Good Girl Bad (41)

“Someone saw them fall in, and they pulled Rebecca out. She could swim enough to resurface, to kick up. But they couldn’t see Moira. They didn’t find her for two days.”

Nate can’t imagine. He can’t begin to.

“We pulled ourselves together. We tried to support her. She saw a counsellor. But she refused to talk about it. She got so angry whenever we tried to talk about. We tried to tell her it was our fault, that it wasn’t her fault, but she’d just scream and scream. And eventually we stopped trying. We thought she was coping. She got on with life. She seemed like she was okay. She did well at school. We decided not talking about it was how she coped. But I think it was a front, now. I don’t think she was coping at all. I think she was falling apart. And she put herself back together, somehow, but she did it on her own. She had no one to guide her. She wouldn’t let anyone in.”

Cheryl pauses, examining some distant thought or distant memory. Her face is pale and tight.

“She didn’t,” Nate whispers. “She never put herself back together. She’s not together. She’s not all right.” But it’s as though Cheryl can’t even hear him; she’s miles away.

“Rob and I saw a counsellor. God knows how we survived. We tried to make it up to her. But when she left home, she went as far away from us as she could. We moved, you know, to be closer to her. Not so close we made her angry. Just to the border. Just close enough to drive. But she cut us off. She didn’t want to see us. She didn’t want to talk to us. It was like we made her feel bad about Moira, and her way of coping was to cut us out of her life. And we let her, because, I think, we thought we deserved it. Because she might have taken Moira to the river. But every step toward it? Everything that happened that took her there? We might as well have pushed them both in.”





38





Disappearance Day

You’ve got to help me.

Please. You’ve got to get me tonight. I need you tonight.

On Sunday night, Freddy is watching her father closely.

She still hasn’t quite worked out the details of what to do, how to confront Tabby, how to make her hurt as much as she, Freddy, is hurting. The knowledge of the affair is eating away her insides like acid.

But then Tabby texts, and as quickly as Fred tucks his phone away, it was not quick enough.

Freddy was watching like a hawk.

When he disappears into his bedroom and shuts the door, she watches.

When he comes back out and sits in front of the television, she watches. He looks edgy, uncomfortable, or is she imagining it?

She knows from Genevieve that Tabby has a second phone, so she sits, thinking about why Tabby texted from her regular phone to Fred’s, when anyone could see the message, anyone could find out who sent it, and wonder why she was texting Fred, saying that she needed him. Fred is always leaving his phone around. Which you wouldn’t do, if you had something to hide, would you?

She wonders if Fred has a second phone.

“I’m going to go read for a bit,” she says, and Nancy smiles at her and takes Fred’s hand, and her heart squeezes painfully.

Listening for any movement from the lounge room, she goes into her parents’ room. Her mother has a great pile of books on her nightstand. If anyone asks, she’ll say she’s choosing a book.

Then she starts searching for a hidden phone.

In her father’s nightstand, in which she’s never looked before, there’s a half-empty bottle of lube and a giant pink dildo, and she vomits a little bit in her mouth.

Was that for her mother, or did her father fuck Tabby here sometimes?

No, she knows her parents still have regular sex. She hears them often enough—their bedrooms share a wall, and she has already made a mental note that if she ever has kids, to keep her bedroom well away from theirs.

At those times, she puts earplugs in, grimacing, disgusted. Them trying to be quiet is somehow even worse.

For someone who is usually straightforward and uncomplicated, Freddy is remarkably adept at thinking covertly. Her eyes skim across possible hiding places with precision, categorizing places her mother would frequent. Fred’s suits—her mother would check to see if they needed dry cleaning. His sock drawer—Nancy would pair and put socks in there.

Her eyes roam around the walk-in wardrobe.

Some dusty-looking accounting textbooks on the top shelf look promising.

She hoists a chair over and pulls them out, one by one, checking for secret chambers.

Someone had described how to make a hiding place inside a book once in class.

Fred would hide a phone somewhere easily accessible, somewhere he’d be able to check it readily, quickly.

Getting a textbook down is hardly surreptitious, but it is somewhere Nancy would never look.

No secret chambers, though.

The en suite, then.

She pulls out drawers, and bingo.

Six or seven old phones.

She checks them all for charge. The last one lights up at her touch.

Hidden in plain sight.

Freddy guesses her father’s passcode with ease. It’s the same one he uses for everything, even his bank cards.

Idiot.

She reads Tabby’s messages, her heart hammering. Then sees her father’s final reply, and something strange happens in her abdomen.

Fred was calling it off.