channels until she landed on
“I wish Jake’s photo would show up here one of these days,” she said, barely looking over at her younger brother, who by now had started using his fork to eat the mac and cheese.
“I hate him too,” he said.
Starla turned down the volume. This was an interesting exchange with Teagan, and she liked what she heard.
“I thought you liked him,” she said.
Teagan nodded at his big sister. “I act like I like him because if I don’t ‘treat him with respect,’ he’ll beat my butt.”
“He’d better not,” she said, actually meaning it. Since making the cheer team, Starla had dialed down the pretense of being kind to everyone. She didn’t need to be that nice anymore. She was already on top, and that kind of position was very, very powerful.
“You know he was in jail?” Teagan asked.
She didn’t. If it were true, why didn’t she know about it? Her mom’s thug boyfriend was presented to both Starla and her brother as “a dear friend” before both of them realized he was staying over every night in their parents’ bedroom.
“How do you know that?” she asked, no longer interested in the creep du jour who was being profiled on TV—a big fat dude who’d killed his mother with a crowbar and then stolen her car (a measly hybrid, of all things!).
They had a creep du jour right there in their house.
“I heard him talking to mom about it. Said something about how he’d had his freedom taken away once and never, ever would allow that to happen again.”
“What did he do? Molester?”
Teagan went back to typing on the computer. “Dunno. Maybe. They didn’t say what.”
Starla paused, weighing other scenarios before settling on the molester theory.
“I don’t like the way he looks at me,” she said, slumping her head back onto the sofa pillow and wiggling her toes. Her nail polish, OPI’s I’m Not Really a Waitress red, was looking a little tired. She’d attend to that later on that evening.
Teagan was only thirteen, but he almost had to laugh at his sister’s remark. Starla didn’t lift a finger, say a word, or take a gulp of air without someone watching her. She lived for an audience—creepy or not. She just did.
He hated her and admired her for that.
VALERIE RYAN FELT THE STREAM OF COLD AIR coming from the kitchen and knew immediately that the back door had popped open. Kevin was no Mr. Fixit, and it didn’t even occur to her to call him into service. Instead, she went for the junk drawer next to the stove and retrieved a screwdriver. It wasn’t really anyone’s fault. The door handle was always loose.
She noticed the girls’ coats and shoulder bags on the bench by the door.
“Hi, Mom,” echoed at her, which meant that both girls were right behind her.
“Oh,” Valerie said, slightly startled. “I thought you were out walking the dog.”
Hayley and Taylor shook their heads in unison.
“Nope. We haven’t seen her,” Taylor said, suddenly feeling a little worried. Hedda was loved by everyone, but no one thought she was particularly smart. A lot of people liked to chuckle at the slightly dense, long-haired doxie with a dappled silver and black coat, which had made her look old even when they first got her.
“We thought you were,” Hayley said.
The three of them went outside in the mid-January frost and stood on the back porch calling for Hedda. Hayley went down the alleyway looking, and Taylor canvassed the road along the bay in front. Their mother stayed put, calling for Hedda to come home.
Their dog was gone.
Deep down, mother and daughters knew that something bad had happened. Hedda was a homebody who didn’t go far. She just didn’t. Besides that, the little stub of a dog never missed a meal.
Ever.
chapter 25
AT THE TIME OF HER DEATH, Katelyn Berkley was no longer close friends with any of the Port Gamble girls she’d known since grade school. It wasn’t that the other girls didn’t want to be tight anymore. They did. Some even tried. But the more they tried, the more she seemed to retreat. No one really understood why. Hayley and Taylor assumed that it was because of the situation between her parents. When Katelyn was in middle school, the Port Gamble police made at least two trips to the Berkley residence to defuse what busybodies liked to call a “domestic disturbance.” The Ryan twins, having learned from their father’s work, knew that “domestic disturbance” was the PC way of saying “knockdown, drag-out argument.” There might have been other occasions in which intervention was needed, but no one knew for certain.
The teen gossip line said that Katelyn had been the one to call the police, saying she was fearful that her parents would end up hurting each other.
Hayley felt sick about what had happened to Katelyn in the years since those physical altercations. Katelyn had once told her that things were better at home.
“My mom’s getting help,” she said.
“What kind of help?”
Katelyn pretended to hold a glass and tipped it to her lips.
“Oh,” Hayley said, because the gesture needed a response. But she didn’t know what else to say. Sandra Berkley was a sad woman and, like her daughter, she was good at building walls around herself. Alcohol made a great barrier.
She fingered the note that her sister had recovered from Katelyn’s trench coat.
She’d slept on the little slip of paper the night before, as had Taylor the night before
Instead, she found her thoughts drifting back to the state of things in the Berkley household before Katelyn’s life began to unravel. She recalled the time she heard her mother talking with her father about what was going on over at house number 23.
“Things like that happen everywhere,” Valerie had said.
“I know. But, honestly,” Kevin said, “I never would have suspected the Berkleys.”
“With all you know about violent crime, you ought to know that it thrives wherever it can.”
“I feel like the dope who says that their serial killer neighbor seemed so nice, but when they look back on it they can remember a cat squealing and they wonder if he’d just killed it.”
Valerie laughed. “It isn’t that bad, Kevin.”
“No,” he said. “I hope not.”
Hayley remembered how she’d seen Katelyn the day following a police intervention and asked her if everything was all right.
“I’m fine,” she had said. “Why?”
“I don’t know,” Hayley admitted, feeling like she’d intruded on something private. “If you ever need someone to listen …”
Katelyn had stared hard at her, sizing her up, weighing her somewhat cryptic response.
“I don’t need anyone’s help,” she said, finally and quite firmly. The wall was up, and it was made of brick, stone, steel, and tank armor.
Hayley had stood there a second. The words that came from Katelyn were completely at odds with her appearance. She looked incredibly sad, worn down, and very afraid.
