“I’ve got my bike,” she said, motioning to it leaning up against the side of the diner.
The bike. I’d been trying not to picture the scene, but now there it was in my head—Sandy’s body flipping off the bike, the bag strapped to her back with its unimaginable cargo. Her falling explained everything about the suspicious “condition” of the baby’s body. And here she was, still riding around on that bike? She probably didn’t have a choice. There surely wasn’t an extra car sitting in her driveway. But my God. It was hard to believe she was upright after what she had been through. After what she was still going through, with her mom missing.
I had been thinking about Steve, too. And Barbara. I would have thought I’d feel some sort of satisfaction where Barbara was concerned—look at what all your judgment hath wrought. But what I felt for all of them was pity.
“I could drive you home?” I offered, still staring at the bike. “We could put your bike in the back of my car.” Or we could throw it out.
“Yeah,” Sandy said, but not like she was agreeing. She was staring out into the distance at the cars racing up and down Route 33. “We’re, um, kind of in between places at the moment.”
“Oh.” That didn’t sound good. “Where did you sleep last night?”
“My friend Aidan’s house,” she said, then her eyes got wide. “Shit, I forgot, you know his mom. Please don’t tell her. I don’t want to get Aidan in trouble.”
“I won’t tell her,” I said. “Of course not.”
I saw it then when she turned to get her bike, peeking down from the left sleeve of her T-shirt: the thorned stem of a rose. The flower girl.
This was the person Stella had been hiding—Sandy. And not because she was the mother of the dead baby or to protect Aidan. But because Stella was ashamed that her son had picked this girl.
“Why don’t you come to my place for now?” I said. I wasn’t going to let her go back to Aidan’s. God knew what Stella would say if she found Sandy there. “Later I can take you somewhere else if you want. Do you have any other stuff you need to pick up?”
All she had with her was a little backpack. “There’s a couple boxes,” Sandy said after thinking about it for a minute. I was relieved she hadn’t argued, but she didn’t look thrilled. She shifted around uncomfortably, wouldn’t meet my eyes. “I left them back at our old apartment. I guess I should probably go get them.”
“Come on, let’s go, then,” I said, hoping that forward momentum might keep her from changing her mind.
Sandy was rolling her bike toward my car when she got a text. I watched her face tense, reading it. “It’s Hannah’s dad,” she said finally. “I guess he texted me a couple times overnight. I didn’t read them because they were from Hannah’s phone. I thought they were from her and I just—I needed a break. But they can’t find Hannah.”
“Do you know where she is?”
“I’m not sure Hannah knows where she is. A day or two after the baby was born, she started talking about how it was mine, and she’s been acting like that ever since.” Sandy was still staring at her phone. “Wait, I might— Maybe she went down to where—to the creek. I called her that night, not until after I got rid of the bag and the towels in a dumpster behind that tanning salon Highlights. It was the only place that was closed.” Her voice drifted as she looked off, like she was remembering. “I didn’t tell her that I fell or anything, just that the creek was where I—where her baby was.” Sandy shook her head. “Anyway, I think there’s a chance Hannah went down to the creek before. I got this weird text from her once about ‘how beautiful it was.’ She didn’t say what she was talking about and I didn’t ask. I got so many weird messages from her. I didn’t want to know anything else. I just wanted her to remember.”
“Maybe she finally has. You need to tell Steve where she is, Sandy.”
“I know,” she said, already typing out a response.
Sandy showed me the way to Ridgedale Commons, a depressing two-floor rectangle that looked like a motel you’d drive all night to avoid. I pulled up alongside the curb in front, having a hard time believing we were still in Ridgedale.
“I’ll be right back,” Sandy said, opening the door before the car had fully stopped.
“Are you sure you don’t need help?”
“Nope.” She shook her head as she rushed from the car. “It’s not much.”
I watched her walk, wiry and strong, across the browning side yard toward a staircase on the side. She looked around guiltily before squatting down and reaching beneath the stairs. Her boxes weren’t “at” her old apartment, they were hidden under the building stairs. It was excruciating. I swallowed the lump in my throat. Things had been bad for me when I was her age, but not bad like that.
“Do you think, um, I could take a shower?” Sandy asked once we were at my house. We were standing in the little guest room with its excessively fluffy, overly fashionable blue-and-orange-hued bed.
“Of course, yes.” I was relieved for the time her showering would buy me to collect my thoughts. It had been so easy to want to rescue Sandy. Now that I had, I felt overwhelmed and unprepared. “Let me get you some towels.”
When I returned, Sandy was standing right where I’d left her, arms crossed like she was afraid of being blamed for breaking something. I handed her a stack of overly fluffy towels. Everything we had suddenly seemed outsize and unnecessarily inflated. Like I was overcompensating.
“There’s shampoo and everything in the bathroom if you need it.”
“Thanks,” Sandy said, stuck in the center of the room, gripping my towels. “I’ll be quick.”