“Me. Just little old me.” The lip curled again. She saw that it had been cut, as if by a knife, a thin, pale thread of scar. “What am I supposed to do, camp out on their lawn, follow them around?”
She took a deep breath. “You could scare them off from any more revenge, I could let you know when they’re around.”
“They could call the cops on me.”
“They won’t. Not if we can find evidence to tie them to the fire. Or to your burglary. Or to whatever they’ve done to Randy Franklin.”
“And I find this evidence?”
“We do. And then we go to the police.”
“I don’t like the police.”
She felt she’d wandered into a twilight zone.
“I don’t want publicity. This would get publicity.”
“Yes, I suppose.”
“I’d rather privately convince them to stop.”
“You won’t hurt them.”
The corner of his mouth went up. “Do you care?”
“Of course I care.”
“I didn’t get the impression you did.”
A dark, shameful sensation rose in her chest, like a fist stretching, and she drank her tea and turned away from him for a moment. “I just want them to leave. Move away. She doesn’t want to sell that house because her late husband bought it for her. I won’t sell because of my son. Stalemate.”
“This would break it. They lose something they want. And we do it so they can’t go to the police.”
“And no one gets hurt?”
“Yeah, sure. Hey, I save lives, Mrs. Hall. I’m one of the good guys.”
“OK, so we have a deal.”
He stepped closer to her again. “Shall we seal it?”
“I…I…” The way he was smiling at her. The way the T-shirt strained against his chest. The emptiness in his eyes. “I…”
“With a handshake,” he said. “What did you think I meant?”
“Nothing. Nothing.” You’ve made a deal with a devil, she thought. Now you just have to be smarter than this particular devil. “So what do we do?”
“I reached out to Jane this morning when I was sure you and your husband were the big bads,” he said. “She thoroughly rejected my offer of help. I think she’s afraid of me. But she’s her mother’s weakness, right? Let’s figure out how to make that work for us.”
“And no one gets hurt?” she asked again. Because she felt that he wanted to hurt someone. He wanted it badly.
For a moment she thought of David. Of what he would think of this. She had always stressed to him that catchphrase of twenty-first-century parents, “Make good choices,” and she’d said it to him so often—calling it at him every time he left the house, both of them laughing because obviously David would never make a bad choice—that it became a joke between them.
Make good choices.
Shiloh Rooke smiled his scarred smile at her again.
39
JANE HAD COME home, and spent a pointless two hours searching her parents’ bedroom. There was nothing there that suggested an affair had happened, or was still happening, between her mother and Cal. She could not imagine they were still currently involved; surely the accident and its aftermath ended that. But her mother’s insistence on refusing to sell the house now seemed shaded with other possibilities.
She had thought of shoving the picture under her mother’s nose, saying, You want to explain this? Asking her about Kevin Ngota, although she thought it better to simply confront her mother at their meeting with Kevin. Otherwise, if she pushed the issue now, there would be no meeting with Kevin, and Kevin was trying to prove he was on her side. And she didn’t want to explain how she’d gotten the file.
She tried Franklin’s office number. No answer. She tried his cell, nervous that it would leave a record of her call. She didn’t want to be tied to him. But she had to know, so she called, and there was no answer.
She left the picture in the file and hid the file in her room, in her closet, behind a stack of books on the shelf. She thought maybe it was better to wait and see what hand her mother played in this game between them, to keep the proof of an affair with Cal Hall as a trump card until she needed it.
Did Dad know? Did Dad know?
It couldn’t still be going on. It couldn’t be.
And snooping upstairs meant she didn’t have to go downstairs and talk to her mother about what had happened this morning with Perri and Shiloh, and what else she had learned. What Adam had told her: that the night of the crash he’d found her mother and Perri Hall arguing. Was it about the affair?
She could hear Laurel downstairs, humming, perhaps delighted that her daughter had announced she had social plans. She really didn’t want to crash the party, but if she could pour a beer down Trevor’s throat and keep him off-balance, maybe he’d talk about his truck being on High Oaks at the time of the crash. He had been willing to talk to her at the coffee shop, but that didn’t mean he didn’t have his own secrets. His own agenda. His own guilt, perhaps. Now that she saw the guilt in others—she had been blinded by her own—she could see what a powerful force it was.
She kept wondering, Did Dad know? Did he know? Did he die knowing his wife cheated on him? And did I know this and I’m just not remembering? Maybe I didn’t just forget all my regular life. Maybe I forgot my secrets, too.
“Mom?” she said, coming down the stairs.
“Yes, sweetheart?”
Start with the easy part. “Why was Kamala in your office today?”
“Look, I couldn’t just tell her I wouldn’t work with her sorority. I met with her. It was a courtesy. I know you don’t like her, but you weren’t going to be involved.” She offered a smile, but all Jane saw was her mother in Cal Hall’s arms, her palm against his jaw, like she was savoring his touch. Her mother paying Kevin to pretend to be her therapist, perhaps to help have her committed. Her mother meeting with her worst enemy.
If she told her mother everything that had happened, her mother would be hauling her off to the psychiatric hospital, “for her own protection.” But Mom was in danger, too, from this Shiloh Rooke if he showed up again. So she had to tell her.
She very calmly explained about the harasser calling herself Liv Danger, the two paramedics who had been targeted, Shiloh Rooke following her to UT, Perri’s insane certainty that Jane, or Laurel, or both were behind the Liv Danger name, Perri’s attack on her at the grave. But she said nothing about sneaking into Franklin’s office or his files or the photo of Laurel and Cal. She said nothing about Shiloh’s offer to make the Halls pay for their supposed crimes. She said nothing about Kevin or what she’d learned from Adam. She was not ready to go there yet. As she finished, she still expected Laurel to call the psychiatric hospital and inquire about room availability. Instead Laurel stood and hugged her tight.
“Why didn’t you tell me this before? I’ll take care of it so this man doesn’t bother you again.”
“What?”
“Well, I’ll call the police. He followed you. The police need to know.”
“Yes, and he’ll tell them what? He offered to help me tear down the Halls?”
“He sounds very trashy. This fiancée is better off without him.”