Heart of Ice

Jenna’s face stayed blank, pinched in horror. Tears ran down her cheeks. “I don’t know her.”

“Sarah Cleary was her name. Sarah Barton Cleary.” Michael taunted Jenna with the blade. “You said she wasn’t good enough to be in your stupid club. You, Lily Ann, Tiffany…the three of you. You told her that she wasn’t smart or pretty enough. Do you even have a clue how much you hurt the girls who want into your little club?”

Jenna racked her brain, but things were happening so fast she couldn’t grab on to any memory of any Sarah Barton. “I don’t remember Sarah, I’m sorry. I’m sure she was a nice girl.”

“You set her up. You told her she was ‘in’ and then you took it away from her. You crushed her. You have no damn idea what her life was about, how much she struggled.”

Jenna continued scanning the room for a way out, a weapon. Anything. “I really am sorry. Please. We need to get Shali a doctor.”

“She’s collateral damage. I came for you. I missed you once at Dixon University and I’m sorry about Sheraton Wilkes. But you two look alike and she was wearing your damn coat and she was in your room.”

Jenna remembered how Sheraton had borrowed her coat that night at the restaurant, how she’d vacated the chapter’s guest room for the sleeping porch the night Sheraton was murdered.

“You deserve this,” he said.

Emily Kenyon turned the unlocked knob on the front door and pushed, but something was in the way. She pushed a second time, a little harder.

Shali Patterson’s unconscious body was blocking the door. Each time she pushed, a smear of blood grew larger across the hardwood floor, but she couldn’t see it.

Dear God, what’s going on here? She pushed harder, this time using her shoulder like a battering ram.

Chris Collier’s rental car pulled up and he ran across the driveway to Emily, who was hunched low by the front door.

“Something terrible is going on here,” she said, her words hushed, and her face awash in worry. “You cover the backyard. Shali’s hurt.”

“Where’s Jenna?” he asked.

“I don’t know. Call for help. We need an ambulance and backup.”

“Already called. I’ll check out the back of the house.”

“Be careful,” she said.

Chris Collier rounded the backyard with such haste that he nearly fell over a planter on the patio. He steadied himself, bent down low, and peered into the living room window. What the? He could see Jenna walking backward toward the kitchen, a man with what looked like a knife moving toward her. He could see a slice of light come through the front door as Emily pushed and pushed from the outside of the front door.

Emily stuck her head inside and screamed. “Jenna!”

The man with the knife started to lunge for Jenna and Chris did what he knew he had to do. This has to be the cleanest shot I’ve ever fired, he thought. He aimed his gun and fired at the man in the hoodie. The window shattered and glittery pieces of glass rained down all over. For a second he couldn’t see what, if anything, he’d done.

“Jenna! Emily!” he called out.

“I’m all right,” Jenna said.

Chris rolled his body through the broken window and ran to Jenna just as Emily came inside. Shards of glass clung to his chest and pant legs.

“Mom,” Jenna said, pulling her mother toward her in a desperate embrace. “We have to help Shali. That freak stabbed her.”

Emily hugged her daughter as tightly as she could. “The EMTs are coming, honey. They’ll take care of her.”

Tears rolled down Jenna’s face. “Mom, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have let him in.”

She squeezed her daughter with the kind of hug that promised to never let go. “Don’t blame yourself.”

Chris bent over Shali and told her in a gentle voice that she’d be all right.

“You’re a fighter, Shali Patterson,” he said. “Fight this one. Hang on.”

Sirens screamed down the street, growing louder as they came toward the Kenyon house.

Jenna was crying and shaking. She was nearly inconsolable, the kind of breakdown that happens when one feels safe enough to just let go.

“He said he killed Lily Ann, Tiffany, and Sheraton,” she said.

Emily held her with the might of a mother’s love. “I know. I know. Baby, it’s all over.” She looked over at the dead man on her living room floor. A puddle of bloody water formed around him. Michael Barton had been shot in the chest. The knife was still clutched in his hand. For a second, Emily felt the look on his face wasn’t anguish or menace.

It was a dead man. A sick man. A monster at peace.

Epilogue

Noplace was more lovely than Cherrystone in the full of a spring day. The cherry blossoms planted along the main arterials by the Boy Scouts in the 1960s were in their pompom prime. Whenever the breeze came down from the north, a little flurry of white petals filled the air, drifting around tires and along the curb. The winter had been beyond turbulent—but the spring promised, as it always did—a rebirth.

Jenna had been accepted into law school and would be attending Stanford in the fall. She was more than ready to pursue a career in criminal law. No young woman had seen so much, yet stayed steady and optimistic. She quit the BZs with an e-mail the same day that her mom agreed to marry the man she loved.

“We need to get on with our lives,” Emily had told her daughter. “We can’t always count on a second chance coming around again.”

Jenna and Shali decorated the gazebo in the Kenyons’ backyard with massive bouquets of cherry blossoms.

“I had no idea that you had so many cherry trees at your house, Shali.”

Shali rolled her eyes. “I know why you’re saying that.”

“You do?”

“Yeah, I know that you know we don’t have any at my house. But hey, it’s your mother’s wedding and I like her. So I did a little snipping here and there last night two blocks down.”

Jenna measured another length of ribbon. “I hope my mom doesn’t get arrested for having stolen property at her wedding.”

Shali grinned. “I hope she does. We’ll get on the news for sure.”

Both girls laughed. They hadn’t laughed like that in a while, not since that terrible afternoon when Shali had been stabbed by Michael Barton. Her injuries had healed, and she was conscientiously attending her prescribed physical therapy sessions. Jenna marveled at her friend’s indomitable spirit. She’d be all right. They all would.

They stepped back from the gazebo. Indigo blue ribbons and white cherry blossoms were carefully braided around each post. It was, both girls knew, as beautiful as a dream.

“So your mom’s not going to run for a second term, huh?”

Jenna surveyed the yard. Things looked perfect. “Nope. Jason is, though. Mom and Chris are going to open their own investigative agency.”

“Like private eyes?” Shali’s eyes grew wide with intrigue.