Good Girl Bad (39)

She’d gotten complacent. She never thought Rebecca would actually hurt anyone. Not physically. But that look on her face. She was completely insane. She’d completely blanked out, gone somewhere else. Somewhere where she could kill their dog with just the flick of her wrist.

She can’t leave Genevieve.

Tabby, Jesus. You can’t come here. Just wait till tomorrow. Or call your Dad.

She’d tried to call Fred then, but he’d cancelled the call on the first ring.

You said you loved me. Well I need you now. I’m coming over, or it’s over between us.

She flings the phone down on her bed, the sobs unstoppable. She hates having to force him, she knows it will make him angry, but if he can’t help her now, what does their love even mean?

But even as she’s flinging clothes into her backpack, the sound of a text message stills her. She doesn’t want to look. Somehow, tonight, she’s seeing things with peculiar clarity.

He won’t let me come.

She knows it before she even looks at her phone.

DON’T YOU DARE, the text reads. And then: Fine then. We’re done.





35





One Day Earlier Freddy screams into her pillow.

Screams and screams and screams.

“Are you all right, honey?” Nancy is knocking on her door, concerned.

The pillow didn’t muffle much of anything, then.

She can’t talk to her mother now.

She just needs to think. She needs to come up with a plan.

How could she? How could she, how could she, how could she?

This is worse than being rejected. This is excruciating. This is hurting not just Freddy, but Nancy.

This is bigger than her.

Rage rises up in Freddy’s chest, not just the rage of the rejected, but the rage of the fooled.

Tabby had misled her. Willingly, extensively. For months. She’d pretended to be her friend, all the while laughing at her, and fucking her father.

She must think she is so thick, so slow, so unimaginative. Was she laughing at her this whole time?

Freddy has never felt so stupid in all her life. But more than that, it’s the thought of Nancy that twists something deep inside her. The pain is unbearable.

It’s one thing for Tabby to make a fool out of her. But Nancy, who is so gentle, so lovely. Freddy can’t even imagine how Nancy will respond to such a thing.

Her whole life feels ruined, in one small text.

Like everything she believed in has been yanked away and lit on fire right in front of her eyes.

She can’t bear it. She can’t. She needs to make it go away. She needs to fix it, or else take this pain and rage and fury and put it somewhere else.

And as she lies in bed and hatches a plan, the unbearable thing becomes bearable.

Like a million people before her, she takes her pain and turns it into something else.





36





Disappearance Day

Leroy rubs his eyes. He looks over at his wife. She’s breathing evenly. She looks peaceful.

He reaches for his phone, wondering who was texting him so late. He makes a mental note again to switch his settings to night mode. He hates getting woken up, but he keeps forgetting to look up how to change this setting.

Sighing, he touches the home button, the screen lighting up and blinding him. He blinks at it sightlessly for a moment.

Tabby.

God, six messages.

He swings his legs out of bed, unsettled. She never texts him.

Yawning, he opens up his messages, then sits ups straighter, wide awake. He glances at Rebecca, checks she’s still sleeping, his heart hammering in his chest, panic prodding him out of bed, down the hallway. He knocks on Tabby’s door softly. He doesn’t want to wake Rebecca. There’s no answer, and he tries the handle.

Locked.

“Tabby, it’s me. Jesus Christ. Open up,” he whispers, but the house is completely silent. If Tabby’s in there, she’s holding her breath.

Leroy pads down the other way toward the kitchen. He starts the video back up again. He stopped it in the bedroom, not wanting to wake Rebecca, and besides, the text messages told him all he needed to know.

She killed him. She killed him.

He watches the video and thinks he’s going to be sick.

What has he done? For the love of God.

Kind words. A lock on the door.

What the fuck was he thinking?

He grabs his keys, walks quickly back to Tabby’s door, puts the key in the lock. It’s labeled “work locker” to keep Rebecca from noticing it.

Tabby’s room is empty, the window wide open.

A phone he’s never seen before is lying on her bed, and the last message still lights up when he pushes the power button.

Fine then. I’m sorry. Meet me at the Tandy Bridge.

Leroy doesn’t notice her usual phone, lying where it fell on the floor after she had texted him. But he grabs the second phone, and creeps into his bedroom, finding his jeans and a jumper, trying to be as quiet as possible. But Rebecca sits up, a strange expression on her face.

“What’s going on, Leroy?”

And he’s so angry, he can’t think of what to say to her, rage working across his face as he yanks on his boots.

“You, Rebecca. You’re what’s going on. You said you’d fix it. And I believed you. Jesus Christ. I’ve been colluding with you, and your abuse.”