“That’s what you get for owning a purple car,” Gwen said when she called Katie, just before noon. Katie could almost hear the tapping of her nails through the phone.
Not even Gwen seemed to know much. She knew Teddy had retained Ron Wrigley, that Hailey was still cooperating with police, and that no other eyewitnesses had come forward.
There was an article in the Gazette about dozens of reports of damaged purple cars and suspicious paint and repair jobs coming in from across the county. An unidentified man with a plum Toyota had been questioned but released after it was determined that his torn bumper came from running over a dog. Another man claimed the new paint job on his magenta Sentra was due to a rancid egging by a deranged ex. “She called in the tip,” he told the Gazette. “She thinks I stole her stereo and poisoned her cat. She wants to destroy me.”
It was upsetting, like the seam of something had been torn, ever so slightly.
But the boosters were all focused on Hailey.
“The more you think about it, the weirder Hailey’s story is.” Calling during her lunch hour, Molly spoke breathily between what sounded like long tugs on a straw. “Ryan drives her home and leaves her car there? Why not drive himself home? And let me ask you this: Who walks two miles at eleven o’clock at night? On that road? I hope they’re testing for drugs.”
“Maybe Ryan had dealings that came back to haunt him,” Kirsten Siefert whispered, calling Katie from the ladies’ room at BelStars, her voice echoing high. “You saw that mug shot. Who knows what kind of life he led?”
There were questions no one could get the answer to: What really happened between Hailey and Ryan at that dinner? Were they engaged? (No ring had been spotted on Hailey’s hand at the funeral.) They were questions you couldn’t ask anyone but Hailey, and now, with Ron Wrigley on retainer, word was she wasn’t talking to anyone.
Except Katie didn’t really believe she would stay silent. The girl she’d heard on the phone that morning seemed unready for muzzling. She seemed to have so much to tell that her throat might burst.
In the laundry room, the dryer knocking sneakers violently beside her, Katie loaded the washer with everything Drew had touched in the past three days. She almost didn’t hear the phone.
It was Eric, saying something had come up, he wouldn’t be home for dinner, he’d explain later. And Devon was getting a ride home with the Chus, and he’d explain about that later too.
“Eric, I’ve been trying to call you all day. Hailey called me.”
“What?”
She told him about Hailey’s call, a version of it. She couldn’t quite bring herself to use Hailey’s exact words. They were a blur anyway.
“God,” Eric said, after a pause, “she sounds completely unstable.”
“She wasn’t herself. She was so…angry. The things she called Devon…” As she spoke, a thought fluttered in the back of her brain, something Hailey said: You can tell her for me that I know everything.
“Well, look at her history,” Eric said. “Her own mother couldn’t handle her.”
“That was ten years ago,” Katie said. “She was a teenager. Didn’t you do things when you were young that seem impossible now?”
“Maybe it’s still in her,” he said, not answering her question. “Maybe that’s why she was dating someone with a rap sheet.”
“Eric,” she said, surprised. That sounded like Gwen. It didn’t sound like Eric at all. “You know Ryan was a good kid. He was—”
“You’re just like him.”
That’s what she thought she heard him say, the line crackling.
“What? What did you say?”
“You just liked him,” he said. Which was not the same, even remotely. “We all did. We all liked both of them. But we don’t know what this is, do we? All we know is we don’t want her bothering Devon again.”
Katie didn’t say anything for a moment.
And she couldn’t account for how upset she felt, her face hotly throbbing with it.
“I tried to talk to Teddy.”
“Don’t talk to Teddy,” he said. “I’m going to talk to him. I don’t want her calling us again.”
“Okay,” Katie said.
“And Katie, whatever you do,” he said, “don’t tell Devon that Hailey called.”
“Why not?”
“She has enough pressure. She doesn’t need to know this.”
The pause that followed felt very important. It was one of those moments in a marriage when you have to make a critical decision with alarming speed and the consequences could last a long time, even forever.
The words almost came out: I already told her.
But they didn’t.
“Right,” she said. “Whatever you say.”
The house felt small and sweaty and polluted.
Devon came home, rubbing her hands with antibacterial cleanser. Hovering at her brother’s door, she looked at Drew, asleep again, only his shuttered eyes visible above the swoop of the comforter.