Good Girl Bad (42)

Tabby was so stupid. As if Fred would ever leave his family for a teenager.

For a moment she’s flooded with relief that it’s over. Later, it will occur to her that it’s not over at all. Fred might be calling off the affair, but everything that’s left—what he’s done, even what sort of a man chooses to hide his wrongdoing rather than help someone he’s supposed to care about, who is clearly in deep distress—will not be over for any of them, for a very long time.

But that doesn’t occur to her right now.

Right now, she just wants to make sure Tabby knows that it is over. She thinks quickly. She’s so full of rage. She wants to see Tabby, tell her everything, tell her how much sex Fred and Nancy have, how they’re sitting on the couch right now holding hands.

How they usually fuck on movie night. Two hours sitting on the couch together, touching.

Tell her what a fool she was, to think Fred would come and rescue her.

She taps quickly into the phone, then slips it in her pocket.

Her father will notice it’s missing, but what’s he going to say?

He can’t say bloody anything, and she’ll deal with him later. She tells her parents she’s turning in. Then she slips on her sneakers, and jumps nimbly out of her window and walks quickly to the shed to get her bike.

Across town, Tabby’s phone pings: Fine then. I’m sorry. Meet me at the Tandy Bridge.





39





Thursday

“We need to talk.”

Casey tells Nate that she’ll be there in twenty minutes. “Where’s Rebecca?”

Nate tells her he doesn’t know. “She went walking and hasn’t returned.”

“I’ll call her,” Casey says, but Nate tells her not to bother—Rebecca has left her phone behind. Casey curses and hangs up without another word.

Rob arrives, his hulking frame somehow comforting to Nate. “We’ll sit with Gen,” Cheryl tells him. The air is at once heavy and clear between them. At least one piece of the puzzle has fallen into place.

Nate nods once, and waits at the table.





40





Disappearance Day

At the bridge, Tabby and Freddy are fighting.

Freddy shoves Tabby, and Leroy screams to a stop next to them and jumps out of the car.

“Tabby, Jesus. Oh my God.” He pulls her into his arms, but she fights him off, sobbing.

Freddy is crying, too.

“You never stopped her,” Tabby sobs, hitting Leroy in the chest, her little arms flailing, and she seems to him like a little doll, tiny and vulnerable and like she might break in two with the slightest puff of wind. Leroy is bewildered, trying to fend off Tabby’s blows, and Freddy’s shoves too.

“Tabby! Calm down, love. Calm down. What’s going on? Why are you out here in the middle of nowhere? Why didn’t you wake me instead of texting?”

“Because you always take her side! You say you’ll try to help me but you never really do! You just stick a Band-Aid over it! Like a lock on the door! Well, how well did that help tonight? What happens when I’m in the kitchen? What happens when Charlie is?” Her voice cracks, and she doubles over, her shoulders shuddering violently, then slowly sinks to the ground.

Leroy squats down beside her, trying to lift her back up.

“Sweetheart, it’s cold. Come here.” Tabby pushes his hands away though.

“Why are you here, Freddy? And why are you fighting, not helping her? Jesus, did she tell you what happened?” Leroy feels strangely furious with Freddy, that she’d lure Tabby out to the middle of nowhere instead of asking an adult for help.

But Tabby’s done that already, hasn’t she? Asked for help?

And fat lot of good it did her. Fat lot of help he was.

Leroy takes a deep breath. So he hasn’t helped. So he didn’t realize how bad it was. But he can help now.

His thoughts are interrupted by Freddy though: “Why don’t you ask her, the fucking little slut?” she hisses, and yanks a bike off the ground behind her, swinging a leg over, and pedalling furiously away.

Leroy stares after her, shocked. He turns back to Tabby.

“Tabby, honey. I don’t understand what’s happening with Freddy. But let’s go home. Or at least come sit in the car and let’s talk about it. I will keep you safe, I promise.”

“No!” Tabby screams jumping back to her feet, trying to pummel him with her fists again. “All you ever do is talk about it! You even tell me to ‘just go with it’! Just go along with it and pretend I’m the one with the problem! You just try to minimize the fallout, not fix the problem, and now Charlie is dead, and I’m not going back there! I’m not going back to her! You know exactly what she’s like, and you’ve never done anything except try to smooth out the worst of the bumps. You’ve never even told her she’s the problem, not me.” Tabby is crying so hard Leroy can barely understand her, and his stomach feels like a brick in his abdomen, because Tabby is exactly right. He remembers that fight as clear as if it was yesterday. Rebecca flying into a rage about something he didn’t understand, something so nonsensical it didn’t even seem worth exploring. He’d arrived home and caught the tail end of it, Rebecca screaming so much Tabby had fled, had actually run to her room, and when Leroy had gone to her, his approach had been to try to comfort her tears away, not delve into the problem and truly try to understand it. Just pat her on the back, as though that would solve anything. And when Rebecca had poked her head in the door twenty minutes later, he’d explained to Rebecca that Tabby had had a hard day, she was sorry that she’d been snappy. And he’d felt Tabby stiffen beside him, because it was a lie, but it was the quickest way back to calm, back to harmony, and he’d whispered to her “just go with it” and Rebecca had held on to her miffed attitude, but Leroy could see that she felt vindicated, that the fire had gone out of her, that Tabby would be safe then, that everything was okay.