by Kate Moretti
She and Tripp sat at the diner behind the police station, The 543, the same one they’d sat at not even a full week ago with the same waitress, her thick fingers smoothing down her apron front, Ashlee William’s cousin. She watched them with her eyebrows raised, her wide neck wobbling as she talked about them to the cook. He leaned out, looked over the grill at them, and shook his head.
“Nate did not do this thing, Tripp. They asked me in there about Nate’s activities, his comings and goings. Did they ask you?”
Tripp nodded slowly, stirring a fistful of sugar packets into his coffee. “They did. He walked in the woods all the time, Bridge. I had to tell them that.”
“It looks bad.” Their waitress brought over a plate of rheumy eggs. The plate clattered as she tossed it down in front of Bridget. “This is something else. Something worse than Nate. The school, this town. I found that ring. And something about that video.”
“It’s gone now.” Tripp snapped his fingers like he just thought of it. “I looked it up as soon as you called me. He took it down.” He fished his phone out of his pocket. “Glad we saved it, right?”
Bridget took it like it was a poisoned thing, a sharp-toothed poisonous snake, pincered between her fingers, and clicked play on the video. She skipped to the end, watched until the hand, dark against the pale backdrop of Lucia’s breast, the ethereal wooooooooooooooooowooooooooooooooo. Until her brain itched. Something. Something.
“Tripp. The voice in the back, the woooooowooooo that sounds like it’s a ghost sound? They’re not saying woooowooooo.”
She couldn’t be sure. She had to be sure.
She stood, motioned in a circle with her hand, and threw a ten-dollar bill on the table. It would be a small tip. Deservedly so.
Tripp rose, following her, confused, his hands pawing at his wallet to beat her to the bill. She was out the door and in the parking lot, trying to catch her breath, her mind skipping on all the pieces that were right there. So close she could touch. Tripp trotted behind her.
“Bridge, wait up, where are we going?”
“My house.” She spun around, her purse clutched between her fingers. “I think I figured it out.”
• • •
“Here, here.” Bridget flipped through the journal, the other notebooks strewn around her dining room in her frantic haste. She found it then and shoved it toward Tripp.
“Look. There. See?”
She said, I’ll tell your mama, I know just who you are! You said, Then who are we? Did you really think she was lying? She called you out so fast, Taylor Lawson, she said, and then she looked at me, like she’d never seen me before. Lulu something, she said. You nearly died laughing.
“Taylor called her Lulu. The voice on the recording. It’s saying Luuuuuuuuuuuluuuuuuu not wooooooooowoooooooo.” Bridget felt breathless, jittery. “Do you see it?”
“Yes, gimme a minute, Bridget okay? Let me read it.”
His eyes scanned the passage, seemingly forever, and Bridget jiggled her foot, hopping back and forth. She focused on her breathing, on not snatching the journal away from him. Until he looked up at her, done, his eyes a question mark, and she did take it back. She fanned the pages forward then back again. Until she found the second thing.
The ring, or what she now knew was a ring, but before was only the charm, the ring part broken off, the metal heart, worn thin, the BE FRI rubbed smooth. Taped to the pages with scotch tape. She pried the sticky charm off the paper, painstakingly, to avoid tearing the paper.
“Okay. I don’t get it.”
“It’s Taylor. Taylor was there. I don’t know when exactly, but that ring? The one in the clearing that I gave the police? This is its counterpart. Do you see now? They fit together. It said best friends.”
Tripp nodded. “I do. But do you think Taylor killed her?”
“Yes. No. I don’t know. But this isn’t as simple as Nate and an affair. I know that.”
Bridget asked for his phone and he handed it to her. She watched the video again, trying to make out the voice. Before it seemed disconnected, maybe a series of voices, maybe a boy with a falsetto wooooowooooooo, but now, her fingers turning around the sticky charm, rubbing at the embossment, she knew. Without a doubt.
“Taylor was there. The night she was raped, Taylor was there.”
And then she thought of Taylor, folded on top of Andrew in his truck, her compact body kicking against his to some internal beat.
Bridget had to wonder: When did they become a couple, before or after the party?
Ironically, Nate would have known.
“I think Taylor killed Lucia. Maybe to keep her quiet. About Andrew.”
Tripp nodded like he understood, but then asked, “But why? Why does she want to protect him?”
“Why else?” Bridget fought the urge to pat his cheek. “For love. She loves him.”
• • •
At the police station, Bridget paced in the small waiting room with three blue vinyl and metal chairs and a glass table. Tripp let himself into the back, looking for Harper.
Bridget tried Nate again; no answer.
She’d marked the pages in the journal with a Post-it note, the ones to show him about Lulu, the video, the counterpart to the ring. She realized, too late, that it’s not enough. It’s just not enough to string together.
A detective came out, one Bridget had never seen before, not Harper, not Mackey, and she realized that they were sending out their third string. Everything she had would be tossed in a pile to be sifted through later. Evidence to be gathered to support the accusation, not the other way around.
Tripp followed the man and nodded behind him.
“Do they have Nate? Did they arrest Nate?” Bridget asked, and Tripp looked left and right before he finally nodded again. He started to speak, but the detective cut him off.
“I can take a statement, Ms. Peterson. And anything you’d like me to have?” He held his hand out, an expectation without promise. Bridget pulled the journal in tight to her chest.
“I’ll come back. I made a mistake, okay?” She backed toward the door, Tripp looking confused behind the detective and shaking his head, mouthing no, but Bridget left anyway. Back into the parking lot, Tripp burst through the door after her.
“What are you doing?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know, but I’m not doing this. I’m not serving Nate up on some kind of platter. I need to figure it all out first. If we give everything over to Harper, who knows what will happen? I haven’t read this thing cover to cover. Anything in it will be torn apart, scrutinized, and put back together in any way that supports his agenda.”
“Bridget, stop it. That’s not what will happen. Besides, I suspect this journal will become evidence regardless.”
“Fine, but then I have time.”
“Time for what?” Tripp came to her, so close she could smell him, leather and peppermint and something musky. She felt her heart flip, just once. His hand twitched on her elbow.
“I have to talk to Taylor. I’m the only one.”
“I’ll come with you.” He said it automatically, like a statement, not a question.
“No. Stay here. Nate needs you. I’ll be back.” She was glad she’d brought her own car, glad she insisted on driving separate. She turned, started to walk toward her car.
“Bridget, don’t be an idiot. Let me come with you.” Tripp followed her, close on her heels.
At the car, before she got in, she hesitated. She turned and looked at Tripp, his face a reflection of both confusion and worry, the lines on his forehead permanent and something she’d never noticed before. In the weirdly dim parking lot—later she’d wonder why the lot at the police station was so dark—he looked older. Almost like an old man.
Bridget remembered this now, this quick pulse of heat, this wanting. She put her hands on his waist, right at the belt of his jeans, leaned up, and pressed her lips against his. Softly, at first, and then a bit more insistent, and he gave a soft
cry of surprise. Bridget felt an unusual sort of power surge through her, high on the idea that she was giving him something he’d wanted forever, and admitting to herself that she’d known it.
Then his arms were around her and she didn’t know how they got there but they were, and he pulled her against him, his mouth warm and his arms and chest unyielding, his thumbs rubbing at her waist, where her skirt sat. His mouth moved under hers, his tongue slipping between her lips, her body pressing closer, her heart hammering wildly in her chest so she was sure he must be able to feel it.
When she pulled away, the back of her hand against her mouth, she found she was smiling. He held her tight and she had to arch her back to look at him.
“I’m coming with you,” he said, but he was smiling.
“You stay here. I’ll be fine. I’ll call you. She’s a high school girl. She won’t say a word to me if you’re with me. It’s ten o’clock at night. I’m sure her mother is home.”
“Call me immediately when you leave,” Tripp said, and let her go, openly reluctant about it.
“Of course. Stay here until I get back.” Bridget placed her palm against his chest and he moved his hand over it.
“You’ll come back?” Tripp asked, his eyebrows raised in surprise.
“To you? Yes,” Bridget said, her blood pumping with adrenaline, mixed up with the rush of new love and the idea that she could still have this feeling, could still be this person.
“That’s not what I meant,” Tripp said, smiling, his head turned to the side, his palm against his chin, his jaw. He looked back at the door, the detective backlit in the hallway, watching them.
“I know. But it’s what I meant.” She kissed his cheek.
Bridget got into the car and drove away. In the rearview mirror, she could see Tripp watch her go.
• • •
The Lawsons’ house sat in the same development as the Tempests’. Part of the Mt. Oanoke elite, if there were such a thing. Their house was high on a rise, imposing but sterile, tan brick on the outside, utterly devoid of personality. Not even a potted plant. She wondered what Burt Lawson must pay to be free of Jennifer and Taylor. Seemed like a lot.
Before Bridget could second-guess herself, she rang the doorbell. The house was dark and she suspected either no one was home or everyone was sleeping. The door opened without either a porch light or an interior light being flicked on and Bridget gasped in surprise, Tripp’s peppermint taste still zinging on her tongue.
“Mrs. Peterson! Really? What are you doing here?” It was Taylor, her voice lilting and dreamy.
“Taylor, is your mom here?” It was the first question Bridget could think of to ask and it was met with a high laugh, brittle in the quiet night.
“That would be a no, Mrs. Winters.” Bridget could smell the liquor on her breath wafting across the darkened threshold. A giggle, a stumble. Then, bam, like the sun, a porch light.
Taylor’s hair was piled high on her head in a messy bun, her ears devoid of dangly earrings, her face white in the fluorescent ecofriendly LED porch light, her eyes black. Bridget almost didn’t recognize her. Without her makeup, her thick cat-eyed eyeliner, she looked like a twelve-year-old. Prepubescent, even, gangly legs jutting out from beneath her cotton nightgown.
Taylor opened the door wide and then wandered away into the darkened house. Bridget tentatively stepped inside; it smelled new, cheap, and chemical. A light flipped on from somewhere upstairs and Bridget followed it and Taylor’s footsteps up a winding staircase to a gaping hallway and an interior balcony, bumped out above the foyer below. She looked down and saw the front door, the glass and brass swinging chandelier. Below, the ceramic tile floor.
Bridget couldn’t be sure because of the dark, but it seemed to be the only furnished room in the house.
Taylor sat in a monstrous plaid armchair under a dim table lamp, the smoke curling from a lit cigarette in her hand. In the far corner perched a dry bar, the clear bottles stacked together, an ice bucket sweating on the glass. The rich were strange.
“My mom hates when I smoke in here,” she said. “But she’s not here, so . . .” She shrugged then and laughed, a glass jangling with ice and clear liquid. Bridget would have bet it wasn’t water. “So, Mrs. Winters, are you here to talk to me? Or my mom?” She stretched her long skinny doe legs out, flexing her painted toes like a cat.
“You,” Bridget said, and wondered briefly if she underestimated her. For some reason, in the dim of the balcony, watching the smoke spiraling from between Taylor’s blue glittering fingertips, Bridget felt like Taylor had the upper hand. The sensation, like at the mill, of being driven forward by forces out of her control. “They found Lucia, Taylor. At the mill.”
Taylor opened her eyes wide, but there was something black and dead in them. She shook her head.
“I’m not surprised, really. I’m sure Mr. Winters killed her, to shut her up. They were a thing, you know. I knew it, everyone knew it.” Her voice changed, as well as her face. Her posture was slung low like a cat, slinking over the rolled arm of the chair, and she gave Bridget a slow, torpid smile. In that second, she seemed both beautiful and deeply malicious and, for a beat, Bridget was afraid.
“Oh? I didn’t know it,” Bridget said.
“Sure. Andrew saw them once, behind the school. He had his hand down her jeans.”
Truth or lie? Lie, Bridget decided.
Taylor shook her head and blew out a cloud of smoke, which filled the space between them. “Andrew said she was a big girl, you know, down there. He should know.”
Bridget tried to make her face passive. The Taylor she’d known was so different from this girl, this crude, drunk, calculating girl.
“So I’m sure he kinda lost it when the whole thing about Temp’s party was about to blow, you know? I think she was losing her mind. She was babbling crazy things. She said Nate loved her. Was gonna leave his wife and that kid for her.” Taylor hiccupped, her bun bouncing, the ash from her cigarette scattering onto the plush of the plaid La-Z-Boy. She looked Bridget up and down. “He might leave that cunt of a wife, but he’ll never leave that kid.”
For a few moments all she could hear was the sound of Taylor’s inhale, hold, exhale.
“The thing with Andrew was, well . . . She wanted that. Has wanted it forever. She took everything from me. All the time. And then to say what she said? That he raped her? Stupid. He had her on video. She didn’t care if she was going to ruin him. Ruin his whole life.”
“What about her life, Taylor?” Bridget asked.
“There’s only one way out of this town, you know that.”
“How’s that?” Bridget asked.
“Only a man can get you out. No one knows that better than you, right?” She meant it to jab, to hurt. It didn’t.
“Taylor, when I had a man, when he was alive, we lived in this town by choice. We moved here.”
“Well, no accounting for taste, I guess.” Exhale. “Jennifer says that.”
“Does she also say the only way out of this town is with a man?”
“Sure, why not?” A giggle, exhale. Then, softer, “He’s my only shot. I’m not going to college on my own. I don’t think.”
“Why not? Your grades are good. You could get out on your own, Taylor.”
“Oh, don’t you know? Burt’s gone. I mean, he was gone before, but now he’s really gone. Skipped town, no one can find him.” She snorted. “No more money from him. You think Jennifer’s gonna work now? Nah. We’re upside down here. Stuck in this house. Look around, do you see any furniture?”
Bridget peered into the empty foyer below. The cavernous living room. The ugly incongruity of the plaid chair. She said nothing, stood with her hand resting lightly against the railing, the cool wood beneath her palm.
“We’ll see when I get down there.”
“Down where?” Bridget asked, the answer plain.
“Texas.”
“Does he know yet? That you’re following him?”
&n
bsp; “Not yet. We have time before he goes. I’ll graduate, get a shit job, and wait for him. It’s fine. He’s been freaked out. Coach Winters, then Lucia.” Her voice pitched downward, like Lucia was a dirty word. “It will all be okay now.”
“Lucia? Why?” Bridget feigned innocence, her phone in her hand, her thumb scrolling through the apps, looking almost bored while she pressed the button. The phone flashed red, blinking in her hand: record.
Taylor lit one cigarette off the other, clinked her ice cubes. She pushed off the armchair and stumbled to the bar in the corner, dimly illuminated by a night light. She leaned close to the railing and Bridget held her breath, just one little misstep. She imagined her flipping, feet over head, into the abyss below, the chandelier swinging gently.
“It was all so fucked up. She was going to just disappear long enough to fuck him up. Get him fired. Ruin his marriage. She was gone too long. That girl was always too dramatic. Always too much.” Taylor poured more vodka from the bottle and flopped herself back into the chair. Caught her breath, like it was one big effort.
Finally, “He was mine first, that’s all.”
“He’s not now?” Bridget asked, wondering briefly if she meant Andrew or Nate. Andrew. Definitely Andrew.
“Not with the lies Lucia’s been spreading about him. It’s all going to shit now. Well, maybe not anymore.” She heaved another one of those big breaths, her hands splayed across her chest. “She ruins everything she touches.”
Everything you touch. Accusatory, not amorous, then. You ruin everything you touch.
“You wrote that note, Taylor,” Bridget could hardly breathe. “Who set it on fire?”
Taylor said nothing, just stared over her shoulder at the wall, shaking her head, an indistinct smirk playing on her mouth until her eyes darted away again. “Why? You love Lucia. She’s your best friend.”
Taylor leaned forward, her face white, her nose scrunched. “That girl. The truth?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “I’m glad to be rid of her. She’s been nothing but an anchor around my neck. Jennifer always pecking at her, worried about her. It’s enough to make anyone sick.”