God laughs.” Tia had never really gotten that. She thought that it gave you an excuse to not try your hardest because, hey, God is going to mess with you anyway. But that wasn’t it. It was more about understanding that you could give it your all, give yourself the best chances, but control is an illusion.
Or was it still more complex than even that?
One could argue just the opposite-snooping had saved them all. For one thing, snooping had helped them realize that Adam was in over his head.
But more than that, the fact that Jill and Yasmin snooped and knew about Guy Novak’s gun-without that, they would all be dead.
So ironic. Guy Novak keeps a loaded gun in his house and rather than it leading to disaster, it saves them all.
She shook her head at the thought and opened the fridge door. They were low on groceries.
“Jill?”
“What?”
Tia grabbed her keys and wallet. She looked for her cell phone.
Her daughter had recovered from the shooting with surprising ease. The doctors warned her that it could be a delayed reaction or maybe she realized that what she did was proper and necessary and even heroic. Jill wasn’t a baby anymore.
Where had Tia put her cell phone?
She had been sure that she had left it on the counter. Right here. Not more than ten minutes ago.
And it was that simple thought that turned everything around.
Tia felt her body go rigid. In the relief of survival, they had let a lot of things go. But suddenly, as she stared down at the spot where she was sure she had left her cell phone, she thought about those unanswered questions.
That first e-mail, the one that started it all, about going to DJ Huff’s house for a party. There had been no party. Adam had never even read it.
So who had sent it?
Still searching for her cell, Tia lifted the house phone, picked it up, and dialed. Guy Novak answered on the third ring.
“Hey, Tia, how are you?”
“You told the police that you sent out that video.”
“What?”
“The one with Marianne having sex with Mr. Lewiston. You said you sent it out. To get revenge.”
“So?”
“You didn’t know about it at all, did you, Guy?”
Silence.
“Guy?”
“Let it go, Tia.”
He hung up.
She crept up the stairs quietly. Jill was in her own room. Tia didn’t want her to hear. It was all coming together. Tia had wondered about that, about these two horrible things-Nash going on his rampage, Adam vanishing-happening at the same time. Someone had joked that bad things come in threes and you better watch out. But Tia had never quite bought that.
The e-mail about the Huff party.
The gun in Guy Novak’s drawer.
The explicit video that was sent to Dolly Lewiston’s address. What tied them all together?
Tia turned the corner and said, “What are you doing?”
Jill jumped at the sound of her mother’s voice. “Oh, hi. Just playing Brickbreaker.”
“No.”
“What?”
They joked about it, she and Mike. Jill was nosy. Jill was their Har- riet the Spy.
“I’m just playing.”
But she wasn’t. Tia knew that now. Jill didn’t take her phone all the time to play video games. She did it to check Tia’s messages. Jill didn’t use the computer in their room because it was newer and worked better. She did it to see what was going on. Jill hated to be treated like a little kid. So she snooped. She and her friend Yasmin.
Innocent kid stuff, right?
“You knew we were watching Adam’s computer, didn’t you?”
“What?”
“Brett said that whoever sent that e-mail had done it from inside the house. They sent it, they went on Adam’s e-mail because he wasn’t home, they deleted it. I couldn’t figure out who would or could do that. But it was you, Jill. Why?”
Jill shook her head. But at the end of the day, a mother knows.
“Jill?”
“I didn’t mean for this to happen.”
“I know. Tell me.”
“You guys shredded the reports, but I mean, why did you suddenly have a shredder in your bedroom? I could hear you whispering about it at night. And you even bookmarked the site for E-SpyRight on your computer.”
“So you knew we were spying?”
“Of course.”
“So why did you send that e-mail?”
“Because I knew you’d see it.”
“I don’t understand. Why would you want us to see something about a party that wasn’t really happening?”
“I knew what Adam was going to do. I thought it was too dangerous. I wanted to stop him, but I couldn’t tell you the truth about Club Jaguar and all that. I didn’t want to get him in trouble.”
Tia nodded now. “So you made up a party.”
“Yes. I said there would be drinking and drugs.”
“You figured that we’d make him stay home.”
“Right. So he’d be safe. But Adam ran away. I didn’t think he’d do that. I messed up. Don’t you see? It’s all my fault.”
“It’s not your fault.”
Jill started to sob. “Yasmin and me. Everyone treats us like babies, you know? So we spy. It’s like a game. The adults hide stuff, and then we find out about it. And then Mr. Lewiston said that horrible thing about Yasmin. It changed everything. The other kids were so mean. At first Yasmin got really sad, but then it was like, I don’t know, like she went crazy mad. Her mom had always been so useless, you know, and I think she saw this as a chance to help Yasmin.”
“So she… she set up Mr. Lewiston. Did Marianne tell you about it?”
“No. But see, Yasmin spied on her too. We saw the video on her camera phone. Yasmin asked Marianne about it, but she said it was over and that Mr. Lewiston was suffering too.”
“So you and Yasmin…?”
“We didn’t mean any harm. But Yasmin had had enough. All the adults telling us what was best. All the kids in school picking on her. On us, really. So we did it on the same day. We didn’t go to her house after school. We came here first. I sent out the e-mail about that party to get you to act-and then Yasmin sent out the video to make Mr. Lewiston pay for what he’d done.”
Tia stood there and waited for something to come to her. Kids don’t do what their parents say-they do what they see their parents do. So who was to blame here? Tia was not sure.
“That’s all we did,” Jill said. “We just sent out a couple of e-mails. That’s all.”
And that was true.
“It’s going to be okay,” Tia said, echoing the words her husband had repeated to her son in that interrogation room.
She kneeled down and took her daughter in her arms. Whatever had been holding back Jill’s tears gave way. She leaned against her mother and cried. Tia stroked her hair and made comforting sounds and let the sobs come.
You do what you can, Tia reminded herself. You love them the best you can.
“It’s going to be okay,” she said once more.
This time, she almost believed it.
ON a cold Saturday morning-the very day that Essex County Prosecutor Paul Copeland was to be married for the second time-Cope found himself standing in front of a U-Store-It unit on Route 15.
Loren Muse stood next to him. “You don’t have to be here.”
“The wedding isn’t for six hours,” Cope said.
“But Lucy-”
“Lucy understands.”
Cope glanced over his shoulder where Neil Cordova waited in the car. Pietra had broken her silence a few hours ago. After all her stone-walling, Cope had come up with the simple idea of letting Neil Cordova talk to her. Two minutes in, with her boyfriend dead and a deal firmly in place with her lawyer, Pietra broke down and told them where they would find the body of Reba Cordova.
“I want to be here,” Cope said.
