What Lies in the Woods(98)

“What happened to Jessi Walker?” I asked.

“I’d put my money on Oscar,” he replied. “He’s always been violent.”

“It explains everything,” I acknowledged. “Except why you were having me followed.”

He sighed, and I saw him shrug off the first lie like so much dead weight. “Look. Naomi. It wasn’t anything nefarious. I was just worried about you, that’s all. Liv was dead, and there was something going on between you two. I didn’t want anything to happen to you, so I asked Jessup to have someone keep an eye out. That’s all.”

“Why are we out here, Cody?” I asked. I wanted so badly to be wrong. For my monsters to be simple beasts of violence and hunger.

His fingers flexed at his sides. “I just want to see her one last time.”

“Is that what you told Liv?”

“For God’s sake, Naomi, listen to yourself. You sound completely insane,” Cody said. He paced a few steps away, hand to his mouth. Cool rain drifted down, light as mist, coating my skin. I shivered, but Cody was protected by his coat.

“I changed you, you said. I saved you. Who were you before, that you needed saving from it?” I asked. “Did you hurt Jessi? Were you jealous? Were you in love with her, is that it? You snapped and you hurt her, and—”

“It wasn’t like that!” he yelled, spinning. The rage in his eyes—I knew that rage. He was looking at me the way he’d looked at Oscar Green, that day behind the gas station. But he took a breath. Held up his hands, placating. “I’m not going to hurt you, Naomi, okay? I swear, I’m not going to hurt you. I just need you to understand what happened and then we can figure this out. Together.”

“You keep saying that. But what are we going to figure out, Cody?” I whispered. My hands cupped my elbows. Shivers trailed down my body.

Cody looked at me with the same wrecked expression that I remembered from twenty years ago, when he lifted me up from where I’d fallen. Older now. Lines in his face that hadn’t been there. Gray in his hair. He wasn’t that boy, and I wasn’t that girl.

“What happened to Jessi was an accident,” Cody said.

I let out the breath I’d been holding and shut my eyes. My body saw danger in every shadow, panicked at loud noises and unexpected movements, but now I was oddly calm. The certainty of this danger had a kind of comfort.

“Listen. Naomi, listen, I never wanted to hurt her,” Cody said. He crossed the distance to me, hands gripping my arms.

I wobbled in my stupid shoes, and only his grip kept me from tumbling. He looked down at me, and I couldn’t tell if there were tears in his eyes or if it was just the rain, clinging to his lashes.

“I loved her. I knew she didn’t feel that way about me, but I knew that if I was there for her, eventually she’d realize that she was making a mistake, going after this married guy. But then she told me she was leaving. He was going with her.”

“What did you do?” I whispered. “Did you hurt her?”

He shook his head fiercely. “No. We fought. Argued. We said some things we shouldn’t have, but I never touched her,” Cody insisted. “It was a few days before she … That’s why we weren’t talking to each other, at the end.”

“Then what?” I asked. There was nothing left of me to break. No sorrow, no anger. Only the cold.

“Big Jim called me. It was night. He was at the mill. She was there, too. And she was going ballistic, because she’d finally realized what a piece of crap he was. He was never going to leave Meredith. He was never going to blow up his life for a waitress, for God’s sake. She was drunk and she was pissed and she’d scratched the hell out of him, so he called and told me to come get her.”

“And you did. Because you wanted to take care of her,” I said. “You wanted to make sure she got home safe.” Because Cody was a good guy, and that’s what good guys did.

His hands dropped down my arms, and he took both of my hands in his, looking down at them. “I picked her up. She was still screaming at him when I got her in the car. She was out of her mind, Naomi. She bought every line he fed her, and he just kept stringing her along.”

“She never got home,” I said. He shook his head. “What happened, Cody?” I kept my voice gentle. I understood the need for confession. Once you began, it was hard to stop.

“She said she was going to throw up. She told me to pull over,” Cody said. “So I did. I held her hair while she puked up all that cheap vodka and then she slapped my hands away. She was screaming like it was my fault. She kept saying I thought she was trash. That she was an idiot. I said something stupid, like I didn’t think she was trash but she was definitely acting like it. She tried to hit me. I grabbed her wrist, just to stop her, and maybe I pushed her back a bit, and she was in these strappy heels, and she fell. She hit her head on a rock and she just lay there. She didn’t move.”

“She was dead?” I asked.

He shook his head. “I thought she was. There was blood—there was a lot of blood. But she opened her eyes. I tried to help her up but she kept hitting me. Calling me names. Saying that she was going to get Miller to arrest me.”

“Anyone would lose their temper.”

He lifted one finger, as if in warning. “No. Not like that. I didn’t hurt her. I was so angry. I wanted to hit her. So I left her there, before I did something I would regret. I walked back to the car and I drove away. That’s all. I drove away.”