Emma, for her part, had taken the news of Girard’s death in stride. She hadn’t commented, apart from saying, “Mom would be glad,” then acted as if nothing unusual had happened. Jamie had contacted Gwen and asked her to talk to Emma, and Gwen had agreed to stop by the house on Wednesday night. Harley, who’d been on the phone with her friends but wouldn’t give Jamie the slightest inkling of what was being discussed, had wanted to witness the meeting between Gwen and Emma, but Jamie had put the kibosh on that. Even she wasn’t invited into Emma’s room, where the meeting had taken place. Instead, she took Harley out for ice cream—ignoring her protests of having homework, being tired, needing to be alone, whatever else she could dream up—so that they could have some privacy.
Jamie had tried to get Harley to open up, to no avail. She’d mentioned that the seniors had, after that first day, clammed up tight about what had happened to Marissa around her. She’d used that information to hopefully prod her daughter into communicating, but Harley’s answer had been, “What did you expect after you ratted them out?”
What Jamie didn’t tell her was that the staff room at the school hadn’t been so tight-lipped. The boys involved in the pranking had been interviewed by the police, and though Deon Stillwell had threatened lawyers and lawsuits and all kinds of legal action, Troy’s mother, Alicia, had managed to override him. It helped that Troy himself wanted to talk to the police. The two boys involved, Troy and Greer Douglas, admitted they’d gone to the house to scare Marissa, but that Marissa had seen them and knew who they were. They’d thought that a friend of hers was going to be there, too, but when they learned Marissa was alone, they left. It was sometime after that that Marissa said the intruder had entered the house. She thought she’d locked the back door, but under questioning had broken into tears and admitted that maybe she’d forgotten.
There had also been talk that Tyler Stapleton was part of the group, but the other boys had insisted he wasn’t, so that question had been dropped, although Jamie could tell some of the staff weren’t so sure Tyler was as innocent as they all claimed.
In any case, everyone believed Marissa had been frightened by a home invader, not either of the boys.
Unless one of them had gone back in ski gear and with a knife.
While Jamie was sitting across from Harley in the ice cream store, she’d asked her, “So, are you friends with any of the boys in your own grade?”
“I know ’em” was the sullen response.
“Maybe you should work on making friends with them?”
“Why?” Harley had been carefully eating along the edges of the cup of salted caramel and fudge ripple ice cream.
“I just know that you know the senior boys, and I wondered about your own class.”
“You don’t like the senior boys now that you know they scared Marissa. Why don’t you worry about the creep who scared the shit out of her?” She waved around her plastic spoon. “‘Language, Harley,’” she intoned, as if she were Jamie, then added, “I mean it, Mom. You’re focused on the wrong stuff.”
“I don’t want to get in an argument with you. We’re all concerned. If someone’s out there—”
“If? If? See! That’s the problem!” she cut her off.
“What about Greer?”
“What about him?” Harley had glared at her, daring her to continue.
“I heard he’s been in trouble with the law.”
“What? Who told you that?” she demanded.
“Apparently, he stole a car.”
“That’s not true!” She had her spoon gripped in her hand so tightly, Jamie imagined it would leave marks.
“That’s what I heard. If it’s not true, I’m sorry for spreading gossip, but if it is true, you might want to rethink how you feel about him.”
That had done it. Harley had shoved her spoon in her remaining ice cream, gotten up, and stomped out of the store, waiting by the car until Jamie had paid and joined her. The trip home was made in silence. Jamie had wanted to talk to Harley about the state of Marissa and her friendship, too, but that wasn’t going to happen. She’d overheard enough of Harley’s telephone conversations to realize Harley and Marissa had cooled it a bit. Harley, being new, was suffering without the battalion of other friends Marissa possessed. It didn’t appear to be a serious rift between the two girls. It seemed more that circumstances had made it difficult for everyone and, truth to tell, Marissa was dealing with some PTSD-like symptoms.
After they’d returned from the ice cream trip and Harley had once again shut herself in her room with Duchess, who’d been lying outside Emma’s door, her chin on her front paws, both Emma and Gwen had come downstairs to the kitchen. Jamie had looked at Gwen, but it was Emma who said, “She can talk to you about me. I told her she could.”
“Are you certain, Emma?” Gwen had asked, clearly rechecking.
“I don’t have a mom anymore,” Emma explained. “You need to talk to Jamie.”
Jamie noticed Gwen was carrying a piece of paper from a notepad with some writing on it. “Is that for me?” she asked as Emma ensconced herself in front of the television.
Jamie glanced down at the words she had written in cursive: She’s not hiding. Likely lost memories. “It’s more a note to myself,” Gwen explained as she and Jamie walked away from the living room together. Rather than stand in the hall below the stairs, where their voices might carry, they once again stepped onto the back porch.
“This appears to be my meeting room,” Jamie said. She darted a look toward the back fence and around the yard,
