CHAPTER TWELVE

In the parking lot, I can tell that Ashley is desperate to ask me what happened inside that interview room. A quick glance in the side mirror of the SUV shows I’m white as a sheet. At best, Burke thinks I’m some sort of rubbernecker, showing up at crime scenes.

Worst, he actually thinks I know what happened to Bailey. That I was involved somehow.

Ashley makes a right toward Main Street when we leave the sheriff’s station, though, and not a left toward home.

“I’ve got to run into the drugstore and get Lauren something to help her sleep,” Ashley explains. “You don’t mind, do you?”

I’m quiet. I should tell her about the sleepwalking and Lauren wanting to stay in my room, but I’m positive of what will happen: Ashley will eventually break Lauren down, get her to admit to what we did the other night.

Ashley’s fingers find mine, atop my knee, and squeeze. “Oh, hon, I’m so sorry. I’m such a horse’s ass, asking you to go in there.”

Friendly Drugs. She thinks I’m quiet because of the thought of going into Bailey’s workplace and being reminded of her.

When your friend is missing, it’s not something you need to be reminded of. Bailey’s absence is my new state of mind.

We pull up to Friendly Drugs and I follow Ashley to the back of the store, to the pharmacy. Tyrell is behind the counter, wearing a white lab coat in lieu of the navy Friendly Drugs polo. He looks somewhat embarrassed by it.

“Nice coat,” I say, while Ashley pokes around in the aisle. “You get a promotion?”

“I’m eighteen, so I’m allowed to work back here now.” Tyrell pauses. “Have you heard anything?”

“Nah. We just left her house. Her mom’s a wreck. What about you?”

Tyrell glances down the aisle. I follow his gaze. There’s no one but Ashley, browsing the cold medications and sleep aids.

“I heard they’re close to ruling Cliff out,” Tyrell says. “His dad gave him an alibi. Said he was home and in bed before midnight.”

So that’s why they let him go from the station earlier. If Cliff fought with Bridget, left the party, and went home, there’s no way he had time to follow Bailey, kill her, and get rid of her body. “Do you think his dad’s lying for him?”

Tyrell’s upper lip goes flat. He looks around the store to make sure no one’s listening to us. “Don’t repeat this, because I don’t want him coming over here and accusing me of shit. But there’s a rumor going around that Cliff’s dad was at the Tap Room until closing time Saturday.”

“So the alibi is bullshit.”

Tyrell holds up a finger. Gestures: Shhh. “Like I said. It’s a rumor. I don’t know for sure.”

Ty’s voice trails off as Ashley comes up to the counter, empty-handed. “Ty. Andrew didn’t tell me you were working back here. I’ll have to tell Russ. He’ll be so proud.”

Tyrell wants to work in a hospital pharmacy someday, like my father. He got into Madison’s pharmacy school, early admission. Six years of school, and he’ll be a doctor. I envy people like him, who just know what they want to do.

“What can I help you guys with?” Tyrell asks, blush creeping into his cheeks.

“Lauren’s having trouble sleeping,” Ashley says. “Do you have anything stronger than Benadryl behind the counter?”

Tyrell disappears as an older technician—a woman with a smoothed blowout—comes forward. Sticks a pen in the pocket of her lab coat. “Is that Ashley Markham?”

“It is.” Ashley cringes. I don’t know the woman. Her name tag says DEB.

Apparently she knows me—or of me—because she clucks and grabs my hand, her words coming out rapid-fire. “You poor thing. You’re friends with her. You must be in pieces. I barely knew her—she works up front—but it feels downright scary, her being gone.”

I pull my hand back. Ashley puts a protective arm around my shoulders. “You know, we could absolutely use your help this week,” she says. “The sheriff’s office is putting together a volunteer search. I’m putting together boxed lunches.”

“Oh, bless your heart, Ashley Markham. You just name the place and I’ll be there.”

Tyrell comes up to the counter, setting down a box of NyQuil next to Deb’s hand. He catches my gaze and rolls his eyes. Deb holds the scanner gun over the box of meds and gives a whole-body shudder. “You just don’t think of things like this happening here.”

Whenever people say that, are they forgetting about the Leeds family? “Yes.” I nod in agreement while Ashley signs the book promising she won’t make the NyQuil into meth. Deb is staring at me.

“I hope you’ve been being careful,” she warns. She actually wags her finger at me as she bags the meds. “Right about now I’m very grateful we put Kayla in karate. Denise insists on dance still, bless her. These silly girls don’t know what danger is.”

Ashley grips the receipt Deb hands to her. No doubt thinking of Lauren, home alone with Mrs. Lao watching her. “Thanks, Deb. You take care.”

“I heard they got some detective from the state bureau of investigation,” Deb says. “Someone with actual experience.”

“Well, the sheriff is doing his best.” Ashley gives a tight smile. The Midwest way of saying, Please shut the fuck up now.

“You know, I wonder if they want him off the case because of his connection.” Deb looks over her shoulder, which is hilarious considering the store is literally empty except for Tyrell. “Everyone is saying the Grosso boy is involved.”

“I’m not sure that’s wise.” Ashley hikes the strap of her purse up higher on her shoulder. The Grossos may not be the most well respected in Broken Falls, but it’s better to be feared than loved. No one wants to mess with them and have to drive forty minutes to the Walmart outside Pleasant Plains for ammunition. Most people who go in their stores do it with their heads down. Too afraid of looking at Jim Grosso the wrong way and getting a bullet in the ass like that boy did.

Perfect reason for the people who might have seen Jim Grosso at the Tap Room Saturday night not to come forward and say so.

“Well, sleep well.” Deb gestures to the plastic bag with the NyQuil—I’d grabbed it unconsciously.

“Oh, those are for Lauren,” Ashley says. “You take care, Deb.”

“Oh! You know, your son has a prescription here waiting,” Deb says. “Did you want to pick that up now?”

I freeze. Ashley says sure, gets out her wallet again. Completely unaware of what Andrew told me the other day: that he picked up his medication Sunday morning.

Ashley drops me off at home so I can wind down while she goes to the Costco in Pleasant Plains to get the boxes for the hundred lunches we’re making tomorrow, to donate to the volunteer search.

Andrew is in the dining room when I get home, his physics textbook cracked open in front of him, an empty pickle jar off to the side. It sends a jolt of calm through me, a brief reprieve from how rattled I am after that interview with Detective Burke.

And then I remember the bag of meds in my hand. The ones he lied about picking up the other morning.

I sink into the chair across from him. He looks up. Shakes hair out of his eyes. “Hey.”

“Hey.” I set the prescription bag in front of him. “Your mom and I picked these up for you.”

“Oh. Thanks.”

A beat of quiet as Andrew finishes up the problem he’s working on—math, physics, it all looks the same to me. I swallow. “I thought you said you picked up your prescription on Sunday morning?”

“I guess I had another one waiting.”

I study the top of his head. Can’t tell if he’s purposely not looking at me. He could very well be telling the truth, but there’s still a question mark that pings in my brain when I think of those fresh tire tracks Sunday morning.

I’m being paranoid. I’m just frazzled from the interview at the sheriff’s station. As I open my mouth to tell Andrew about it, a familiar, husky voice floats down the hall. I stare at Andrew: “Chloe Strauss is here?”

Andrew rolls his eyes. “She just showed up. I kinda wanted to tell her to leave.”

I unwind the scarf from my neck. “You’re too nice to tell her to leave.”

Luckily, I’m not. I follow the chattering into the den where Lauren and Chloe are watching TV. The sight sends a shock of annoyance through me. They’re only thirteen, they’re not even Bailey’s friends, but seeing them chatter casually over Say Yes to the Dress is too much right now.

“Hey, Laur,” I snap. “Don’t you have chores to do before your mom gets home?”

Lauren looks at me blankly; Chloe inspires that held-hostage look in her eyes. “I did them.”

Chloe mutes the TV. “I heard you’re the one who found the blood in the Leeds Barn.”

My heartbeat stalls. “How did you hear about that? It wasn’t on the news.”

Chloe shrugs. “My dad heard. He says Bailey’s dead.”

“It’s stupid of him to spread rumors.” I think of all the things people are saying about Bailey—that she OD’d on drugs, that she killed herself. What the hell do they know? “Bailey could still be alive.”

Chloe lifts her chin. “She’s not. I know what happened to her.”

Lauren’s shoulders tense up. I stare back at Chloe. She even looks like a little rat: pointy nose, mousy blond hair with a gray sheen to it. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“You guys made the Red Woman angry,” Chloe says. “When you summoned her spirit to the barn. She killed Bailey for revenge.”

In a split second I have Chloe’s arm in my grasp, yanking her off the floor. She’s yelling, and Lauren is yelling, and Andrew runs into the den. “Kacey! What is wrong with you?”

“There’s something wrong with her.” The feel of my nails digging crescent moons into Chloe’s skin is satisfying.

“Let go of her,” Lauren pleads over Chloe’s yelping.

I let go of Chloe. She falls back to the carpet, her eyes saucers. My voice comes out in a tremble: “She shouldn’t be here. She’s a lying little psychopath.”

Chloe lets out a low whine: “I didn’t even do anything—”

“Jesus.” Andrew runs a hand through his hair. “Chloe, c’mon. I’ll walk you home.”

Chloe stands up, sidestepping me like a cowering puppy. When they reach the hall, I hear Andrew admonish her: “You can’t just show up here without calling first. It’s rude.”

I’m shaking, Andrew’s words zipping around in my head. What is wrong with you? Lauren sits on the floor, shrinking into herself. Her eyes are on the door, but she doesn’t move to get up.

“Laur—”

“Just go away, Kacey. You mess up everything.”

I turn and cross the hall to my room without looking back at her. If I do, she’ll see how much what she just said wrecked me.

Lauren hates me. I hurt her friend—the only friend she thinks she has left—so she must hate me. Chloe isn’t going to want to come back here now. Maybe Chloe will even tell all the kids at school that Lauren Markham’s stepsister is a psycho who tried to hurt her.

I never wanted siblings. My mom had always been so inaccessible, so erratic with her affection, that I couldn’t imagine having to share her with someone else.

When the social worker told me that my father had a daughter and a stepson who lived with him, I thought I would be sick. They’d hate me, I was sure of it—I imagined being relegated to an extra bed in the attic. Real-life Cinderella shit.

So I tried to avoid everyone. But Andrew wouldn’t let things be.

It was a Saturday morning when he came into the living room where I was watching Animal Planet. I turned it off, like I’d been caught watching porn—even though Ashley told me to treat the house as my own.

“Are you doing anything this morning?” Andrew asked.

I shrugged. “I don’t now. Why?”

“I have to drive Lauren to the dance school in Pleasant Plains.” He tugged on his knit cap. “There’s a Waffle Hut across the street, so I always just wait there until she’d done instead of driving back…and now that I’m saying it out loud, I’m realizing how sad it is that I eat by myself every Saturday. So please come.”

“Waffle Hut,” I said. “I already ate.”

“No one is ever too full for waffles. Meet us in the car if you want to come.”

I thought about it for a beat. The alternative was sitting around doing nothing, possibly until my dad woke up. Then we’d be alone, and I wasn’t ready for that.

I tugged my boots on. Threw on my jacket and scuttled outside, where Andrew’s car was warming up. Lauren was in the front seat; through the glass, I saw them bickering. When I climbed into the backseat, she clammed up.

“Thanks for letting me come,” I said.

Lauren nodded and took out her phone. She was silent for the entire fifteen-minute ride to the dance studio, even when Andrew tried to get her to talk about why she made the trek to Pleasant Plains every Saturday. She was a teacher’s helper for a baby ballet class.

“How old are they?” Andrew prodded, when we were finally in the parking lot.

“Little,” Lauren snapped. “You know that.” She leapt from the car and hurried into the studio, pink dance bag slapping against the back of her leotard.

“She hates me,” I said.

“Nah, she always says she’d rather have a sister,” he’d said. “At least on the days she wants me to drown in hellfire.”

Andrew paused, holding the door to the Waffle Hut open for me. “She’s shy. Once she warms up, you won’t get her to stop talking and you’ll miss the quiet. Counter or booth?”

“I don’t care,” I said. Andrew picked the booth. As the waitress brought us menus, I felt a stab of homesickness. I thought of my mother and me, in our usual booth at the diner next to her bank. The tables were grimy and the plastic seats would stick to your thighs, but they had the best silver dollar pancakes. Always with strawberry syrup.

After the waitress took our order I slid the sugar shaker in front of me. Played with the top flap, eyeing Andrew. “Did you and Lauren even know about me?”

Andrew slid the shaker out of my hands and poured a tiny pyramid of sugar onto his spoon. “I did.”

My throat felt tight. Andrew’s gaze flicked to mine. “They thought it was for the best—Lauren wanted a sister so badly, and it would have been too hard to explain to her why we didn’t even know you.”

“And why was that, exactly? I just want the version you got.”

Andrew hesitates. “Your mom wouldn’t let your dad see you.”

Our food came out—we’d both ordered waffles: his with fresh strawberries, mine with a scoop of ice cream. I wasn’t hungry anymore. Maybe it was hearing someone confirm that my mom had lied to me my entire life.

I watched as Andrew administered an even sprinkle of sugar on each strawberry. I wondered if he did the same thing every week.

“My mom and I—my life before was really screwed up,” I said. “The last thing I want is to screw someone else’s family up.”

He looked up at me and said, simply, “I don’t think you could ever do that.”

After that, before I started working at Milk & Sugar in the summer, I went with Andrew to drop Lauren off every week until dance ended for the year. My sister thawed, started to pout that she couldn’t join our Saturday-morning waffle jaunt, like Andrew and I were attending a club meeting.

Really, we just talked. And one morning, when he caught me playing with the scar on my lip, he didn’t look away.

“How’d that happen?”

I sipped my coffee. Set the cup on the saucer with a clink. “I bit through it when my mom pushed me into a wall.”

He didn’t react. “I’m really sorry.”

“Don’t be. I pushed her back.” I looked out the window to the parking lot; the hostess was standing behind a Buick, helping the elderly woman behind the wheel back out of her spot. “It’s why we can’t live together. I’m just as bad as she is.”

“You’re really not,” Andrew said, after a beat. “I mean, she was the mom. It should have been her job to keep you safe.”

I picked up my cup. Set it back down. “Yeah. Maybe.”

I hadn’t told anyone the truth before, not even Dawn. But that’s the problem with letting someone slowly chip away at your walls—when you let too much of yourself out, there’s no way to get it back.

I have got to keep my shit together. The last thing I need is for Detective Dickhead to find out that I assaulted an eighth grader. By now, Chloe has probably told anyone who’ll listen what I did to her.

I wait until Andrew leaves with Chloe to tiptoe back into the den. No Lauren. I head upstairs, past my dad’s room and the sound of waves rising and swelling. His noisemaker, so he can sleep through our bullshit during the day. Ashley jokes that he wouldn’t wake up if Led Zeppelin reunited and started performing at his bedside.

I knock on Lauren’s door; instead of snapping at me to go away, she lets out a delicate “What?”

I inch my way in. She’s on her laptop. I think of scrolling through her browser history and swallow back guilt. “I’m sorry,” I say. “Chloe just really pissed me off.”

“It’s okay.” Lauren looks up from the computer. “She pisses me off too, sometimes. She said Bailey was killed in the barn in a satanic ritual.”

“I don’t think Bailey was killed in the barn,” I say. “There wasn’t a lot of blood.”

Just a streak to mimic the one found in the barn the night the Leeds family was murdered. I think of what Jade said earlier: someone wanted the police to find the phone on Cliff Grosso’s lawn. Whoever left it there earlier could have easily made the streak of blood to throw the searchers off more—make sure they look in the wrong place.

I sit on my sister’s bed, inches from her desk chair. “Lauren, I told you not to tell anyone what we did in the barn.”

Lauren’s face pinches. “Chloe is my only friend.”

“I’m your friend. Andrew’s your friend.” I sigh. “Chloe has issues. I think she really believes that stuff.”

“The blood.” Lauren’s voice is a hush. “Was it really in the same spot?”

“It doesn’t mean anything. It could just be someone playing a sick prank.”

Lauren pulls her knees up to her chin. After a beat: “I’m scared.”

“Of what?”

She looks out the window, the one that looks out over our road, Sparrow Hill visible in the distance. “That I’m never going to see you again.”

What a bizarre thing to say. Does she think that whatever happened to Bailey is going to happen to me too? I shake the thought out of my head.

“That’s not going to happen.” But all I feel is a wash of anxiety, imagining Ashley’s reaction if she finds out I’m responsible for Lauren’s freak-outs.

That’s what I should really be worried about—getting sent away from the Markhams for my bad behavior. But when I close my eyes, I see the halls of juvie as Crazy Missy described them. Girls going after each other like animals for misplaced glances.

I see Detective Burke, and the way he looked at me: like he’d found the missing piece of a puzzle.