Real Bad Things(41)

An itch worked its way up her throat. Georgia Lee coughed and sipped her drink. Smiled at no one in case they watched. “You shouldn’t go to jail. Warren was a horrible person.” The first night that Georgia Lee had met Warren, he had barged through the door and declared it steak night. Jane looked confused at the mention of steak, but Jason got excited. He loved steak in all its forms: plain, on rice, in a stew, in a flour tortilla, on a salad. But come dinnertime, the only steak was the one on Warren’s plate—though he’d fed Diane bites off his fork while smiling at Jane, Jason, and Georgia Lee and their pitiful plates of box mac and cheese with a side of canned corn. Georgia Lee had taken them to the Dairy Queen for dessert. “The world is a better place without him in it.”

“Wow.” Jane gaped. “Didn’t expect that of you.”

“And I didn’t expect you to confess. But you did. And here we are.” Words she’d longed to say. Been afraid to say, without even realizing it. And now they were out. “This is Maud,” Georgia Lee said. “Their attention to detail is not great, their motivation less so. They wouldn’t have done anything.” Georgia Lee shoved another piece of pizza toward her mouth and chewed with vigor. Jane had brought this on herself. And now she’d have to pay the price. So be it, she told herself, even as her guilt for feeling off the hook flamed. “You ruined your life for nothing.”

“My life was already bad.”

Georgia Lee was in the process of swallowing another bite. Jane’s words made her food scrape all the way down to her belly.

“I didn’t plan to confess,” Jane said. “It just happened.”

All that guilt mixed with her bitterness. “You were supposed to keep your mouth shut. That’s what you told all of us to do.”

“I know.” Jane stared at her pizza crust. “I panicked.”

“Why? What happened that forced you to do the very thing you begged us not to do?”

“Jason got scared.” Jason. Always Jason. What about Georgia Lee? She’d been hurt that night too. “They came to the house. The cops,” Jane said. “They kept asking us all these questions. Diane was hovering, getting agitated. Jason started to say something.” Jane looked off into the distance, as if recalling the details after a long time without thinking of them. “I stopped him by saying something first.” She picked at her abandoned pizza crust. Jane had always called them her “bones” and joked that she used them to keep track of how many pieces she’d already had to prevent herself from getting sick. “I just didn’t want Jason to go to jail. Shit was bad enough. I didn’t want him to go through more than he already had.”

“So that’s that? You’re just going to go to prison?”

Jane shrugged. “I thought so, but I guess they have other plans.” She shoved her plate away from her. “I wish they’d get on with it.”

Georgia Lee ate the remainder of her pizza in silence. Everything felt unfinished. Was she supposed to say bye and then wait to see if Jane would actually be arrested, or were they looking for more evidence, more suspects? They had Jane’s confession, the body. There was no need to wait on an arrest—unless there was something else the police had learned. Something that would point away from Jane and toward someone else.

Georgia Lee hated to wait. She liked action and to-do lists, but in this situation waiting was all she’d been doing. Doing more meant placing a target on her own back. Maybe if she asked John and Benjamin the question head-on, they’d never suspect she knew the things they wanted to know.

“I’ll try to get more information from my contacts at the police station. See what’s going on and why they’re waiting. I can’t guarantee anything. But I’ll try.”

Jane wadded her napkin into a tight ball, not looking up at Georgia Lee. “You don’t have to do that.”

“I want to.” She had to. All this waiting around had her on edge.

“You know a Detective Hampton?” Jane asked. Georgia Lee nodded. “Best thing you could do is try to convince him I did it alone. He seems to think that’s not the case.”

“It’s not,” Georgia Lee said.

Jane leaned back in her chair and gave a little laugh while stretching. “I’ve been alone with this for twenty-five years. I might as well have done it on my own.”



As soon as Georgia Lee veered the car into the trailer park’s one-way road, recollections of that long-ago night swarmed into her mind like inanimate objects in cartoons come to life after years of disuse and dust. She tried to ignore the jarring images and focus on the present. That wasn’t great to look at either. Maud Bottoms Estates held on to decay like a badge of honor. Tree branches hung over the road, creating a tunnel to block the sky. Every time she’d come here to visit Jane, she had worried a tornado would drop down and carry them off in its funnel, never to be seen again. But wintercreeper and honeysuckle tentacled the vinyl siding and slats of wooden porches, ensuring the mobile homes’ permanence until the vines pulled it all back to nature.

“Is Angie still around?” Jane asked when they passed her old trailer.

“I have no idea,” Georgia Lee said. “We didn’t speak after that night.” Angie would rather be waterboarded than affiliated with Georgia Lee. Their worlds had collided, with Jane at the center, and neither had been keen on giving up the time they spent with her. Georgia Lee wished she’d been nicer. But she’d been so wrapped up in Jane and afraid for anyone from Maud Proper to find out.