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The Lawsons’ house sat in the same development as the Tempests’. Part of the Mt. Oanoke elite, if there were such a thing. Their house was high on a rise, imposing but sterile, tan brick on the outside, utterly devoid of personality. Not even a potted plant. She wondered what Burt Lawson must pay to be free of Jennifer and Taylor. Seemed like a lot.
Before Bridget could second-guess herself, she rang the doorbell. The house was dark and she suspected either no one was home or everyone was sleeping. The door opened without either a porch light or an interior light being flicked on and Bridget gasped in surprise, Tripp’s peppermint taste still zinging on her tongue.
“Mrs. Peterson! Really? What are you doing here?” It was Taylor, her voice lilting and dreamy.
“Taylor, is your mom here?” It was the first question Bridget could think of to ask and it was met with a high laugh, brittle in the quiet night.
“That would be a no, Mrs. Winters.” Bridget could smell the liquor on her breath wafting across the darkened threshold. A giggle, a stumble. Then, bam, like the sun, a porch light.
Taylor’s hair was piled high on her head in a messy bun, her ears devoid of dangly earrings, her face white in the fluorescent ecofriendly LED porch light, her eyes black. Bridget almost didn’t recognize her. Without her makeup, her thick cat-eyed eyeliner, she looked like a twelve-year-old. Prepubescent, even, gangly legs jutting out from beneath her cotton nightgown.
Taylor opened the door wide and then wandered away into the darkened house. Bridget tentatively stepped inside; it smelled new, cheap, and chemical. A light flipped on from somewhere upstairs and Bridget followed it and Taylor’s footsteps up a winding staircase to a gaping hallway and an interior balcony, bumped out above the foyer below. She looked down and saw the front door, the glass and brass swinging chandelier. Below, the ceramic tile floor.
Bridget couldn’t be sure because of the dark, but it seemed to be the only furnished room in the house.
Taylor sat in a monstrous plaid armchair under a dim table lamp, the smoke curling from a lit cigarette in her hand. In the far corner perched a dry bar, the clear bottles stacked together, an ice bucket sweating on the glass. The rich were strange.
“My mom hates when I smoke in here,” she said. “But she’s not here, so . . .” She shrugged then and laughed, a glass jangling with ice and clear liquid. Bridget would have bet it wasn’t water. “So, Mrs. Winters, are you here to talk to me? Or my mom?” She stretched her long skinny doe legs out, flexing her painted toes like a cat.
“You,” Bridget said, and wondered briefly if she underestimated her. For some reason, in the dim of the balcony, watching the smoke spiraling from between Taylor’s blue glittering fingertips, Bridget felt like Taylor had the upper hand. The sensation, like at the mill, of being driven forward by forces out of her control. “They found Lucia, Taylor. At the mill.”
Taylor opened her eyes wide, but there was something black and dead in them. She shook her head.
“I’m not surprised, really. I’m sure Mr. Winters killed her, to shut her up. They were a thing, you know. I knew it, everyone knew it.” Her voice changed, as well as her face. Her posture was slung low like a cat, slinking over the rolled arm of the chair, and she gave Bridget a slow, torpid smile. In that second, she seemed both beautiful and deeply malicious and, for a beat, Bridget was afraid.
“Oh? I didn’t know it,” Bridget said.
“Sure. Andrew saw them once, behind the school. He had his hand down her jeans.”
Truth or lie? Lie, Bridget decided.
Taylor shook her head and blew out a cloud of smoke, which filled the space between them. “Andrew said she was a big girl, you know, down there. He should know.”
Bridget tried to make her face passive. The Taylor she’d known was so different from this girl, this crude, drunk, calculating girl.
“So I’m sure he kinda lost it when the whole thing about Temp’s party was about to blow, you know? I think she was losing her mind. She was babbling crazy things. She said Nate loved her. Was gonna leave his wife and that kid for her.” Taylor hiccupped, her bun bouncing, the ash from her cigarette scattering onto the plush of the plaid La-Z-Boy. She looked Bridget up and down. “He might leave that cunt of a wife, but he’ll never leave that kid.”
For a few moments all she could hear was the sound of Taylor’s inhale, hold, exhale.
“The thing with Andrew was, well . . . She wanted that. Has wanted it forever. She took everything from me. All the time. And then to say what she said? That he raped her? Stupid. He had her on video. She didn’t care if she was going to ruin him. Ruin his whole life.”
“What about her life, Taylor?” Bridget asked.
“There’s only one way out of this town, you know that.”
“How’s that?” Bridget asked.
“Only a man can get you out. No one knows that better than you, right?” She meant it to jab, to hurt. It didn’t.
“Taylor, when I had a man, when he was alive, we lived in this town by choice. We moved here.”
“Well, no accounting for taste, I guess.” Exhale. “Jennifer says that.”
“Does she also say the only way out of this town is with a man?”
“Sure, why not?” A giggle, exhale. Then, softer, “He’s my only shot. I’m not going to college on my own. I don’t think.”
“Why not? Your grades are good. You could get out on your own, Taylor.”
“Oh, don’t you know? Burt’s gone. I mean, he was gone before, but now he’s really gone. Skipped town, no one can find him.” She snorted. “No more money from him. You think Jennifer’s gonna work now? Nah. We’re upside down here. Stuck in this house. Look around, do you see any furniture?”
Bridget peered into the empty foyer below. The cavernous living room. The ugly incongruity of the plaid chair. She said nothing, stood with her hand resting lightly against the railing, the cool wood beneath her palm.
“We’ll see when I get down there.”
“Down where?” Bridget asked, the answer plain.
“Texas.”
“Does he know yet? That you’re following him?”
“Not yet. We have time before he goes. I’ll graduate, get a shit job, and wait for him. It’s fine. He’s been freaked out. Coach Winters, then Lucia.” Her voice pitched downward, like Lucia was a dirty word. “It will all be okay now.”
“Lucia? Why?” Bridget feigned innocence, her phone in her hand, her thumb scrolling through the apps, looking almost bored while she pressed the button. The phone flashed red, blinking in her hand: record.