Pretty Girls Dancing(81)

Janie hesitated. She’d fared better than Alyvia had, who was currently grounded into infinity. Her friend had even lost cell phone privileges. But she was confident her foster parents would relent. By the time she was done going over the story with them, they’d be convinced she and Janie were modern-day Nancy Drews. “They were all right,” she said finally. “I was mostly concerned about my mom. Newman admitted on tape that he’d taken pictures of my sister seven years ago. That was hard for her to hear. She hasn’t really been the same since Kelsey was kidnapped.” And neither, in truth, had her dad. The change had happened so gradually that Janie hadn’t even realized how much time he spent away. Maybe he had more responsibility at work. Or perhaps he’d rather be anywhere but home. She couldn’t help feeling that it had been more guilt than concern that had led to him showing up at home late Friday night. Janie had already had her mom calmed down by then. She’d insisted Claire take a hot bath. Get into bed. And had sat with her until her dad had shown up unexpectedly.

“Who would be the same?” A shadow crossed Cole’s expression. “My dad used to be a teetotaler, but now I see a bourbon bottle in his bottom desk drawer in the den. And sometimes he hits it pretty hard. It’s like he’s a different person. Then it occurred to me that he was using the bourbon for the same reason I bought weed. That had me backing off it. I don’t want to rely on it to get by, you know?”

“Yeah.” The same way Janie didn’t want to depend on medication because of her mother’s addiction to alcohol and pills. And it was an addiction, even if she could go days without them. Her father seemed blissfully unaware of the problem. Or was it just easier for him to overlook it? He’d lost a daughter, too. If there was one thing their family dynamics proved, it was that everyone managed trauma differently. They all had their own ways of getting by.

“My mom stays super busy with work and all these activities and baking . . . she’s always in the kitchen doing something. Like, if she just keeps moving she can outrun Garrett’s death. I think she’s afraid if she stops, it’s going to steamroll over the top of her.”

Janie listened in awkward silence, sipping at the coffee to avoid answering. It felt too personal to hear about the cycle of someone else’s grief. She’d been trapped in her own and in that of her parents since she was ten. But there was a weird sort of comfort in Cole’s revelations, too. No one got out of a personal tragedy unscathed. The wounds didn’t go away. It was just a matter of how well each person covered them.

“I don’t know what I’m supposed to be feeling. It sucks to be wrapped in this crappy mourning period, but whenever I catch myself having a good time, I feel guilty, you know? Like I’m betraying Garrett by enjoying myself. Then I get mad at him for being dead.” He shook his head and took a long gulp of his coffee. “How’s that for sick? It’s been two years. I should be handling things better.”

She surprised herself by saying, “Know what I was doing two years after my sister was kidnapped?” His head swiveled toward her. “I had just started back to school. For a year and a half afterward, I couldn’t leave the house. When I tried, it was like someone stuck a vacuum down my throat and sucked all the air out of my lungs.” She’d felt as though she’d been slowly suffocating. Other times, the tightness in her chest mimicked a heart attack. She’d known that it wasn’t real, that it was her mind making her suffer like that. The helplessness of not being able to control her own brain had been the worst part about it. “I was so medicated sometimes, I felt like a zombie. And even that was preferable to the anxiety attacks. So you’re not doing that bad.”

He looked at her for a long moment. “Thanks for telling me that. You probably don’t talk about it much.”

“I don’t talk about anything much.”

He laughed, and although she hadn’t meant it as a joke, she smiled, too. “Now I have to go punch in. Doris freaks out if we’re not there fifteen minutes early. Thanks for the coffee.”

“Not a problem.” Hand on the door latch, he paused. “Is it okay if I text you sometimes?”

The knot in her chest was back. But it felt different this time. “I guess.”

“Awesome. See you tomorrow.” The door slammed. A moment later, he was in his car, starting it up. Not wanting to be caught staring, Janie put the vehicle in gear. Backed out of the lot and headed for the Dairy Whip.

That had been weird. But a good kind of weird. She waited at the end of the drive for the barely there traffic and then pulled across the street. Janie still wasn’t sure what to think about Cole Bogart. But she was okay with taking some time to find out.





Claire Willard

November 15

1:15 p.m.

“David, lunch is ready.” Claire felt almost normal engrossing herself in daily chores. Normal except for the muzzy-headed feeling that was the result of the pills she’d taken in the middle of the night while David lay sleeping. Two, to banish the endless movie reel of the nightmarish events that had been replaying in her mind since Friday. She’d needed the pills to shake the mental image of Kelsey drifting above her, condemnation in her eyes.

I was just trying to protect you, Claire told her daughter silently. I didn’t want the police to see you that way. To think about you like that. You made a mistake. Acted out. I covered the best that I could.