No One Will Miss Her(7)

“So what do we do?”

“We? Nothing. You stay here. Out of sight. I’m going to get the money, and then we’ll make a plan. A real plan. We’ve been lucky, but I want to be smart, even if that means taking a few days. It’s fine. We don’t need to run, not when nobody is chasing us.”

He hated her right now. She could feel it coming off of him in waves, could see the tension thrumming in his jaw as he ground his teeth together. He’d always hated when she took this tone, which made it all too clear that she thought she was the smart one between them. Well, tough shit, she thought. She was smart. She always had been, and she had always known it, whether people like her husband cared to acknowledge it or not. And if she had to piss him off to remind him what was at stake and who was in charge . . . well, she preferred his wounded anger to some of the alternatives. That red-eyed, haunted look he’d had when he first came out of the bedroom, gazing out the windows like he didn’t know who or where he was—no, she didn’t like that at all. If he couldn’t keep it together, they were both screwed.

“What if the cops show up?” he said finally.

“And why would that happen?”

He shrugged, looking down. “I don’t know. The Mercedes? People are going to remember seeing it, if they saw it. Out-of-state license plate, out of season, big fucking luxury car that sticks out like a sore thumb. Especially after that bullshit at the market last year. You and the fucking yogurt? They’re going to remember, and they’re going to come asking questions, and—”

“Then I’ll tell them what they need to know,” she cut him off, glaring. “I will tell them. Look at me. Look at me.” He did. For several long seconds, he stared at her as she gazed back. She laid her hand on top of his and spoke with fierce conviction. “We are so close to finishing this. You just have to let me handle it.”

Finally, he nodded. He believed her; she could see it in his face. But the lost look—that was still there, too. She sighed.

“Say it. We can’t afford to play this game, not now. Say whatever you’re not saying.”

He gazed into his coffee cup. He’d barely tasted it, and now it was cold.

“It’s just . . .” He trailed off and squared his shoulders. “They’re going to figure it out. What we did.”

She shook her head furiously.

“They won’t.”

He sighed, twisting the band on his finger. A familiar nervous habit. Seeing him do it made her heart ache—but she had to be firm.

“Listen to me,” she said. “Lizzie and Dwayne are dead. It’s over. There’s nothing we can do. But we are alive. We have a future. And we have each other. Right? You have to trust me.”

His shoulders sagged, and hers did, too, with relief. He was giving in to her, the way he always did, the way she always knew he would. But his eyes stayed haunted, and when he spoke again, she nearly screamed aloud.

“I can’t stop thinking about—” he said, and she leaned forward, gripping his shoulders, unable to bear it.

“Don’t.”

But he couldn’t help it. Couldn’t hold it back. The words escaped in a whisper, and the air in the condo hung heavy with dread.

“The way she looked at me.”





Chapter 4

Lizzie




For the record, I never fucked that guy.

You know the one I mean. The one who just couldn’t help himself, standing over the bloodied, battered corpse of a murdered woman, having a good solid gloat with the hometown fellas about how they’d all seen her tits before. Pure class, those Copper Falls boys. Truly. Especially that line. Such a perfect combination of crass and coy that it became a little bit famous. Someone who was there told someone who wasn’t—You won’t believe what Rines said to that trooper—and before long, people were repeating it like a catchphrase clear across the county. You remember it, don’t you?

How do you think, man.

Jesus fucking Christ.

You probably thought I was kidding. Or exaggerating, deluded, just being dramatic. It’s all right; I’ve heard it before. She’s making it up. She’s just looking for attention. Everyone knows that Ouellette girl is a sack of lying trash. These are, of course, good churchgoing people we’re talking about. Salt-of-the-earth, New England working folks. It’s hard to believe in such casual cruelty unless you’ve seen it with your own eyes.

But now you have. Now you know. Visit beautiful Copper Falls! Where the air is clean, the beer is cheap, and the local cops will slut-shame a girl at the scene of her own goddamn murder.

His name is Adam Rines. The blond with the crooked little almost-smile, Mister How Do You Think. And despite what he wants everyone to believe, I never slept with him. I never slept with any of them, except Dwayne, and that was different and later on. Much later. It had been a good five years by then, since that early summer day, the moldy shingles of the hunting shack moist between my shoulder blades, the jeering of six ugly boys ringing in my ears.

How do you think, my ass.

I’ll tell you how. Or you could even guess. All it takes is a little imagination. Like this: Imagine that you’re thirteen years old. Ninety-five pounds and not yet a woman, but not a little girl anymore, either. Imagine your body, all gangly arms and knob-kneed legs that never look right no matter how you arrange them together, and your hair, a ginger-colored mess that’s always lank and dirty, the ends all uneven where you had to cut it yourself with a pair of dull scissors. Imagine your ignorance: a mother long dead, and a dad who just doesn’t know, doesn’t realize that a thirteen-year-old girl is old enough to need a bra, and a box of maxi pads, and a conversation about what they all mean. He doesn’t see you growing up.