Beneath Devil's Bridge(89)

“They’re okay. Look. Shh, they’re fast asleep. They’ve had a mild sedative.”

She turns her head on the pillow, wincing as she moves. There’s a bruise forming under her eye, deep purple. Above the eye a bandage covers stitches. She tries to move her arm, then seems to realize it’s in a cast. With her free hand she tentatively touches her brow.

“You’re going to be fine, too,” I say softly. “Broken arm. Big bang to the head, some stitches. But you got your girls out the back, and then it seems you were knocked on the head. Your neighbor and his friend broke in and brought you out.”

She seems confused, as though she’s trying to remember. Then panic widens her eyes.

“Darren?” Her voice is hoarse. She coughs and winces again.

“I’m so sorry, Mads. He . . . he didn’t make it.”

She closes her eyes and sinks her head back into the pillow. Tears leak from beneath her lashes.

“The police officers will return soon. They’re going to ask you what happened.”

Her lids flicker open. She’s silent for a few moments. Moistening her lips, she says, very quietly, “I want to talk to you, but I . . . I don’t want Lily and Daisy to hear.”

I nod. “I’ll go find a nurse to see if someone can help me get them back to their room and watch them.”

Once the girls have been safely relocated, I pull the chair close to the bed, sit, and take Maddy’s good hand. For a few minutes she just lies in silence with her eyes closed, and she lets me hold her. My daughter, for the first time in twenty-four years, has not pulled away from my touch. Tears fill my eyes, and I just allow the moment, because I fear it will all change again in an instant.

She tries to moisten her dry lips again. “He started it, Mom. Darren started the fire.”

Mom.

My stomach contracts.

I have not heard that word from my daughter’s lips in such a long time. And suddenly it breaks me. I struggle to hold in my surge of emotion.

I sniff and say softly, “Why?”

“Because of what he and Beth did to Leena.”

“I don’t understand.”

Maddy inhales a shuddering breath. She closes her eyes again. And when she speaks, it seems to be from a distance, as though she’s slipped into a place far, far away.

“I always thought it was my fault. Our fault. All of our faults. I never knew. I . . . None of us knew that Darren and Beth went back. They went back to finish it off.”

Cold leaches slowly down into my belly. I don’t say a word. I’m terrified to hear what’s coming next.

“Me and the other girls, we . . .” She opens her eyes. They’re awash with tears. Her voice is shaking. “We swarmed her. Leena. That night. Under Devil’s Bridge. Us girls. We beat her up.”





RACHEL


NOW


Monday, November 22. Present day.

“What do you mean, swarmed her?” Blood thumps against my eardrums.

“Beth found out that Leena stole her address book. It was the last straw for Beth. Leena had already taken jewelry from us, and makeup. And then when she took the address book, she started calling up boys, and pretending she was Beth, and she said things on the phone that were . . . disgusting. Beth was always on Leena’s case, being a bully and kind of sadistic about it, so . . . I don’t know, maybe that’s why Leena did it. But when Beth found out—it was like a direct attack on Beth, and thus all of us in the group. Beth said we had to teach Leena a lesson.”

Maddy falls silent. She reaches with her good arm for the water cup next to her bed and takes a sip.

“Beth phoned Leena the day before the bonfire. She invited her to an ‘after-party’ under the south side of Devil’s Bridge. Beth told Leena there was going to be a nice surprise. Leena bought it. She couldn’t even see it for the ruse it was. A trap. A setup. An ambush. Leena was excited. She actually thought Beth was trying to be her friend, and she was pestering us at the bonfire.”

The words Darsh Rai uttered to me and Luke that night at the Laurel Bay ferry dock resurface from memory.

I’m sure everyone has told you by now that Leena did stupid, stupid things, and that she had no idea how desperate it made her look. Sometimes . . . she just had trouble reading people.

“We wanted to tell Leena to bugger off at the bonfire, but Beth said we had to play along, or Leena wouldn’t come to the bridge.”

I am so still, so silent, that Maddy stops to regard me. Her eyes are huge and dark, and she’s so pale. She looks like my little Maddy. The young girl I used to love so very much, and would move the earth for. My heart, my soul, is shattering all over again. A part of me wants to tell her to stop. I’ve heard enough. I don’t want to know the rest. A suffocating horror is rising in me. Terror. Of what is yet to come out of my child’s mouth.

“Say something, Mom. Please. Say anything.”

I’m conscious of the seconds ticking away. The dawn outside is getting brighter. The police will be back soon. I swallow, clear my throat. “And Clay Pelley? Was he at the bridge?”

“No.”

I feel ill.

“He was only at the bonfire. After Leena stopped badgering us, she sat with Clay on a log on the other side of the fire.” Maddy hesitates. “He had a soft spot for her. A different way of interacting with her. He cared. The part of him that was a teacher truly cared for Leena, I think.”