My Heart Is a Chainsaw (The Lake Witch Trilogy #1)(55)

“But, in your estimation, someone is dressing up like the Lake Witch and playacting a horror movie,” Mr. Holmes clarifies.

“A slasher,” Jade clarifies right back.

“To use your chosen subject matter,” Letha says, taking Jade’s hand from the side, “yes, as Mr. Holmes was saying, this is about the boogeyman, one hundred percent.”

Jade jerks away, holds her hand in her other hand as if it’s burned. She tries to smile these accusations off, to make a display of how preposterous all this is getting, but knows full well her smile has to look mechanical and scary to them, like if Michael Myers ever tried a grin on in the dayroom for Loomis. So she gives up, knows she can’t convince all three of them. But… maybe just one? The important one? She turns to Letha, says, “Listen, if you care about your family, about Terra Nova, I need you to—”

“I read between the lines, Jade,” Letha repeats slower, like that’s going to make Jade finally hear what she’s saying. “You were dressing it up as best you could, trying to hide, even hiding it from yourself, but—here, I’ve got it highlighted.”

She extracts Jade’s printed-out letter from the back pocket of the pants that used to be Jade’s, holds it up, flips to the page she wants, and: “ ‘A doctor’s appointment I couldn’t do in Proofrock.’ ”

The silence after is as wide as the lake.

“That was—” Jade starts, starts over: “My mom, she didn’t want Doc Wilson—”

“Because he was local?” Letha asks.

“No,” Jade says, taking a step back, casing all three faces of her little make-do jury, here. “I was just—I was telling you where I found Bay of Blood! Every slasher has an origin story.

Jason, Freddy, Michael, Chucky, but every slasher movie has an origin story too. The first time you saw it. Where you found it. That’s all I was—that wasn’t about me, that was about Bay of Blood.”

Jade looks to each of them in turn again, waiting for the obviousness of this to register. For any of them to hear the logic of it.

“ ‘My mom was having a conversation with herself in the car about will she, won’t she,’ ” Letha reads this time, since that’s a lot to recite.

Jade just stares at her.

“What are you saying?” she says at last. “This is—I was at a random gas station, I happened to look into the bargain bin—”

“You were at your most vulnerable, your most broken,”

Letha says, about to cry. “And you reached out for the first thing you saw, held it as close as you could, like armor. Like it could protect you. And it has, hasn’t it?”

“A Bay of Blood?”

“Slashers,” Mr. Holmes says.

“She’s kind of been hiding in bad behavior too,” Hardy’s compelled to add.

“What—what—” Jade says, her thoughts swirling, only some of her words finding her mouth. “What are you saying?

My mom did something to me?”

“Your dad,” Letha says, barely loud enough to register.

“My dad?” Jade blurts out.

“Happens more than it should,” Letha says. “And among Native Americans, the percentage is even—”

“You think he’s why I was at the doctor in Idaho Falls?”

Jade asks all of them, polling this jury now.

Yes, none of them say out loud.

Jade closes her eyes in pain, slams her fingers into her gunky hair and pulls, turns around on her combat heels, giving them her back, and—she doesn’t want to do this, doesn’t want to have to deploy the nuclear option, but what else is there?

“You’re a father, Sheriff,” she says, no louder than necessary. “Would you have ever done this to your daughter?

To Melanie?”

“Jennifer,” Mr. Holmes says sharply.

“Jade,” Jade spins back around to hiss at him. “And aren’t you always the one saying read between the lines, sir? Try this on, then. All this… all these accusations, all this textual evidence, whatever. Who’s to say I didn’t pack that in intentionally? Why would a girl like Letha ever give me the time of day if she wasn’t feeling sorry for me? Maybe I wrote it like that to tug on her heartstrings, make her worry about me. Whatever it takes to get her here, talk her into my harebrained scheme about slashers and final girls.”

Mr. Holmes just stares at her about this.

“What was your mom arguing with herself about in the car that day?” he says at last, super calmly. “Don’t think, just answer.”

“What was she—?”

“ ‘Will she, won’t she?’ ”

“Will she leave my loser dad, won’t she leave my loser dad,” Jade says without missing even one single beat.

Before Mr. Holmes can press her on this, she spins around again, glares out across the glinting water, arms crossed.

“Apologize to the sheriff,” Mr. Holmes says.

Jade lowers her head, closes her eyes, says, “Sorry, Sheriff.

That was out of bounds.”

“You were scared,” Hardy says back, and Jade closes her eyes harder, because she knows not to take this bait. If she nods yes to this, then the next question will be Scared of what?