The manager’s a nice-enough-seeming guy in his thirties who says yes pretty much right away. “Got to love the festival. Best part of the summer.” He says to come back tomorrow and he’ll have a two-hundred-fifty-dollar check ready for me, enough to cover whatever dress and shoes I end up buying and flowers. I’m not sure why I need flowers or what I’m supposed to do with them, but I’m betting Nell does.
Once Libby’s loaded up her basket, there’s only one register open, and it’s Kat’s. Kat leans on the counter, but she draws lazily up to her full five foot three when she sees me coming. Her red employee polo shirt tents off her bony shoulders, and her black jeans are so skinny they look airbrushed on. “Supertramp,” she greets me. “Shopping with the fam-damily. Love it.”
I grin. Libby’s grown stiff beside me. “Kenyon working?”
Kat pops her gum. “Called out sick again. Loser.” She totals our order and stares at Libby, who swipes her card and gets an error message. “Wrong way.” Kat keeps chewing and staring as Libby fumbles the card around and tries again. “Wrong. Way.” When Libby finally gets it, her face is brick red. Kat rips the receipt and holds it out to her, smiling with her little sharp teeth.
Libby leaves in a rustle of plastic bags, and Nell, who watched the whole thing with her eyebrows raised, follows, glancing back to make sure I’m coming. I linger for a second, hissing at Kat, “You’re gonna get your ass fired. She’ll complain to your manager.”
“So? That’s your aunt, isn’t it? You said you hate her.”
I hope she didn’t see me flinch. “I said she can be a bitch sometimes.” Kat rolls her eyes like same difference. “I gotta go. Stay out of jail.”
She slides back into the position she was in before, fingering through the tabloids. “No promises.”
Libby puts the pedal down before I even have the door shut all the way, and I have to buckle up as we drive. The angry flush reaches all the way to the back of her neck, and I can’t help feeling another twinge of guilt.
Kat and I first started hanging out the winter of sophomore year, after Rhiannon and I had our big fight and stopped speaking. Until then, I’d always hung out with normal, middle-of-the-road kids, but there I was, between friends and spending a lot of time not liking myself very much. I had Mags and Nell, of course, but family’s different. Kat and I worked on a project together in American history and got to talking. She was funny and didn’t give a crap what anybody thought, so when she asked me over to her house one Friday, I said okay.
Once we were up in her room with her speakers blasting, she reached under her bed, brought out a shoe box, and said, “Take some.” It was full of lipstick, eye shadow, foundation, you name it, all sealed, some with Rite Aid sale stickers on the bottom. Most of them weren’t even Kat’s shades, just random colors she must’ve stuffed in her pockets without really looking. Now, if I were Mags, I would’ve said no. I would’ve said it was wrong, and told Libby. But since I’m me, I took a bottle of nail polish called Plum Velvet. It’s still on my vanity, half-buried in cotton balls and hair elastics.
It’s nearly dark when we get home, and the porch light is on. There’s a cop car in the driveway. Our headlights flare off the reflective lettering across the door, and my heart rises into my throat.
I’m the last one inside. Mom’s sitting at the table. Officer Edgecombe sits across from her. The air is hazy with smoke, looking like a scene from a bad dream, one where I can’t move forward or back because I’m rooted to this spot on the peeling linoleum for all time as Mom says, with her face giving nothing away, “Darcy. He’s got some questions.”
Edgecombe is older than Mom, his face loose and jowly, his gut a heavy sack hanging over his belt, somehow making him look even bigger than he is, which is big. He’s as tall as Hunt and must have forty pounds on him. He seems old to still be the kind of cop who has to wear a uniform; I thought the same thing last year when he sat me down at his desk in the corner of a room full of other desks that were empty because most of the force was out looking for Rhiannon. Now I read his name tag and it says Corporal, which I guess means he can boss the younger guys around a little.
“Darcy.” Maybe it’s the jowls and the hound-dog eyes, but this guy always manages to make me feel like I’ve disappointed him. “I didn’t want to have to make this visit.”
I sit at the head of the table with my fists in my lap. Libby and Nell stand at the counter. Everybody seems like they’re caught in the same bad dream. Feet too heavy to run, lungs too tight to breathe.
“I’d hoped you were honest with me last time we talked.”
“I was.” Libby makes a sound, and I hunch my shoulders. “I was.”
He takes a shallow breath, making a show of getting out a notebook and clicking open a ballpoint. “Ms. Prentiss, this might be easier if Darcy and I could talk one-on-one.”
Mom scrapes her thumbnail across the unlit tip of her next Kool. “Now, that wouldn’t be a very good idea.” There’s a humorless quirk at the corner of her mouth, and in this moment, I’m so, so glad she’s my mother.
Edgecombe blinks, says mildly, “This isn’t an interrogation. It’s a conversation. There’s no reason it has to become anything more than that.”
“What’s wrong?” Nell’s voice is high and sharp, her gaze going between Edgecombe and Mom. Libby takes her arm but she pulls away, turning to her mother. “No, why does he want to talk to her?”
“Lib, we’ll see you guys tomorrow.” Mom doesn’t lift her gaze from Edgecombe. It must be killing Libby to miss this, but she takes Nell out. Mom taps her lighter on the tabletop. “So this has to do with the car, right? Everybody knows you found it.”
“In part.” He looks at me. “Last summer, you said you hadn’t been friends with Rhiannon for a long time. That you two didn’t talk anymore.”
“Yeah.”
“What happened?”
I’ve already answered this, or danced around it, anyway. I fight the need to glance at Mom, to see if she’s been wondering the same thing or was just glad when Rhiannon stopped coming around. I always got the feeling that Mom never liked her much. “Nothing. Just grew apart.”
“You stopped being friends for no reason?” He waits, using the silence. I know that trick from years of living with Mom, and don’t rush to fill it. “I find that very hard to believe. When was the last time you were in Rhiannon’s car?”
“Never.”
“You never rode with her. Never even sat in it?”
“No. She got it after we stopped hanging out.” For a second I panic, remembering all the places in that car that my hands have touched, but I don’t think Mom will let him print me.
“When did you last see Rhiannon?”
“You know. That Friday, end of the day raking berries.”
“Friday, August twelfth?” I nod. “And she was doing what?”