stupid teenager fantasy?
What kind of person was I? Well, I got my answer. You cheated with your best friend’s boyfriend. She suddenly didn’t want to talk to Amari. She didn’t want to know more.
She hadn’t noticed the truck following her and Kamala from her mother’s office. She didn’t see the truck illegally park in the lot across from where she stood, or the man get out of it. He wasn’t tall but he was powerfully built. Shiloh Rooke watched Jane as she walked. He followed her. She walked to a big fountain with a sculpture of running mustangs, hewn in iron. Dozens of students milled about. He leaned against a wall and watched.
35
IT HAD EXPLODED at a speed Perri could not have imagined.
The captions under the video read either of two ways: She was “grieving mom” or Jane was “amnesia victim”—someone beyond her circle of friends had tied her to the accident—or she was “daughter of famed mom blogger.” She could see Laurel being behind a bit of self-promotion; she had kept an eye on Laurel’s mom blog in the months after the crash, alert for the barest hint that Laurel was looking to excuse Jane from David’s death with self-indulgent entries or pleas for understanding.
As “grieving mom” she was trending on both Faceplace and Cheeper. Soon the phone would ring, unwanted calls. Her phone beeped. She wasn’t going to answer it unless it was Cal, but then she saw it was Ronnie Gervase, who had called her before. Who had hugged her at breakfast before the cemetery incident and reminded her of the fund-raiser gala meeting.
“Hello, Ronnie.”
“Hon, how are you?” Voice soft as silk. A silk garrote, Perri thought.
“I’m all right. This is embarrassing.”
“Of course it is. I just wish I was there to give you a hug.”
“Thank you.”
“Listen, hon, the board of directors have called me and they are so grateful to you for all you’ve done for the education fundraiser gala—you have been fabulous—but I think they think it best if you take a step back.”
Such vague, inoffensive language. She closed her eyes. “This will blow over. You know the Internet. All eyes on something new tomorrow.”
“I do, of course, but they don’t. It’s just not the look they want for a gala. You understand.”
She felt hollowed out. “Do I need to resign publicly?”
“Oh, no, they’ll handle the wording. We had a couple of sponsors call who got itchy about staying in, and you know what they’re like. One pulls out, they all start to run. We all just want you to rest and feel better.”
Like she was some sort of Victorian hysteric, or ill, when she was just mad. Why couldn’t she be mad? She shouldn’t have pulled Jane from the car, but why was everyone forgetting that Jane—through either intent or recklessness—killed her son?
“You know, Ronnie, whatever. Good luck with the gala.”
“Don’t be that way.”
“Stop telling me how to be. Go run your gala.”
“All right, Perri. All right. I’m so sorry.”
“No, you’re not.” Perri hung up before Ronnie could offer another platitude.
She sat down, heavily. Her husband, siding with the enemy. Job in danger. Her volunteer career—which had nurtured so many of her friendships in Lakehaven over the years—wrecked. Lakehaven was slow to forgive; and she had taken a particular pleasure in that when it was the Nortons feeling the stings and snubs of Lakehaven.
She found her notes on the gala and ripped them from the little spiral notebook, as well as the calendar page for the gala, and she shredded them with her hands until the paper all lay like torn confetti at her feet. She deleted the board’s phone numbers from her phone, Ronnie’s as well, and all the e-mails tied to the event. Her breathing was harsh and sharp. Screw them. She tried to call Randy Franklin. No answer. She tried his office. Just a standard voice mail, but on it he said his office was indefinitely closed.
She could not just sit here and let the Nortons burn her life down.
Proof was a good thing, but maybe Perri could just scare Laurel out of chasing this revenge. She went and got the Liv Danger notebook from where she’d hidden it. She went back downstairs and sat near a window where she could see the garage. She began to page through the notebook, studying her son’s art and Jane’s storytelling, glancing up from the page every minute.
Laurel’s garage was closed, but she could see Laurel, through a window, talking on her phone. Then she vanished from sight, and a few moments later the garage door went up.
Perri hurried to her own car and tossed the notebook on the passenger seat. Following Laurel wouldn’t be easy: of course they knew each other’s cars, and Laurel would notice that Perri left when she did.
Laurel’s red Volvo drove through the circle and turned left. Perri roared out of her driveway, nearly clipping the decorative limestone edging, and followed. Ahead she saw Laurel turning onto Kelmont, and then again onto Old Travis. Perri followed. There were three other cars between her and Laurel, for which she was suddenly grateful. Maybe Laurel wouldn’t notice. Or maybe Laurel would give up this insanity now that she must know that Perri was onto her.
Her phone buzzed, again and again. At the red lights or stop signs she would glance at the list of callers. Friends and acquaintances calling, probably because they had seen the video, some genuinely wanting to comfort her, and others, less noble, wanting to hear the tone of her voice, to see how she was, to listen in sympathy and be secretly glad it wasn’t them. Embarrassment always drew a crowd.
Laurel merged onto MoPac, heading north, across Lady Bird Lake, toward downtown and the University of Texas. Perri followed, trying to keep back but also trying not to lose her.
The phone rang again. Playing a particular piece of music. “Toxic,” by Britney Spears. A ringtone tied to a number she had never deleted from her phone. A song she and Laurel had once sung together at a mom’s weekend a few years back in Vegas, before she lost David; she’d given the six women on the trip each a different Britney song for their ringtone. “Toxic” for Laurel. She had no idea it was such an appropriate choice.
She hit the icon on the car screen that answered the phone.
“Perri, why are you following me?”
“I know you’re behind this.”
“Behind what? By the way, you might be hearing from my lawyer, given your assault on my daughter.”
“I don’t think so. Because a lawsuit would mean you and Jane both testifying under oath and I’m not sure you’re quite ready for perjury. It’s easier to prove than arson or theft.”
“Your problems have nothing to do with me. Stop following me, or I’ll call the police and tell them you are harassing me.”
“I’m driving on a public road. I have every right.”
“How does it feel?” Laurel asked after three beats of silence. “To be blamed? For everyone to mock you, to think the worst of you, to not want to hear your side of the story?”
“I knew it. This is you. You’re mental. Burning down that woman’s house. Destroying that man’s marriage, and he’s a nutcase, he’ll come for you and your daughter. You have let one crazy genie out of the bottle.” And then she saw the solution to her problem.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. But stop following me.”
“Fine. I will.” And she took the next exit, into a heavily wooded older neighborhood.
“And stay away from my daughter.”
“I kno
w where the name Liv Danger comes from. Jane knows it. She remembers it. You’re both liars of the worst sort.”
“I don’t know what you mean and you won’t be able to hurt her for long,” Laurel said.
“Did you just threaten me?”
“You’re the one following me and you feel threatened? Maybe I’m driving to David’s grave to put flowers on it. You want to come beat me up? I fight back.” Laurel hung up.
Oh, I fight back, too, Perri thought. I’m going to aim a weapon of mass destruction at you and your lying daughter. She parked in the lot of a small coffee shop. She searched the Internet for Shiloh Rooke, found an address for him on the county’s property tax rolls website, and drove to his house. It was a modest ranch house from the 1960s, in the Northwest Hills neighborhood.
It was time for them to face their common enemy.
36
UT WAS FAR bigger than St. Michael’s, and Jane thought there might be a kind of wonderful anonymity here. Just so many kids, thousands upon thousands. You could hide here. Maybe she should try school again at a bigger campus than St. Mike’s, where it would be less nerve-racking for her to reboot her life.
“Amari? Hi.”
“Jane.” Amari looked up from her phone. “Whatever this is, let’s make it fast. I’ve got somewhere to be.”
“It’s about the accident.”
“Did you remember it all now?” Funny how interested other people were in her memories. Or lack thereof. Or that amnesia seemed like an illness that wasn’t permanent, like a bad flu.
“I wanted to ask you about that day in class.”
“I don’t really remember much either.”
“Well, you do more than me.” Jane forced herself to offer a bright smile. It didn’t work. Amari stared at her. “You saw David pass me a note in class, right? But you didn’t read the note.”
“No, I didn’t read it. Obviously.”
“Then you saw us that night and texted Kamala about it.”
“I thought she would want to know.”
“She said they’d broken up.”