You Can't Catch Me(79)

“What does that mean?”

“We figured out she was the bad Jessica yesterday.”

“What?”

“Yeah . . .”

“Is she coming after me?”

“I don’t think so. But I’ll text you my friend Liam’s number. He’ll keep an eye out.”

“Is that why you called?”

“No, um, we’re going to the police.”

“That sounds like a good idea,” she says.

“Yeah, but do you mind if we keep all that stuff we did with you out of it?”

“The fake contest, you mean?”

“Yes.”

“Why? Because it will make you look bad?”

“Of course.”

“Why should I?”

“You probably shouldn’t, actually, but I’m going to ask you to do it anyway.”

She laughs. “Did you get it?”

“What?”

“Your money back.”

“No. Not yet.”

“Okay, I’ll do it. But if you do, you have to promise to do a scholarship for real this time. Like a local kids’ thing in Jackson or something.”

“I’ll do that. Thank you.”

“No sweat. You think Liam can show me where to get good sushi?”

I shove down the pang of jealousy I have. “Definitely.”

We say goodbye and I walk back to JJ. “We’re all set.”

“She’ll play along?”

“Yes.”

“So . . .” She picks up the remnants of her breakfast and crushes it into a ball. “Time to face the music.”

“Let’s hope we both can dance.”





Chapter 36

Perfect Circle

My mother caught up to me in the cornfield. I never knew there were farms in Connecticut. I always thought of it as the preserve of rich family compounds. But I guess there are farms everywhere, of one kind or another. Regardless, it was a cornfield, and who cared about my stupid misconceptions about Connecticut?

My brain is a prison I have trouble escaping sometimes.

It was early summer, and the stalks were low and bright green. They hadn’t cleared out last year’s crops properly, so there were dead, brittle canes in among the new growth. The property must’ve been a couple hundred acres, and part of me wondered why the lawyers hadn’t gone after this, too, even though it wasn’t part of Todd’s estate. If I told Covington about it, he’d be pissed. But I hadn’t even told him about Kiki yet. I didn’t know if they’d kept in touch while Kiki was away, or what had even happened to them after I saw them exchange a tender kiss on New Year’s. I tried to ask her the next morning, but she just blushed and changed the subject. I knew how hard-won her privacy was, so I let it go.

But I was going to have to tell him, and it was a conversation I wasn’t looking forward to, like the one I was waiting to have there, on the edge of a cornfield in Connecticut.

The lawsuit, the settlement—they were supposed to make things better. But money wasn’t going to bring Kiki back. Money was the root of all evil, Todd used to say, though we didn’t know that wasn’t an original thought when he said it. I didn’t, anyway. My parents surely did, the idiots.

I hate to agree with Todd about anything, but he might’ve been onto something there.

The sky was a slate gray and the air smelled like rain. The sweater I was wearing wasn’t quite warm enough for the day. I wanted to get back into my car and drive away from that place, and let the only proof that I’d been there be the dust my car kicked up, but something held me back. I had so many questions about my life, my childhood, my parents’ choices. If I didn’t ask for answers now, it felt like I might never get them. So, I waited out in the yard, on the edge of the cornfield, knowing that she’d come speak to me eventually.

And she did.

“You’re right, you know,” my mother said, coming up next to me so silently that I started when she spoke. I wasn’t sure how old she was. Sixty? Sixty-five? No, not that old; she hadn’t been forty when she’d had me. But it was one more thing I didn’t know about my mother, because Todd forbade all birthdays except the eighteenth and his own, of course, where he turned thirty-three over and over, the age of Christ at his crucifixion.

“Right about what?” I said, making an effort to keep my voice unconcerned.

My mother shifted from one foot to another and then settled back into stillness. One thing I always noticed about us growing up was that she and I had the same posture. It wasn’t Todd-imposed either. It was simply the way we both naturally stood when we weren’t paying attention, one shoulder lower than the other, a hand on a hip. There’s a kinship in these things, a reminder of the blood ties that bind. However much I might try to pretend or forget, she was my mother. And I was her daughter.

“All of it. Todd especially. You don’t know what he was like then.”

“Tell me.”

“You want to know?”

I shrugged, and that was enough for her to begin.

“We were so young, your father and me, when we got married. We were so naive. We’d been sheltered growing up in Provo. No alcohol. No music other than what we sang on Sundays. You never met your grandparents, but they were so, so strict. Everything I wore, everything I did, everyone I knew, they controlled all of it. If they hadn’t decided your father and I were going to get married long before we even knew one another . . .” She shook her shoulders. “But that was the one thing they got right. Your dad was different. He’s so smart, and even then, he could see around corners.”