“Of course I’m not glad,” Jada snapped. “But I’m not going to pretend I’ll miss her.”
The doctor took control. “Would you like to share your feelings with us, Jada? Maybe we could help. Dealing with death is tough, perhaps worse when it’s murder.”
“Murder?” That from all three at once, reaction in triplicate, awe, fascination, curiosity.
Jada’s lips remained in that thin, set line, ignoring the other members of the group. “I don’t have any feelings about it.”
Max remembered the pained screams when Jada discovered her sister’s body.
Number Two laughed. “Yeah, right, you hated her guts.” She raised her tone, did quite a good imitation of Jada, her bony shoulders moving in time with the tilt of her head. “She gets all the attention. It’s Bethany this and Bethany that. What about Jada? No one thinks about Jada.” She stopped, narrowed her eyes. “Maybe you even killed her.”
Spitting mad, Jada leaned into her. “I didn’t care enough to bother killing her.”
Number One. “You’re such a liar, Jada. You’ve always been pissed at her. She’s all you ever talk about in here. I think you could have done it.”
“You’re a bunch of fucking bitches.”
Prunella let them go on biting and snarling at each other. Was this part of constructive therapy?
“How’d she die?” That from Number Three, but they all leaned forward en masse, like walls closing in on Jada.
Jada’s glaring arrogance faltered. Her anger and apathy was nothing more than a mask.
Max, knowing exactly what she’d seen in that house, felt sorry for her. She, too, leaned forward, but with compassion in the hand she held out. “Do you want me to tell them?”
For a moment, a spark of relief and gratitude lit the girl’s eyes. Only a moment’s worth, then she shut down again. “It’s no big deal.” Again her tone lacked a ring of truth, but she pushed on. “Someone bashed her head in.”
“With what?”
Max didn’t even turn to see which of the three had asked. She watched Bethany’s sister.
Jada’s brow furrowed in confusion. “I don’t know. I didn’t ask.”
There were only three possibilities surrounding that answer. She was an extremely good actress. She didn’t remember. Or she’d had nothing to do with her sister’s death.
“Good answer with just the right inflection,” Number One quipped. “You’ll be perfect when they call you in for questioning.
“I didn’t kill her.” Jada reverted to a snarl.
Max glanced at Prunella, whose face remained serene yet alert. Why didn’t she stop it? This hounding couldn’t possibly qualify as therapy. It was cruel.
Max couldn’t stand for it. “I don’t think you did it, Jada.” She threw a frosty glance around the room. “From what Witt says, I don’t think the cops do either.”
“Ooh, see how she calls him Witt,” Number two crooned. “I thought he was interested in you, Jada. Someone’s always beating you out, aren’t they? First your sister, now her.”
Max had never seen nor felt such anger, a palpable cloud in the room. She could almost reach out and touch its haze. With each breath, she sucked it in, felt it permeate her blood vessels, her nerves endings, her hair follicles.
Still Dr. Prunella Shale didn’t put an end to it.
Jada clutched her pillow closer, her fingernails digging like talons into the material. “The bastard can go fuck himself, for all I care. I never liked him. He was the one that came on to me.”
“You’re such a liar.” It could have been any of the three, as one, their thoughts, feelings, and words bombarded the room. “Just like you’re lying about how you felt about your sister.”
The whites of Jada’s eyes turned blood red. “All right. You want the truth, I’ll tell you. She got all the attention when she was alive. Now she’s got it when she’s dead. She’s probably looking up from hell and laughing at me.”
Bethany was looking all right, but she wasn’t laughing. Inside Max, Bethany cried, a pale, keening sound that forced Max to clamp her mouth shut. She could not let that horrible sound out.
“She was a pig. She was fat and she was ugly and I hated her. I always hated her. I made sure she didn’t have any friends. I made sure my mother saw how fat she was getting. I made sure I stayed skinny so everyone would see how extra fat she was.” Jada was not a demonstrative person. She sat in her chair, the pink pillow clutched against her breasts, her legs pulled up against the cushion. Only her lips and face moved, only her eyes showed how close she was to complete manic meltdown.