Good Girl Bad (9)

But she shakes herself, and opens the wardrobe, her fingers running over Tabby’s clothes lightly.

So many nice things.

Rebecca never had such nice things when she was growing up.

She pictures, now, the neat little space she shared with her sister, Moira, and her throat clams up, her heart thumping, and she drags her mind back to this current room, this current problem.

All of Tabby’s clothes are hung neatly. There’s no mess to sort through; it’s easy enough to see all of Tabby’s things, because there is no clutter anywhere in this room. Her desk is spotless, a few textbooks stacked uniformly in one corner, the edges all lined up. Her pens and pencils are all inside the penholder, not a single one lying out of place. Opening the drawers, Rebecca finds them in much the same state: neat piles of blank paper, exercise books, staplers, and knickknacks all sitting next to one another in neat lines.

Nothing thrown haphazardly at all.

Something about the orderliness makes her uneasy, but the feeling steals away, tenuous and undefined.

Rebecca has popped in more than she used to, ever since Ms. Paisley raised the slipping grades, but every time Tabby has been sitting dutifully at her desk, pen in hand, earnestly tackling whatever problem her homework consisted of that night. Even when Rebecca peered over her shoulder, there was nothing she saw to ever worry her. And Tabby’s grades had started to pick back up.

There was something, though. For the first time, Tabby has seemed elusive to Rebecca. She smiles, and nods, and says all the right things, but Rebecca has felt her slipping away. Hiding things. Presenting something on the surface that a mother couldn’t snipe about, couldn’t argue with, but hiding something beneath it.

Still waters run deep, she thinks to herself, and then thinks, what a ridiculous saying. All teenagers brood. All of them hide things from their parents.

Again, something catches in her throat.

Didn’t she hide things from her parents?

She shies away from that thought, though.

She barely speaks to her parents these days.

And she certainly never thinks about them. She’s not about to start now.





When Nate and Genevieve return, Rebecca is sitting at the kitchen table, her fingers drumming a relentless beat on its surface.

“I found this,” she accosts Nate, leaping up and thrusting a piece of paper under his nose before he has even shut the door.

You belong to me, forever, the crumpled paper reads, and Nate looks at Rebecca, questioning.

“It was folded up into a tiny square, tucked into her pillowcase.” And Nate raises an eyebrow, taking in the seriousness with which his ex-wife is now conducting herself. Searching for things.

“Who wrote it?” he asks, thinking to himself that whatever Rebecca thinks it is, it really offers nothing concrete for them to go on. Just a boy, in love with his daughter. He hates the thought of anyone staking such a claim on her, but thinks that that bit of paper could mean anything.

Rebecca swivels sharply to face her other daughter. “Do you recognize this writing?” she asks, holding the paper out again.

Genevieve startles, and looks guilty.

She shakes her head, her eyes wide.

“Darling, help us out, please. I know sisters might have secrets. But I’m really worried. Has Tabby been seeing anyone? Trent? Anyone else at school? Who might have written this note?”

For a moment, Nate thinks Gen isn’t going to answer at all, but then, ever so softly, she says: “She was seeing Trent for a bit. It was pretty casual. I think Trent liked her more than she liked him, and she had trouble…getting rid of him.” Here Gen’s eyes widen, and she back-pedals. “I mean, nothing bad. I think he just kept pestering her after she ended things. That’s all I know,” she adds, a note of defiance in her voice that Nate has never heard before. For all the clichés about teenagers that Tabby lived up to, none of them stood up in regards to Genevieve. Mild-mannered and agreeable, he wonders what the edge in her voice is all about.

“Okay. Right. So we’ll let the police know that they should have a chat with Trent. Right now, I need to get into Tabby’s phone. Do you know what her passcode is?” Rebecca no longer cares if Nate thinks she is being unreasonable. Her heart is thumping in her chest. She needs information. She needs to know.

But here Genevieve looks uneasy again, and Nate and Rebecca both become very still. Independently, they both sense that she has something important to tell them, but she’s undecided, she’s weighing something up, and they mustn’t startle her, mustn’t do anything to change her mind.

Seconds tick by, and Genevieve wrestles with something inside herself.

Finally, she says, “Yes. But it won’t help you. Because I’m pretty sure she has a second phone.”





7





Four-and-a-Half Months Earlier

Tabby sits on her bed, sullen.

She knows Leroy will come back, and she’s full of rage.

This time, he hadn’t even made it through the door before she’d hissed at him, “Out, out, out, out, get OUT,” and he’d gone, thank God.

But she knows he’ll be back.

He’s trying to make it better. Trying to make it up to her. But he can’t make it up to her, and he can’t make it better, and she hates him, more than anyone. It’s not fair, she can see that. There are plenty of other people she ought to hate more.