Locust Lane(49)
“But come on. Christopher?”
“Stranger things,” he said before taking a sip.
“Is this why Hannah was so freaked out in the middle of the night?”
“No, she didn’t know until this afternoon. Everything was hunky-dory when she left.”
“Are you sure? She seemed pretty upset.”
“Come on, Alice. This is Hannah we’re talking about. It was late. Maybe she wasn’t acting as weird as you thought she was.” He nodded to her bandage. “So what happened to you?”
“Scraped it getting out of the Uber.”
“Looks serious.”
“No, yeah, it’s not as bad as it looks.”
He met her eye. It looked like he was deciding whether or not to say something.
“I’m sorry to bail on you like that,” she said, mostly to break the weird silence. “But it didn’t seem like my presence was required.”
“Yeah, I’m the one who’s sorry. But this is all a shock.”
A normal couple would have hugged at this point. Instead, Geoff took another bite of his sandwich and Alice went to check on her stepdaughter. She was sitting up in bed when Alice eased open the door. She quickly placed her phone facedown on the covers. She wasn’t crying, exactly, but the runways were definitely open for the next arrival of tears.
“So how was it?”
“Scary.”
“Your father told me what’s going on.”
“I just feel so bad for Christopher.”
Alice crossed the room and sat on the edge of the bed.
“So you really think he did this?”
“Looks like.”
“But does that even make any sense?” Alice asked. “I mean, had you seen any sign of this? Because I’ve been around some pretty violent men in my life. And Christopher Mahoun isn’t one of them. Not by a long shot.”
“He was pretty crazy when it came to Eden.”
“How crazy?”
“I think she was the first girl he ever loved. And she could be pretty unpredictable. He was a lot younger than her. Eden had been through some stuff and he’s, you know, like Bambi.”
“Bambi went through some stuff.”
“Oh yeah. Well, you know what I mean.”
“Hannah, I have to ask you something. Last night, when I saw you in the kitchen, you were really freaked out. But you didn’t know about Eden yet. I mean, nobody did, right?”
“I wasn’t freaked out.”
“You kinda were, though.”
Hannah stared at the bedspread.
“You can talk to me, Hanns. You know that, right?”
“You can’t tell Dad.”
“Cross my heart.”
“I was just really strung out. I’d taken something and it really messed me up.”
“Okay.”
“It’s why I was up all night.”
“Do the police know this?”
She shook her head.
“We didn’t want to get in trouble.”
“So everybody took it?”
“Not Jack. But the rest of us, yeah.”
“So that was it? The only thing that was bothering you last night?”
She nodded, though she wouldn’t meet Alice’s gaze.
“You know if there was something else, you could tell me.”
“I know,” Hannah said. “But there wasn’t.”
“Well, come here.”
They hugged.
“What did you take, anyway?”
“It was supposed to be Molly but it musta been a bad batch because it really wiped us out for a couple of hours.”
“I know this is going to sound weird coming from me, but be careful around that stuff,” Alice said.
“No, yeah, lesson learned.”
She left her alone after that, although she couldn’t help but feel that there was something more going on here. Yes, what Hannah was saying certainly made sense as far as her kitchen outburst was concerned. The girl didn’t exactly have a robust constitution. Two glasses of wine and she crumbled into a disorganized mass of giggles and blubbering. And Alice had seen enough people bent sideways in her life to know that all bets were off when chemicals were introduced. But still. It didn’t feel right.
Michel needed to know about this. She went up to her room and texted him, but the message went unread. She knew that he was considering turning off his cell if his number fell into the hands of the rabble. Simply communicating, much less being together, was going to get even more difficult. She considered emailing him but then remembered that the cops had taken his computer. She climbed into bed, exhausted by the last few hours but also knowing that sleep was unlikely without pharmacological assistance. But she needed to stay sharp. Her arm began to throb beneath the dressing. God only knew what kind of evil shit was lurking below.
Undrugged, the night fragmented into short intervals of shallow slumber interrupted by bursts of panic and dread. Michel didn’t write. Nor was there any real news online. There was, however, plenty of gossip. After an initial wave of shocked disbelief, public opinion was solidifying against Christopher. The racists and trolls arrived, lending their measured insights. Osama became the go-to insult; Obama wasn’t far behind. The comments subdivided into three main schools of thought. First, there were those concerned with policy: so I guess were just going to keep letting these fuckers in until they dehead us all. There were also those whose interest was more in the mechanics of due process: Kill him. No trial. Rope + tree. Summary execution. And finally, a more nuanced element, focused on the romantic and erotic side of the emerging story: Their own women are pigs so they go crazy when they see a white girl I bet he fucked her with his little brown dick after she was dead.