Diana spoke the words quickly, and once they were out, a silence again fell over the table. Diana felt as though she had been exposed, as though something ugly she had previously been able to keep buried deep within her had now been brought out and laid on the table for everyone to see. She wished the lights would go out so Jason couldn't see her.
"Her behavior didn't get any better after that. It got worse. She became wilder and wilder, sleeping around with a lot of different guys, drinking and partying. On the night she disappeared she went to a party. Apparently, she'd been sleeping with an older guy, a nineteen-year-old. Rachel didn't know he had a girlfriend. The girlfriend showed up at the party and went after Rachel. Physically. She punched Rachel in the stomach, doubled her over, and made her cry. People broke it up, but Rachel left the party crying. A different guy gave her a ride home. He dropped her off at the end of our street. He said she was fine when he left, quiet but fine. The police cleared him of any wrongdoing."
"Do you think he's involved?"
"I doubt it. I saw Rachel in the house after that. I was still awake, and I heard her come in. I went out into the hallway outside our bedrooms, and I saw her. She'd been crying. Her makeup was a mess, smeared all over her face. She looked like she'd been through the wringer." Diana paused. She took a deep breath. "I just shook my head at her. I didn't ask how she was doing, or what had happened. I just shook my head at her and went into my room and closed the door. About fifteen minutes later, I heard the front door open again. I looked out my bedroom window and saw Rachel walking up the road in the glow of the streetlights, going away from our house. That was it. That's the last time anybody saw her that we know of."
Diana waited for Jason to say something. Anything. He didn't speak right away. He sat there nodding, tapping his fingernail against the glass of the beer bottle.
"What are you thinking?" Diana said.
Jason took a moment to answer, then he said, "I think you want to help this Kay Todd woman because you feel guilty about everything that's happened to your family. You see this as your second chance."
"It's not a second chance," Diana said. "There is no second chance. That's gone."
"Then it's another chance to do something right. Any way you look at it, it's atonement. Something like this is never just a simple act."
"It's always tied to the past, to something that went before."
"Such is our fate," Jason said.
"I went to see my mom tonight. At the hospital. Driving back, I stopped and took a little walk in the woods, just like in the old days."
"Find anything?"
"I found myself alone in the middle of the woods. Searching. And I think I'm going to keep finding myself there from time to time unless I do something about this. Unless I try to put it to bed by helping Kay Todd. You never know. It might tie the knot somehow."
"Do you really think you're going to find anything?" Jason said. "The trail's awfully cold."
"I don't think I have any choice. But I really won't know until I look."
"You never know what you're going to find," Jason said. "You might not like it."
"I don't like what I know now, so how much worse can it get?"
"That might not be a question you want to ask. What are you going to do next?"
"Start talking to people around town. See what I can find."
"If you need my help..."
"I know," Diana said. "I know."
It was late, and the thought of going home to her empty apartment made Diana feel a little sick. She didn't know if she could bring herself to ask...
"You want to stay here tonight?" Jason said.
She smiled. "Yeah, that would be nice."
*
Diana slept better than she had in a while, certainly better than the night she had spent in the chair in her mother's hospital room. And she didn't dream, at least not the kinds of dreams that had come to her during that night at her mother's side, the kinds that were populated by Rachel and Kay Todd. Maybe it had been being with Jason, falling into his arms, stripping each other's clothes, losing herself in someone else for a brief period of time.
Diana slept deeply enough that she didn't hear Jason's phone ring just before six, and she didn't hear him showering and dressing. She didn't know anything was wrong or unusual until he placed his hand on her shoulder and whispered her name, bringing her awake.
"Hey."
"What is it?" Diana asked. "You're dressed already."
"They called me in, but you can stay here. Go back to sleep."
"What's wrong?" Diana asked. She could tell that he knew something that he didn't want to tell her. She thought of Dan. Something might have happened to Dan, but she didn't want to say it. "What is it?"