The Bad Daughter(26)
There was an elaborate Jacuzzi in front of a large window overlooking the side of the house, a glassed-in shower for two, a beige marble floor with matching countertops, double sinks on either side of the room, a separate stall for the toilet, a bidet, gold-plated faucets. “A bidet? Gold-plated faucets? Are you kidding me?” Robin could almost hear Tara squeal with disdain.
She followed her sister across the upstairs hall to the other wing.
“How are you holding up?” Sheriff Prescott asked as they approached Cassidy’s room.
“I’ve been better,” Robin told him, although in truth, she wasn’t feeling as bad as she’d feared. The Ativan was doing its job.
That is, it was doing its job until she saw the blood covering Cassidy’s bed and pictured the little girl sprawled across it, her phone in her hand. A burst of anxiety exploded like gunfire inside her chest. “Oh, God.”
It was only later, after they’d finished the tour of the upstairs rooms—a guest bedroom, a home gym, a media room—and they were saying their goodbyes at the front door, that Robin realized how different Cassidy’s new room was from her old one. The soft pinks and snow globes were gone, replaced by bold primary colors and shelves lined with video games. Posters of snarling hip-hop artists and half-naked models had usurped Beyoncé and Taylor Swift. Cassidy was growing up, she realized, becoming a teenager, moving inexorably from girl to woman.
Someone had tried to stop that from happening.
What kind of monster shoots a twelve-year-old girl?
“Goodbye, Sheriff,” Melanie was saying when his cell phone rang.
He motioned for them to hold on a moment, then turned away, listening. “That was the hospital,” he said when he turned back.
Oh, God, Robin thought. Their father was dead.
“Cassidy is awake,” the sheriff told them instead. “She’s talking.”
“She’s talking?” Melanie repeated. “What did she say?”
“Apparently she asked for Robin.”
CHAPTER TEN
Fifteen minutes later, they were at the hospital.
“I don’t get it,” Melanie muttered as the sisters exited the backseat of Sheriff Prescott’s patrol car. “Why would she ask to speak to you? I’m the one she lived with for the past six years, the one who listened to her bitch about her mother whenever they had a fight, the one who took her to buy tampons when she got her period last year. She hasn’t seen you since she was a little girl. She barely knows you, for God’s sake.”
Robin shook her head, as confused as her sister. “You never really liked Cassidy,” she offered, remembering Melanie’s initial antipathy toward Tara’s child. “Maybe she sensed that.”
“I just don’t trust kids with better vocabularies than mine.”
It was true that Cassidy had always sounded more mature than her years. Tara had believed in treating Cassidy as an equal, disdaining baby talk and encouraging the toddler to speak in complete sentences. Robin smiled, recalling the look of astonishment on their father’s face after spending several minutes with Cassidy when she was barely two years old. “It’s like talking to an adult,” he’d marveled. To which Melanie had responded, “It’s spooky, if you ask me.” To which their father had replied, “Nobody did.”
“You haven’t been in touch at all over the years?” the sheriff asked, interrupting her thoughts as they entered the hospital’s main lobby. “You haven’t emailed or spoken on the phone?”
“There’s been no contact whatsoever,” Robin assured both the sheriff and her sister.
“It just doesn’t make any sense,” Melanie said as they headed toward the east wing.
Nothing about this makes any sense, Robin thought as they neared Cassidy’s room.
“Hey,” a voice called from down the hall.
They turned in unison to see a young man shuffling toward them, hands in the pockets of his tight black jeans.
“Kenny,” Melanie said, her voice registering her surprise as he came to a stop in front of them. “What are you doing here?”
“I was hoping to see Cassidy.” His eyes shifted between Robin and her sister while carefully avoiding the sheriff. “But they won’t let me in.” He nodded toward the uniformed guard at the door.
“And you are?” Sheriff Prescott asked.
“Kenny Stapleton?” the boy said, as if he weren’t sure. He pushed some dark hairs away from his forehead, still refusing to meet the sheriff’s eyes.
“And your connection to Cassidy?”
The boy shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “She’s a friend.”
The sheriff’s eyes narrowed, his eyebrows forming their now-familiar straight line across the bridge of his nose. “A little young to be your friend, isn’t she?”
“Well, she’s not a friend exactly.”
“What is she exactly?”
“I know her through Landon.”
“Landon,” the sheriff repeated, his eyes darting toward Melanie.
Kenny’s hands sank deeper into his pockets, pulling his jeans down even lower on his slim hips. “Landon’s just real concerned about her. Asked me to check on her.”