I didn’t want to be in a room with him. Or talk about him. And it was this that Hannah Pardot seized on. Not my words but the distance I tried to put between myself and Jackson. This unwillingness to comment on anything Jackson said. To neither confirm nor deny. I switched to I don’t know, which was all Corinne had left me with anyway.
It didn’t matter in the end. Bailey cracked at the first tap, after hearing about the pregnancy test in Corinne’s bathroom. Filled that box with each of our betrayals and all of her fears. Told Hannah Pardot what she wanted to hear: Nic? She thinks she’s too good for this place. But she’s nothing without us. Nothing. And No, we didn’t know Corinne was pregnant, but it must’ve been Jackson’s, and that must’ve been what her voicemail was about, and Jackson didn’t want it, obviously. Bailey followed the pieces Hannah laid out for her, feeding her back the story she demanded: that Corinne was impulsive and reckless—she’d burned down the Randall barn, even—and I was still pissed about her hitting on Tyler at the party. And Daniel was always too harsh on me—emphasis on harsh. Jackson wasn’t going to forgive her this time, Bailey said. He told me so.
It was him. It had to be him. He didn’t want her or the baby.
Bailey made it a story, and since she was one of Corinne’s best friends, that made it real—everyone else adding layers over the top: I heard her throwing up in the bathroom; she didn’t wear those cropped shirts anymore, because obviously she was hiding it; she was ashamed. Jackson dumped her. The poor girl. That poor, poor girl. Brought it on herself, though, you know.
I don’t know what came over me when I found out. Why I pushed Bailey, why I yelled, why I accused her of ruining Jackson. Why I cared.
Because she did ruin him. That was the story people ultimately believed, even if no one could ever prove it. And that was why he was working at this bar, all alone. And why he never had a girl who stuck around. Now those same eyes with the impossibly long lashes made him seem like he was listening too much, eavesdropping, plotting. His appearance was too coincidental. The symmetry of him was the mask. And he, the monster behind it.
This bar was the safest place to put him.
“Why don’t you leave, Jackson?”
He didn’t answer. His tattoos rippled as he wiped down the bar between us. But I thought I knew. You wait for people here. For people to come back. For things to make sense.
“Why do you keep coming back?” he asked.
“I’m helping out with my dad.”
“So you’re only coming back for him?” He smirked again, avoiding my gaze.
I dropped onto a barstool. “Since when did it become socially acceptable to drink at breakfast?” I asked.
Jackson pressed his lips together, looking at me for a beat too long. “It’s after lunch.”
I checked the clock behind the bar, staring at the second hand jerking to a stop with each movement. I must’ve been out for an hour or two at the kitchen table. Trading time in the day for the sleep I wasn’t getting at night.
“What do you want, Nic?”
I drummed my fingers on the counter like my dad might do, then stopped myself. Held them flat. Willed them not to shake from the caffeine. “Do you know where Tyler works?”
“Same place he’s always worked.”
“You know what I mean.”
Tyler didn’t have an office. He and his dad used to work out of their home, where Tyler was happy to live until what I considered way past an acceptable age; he said he’d rather save the money.
“But then you have to spend it on a motel whenever you want to take a girl back to your place,” I’d teased him, standing too close.
He’d grinned and said, “I just take them to theirs.” And he’d taken me back to my place to prove his point.
But now he lived here. In an apartment above a bar. And I wasn’t sure if he still worked out of his parents’ house or was on site today.
Jackson threw the rag on the counter and motioned for me to follow him out of the bar, out of earshot. We stood in the vestibule between the front door and the staircase, and he leaned in close. “Stay away from him right now. Trust me.”
“What are you talking about?” I felt the men in the bar leaning closer, trying to hear—felt all the rumors that could come from this moment: Jackson and Nic, whispering about the case. Jackson and Nic, standing too close.
“Annaleise Carter,” he said. “They’re pushing Tyler hard on it. And you being here? Doesn’t look good for him.”
“How do you know this?”
“It doesn’t matter. Just don’t add more fuel to the rumors, Nic.”
“What rumors?”
He cut me off with a look, and I brushed the comment aside. “I’m engaged. I just need to talk to him.”
“You need to stay away from him. Annaleise was . . .” He trailed off, thinking. Annaleise was still a thirteen-year-old girl to me. I’d left and missed what she had become.
“Annaleise was what?”
“She was obsessed.” He cleared his throat. “With Corinne. She’d been hanging out here a lot. Being way too friendly. Asking questions.”
“About what happened?”
“Not really. It’s not like she was obsessed with what happened, exactly. Just . . . her.” Jackson looked over my shoulder, into the bar, his mouth close to my ear. “She’d say things I swear Corinne used to say to me in the same tone of voice. It was creepy, Nic. Seriously fucking creepy. She could do a pretty sick impression of her.” His jaw tensed, every muscle in his body tensed. “I never . . . She creeped me out, more than anything. But the cops still talked to me. They were here just this morning. I bet they’re with Tyler now, since they also wanted to know where he worked. Bet they’ll talk to your brother soon enough.”
“Daniel? Why the hell would they talk to him?”
Jackson’s lips pressed together and he stared back, unwavering.
“You’re not serious,” I said. “Daniel wouldn’t.”
He shrugged. “I hear she called him a lot. She’d come in here looking for him, just like you’re looking for Tyler right now. Hear his wife spent a few days at her sister’s place a few months back—don’t know if it was related. Rumors. You know how it goes.”
Rumors. They always start from something. Daniel hadn’t told me Laura had left. But then again, would he?
“Just tell me where he works, Jackson.”
“I really don’t know,” he said, his eyes sliding away from me.
Lie. Again.
He left me standing in the entrance to the bar. And somewhere along the way, as I felt myself losing a grip on everything I’d fought to hold together—my family—and as the panic surged up and over, I lost all semblance of pride. I followed him in. Raised my voice in the dim quiet. “Does anyone know where I can find Tyler Ellison?”
The man with the whiskey coughed into his fist. I walked over to him, stood too close. “Do you know?” I asked, leaning so close that the liquor on his breath stung my eyes.
He held the glass between us like a shield, smiled as he raised it to his lips. “Nah, I’m just curious what he did to make a girl barge into a bar looking for him.” He laughed to himself.
The man with the beer ignored him. He frowned and tipped his glass toward me. “Patrick Farrell’s daughter, right?”
The other man went silent. I nodded.
“Ellison Construction’s got a project going at the railway. New station. Funded by the goddamn township.” He took a gulp of his beer, dropped it to the counter. “For the goddamn tourists.” The other man mumbled something about money and funding and streets and the schools. “My guess, you’ll find him there. How’s your dad?”
“Not good,” I said. “Worse. He’s getting worse.”
“You selling the house? That what I hear?”
“I don’t know,” I said. Everything was fluid again. Dad hadn’t signed the papers. But the house was just the tip of the thing now.
I turned to leave, and Jackson grabbed my arm. “Be smart,” he said.
And, like an echo, I heard Tyler whispering to Jackson down by the river. Be smart, he said, and then I stepped on a twig, and they both turned around, pretended they were talking about something else.
Jackson told the police he didn’t see her after the fair, Nic, Tyler had told me later. He claims he never saw her at all that night.