23. BETH
Krista looked ridiculous in her deposition. For starters, she was missing her glasses, and her mother had forced her to go to a salon to get her hair colored and blown out for the interview. To top it all off, she was wearing a lavender twinset.
After the formalities, Kellan asked the question I’d been dreading since last night.
“Was Beth Patterson still friends with Leslie Gatlin when she helped you distract Leslie so that you could write on her locker?”
“Yes,” said Krista.
“Why did she help you, then?” asked Kellan.
“Objection for the record,” interjected Patrick. “Counsel is asking the witness to speculate.”
“I’m just trying to find out about the nature of the relationship between the witness and Miss Patterson.”
“Then just ask her that, for chrissakes, Kellan.” Patrick rolled his eyes and took a swig of water. He was having a tough day, and it was about to get tougher.
“Are you currently friends with Beth Patterson?” Kellan asked, revising the question.
“Yes,” said Krista.
“What is her role in your group, where Leslie is concerned?”
Krista jumped at the opportunity. “She was always sending messages to Leslie from a Facebook account she set up.”
“Who participated in writing these messages?” asked Kellan.
Krista blinked at him like she didn’t understand the question. “I’m sorry?”
“Did anyone besides Miss Patterson use this Facebook page to send messages to Miss Gatlin?”
“No,” said Krista. “She was the ‘send’ girl. It was sort of her thing.”
I reached over and paused the playback.
“Did she just say that?” I asked. “Did that really just happen?”
Jillian nodded. Katherine eyed me for a moment.
“What does Krista have against you, Beth?” Katherine was on to something.
I sighed. “She’s about to tell you, I think.” I pressed play.
“Did Miss Patterson host a party the week before Leslie Gatlin’s death?” Kellan asked.
“Yes,” said Krista. “It was her birthday.”
“Did you attend the party?” Kellan asked.
“Yes.”
“And you spent the night at Miss Patterson’s after the party had ended?”
“Yes, I did,” said Krista.
“Was Miss Gatlin also in attendance?” asked Kellan.
“I wouldn’t say ‘attendance,’ exactly,” said Krista. “But she showed up.”
“Was she invited to the party?”
“No.” Krista laughed.
“Why do you laugh when you say that?” asked Kellan.
“Because no one had hung out with her for over three years except Jake.”
“So you were surprised to see her?”
“Uh . . . yes,” scoffed Krista.
“Did anyone else see Leslie Gatlin at this party?”
“No. It was a small get-together. Just us girls. Beth’s mom isn’t into big parties.”
“So just you and Beth saw her?”
“Yes. I’d gone to my car to get a sweatshirt I left in the backseat, when I saw Leslie walk up the front drive. Beth’s house is on a corner, so I walked through the backyard to the hedge along Beth’s driveway so I could see what was going on.”
“And what happened?”
“Leslie was pleading with Beth about something. She was trying to get her to take an envelope she was holding out.”
“Did Miss Patterson take the envelope?” asked Kellan.
“No,” said Krista. “She told Leslie that she shouldn’t have come, and she begged her to leave, then she went back in the front door.”
“What happened next?” asked Kellan.
“Leslie dropped to her knees on the front porch and cried for a minute. Then she put the envelope in the mailbox at the front door and left.”
“Did you retrieve the envelope?”
“Yes,” said Krista.
“Did you open it?”
“Yes.”
“What was inside the envelope?”
“A letter,” said Krista. “And a necklace.”
“Will you please describe the necklace to me?”
“It was a silver chain with a tiny anchor on it.”
“Did you give the letter and the necklace to Miss Patterson?”
“No,” said Krista.
“Where are the letter and necklace now?”
“Macie took the necklace.”
“You’re referring to Macie Merrick, correct?” asked Kellan.
“Yes.”
“What did she do with it?”
“She left the necklace on Jake’s pillow with a note the night Leslie killed herself,” said Krista.
“And the letter?” asked Kellan.
“We planned to give the letter to Beth, but then Leslie died the next week, and Macie told me to keep it quiet. She had a plan.”
“Where is the letter now?” asked Kellan.
Krista pulled a lavender envelope out of her purse on the floor. “It’s right here.” She smiled.
“Would you please read what it says for us?”
I didn’t wait for Krista to read the message. I didn’t wait for the deposition to end, or for the video to stop, or the screen to get dark. I leaped from the bed, over Jillian and Katherine. I ran into the bathroom and slammed the door.
• • •
It’s an odd thing, standing over the sink, staring into the mirror, knowing that your whole life has just changed. Your deepest secret is out.
How do I go back out there? How do I face Jillian? How does that conversation start?
I stood there staring at my own eyes in the mirror, trying to figure out what I would say.
Maybe: “I’ve been in love with Leslie since we were freshmen”?
Or how about: “Leslie didn’t want me, so I hated her. Sure didn’t think that was going to come up this morning when I left the house”?
I stared at myself for so long, I didn’t recognize my own face. My brain was numb. I was so tired. I’d been so scared for so long that this would happen—that somehow all of this would bubble up to the surface.
And now it had.
I realized how anxious I had been, because now the adrenaline—all the nervous energy that I’d put into hiding this for the past three years—was draining out of me. It felt so strange—so different than I had expected. It dawned on me that I didn’t know what I had expected exactly. The visions of this thing with me and Leslie coming to light always ended in a fuzzy, dark haze of doom. There were no specifics. I’d spent so much time thinking about how to hide it that I hadn’t thought at all about what not hiding it would be like. Now that it had actually happened, I began to wonder if it could possibly be any worse than the torture of hiding it—and all the things that had led to.
There was a timid knock on the door of the bathroom. I knew it was Jillian. I stayed at the sink and tried to think of how Leslie would handle this. She was so sure of herself in every way, it had seemed when I met her. I thought about the way I had kissed her in the garage that day Jake invited us to the pool party. Suddenly, the very idea of Leslie felt a thousand light-years away, and that made me feel sadder than I had the morning she died. I sat down on the edge of the bathtub and cried.
The second knock was firm and louder. I knew it was Katherine. I took a deep breath and swiped at my face. A glance back to the mirror proved that that was a hopeless gesture. I gripped the edge of the tub, squeezed my eyes shut, and said, “Come in.”
Jillian stuck her head in the door. “Is everything . . . okay?”
“No, Jills, everything is not okay. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever felt like things were more screwed up in my life.”
“Well, while we’re sharing secrets, I’ve got one,” Katherine said, and turned to Jillian. “I sent Macie those pictures of you and Brad.”
“What?” Jillian and I shouted at the same time.
“You took those pictures?” Jillian’s jaw was hanging open.
“What pictures of you and Brad?” One look at Jillian’s face told me the whole story. “You mean you and Brad have been . . . ?” I couldn’t even finish the sentence.
“For three years now,” Katherine said. “Brad broke down and told Macie the whole story.”
“You’ve totally ruined my life!” Jillian almost shouted.
“No,” I said softly. “Jillian—she’s saved us.”
“What do you mean?” she asked. She had the look of a woman haunted.
“She did you a huge favor,” I said. “Now Macie doesn’t have anything over you.”
“Nobody needed to know about me and Brad,” said Jillian. I could see the heartbreak in her eyes.
Katherine looked at me, then over at Jillian.
“I wonder what did it?” she asked us. “What pushed Leslie over the edge?”
Jillian dropped her eyes to the computer and shrugged. “I don’t know,” she said, shaking her head. “The last Facebook message we sent from the Di Young account?”
“Yeah, but we sent one of those every week,” said Katherine. “Who knows if she was even getting them?”
“Macie was always sending her text messages, too,” I said.
“It could’ve been anything,” Jillian said. “I guess we may never know.”
I Swear
Lane Davis's books
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