The Quarry Girls(85)

I tasted a shock in the back of my mouth, like I’d licked a nine-volt battery. “Why?”

But suddenly, I knew. Ant would want forgiveness. He’d be desperate for it.

Agent Ryan watched me. “You don’t have to do it,” he said. “If you decide to, it’ll be recorded. Anything he says, but also anything you say.”

I nodded. “Okay.”



When they guided me into the interrogation room, I almost turned and walked straight back out. Ant was the color of bone, his blue eyes stuck with their terror beams on, his left one that had always been smaller than his right now little more than a slit.

“Thanks for coming,” he said, his voice squeaky.

He sounded enough like my old friend Ant that I stayed, though I wouldn’t sit. I remained on my feet, arms crossed, five yards and different roads taken between us, roads you couldn’t ever walk back on. I’d slowed to save my people, the ones I could, on my open-field sprint from kid to grown-up. Ant, he’d gotten lost, confused the pack for the purpose.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

Then he spilled it all, starting with how Maureen had died.

The night of our concert at the county fair, after he and Ed took me home and then Ricky drove Brenda home, Ed and Ricky met back up, then called Maureen to see if she was interested in a good time. Turns out back at the fair, she’d ducked into one of the trailers to smoke weed with the Abe Lincoln carny. When she came out to look for us, we’d already left. She’d gone home mad, thinking we’d all ditched her. Ricky convinced her it was a misunderstanding, and he and Ed picked her up.

Ant didn’t know exactly what they’d done to her next.

He just knew they’d killed her before dropping her body into the quarry.

I clutched myself and rocked while he spoke, his words coming rapid-fire, like he was reciting a play he’d practiced over and over. His voice dropped when he admitted it was him and Ricky who took Brenda. He didn’t know what came over him, he said, but he didn’t kill her, he just held her down before and helped change her clothes after.

Ed had kidnapped Beth all on his own. He’d given Maureen a pair of the gold ball earrings he’d stolen, and then did the same for Brenda even though he soon lost interest in her. He saved the final pair for Junie, who he’d lured out to the cabin with the promise of her first quarry party.

He’d used a police scanner to keep tabs on their surveillance of him.

Turns out Ed and Ricky hadn’t known what Maureen had done with Sheriff Nillson, my dad, and a deputy in Nillson’s basement that night. According to Ant, they targeted her because they knew her, and because Ricky liked her, and because she seemed like she’d be easy. When I asked why he and Ricky went after Brenda, after Ed was no longer interested in her, when she could have still survived, he lost it.

“I don’t know,” he kept saying, over and over again, in a child’s voice.

I didn’t have time for it. I was too scraped up inside to let him not know.

“Why’d you and Ricky do it, Ant?” I repeated.

He stared at the glass behind me. Agent Ryan had said he’d be watching. Probably other officers were in there, too. Maybe Nillson. And a tape recorder, spinning slow like taffy, taking down every word.

“They can just leave, you know,” Ant finally said, scratching his bare arm, taking a swipe at his nose. He stared down at the table like his fortune was carved into it. “Moms, I mean. Or I guess wives.”

His words spider-walked down my spine. “What are you talking about?”

“I heard my mom and dad fighting. A while ago. Not that long. It was after the night of that party where you all watched Roots, but we couldn’t go because Dad was drunk.”

The party where Claude and I ran into the tunnels on a break, and where I plastered my ear to Ant’s door. I’d heard part of that fight. The one that had changed him.

“Mom said she’d had enough. She left. Did you know they could do that?” His glance shot up, overboard eyes clutching for me. “Just leave you?”

My sigh echoed up my throat. I did know. They could leave you while they were sitting right next to you, stay gone even though you lived in the same house. But that didn’t answer the question. “You stole Brenda from us, Ant. Why?”

His shoulders slumped and he started crying.

It turned out he really didn’t know. Realizing that hit me like a punch to my stomach, stealing my breath. Jesus, what this town did to us, forcing our feet to the fire before we knew what it all meant, what stakes we were playing for. I suddenly felt so lonely I thought I’d die from it.

When Ant got his sobbing under control, his face a great swollen loaf, he told me where he’d hidden the photo of me in my bra. In the end, that’s why he’d called me in. He’d been out of his mind to be forgiven for something, anything. I’d known that, and I’d still come.

I didn’t hate him, but neither would I comfort him. He deserved to be locked up. He’d made his choices, and they’d taken away Brenda’s. I might soften to that, but for now, it’s how I felt.

Our meeting lasted twenty minutes. I couldn’t stand it any longer than that.

Afterward, I spoke to Agent Ryan about Father Adolph and asked him to make sure the priest wasn’t the one who visited Ant in jail. I did that for Little Ant, the one who’d built us Barbie doll furniture back in grade school. I hoped he would find his way back to that part of himself. I figured that was the journey all us Pantowners were tasked with, if we were lucky enough to get a chance.