You Are Not Alone(104)
The moment I hang up, I dial Detective Williams.
I drum my fingertips against the cover of my Data Book while I wait for her to answer.
CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN
VALERIE
VALERIE STANDS BY THE green pole marking the entrance to the Thirty-third Street station, watching passengers, mostly gray-faced men and women trapped in the kind of small, colorless lives that Shay inhabits, travel up and down the stairs.
In less than an hour, Shay will return from New Jersey and hurry to this exact spot, expecting to meet Detective Santiago. Shay will be breathless and hopeful, convinced that she has finally outsmarted the sisters and that justice will prevail.
Shay hasn’t shown a great deal of aptitude in anticipating the threats that have befallen her, though it was clever of her to track down Belinda—Valerie no longer thinks of her as “Mom”—and learn about the sisters’ connection to James. That move won Shay a bit of grudging respect from the oldest of the three sisters.
Still, Shay bumbled by not expecting Belinda to report the strange female caller who’d hung up midconversation after finding out about Valerie’s relationship to James. “Wouldn’t she have known that if she was really in Val’s class?” Belinda had asked Cassandra.
Cassandra and Jane are en route to a hot new restaurant now. By the time Shay arrives at the subway station, they’ll be seated and ordering drinks surrounded by other customers, their alibis secure.
Valerie thinks she could have orchestrated all this without her younger sisters, but she’s glad she didn’t have to.
Growing up, Cassandra and Jane were inseparable—they were closest in age, and temperamentally suited. Sometimes Valerie would let them bypass the KEEP OUT! sign on her bedroom door and flop down on her comforter to tell them what it was like to French-kiss boys, or how to shave their legs. Her younger sisters were a rapt audience; they’ve always been impressionable.
As adults, their loyalty to Valerie intensified a thousandfold when she moved to New York and finally revealed what had caused her to leave their hometown. She hadn’t been rejecting them, she explained. She’d pulled away because it hurt too much to have reminders of her past.
The story Valerie shared about their stepbrother, Trey, was true—every last bit of it, down to the feel of his fingers hurting her and the slightly derisive look on Belinda’s face when she committed the ultimate betrayal against her oldest daughter.
But the other tale Valerie relayed on the stormy night when she reunited with Cassandra and Jane—the one in which she played the role of the innocent victim who was tricked by her conniving roommate Ashley—was tweaked and altered for dramatic effect.
Valerie is an actress, after all.
Ashley hadn’t drugged Valerie or hidden her phone on the night before her big callback. Those details were a complete fabrication. Or, as Valerie prefers to think of it, creative license.
Valerie didn’t make it to the callback because Ashley won the part, fair and square, during her own callback, which took place on the afternoon before Valerie’s was scheduled. Ashley hadn’t even known Valerie was chasing the same role.
In her heart, though, Valerie believed the part belonged to her, and she to it. Her devastation was genuine.
Maybe Valerie should have felt guilt when her supportive younger sisters used their influence to ruin Ashley’s career. Ashley might have been able to survive the horribly unflattering photos that were leaked to the tabloids, but the rumors about her sexual perversities were so depraved and vile it seemed no one in the industry could look past them.
Today Ashley is married and living in the Valley; that was a much better role for her.
Perhaps Valerie should feel guilty about what will befall Shay—another innocent woman who got in the way.
But she doesn’t.
Valerie has a new purpose now, one that is more meaningful than hitting her marks and channeling a character, and even more rewarding than hearing an audience’s applause.
She began to feel fully alive again when she watched Trey—or James, as he’d shed his childhood nickname when he went to college—die on that park bench.
Who knows what atrocities she can guide her sisters and the other women to avenge in the future?
Ever since the three sisters reunited, Valerie has been a powerful stealth influencer, shepherding Cassandra and Jane in an exciting new direction. Valerie is the invisible architect of every act of vengeance their larger group has perpetrated. After being alone for so long, she relishes having her sisters by her side.
There’s just one more loose end to tie up.
Valerie lifts her head slightly as she catches sight of a woman in a black puffer coat approaching the subway station. Valerie smiles.
Shay has finally arrived.
The other women in the group think Cassandra and Jane are the leads, and that Valerie plays a supporting role.
But Valerie has been the star all along. This is her stage.
CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT
SHAY
The Double Jeopardy Clause in the 5th Amendment means no one can be tried twice for the same crime. There is no statute of limitations when it comes to murder. There are currently 54 correctional facilities in New York. They hold about 47,000 prisoners.
—Data Book, page 78
IT’S NEARLY TEN P.M. by the time I enter the Thirty-third Street station.