Real Bad Things(52)

What did any of them know about murder? Mayhem? They patrolled the streets of Maud, where the only excitement came courtesy of the occasional burglary or drunk and disorderly. They had no idea what it was like to get their hands dirty. To do something hard. Something that could come back to hurt them. They had no idea what women like her could do. What women like her had done. What women like her would do to keep men like them from learning what she knew.

She ripped open a bag of tortilla chips, poured them into a bowl, and noticed a text that had popped onto her phone screen. Susannah.

Where have you been?

I’ve been calling you.

Rusty said you’re sick?

Why aren’t you answering my texts?

It’s been over a week.

Another text. Christlyn this time.

Do you have mono again?

Georgia Lee swiped her phone off the counter, fully intending to lash out. Ask Christlyn, a.k.a. Lovelace, how long she’d been spreading rumors about Georgia Lee anonymously to Let’s Talk About Maud and if she’d sold her out to Benjamin for money or for free.

Instead, she tossed the phone back onto the counter, opened a fresh bottle of wine for herself, and threw the bottle opener back into the drawer. She tried to slam it shut for effect but couldn’t because Rusty had insisted on quiet cabinets that “whispered” when they closed.

She scooped an avocado out of its shell and plopped it into a bowl. She couldn’t stop thinking about Jane, searching for her online, even though there was never anything new. Her eyes stung, and tears wept down her cheeks. From the onion, nothing more. Her father’s voice rang in her ears, loud and clear: Georgia Lee. There’s no need to cry about it. He was long gone now, felled by his own fool refusal to quit smoking cigarettes.

“I’m not crying!” she had screamed back at him and pointed at the onions her mom had cut for supper.

Georgia Lee had been home and bored and irritated about it. Jane had not called her as much in the days after Warren’s “disappearance.” It didn’t help to ask why. Some things weren’t allowed in Jane’s world: speaking to anyone about what they did when they were alone, asking anyone else for help, and asking Jane if she was okay, which Georgia Lee did one day after that night despite knowing better. A brief and heated exchange in the school hallway followed. Amid the angry postfight haze, she heard the whispers of classmates after Jane passed them. Words her dad had said before he’d told her to stop crying. He said them about Jane, but he also meant them about her.

“Georgia Lee, I’m not going to tell you again. You are not to see that girl, or any other girl, again. That’s final.” He also whispered the words, as if Georgia Lee’s mom might slip back into the kitchen after her pee break and die of shock.

They’d been so careful.

“I’m not like that! We’re just friends!” Desperation and shame crawled from her belly and clawed at her throat.

“Even so. I don’t want her in this house. And I don’t think it’s a good idea that you hang around her at school.” He rubbed his eyes, exasperated. “Please don’t mention this to your mother. I don’t have the energy for that conversation.”

As soon as her dad left the room, Georgia Lee swiped an arm across the counter and watched the onions fall to the floor. It felt good to do something. What she really wanted was something to throw or smash. Eventually, she retrieved all the onions and placed them back on the cutting board before her mother returned from the bathroom.

Her mother didn’t die of shock, even after Jane was arrested and she learned what Georgia Lee’s dad had correctly assumed about her and Jane. She had gone full Mother Superior, but without the temper. Locking Georgia Lee in her room and lying to everyone that it was mono was done out of “love” and “protection,” she’d cried (and cried). Alas, she’d died a few years after Georgia Lee’s dad from a heart attack she’d complained was heartburn.

Georgia Lee couldn’t stop the panic that rose and settled in her chest, hovering near her throat, coating her thoughts and coming words with the desire to make things right after doing so much wrong. That’s what she’d always been told. In church, in school, at home. Be a good Christian. Do the right thing. And she had done the right thing, hadn’t she? She’d protected herself. But then her memory came loose, and she wasn’t sure what to believe.

“Bathroom?” Georgia Lee startled at the interruption. One of Rusty’s buddies. Bart? Barry? Something like that. “Upstairs. Rusty still hasn’t fixed the one down here.”

She needed a task to refocus her. A to-do list.

Find out what John and Benjamin know.

Keep them from learning what you know.

Stay away from Jane.



Simple.

On the way outside, she banged her foot on the patio door to get Rusty’s attention. He couldn’t hear her over the sound of his own voice. Benjamin noticed and ran over to open the door for her.

“Thank you, Detective. You’re too kind.”

She placed the chips and guacamole on the table and settled into a chair next to Benjamin when he sat down. He’d been hired after the lieutenant retired. Not without a fight. Others on the council had balked at hiring a replacement. They claimed money as the cause; Georgia Lee suspected it was race. Though Maud was rich in youth and diversity compared to most towns in Arkansas due to its proximity to Fort Chaffee, the council and police force were not. But Benjamin had been the best applicant, what with his actual on-the-job experience. She could not have accepted the other options, most of whom were related to council members or other cops and had no experience beyond fast-food and under-the-table construction jobs. She encouraged the other council members to change their minds and gave them an ultimatum: Benjamin or they’d lose their hiring opportunity. A majority vote was required. Georgia Lee had hoped John and the others would remember the favor come election time. She’d seen no evidence they had.