“Oh.” Mom looked surprised. “I thought Cooper was bringing you back.”
“No, it’s Marissa’s mom.”
“Okay.” She waved at Mrs. Haynes, who suddenly turned off her Land Rover and stepped out of the car. Mom’s smile, like Mrs. Haynes’s earlier, looked a little fixed as she came farther down the front porch steps to meet up with Marissa’s mom.
Harley didn’t take her eyes off Laura Haynes. As if sensing trouble, Marissa erupted from the car. “Mom!” Marissa yelled. “Mom!”
“Thank you for bringing Harley back,” Jamie began.
“I just heard that the girls have worked out a babysitting gig for tomorrow night.” Mrs. Haynes stopped a couple of feet in front of them as Marissa practically slid into place beside her.
“Don’t get weird,” Marissa warned, to which her mother shot her an angry look.
“Harley told me. I checked with Ted Ryerson to see if it was okay,” Mom said.
“It’s not okay. I don’t care what his answer was. I don’t want Marissa distracted. She has a job to do when she’s babysitting, and with someone else there, it doesn’t get done the same way. I don’t want to be that mother, but I really think Marissa should babysit on her own.”
This was what Mom had said, too, and now she flicked Harley a look. Harley wanted to protest, but Marissa was already in the fray.
“Mr. Ryerson said it was fine!”
“Marissa,” her mother warned.
“He said it was fine!”
“I understand,” said Mom. “Harley can stay home. Let Marissa babysit on her own.”
“You understand?” Mrs. Haynes questioned.
“Yes,” Mom said, in that clipped way she used whenever she was really pissed but was pretending she wasn’t.
Mrs. Haynes looked at her, too, assessing. “So, we agree on this?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Mom!” Marissa gazed at her mother angrily.
“Come on,” Mrs. Haynes snapped at her, heading back to the car.
Marissa threw Harley a can-you-believe-this look, then, with the slow gait of a prisoner heading to her doom, followed after her.
When they were gone, Harley said, “This is shitty.”
Mom didn’t answer immediately. When they were back inside the house, Mom turned the lock on the door and said, “Yes. It’s shitty.”
“And don’t swear,” Harley added, hoping for a smile, but all Mom did was head upstairs.
Chapter Fifteen
The return phone call from Mikes Corliss came in just after Cooper was informed by Laura that she was already at the football stadium and picking up Marissa. Cooper had texted Laura back about collecting Harley as well, and that he was on his way to get both girls when Laura responded that she was taking care of it.
And then the retired River Glen detective’s call came through, and Cooper chose to let Laura do what she would—when she made up her mind about something, she was nearly impossible to dissuade—and answered the phone.
“You wanted to talk about the Whelan attack,” Corliss said. “I remember it as if it was yesterday. Beautiful girl. Terrible, what happened to her.”
“I was one of the kids who pranked her,” Cooper reminded him, still finding it hard to admit his part in the events that transpired.
“I remember you, too. What’s on your mind?”
Cooper told him that he’d been going through the old files, seeing what he could find. When Corliss asked what had brought on this review, he admitted that Emma’s mother had died and that her younger sister had returned to River Glen to help.
“You want to meet somewhere, son?” Corliss asked.
Son. Cooper vividly recalled Corliss calling him that when he and his friends had come in to the station to be interviewed. Corliss had calmly taken their statements, even while hysteria had been the order of the day for a number of the townspeople. Irene Whelan, though vocal, had kept her head. She’d flat-out said it was not a bogeyman who’d harmed her daughter. It was a flesh-and-blood, evil man.
Cooper had first seen her in Corliss’s office while he was waiting to be interviewed, where she’d radiated anger.
“The Waystation?” Cooper asked Corliss now.
“Be there in forty-five.”
Cooper checked his clock and decided to take a quick shower before meeting Corliss. He was disappointed that he wouldn’t see Jamie again tonight. He kept thinking about the soft touch of her fingers undoing the top button of his shirt.
* * *
Jamie came out of the shower to find Emma sitting on the bed in Mom’s bedroom, waiting for her. Bartholomew was beside her, tongue out and panting after running up the stairs, apparently.
“Who was that lady?” she asked flatly as Jamie, wrapped in a towel, searched through her suitcase for some clean clothes. “You need to unpack.”
“Yes.”
“Who was that lady?” she asked again.
“She’s Marissa’s mother. She’s dropped Marissa off before.”
“She doesn’t like you.”
“Yeah . . . well . . .”
If she doesn’t like you now, how’s she going to feel if she finds out you’re interested in Cooper? she asked herself, then argued back: He’s her ex-husband. Ex.
Like when does that ever change how a person feels?
“You still like Cooper,” Emma said.
“Still?” Jamie questioned.
Emma smirked.
Harley came to the doorway. She’d changed into her pajamas, but there was a thundercloud over her head. “Marissa’s mom is really a—”
“Uh-uh-uh,” said Emma, tsking her finger.
“She has every right to feel the way she does,” said Jamie.
“You don’t like her either,” Harley retorted.
“I don’t know her. We’ve started off on the wrong foot. That’s all.”
“Uh-uh-uh,” Emma repeated, this time looking at Jamie. To Harley, she added, “Jamie’s in love with Cooper.”
“What?” Jamie lost it. “You said ‘like’ a minute ago. I don’t even know Cooper Haynes anymore. He seems like a nice enough guy, but that’s as far as it goes.”
“I think he’s cool,” said Harley.
“Jamie went to the party so she could see him, but he came to the house with his friends.” Emma looked up at the ceiling and closed her eyes, but kept her head tilted. “He wasn’t the one, though.”
Jamie had wriggled into her jeans, but she
