Nice Girls(31)

Someone else might have reached out and hugged her. Or told her that things would be all right.

But I was glued to my seat, afraid to move. A hug was too personal. Anything I said would’ve felt like a lie—I didn’t know if things would be all right. I didn’t know if she would find closure over DeMaria’s death.

“Is there a bathroom here?” I murmured.

“Down the hall, far right,” said Mrs. Jackson, sniffing.

I left the living room and followed the mustard-yellow carpet to the bathroom at the end of the hallway. The bathroom was small, the tiles a sterile yellow. I grabbed a wad of toilet paper and rushed back to the living room. Mrs. Jackson buried her face in it.

“Is there anything else you need, Leticia?”

“I’m fine,” she said, her voice muffled. “I’m just . . . tired. I need to wrap this up.”

“I get it,” I said. I felt tired, too, drained from the interview. “But before I go, could I just do one more thing?”





16




DeMaria’s bedroom was messy. It was as if she’d disappeared yesterday in a rush, her clothes strewn about on the floor and plastic water bottles littered on the desk. Her bed was unmade, the sheets crumpled in a ball. In her closet, a plastic dresser peeked out beneath a pile of shirts and a bikini top.

Mrs. Jackson hadn’t cleaned up DeMaria’s room since July. She said she’d been afraid of contaminating the evidence. But aside from the policeman who’d stopped by, no one else came.

“The police are sending an investigator later this week, so this is the only time to look around,” said Mrs. Jackson before she left.

For a while, I stayed near the door. I was unsure of where to start.

The wall next to DeMaria’s bed was covered in posters and pictures. She had magazine cutouts of celebrities and musicians. Other cutouts showed glamorous destinations: a tropical beach, a desert, a quaint café in Paris. And she had a corkboard with photos pinned to it. They showed different occasions throughout her life: an elementary school Halloween party in one photo; a group of friends posing in a restaurant booth; DeMaria sitting in a delivery room with a baby in her arms.

There was one family picture taken in the Jacksons’ living room. Mrs. Jackson looked younger in the photo, her face slimmer, her lips painted bright red. She was sitting on the same sofa where I’d interviewed her. In the photo, she was leaning into a large man with a thick mustache: Mr. Jackson. Sitting on his other side was a little girl in cornrows. She was pointing her finger at Mr. Jackson’s open mouth. I could almost hear the excited squeals, the warm laughter as Mr. Jackson pretended to gobble up DeMaria’s finger. They looked happy.

In all of the photos, DeMaria Jackson was the one constant. She resembled her father mostly—the same sharp cheekbones and dark complexion. But she had her mother’s eyes. They had the same wary look to them.

Most of the room was messy, except for two places: her nightstand and a large indentation on the floor where Demetrius’s crib had once been. He’d slept in DeMaria’s room since birth, but after she’d disappeared, Mrs. Jackson had moved his crib over to her room.

I went over to the nightstand. There was a cheap desk lamp on top and a wooden picture frame. The picture was a selfie of DeMaria and Demetrius, the camera pointed up close to both of their faces. Demetrius was drooling, barely a few months old, and DeMaria was smiling at him, her forehead leaning against his.

I spent the next few minutes looking at DeMaria’s things. I looked under the piles of clothes on the floor, searching through the pockets of her jeans and hoodies. I looked in her closet and dug through her drawers of shirts, underwear, pajamas. I moved her knickknacks and empty water bottles around her desk. In the desk drawers, I found a mess of school supplies and half-used notebooks, nail polish, a makeup bag, chargers, and some pads and tampons. I flipped through her GED materials on the floor. I even checked her wastebasket, but I found only snack wrappers and crumpled papers.

I found nothing strange. Her room was innocuous.

Mrs. Jackson was convinced that DeMaria had changed after becoming a mother. She’d put her entire history behind her—the truancy in school, the arguments, the shitty ex-boyfriend, the DWI. DeMaria had changed completely.

But what did Mrs. Jackson actually know about her daughter?

What did any of our parents know about us?

Olivia’s parents, Madison’s dad, my own father—they had comfortable ideas about their children. They thought we were virgins. They thought we didn’t do drugs. They thought we drank responsibly. We were nice and good in their eyes.

We made it look that way. We stowed away the unsavory bits of our lives, the things that would disappoint them and break their hearts. We hid those parts of us until we couldn’t anymore. And we did it to protect them. We did it out of love.

Most nineteen-year-olds were the same. They always had something to hide.

But there was no contraband in DeMaria’s room, not even a relic from the past. No cigarettes, vapes, or prescription bottles full of weed. No condoms or birth control pills. No gun or pepper spray. No booze or vibrator hidden deep within a drawer. I couldn’t even find a journal or diary.

DeMaria had been discreet.

I sat down on the floor, leaning against the bed. I rubbed my eyes for a moment. In the hallway, Mrs. Jackson seemed to float back and forth from her bedroom to the bathroom to the kitchen. She’d tucked in Demetrius for a nap. I couldn’t hear her footsteps, but I could feel her presence drift past the door, like a soft breeze.