Angie looked past the swingset. She studied the group of mothers at their usual picnic table.
Jo was sitting with them, but on the periphery. Her arm was in a sling strapped low on her waist. Angie didn’t know the prognosis, but she took it as a good sign that Jo’s hand was still attached. She also took it as a good sign that Jo had finally joined the other women. The park was a regular afternoon event. Jo had held herself apart for months, politely smiling, nodding over a newspaper or a book from several picnic tables away. That she was actually sitting at their table now, that she was looking at them, talking to them, had to be progress.
Angie hadn’t talked to her daughter since the night Delilah had tried to murder her. At least not so Jo could hear. The last thing Angie had told Jo as she dropped her off at Grady was a list of instructions. Angie had already called Denny on the way to the hospital. Ng was there too, so they had to come up with a script for Jo that would pass for credible: that Jo’s boyfriend had hurt her, that he had disappeared, that she would not give his name, that she didn’t want to press charges, that her name was Delilah Palmer.
Jo had played her part well, but she didn’t know about the other things that Angie had done, like cleaning up the mess at the crime scene, using her cop training to hide everything in plain sight. Like taking Delilah on the last, most miserable ride of her life.
Angie still shuddered if she thought too long about the things she had done to Delilah’s body. Not letting her die, because the bitch deserved that, but the cutting.
Sure, Angie was dangerous, but she wasn’t sick.
The important thing was that the ends justified the means. Jo was living proof of this. Literally—she was living. The rest of it, Angie didn’t know. Jo’s hand would hopefully heal, but some wounds stayed open no matter what balm you tried.
Angie could only guess what was going on in her daughter’s head right now. Jo would still be feeling guilty about Reuben. Guiltier still that she was relieved to have him gone. She would be worried about Anthony, the short-term damage, the long-term damage. She wouldn’t yet be worrying about herself, but she would be feeling exposed, because the entire world knew what her husband had done to her. To Anthony. To Keisha Miscavage. To other women, because in the ensuing months, victims had started coming out of the woodwork. Marcus Rippy and Reuben Figaroa had taken their show on the road, drugging and raping women across the country. There might be as many as thirty victims.
Angie wondered if Jo took some kind of comfort in knowing that Reuben never beat the women he raped. That was only something special he saved for Jo.
If you were keeping score, and Angie was the type to do just that, Keisha Miscavage was the real winner. The fact that any person with a computer could Google her gang rape had not cowed the girl. Angie had followed Keisha’s story in the news. She was back in school. She was staying clean. She was on the lecture circuit, talking to other students about assault. People believed her now, or at least more people did than not. One woman accusing a man of rape was a crazy bitch. Two women, three women, a few dozen women—they might have a point.
Anthony jumped off the swing. His feet landed wrong. He fell flat on his ass. Jo sprang to her feet, but so did Anthony. He wiped the sand off his butt. He hopped four times in a jagged line, and then he was off.
Jo didn’t sit back down until her son had settled on the rope climb. She had her hand to her chest. The other mothers were clearly teasing her about her concern. Jo smiled, but she kept her head down, wary of even this small amount of attention.
Angie wanted Jo to be more like Keisha. To go out into the world. To tell everybody to fuck off, to stand up, to be strong like her mother. To do something other than hide herself away.
Was it shyness? Was it fear?
For the last few months, Angie had been mentally composing a letter to Jo. The content wasn’t always at the forefront of her thoughts. She wasn’t obsessing over it. What happened was, she was packing up her shit to move to a new place or she was driving down the road in her new car and she would think of a line that would work in the letter:
I should’ve kept you.
I should’ve never let you go.
I loved you the moment I saw you yell at that asshole in Starbucks, because that was when I understood that you are my daughter.
Angie knew that she could never actually write the letter. Not if she wanted to give Jo her happy ending. The temptation was still there, though. Angie was selfish enough, she was cold-hearted enough, and she certainly had proven that she didn’t mind leaving a few casualties in her wake, but for now, she was content to do what she had always done: watch her daughter from afar.
Jo seemed like she was going to be okay. She was going out more. Sometimes she’d wind up at the coffee house near Anthony’s new school, where she’d sit for hours just because she could. Other times she’d go to church and sit in the back pew, hands clasped in her lap as she stared at the stained glass behind the altar. There were aunts and cousins and all sort of boisterous, happy people that Angie could not imagine having to spend Thanksgiving and Christmas with. Anthony was attending a private school two counties over. They were financially secure. Jo hadn’t been on any of Reuben Figaroa’s accounts, but she was still married to him when he had taken the coward’s way out, and she had inherited all of his investments, the properties, the cars, the money.
Angie had her own inheritance, too. From her uncle, which had a certain kind of irony, since Dale had never claimed her until Deidre was gone and he could trick her out. The bricks of cash that Angie had taken from his Kia totaled eighteen thousand dollars. Together with the money in her bank account, she had about fifty grand to live on before she figured out what to do with the rest of her life.
Back to being a private eye? Back to running scams? To running girls? To running pills? Back to Atlanta?
Not once since Deidre had drugged herself into a coma had Angie felt like she had choices. From the age of ten, Dale was always there, pushing Angie, pulling her, slapping her around. Even when she managed to get away, Virginia always connived her back into the fold.
In her imaginary letter to Jo, Angie would explain how Dale and Virginia had gotten their hooks into her. That she had only been four years older than Anthony when it happened. That she had been vulnerable. Terrified. That she had done anything and everything to keep them happy because they were all she had in the world. Maybe she would even quote LaDonna Rippy. The bitch was going to spend some hard time in prison for holding on to those shoes, but she hadn’t been wrong about the nature of damage. Some people had holes inside of them that they spent their lives trying to fill. With hate. With pills. With scheming. With jealousy. With a child’s love. With a man’s fist.
Angie had created the hole inside of Jo. She had to own that truth. Jo had her adoptive parents. She had a normal life. But the second Angie had abandoned her baby in that hospital room, Jo had started to tear. The old saying was that women married their fathers. Angie had a sinking feeling that Jo was attracted to men who were more like her mother.
There weren’t a lot of excuses to make, but this is what Angie would have told her daughter: badness doesn’t come all at once. The dominoes fall over time. You hurt someone by mistake and they let you get away with it. Then you try hurting them on purpose and they still stick around. And then you realize that the more you hurt them, the better you feel. So you keep hurting them, and they keep hanging on, and the years roll by and you convince yourself that the fact that they still stand by you means that the pain you cause is okay.