The sarcasm hit her like a fist. “All right,” she said after a moment. “I realize that sounds a little paranoid.”
“I don’t have warm feelings for your mom, to be frank,” Adam said, softening his tone. “She’s done nothing really to help you or to get you off the streets.” He stood up.
“You give a lot and don’t ask for anything in return.”
Something dark flashed behind his eyes. “The curse of the nice guy,” Adam said. “I have a girlfriend, thanks. Who is not that patient with me spending so much time around you.”
“Adam…” Her reflex was to say I’m sorry, but she wasn’t. She had no reason to be.
“Fair enough. I guess I should have told you. But I never found you that night, I never saw you or David”—here he got up and turned away from the images playing out on the TV—“and…”
“You know something.” A prickle of dread touched her spine.
“Your mom was afraid you might hurt yourself. But she didn’t tell me that until later.”
“Because of the suicide note. But Mom has always denied that the note meant anything. Always.”
Adam said nothing. “Look, I was worried about you, regardless of what your mom said. You were full of secrets back then. We told each other everything, it seemed, but you were keeping stuff from me. And I think it had to do with David.” His voice dropped to a sneer. “Mr. Perfect.”
“What?”
“I don’t know what you two were doing. If I knew that, I would tell you.”
She sat down on the couch and paused the video. “Supposedly we were running away to, like, Canada.”
He laughed, and then saw it was not a joke. “What? Why would you?”
“You’ve never heard that as a rumor?”
“No.”
“How do you know my secrets were about David?”
“You were with him that night, it must be.”
She thought of what Trevor had said. “Did I talk much about my father and his death?”
Now he tried to take her hand, to comfort her, and she pulled away. “Jane, don’t.”
“Did I?”
“No. It upset you too much. You didn’t like to talk about him.”
But David had brought him up.
“So you, what, decided to look for me?”
“I came over, that wasn’t unusual, your mom let me in and wanted to know where you were. I don’t think she believed your texts. She and Mrs. Hall were both here.”
“Doing what?”
“I think maybe having an argument. I don’t know about what. It felt like I had interrupted something between them. But I don’t know why they would argue. She asked if I’d go look for you, see if you were at any of our usual haunts. So I went to the Starbucks, I went to Happy Taco, and I ran into Trevor there, looking for you and David.”
“Why was Trevor looking for me?”
“Well, he said he was looking for David and that you were with David.” He rubbed his face. “I mean, the whole thought of going out to look for someone is so ancient. We have cell phones. But you wouldn’t answer again.”
“Did I owe you an explanation for where I was?” Something here was off. He wasn’t being entirely truthful.
“No, you didn’t,” he said evenly. “And after the crash, you didn’t even remember me. At least you remembered Kamala and Trevor and David. But we didn’t know each other except in high school. You had to get to know me all over again.” His voice softened. “You were my best friend, Jane, it was hard to lose you. It was hard not to help you. I’m glad you’ve let me help you now.”
The curse of the nice guy, she thought. “All right. I forgive you.”
He started to speak and then simply said, “That’s great. Your forgiveness. Did you bring me over to see this video or did you need my help once again?”
Later she wished she had recognized the bite in his words. But, preoccupied, she didn’t. “I need your help. Will you drive me?”
29
SO YOU’VE HAD an interesting morning,” Adam said, his voice dull, as he drove her to the office park where Kevin Ngota and Randy Franklin both had office space.
“Yes.” Jane’s voice sounded dead. “Because I think I just saw the soul of Perri Hall, and it was cancerous.”
“Um, she’s been accusing you of murder since David died. This is not new behavior for this woman.”
“This Shiloh guy…”
“Now him, he sounds dangerous,” Adam said. “Maybe call the cops on him.”
Jane said nothing.
He parked where, from his car, they could see both office entrances. “What are we doing here?”
“Waiting for them to show up.” They sat in the car, with coffee and apple fritters they’d bought from a little bakery on the way. Adam had treated by way of apology.
“Can I tell you something?” she said quietly.
He nodded, chewing his fritter. “You know I eagerly await your every pronouncement.”
“When you lose your memory, it’s a chance for the people around you to rewrite history.”
Adam stopped chewing, stared at her. He wiped glaze from his mouth with his fingertip.
“They all get to tell you what they want you to know. What they want you to remember. They reshape you. No one has ever told me a bad thing I did, or David did. Were we bad?”
He stared at her, then out at the parking lot. “Jane…don’t.”
“I think maybe you and my mom have tried to make me into a better person than what I was.” She watched him. “Who was I, Adam? Was I any good?”
He put his hand on her shoulder. “Of course you were good.”
“How?”
“You were good to me. The best. People were crappy to me at that school when I started. I never fit in.” His voice broke. “But you weren’t. You were my friend, from instant one. Even before I blossomed into the incredible stud you see before you.” He tried his smile on her.
She didn’t say anything for several seconds and then she locked her gaze on his. “My dad, it wasn’t suicide, right? He wouldn’t have wanted to leave me, right?”
“Oh, Jane. You were so close to him. He was such a good guy, he just wanted the best for you. He was funny, he would feed us all, let us jump in the pool, tell the requisite lame dad jokes.” Now Adam looked like he might cry. She knew his own father wasn’t around much; Mr. Kessler had remarried and had a new set of twin toddlers with a younger wife.
“So why would David be talking to me about my dad’s death? In secret. Away from everyone.”
Adam set down his coffee into his cup holder. “You think David knew something about your dad’s death.”
“What if it wasn’t an accident? Or suicide? I sound like I’m talking about the crash.” Her father’s death, her terrible night, all seemed to be part of the same echo reverberating inside her head.
“Your dad wasn’t murdered, Jane. The police investigated. They’re not dummies.”
“I know. It’s not a movie. But why does David say anything to me about my dad, in secret, and then we vanish for hours and then a man overhears us planning to run to Canada? There was something in what David knew that was big and awful and so bad that we thought of running away from it.”
Adam bit at his lip. “I swear, I don’t know. Neither of you ever confided any of this to me. I wish you had.”