Love You More: A Novel

“She ever try to contact you?”


“The last words I spoke to Tessa Leoni were, ‘You need to go home right now!’ And that’s what she did. She took her gun and she ran out of my house.”

“What about seeing her around the neighborhood?”

“Her father kicked her out. Then she was no longer around the neighborhood.”

“You never wondered about her? Never worried about your best friend in the whole wide world, who had to fight off your own brother? You invited her over that night. According to her initial statement, Tessa had asked if Tommy would be home for the evening.”

“I don’t remember.”

“Did you tell Tommy she was coming?”

Juliana’s lips thinned. Abruptly, she set the baby on the floor, stood up. “You should go now, Detective. I haven’t spoken to Tessa in ten years. I didn’t know she had a daughter, and I certainly don’t know where she is.”

But D.D. stayed put, sitting on the edge of the sofa, peering up at Tessa’s former best friend.

“Why did you leave Tessa in the family room that night?” D.D. pushed. “If it was a sleepover, why didn’t you rouse your best friend to come up to your room? What did Tommy tell you to do?”

“Stop it!”

“You suspected, didn’t you? You knew what he was up to, and that’s why you came downstairs. You feared your brother, you worried about your friend. Did you warn Tessa, Juliana? Is that why she brought the gun?”

“No!”

“You knew your father wouldn’t listen. Boys will be boys. Sounds like your mom had already internalized the message. That left you and Tessa. Two sixteen-year-old girls, trying to stand up to one brute of an older brother. Did she think she’d simply scare him off? Wave the gun, and that would be the end of things?”

Juliana didn’t respond. Her face was ashen.

“Except the gun went off,” D.D. continued conversationally. “And Tommy got hit. Tommy died. Your entire family fell apart. All because you and Tessa didn’t really know what you were doing. Whose idea was it to bring the gun that night?”

“Get out.”

“Yours? Hers? What were the two of you thinking?”

“Get out!”

“I’m going to check your phone records. One call. That’s all I need. One call placed from Tessa to you and your new little family is going to fall apart, too, Juliana. I’m gonna rip it apart, if I learn you’ve been holding out on me.”

“Get out!” Juliana screamed. On the floor, the baby responded to his mother’s tone and started to wail.

D.D. climbed off the sofa. She kept her eyes on Juliana MacDougall, the woman’s pale face, heaving shoulders, wild gaze. She looked like a deer caught in the headlights. She looked like a woman trapped by a ten-year-old lie.

D.D. gave one last try: “What happened that night, Juliana? What aren’t you telling me?”

“I loved her,” the woman said suddenly. “Tessa was my best friend in the whole world, and I loved her. Then my brother died, my family shattered, and my world went to shit. I’m not going back. Not for her, not for you, not for anyone. Whatever happened to Tessa this time around, I don’t know and I don’t care. Now get out of my home, Detective, and don’t bother me or my family again.”

Juliana held open the door. Her baby was still sobbing on the floor. D.D. took the hint and finally departed. The door slammed shut behind her, the dead bolt turning for good measure.

When D.D. turned, however, she could see Juliana through the front window. The woman had picked up her crying son, cradling the baby against her chest. Soothing the child or letting the child soothe her?

Maybe it didn’t matter. Maybe that’s the way these things worked.

Juliana MacDougall loved her son. As her parents had loved her brother. As Tessa Leoni loved her daughter.

Cycles, D.D. thought. Pieces of a larger pattern. Except she couldn’t quite pull it apart, or put it back together.

Parents loved their children. Some parents would go to any length to protect them. And other parents …

D.D. started to get a bad feeling.

Then her cellphone rang.





19


Sergeant Detective D. D. Warren and Detective Bobby Dodge came for me at 11:43 a.m. I heard their footsteps in the corridor, fast and focused. I had a split second; I used it to stash the blue button in the back part of the lowest drawer in the hospital bed stand.

My only link to Sophie.

My final unnecessary reminder to play by the rules.

Maybe, one day I could return and retrieve the button. If I was lucky, maybe Sophie and I could do it together, reclaiming Gertrude’s missing eye and reattaching it to her dispassionate doll’s face.

If I was lucky.

I’d just sat down on the edge of my hospital bed when the privacy curtain was ripped back and D.D. strode into the room. I knew what was coming next and still had to bite my lower lip to hold back my scream of protest.