I caught sight of the back of a man walking alone. Cigarette in hand, hair falling in a mop over his face. Something so familiar about the way he walked with his shoulders hunched forward. “Is that Jackson?” I asked.
“Hmm?” She was jarred back to the conversation. “Oh, I don’t know. Haven’t seen him in ages.”
“Last I heard, he was working at Kelly’s,” I said.
She shrugged. “I don’t go there anymore.”
“He didn’t do it, Bailey,” I said.
Bailey took a step away so her back was up against the side of a hot dog stand. “I know that,” she said, which surprised me. It was her words that had landed the suspicion on him. Her answers to Hannah Pardot. Her accusations.
“Then why did you make everyone think he did?”
“They told me she was pregnant! Jackson lied about it. And then the cops came in, demanding answers. I was just a kid!” she yelled.
“No, you were eighteen. We were all eighteen. Everything you said became evidence. Everything. You ruined him.”
“Everyone had a motive, Nic. If it wasn’t him, who do you think it would’ve been?”
Bailey was smarter than I gave her credit for being back then. But she was just as capable of deceit as I remembered. “Really? What was your motive, Bailey? God, you’re terrible.” But I thought I knew. The man walking behind us. Jackson Porter. What does the monster make you do? Does it make you dream of them? Of boys who aren’t yours?
“It wasn’t me. She was the monster. Can’t you see that now? We’re all better off without her,” Bailey said.
“Don’t say that.”
Truth is, I believed Bailey was lucky. For Bailey Stewart, life with Corinne could’ve gone two very different ways. Bailey was gorgeous—naturally alluring. But Cooley Ridge was Corinne’s. The attention was always hers. Bailey could either submit to Corinne, let her push her around, or Corinne could destroy her. Bailey was lucky she was weak. That she bent and folded so easily. There were worse things than being a door mat.
But Bailey also had a darkness in her that let her be manipulated, that wanted out. She was lucky to be loved by Corinne.
“Truth or dare, Bailey.” Corinne moved the soda straw from side to side in her mouth.
Dare, I thought. Take the dare.
“Truth,” Bailey said.
Corinne’s smile stretched wide. “Jackson or Tyler? And explain.”
There was no right answer. There never was.
“I changed my mind,” Bailey said. “Dare.”
“No, no, no, Bailey, my dear. Truth or you can leave. Now, tell me, which of our boyfriends would you like to make yours?”
I’d leaned back on my elbows, watching Bailey shift in discomfort. Corinne caught my eye and grinned.
“Always take the dare, Bails,” I said.
“Tyler,” Bailey said, her high cheekbones tinged red.
I laughed. “Liar.”
She set her eyes on me. “You get a free pass everywhere, Nic. People think you’re better than you are because of him. That’s my reason. Tyler.”
Corinne laughed. “Well played, Bailey.” She pulled Bailey toward her, wrapped her arms around her from the side, and squeezed. “God, I love you to death. The both of you. You’re horrible.”
I hated that Bailey acted so beyond it now. That she would call Corinne a monster as if she could strip out the rest. “Tell yourself whatever you want, Bailey. You always were an excellent liar.”
“Don’t act like you don’t know what I’m talking about. I heard her,” Bailey said. “I heard what she said at the top of the Ferris wheel.”
I shook my head, pretending not to remember.
“Who says something like that?” she asked. “She was sick, Nic. And she was contagious.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said.
She laughed like the joke was on me now. “I gotta go.”
“Wait,” I said. “Can I call you later? We can meet up someplace. Without all this?” Meaning the fair, meaning the Ferris wheel looming above as we talked, turning us harsh and defensive.
“No,” she said. “Let it go.”
Bailey knew something more, I was sure of it. I wished Everett were here to push her, convince her to lay bare her secrets, to absolve herself. I grabbed a napkin from the nearest booth, found a pen in my purse, and scribbled my number on it. “If you change your mind, I’m in town for a while. Helping out with my dad.”
She slid the napkin into her back pocket. God, she was beautiful. Every movement of her body looked choreographed. “Goodbye, Nic.”
“Your daughter is beautiful,” I said.
She started leaving, tossed her hair over her shoulder, gave me one last searing look. “I hope she isn’t like us.”
I heard the ride beside us, the gears shifting, metal on metal as the cars came to an abrupt stop and began spinning the opposite way. The squeals of delight from inside. I tried to focus on that, on every individual sound, so I wouldn’t think about me and Bailey and Corinne at the top of the Ferris wheel.
I must’ve seemed so pathetic to Bailey, standing here pretending not to know what she was talking about when that whispered word had become louder and louder over the years. So that sometimes when I thought of Corinne, it was the only thing I heard.
Her cold hands at my elbows. Her breath in my ear. Bailey’s laughter, tight and nervous, in the background. The scent of Corinne’s spearmint gum. Her fingers dancing across my skin. Jump, she said.
She told me to jump.
The Day Before
DAY 6
I had a few hours before I needed to be at Laura’s baby shower in the church basement. But every time I thought of that room, I pictured Officer Fraize organizing us into search parties, and I saw the pictures of Annaleise and Corinne hanging from the walls, interchangeable in my mind now.
“So you’ll be there at noon?” Daniel was outside the house with a pressure washer, two steps up a ladder leaning against the siding.
“I said I would.”
“Give me the list,” he said, hand extended.
“Seriously? You’re just going to work on the house now? Get it ready to sell?”
He jerked his hand forward a second time. “Come on, I’m not allowed to be there anyway.”
I reached up to hand him the paper, and he skimmed the page. “Pressure washer, got it. Okay, I’ll do the grouting after, and the painting if Tyler comes to help.”
“Tyler’s coming?”
“I don’t know. He was going to, but I haven’t heard from him,” he said, cutting his eyes to me. “So do me a favor and pull all the furniture you can away from the walls. I’ll handle the bigger pieces. Go get the plastic sheets out of the trunk.”
He went back to spraying the house. We were really doing this. Selling the house. Getting it ready. Going about our lives. Moving on.
“Nic,” he said. “Trunk. Go.”
I felt ungrounded as I walked to his car, as if in a daze. Sleep had been hard to come by the last few nights, and it was doing something to my head—like there was too much space to sort through and I couldn’t get a grip on any one solid thing. I pulled the sheets of plastic from the trunk, the smell slightly nauseating, held them against my chest so they billowed up in front of my face. I imagined suffocating inside them, draping them across crime scenes. My mother used to lay plastic sheets across the floor so Daniel and I could paint on easels in the kitchen, and after, they’d be covered in spills and drips, speckles of colors—a beautiful accident.
I couldn’t breathe. I dropped them at the bottom of the porch steps, and Daniel turned to look at me. “Nic, really,” he said, like I was the colossal disappointment of his life.
“I don’t feel good.”
He turned off the machine, walked down the ladder. “Well, if you’re not gonna help here,” he said, “then get to the church and help there.”
I nodded. “I’ll probably be back late. I have plans after.”
“You have plans after?”
“Yes,” I said. “I have plans.” Plans that consisted of wanting to be anywhere but here.
“You can stay with me and Laura tonight. The paint fumes. I wouldn’t want to breathe them in, either.”
“Maybe,” I said.
He nodded. “Good. See you later, then.”
* * *