I gasped. “I have no memory at all of this,” I said.
She leaned forward to touch my knee with her fingertips. “I’m glad you don’t,” she said. “When Jade saw you on his lap and remembered the things he’d done to her when she was little, she snapped. She grabbed you and tossed you—that’s the word she used when she told me what happened—she said she tossed you aside and then she shot the hell out of him.”
I lifted my hands to my face, steepled together like I was praying. “So it wasn’t an accident after all.” My voice was a whisper. I felt numb with shock and sorrow. “And she still didn’t tell anyone what he’d done to her?”
“She was afraid it would look like the motive,” she said. “Her real motive, though, was protecting you.”
For the first time, I could understand why Lisa had felt she had to run away. If the truth came out during the trial—that he’d abused her, that he’d raped her—well, she may have gained some sympathy from the jurors, but they would have known she’d had plenty of reason to kill him. She’d never be able to prove the shooting was accidental … because it wasn’t.
“You hit your head on the coffee table when she pulled you off his lap,” she said.
I touched my forehead and the small divot that had been with me all my life. When I lowered my hand, Celia rested her fingertips on my knee again. “I’m sorry to have to tell you all of this,” she said. “I really am. But you needed to know. I couldn’t let you think she’d ever willingly cast you aside.”
I nodded. “Thank you for telling me,” I whispered.
“Jade refuses to cancel New Bern,” Celia said, resting her hands in her lap. “She’ll take whatever Danny and his friend dish out. Even if it ruins her. And you know it will. She’s being really brave, but she’s going to be locked up for the rest of her life, and I’m so scared for her.”
I pressed my fingers to my eyes and they came away wet. “I’ll talk to Danny again,” I said, hoping he hadn’t already spoken to Harry. “But I don’t think he’ll bend.”
She picked up my phone from the floor. “I’m putting my number in your contacts,” she said, tapping the screen. “Call me after you talk to him, all right?”
“He’s driven, Celia,” I said. “All he cares about is hurting Lisa the way he thinks she hurt him. He’s looking for justice.”
She stood up. “I won’t stop hoping.” She leaned over, surprising me with a kiss on the top of my head. “And besides,” she said, straightening up again, “justice comes in many forms.”
56.
I didn’t even consider going to bed after Celia left, although it was four in the morning. My body was exhausted, but my mind reeled. That image of Lisa pulling me off Steven Davis’s lap and blowing him away in a fit of fury was never going to leave me.
I tried calling Danny, unsurprised when he didn’t answer. I grabbed my duffel bag and locked my apartment door before heading down to the deserted garage. My phone rang as I got in my car. Jeannie again. I would call her from the road. Right now, I was anxious to get back to New Bern. I’d drive straight to Danny’s trailer and wake him up. I had to tell him what I’d learned. I’d beg him not to talk to Harry … if he hadn’t already.
The night was pitch-black and I had the road nearly to myself. I started to call Jeannie twice, but each time tears filled my eyes and I knew my voice would shut down on me, and I stopped the call before it could go through. I was nearly to Goldsboro by the time I thought I could talk without crying.
She sounded frantic when she answered the phone. “Are you all right?” Her voice surrounded me in the car. “I’ve been so worried. I had no idea what—”
“I’m alive,” I said. “That’s about the best I can tell you.”
“What happened?” she asked.
My tears started again and I couldn’t speak.
“Oh, honey,” she said. “Tell me. Talk to me.”
“Steven Davis was my father,” I said.
She was silent and the dark air of my car filled with my sobs. I could hardly see the road in front of me.
“No,” Jeannie said finally. “I don’t believe it. I don’t want to believe it!”
I told her everything Celia had said, my words nearly unintelligible. Jeannie had to ask me half a dozen times to repeat myself. By the time I’d choked out the story, her voice was thick as well.
“If only Lisa had told your parents what was going on!” she said. “They could have done something to help her.”
“I know.”
“She was such a gentle girl,” Jeannie added. “I could never even picture her holding a gun, much less shooting one. Now it all makes sense. She would have done anything to protect you.”
“And I was horrible to her, Jeannie!” I said. “I got so upset when I was talking to her.”
“Did you tell her to stay away from New Bern?” Jeannie asked.
“She’s coming anyway,” I said. “I have to talk to Danny. I have to try to—”
A deer suddenly darted into the road in front of me, nothing more than a flash of tawny fur in my headlights. Reflexively, I yanked the wheel to the right as I let out a scream. My car went airborne, the steering wheel useless, the tires off the road, and I catapulted like a rocket, upside down, into the black night.