“I don’t know,” I say. “I’m scared.” It’s the truth, not sugarcoated for her ears, for a change. None of the usualIt’s all going to be okay. I’ll take care of it.None of that. It feels like a veil has been lifted between us, like I can finally just be myself without worrying about her reaction. “But for now, I’m too tired to worry about any of it. I hope to sleep through most of the press the next few days.” I give a weak smile. “But I can tell you one thing I know for sure. I’m glad to finally get it off my chest.
“I am responsible,” I say. “In part, for Leon’s suicide. For not exposing the truth of that night. But you’re right: Initially, where I went wrong, before all my other sins, is that I thought I could control things, thought I could shield you somehow. I’ve been overprotective. I’ve been telling myself you and Sam need me this much, but really, I’ve needed it for me—and don’t get mad at me for bringing this up again—but I’ve needed it because of Sophie.”
Jess stares, surprise filling her eyes. “For Sophie?”
“You know, in a weird way, to atone for her. The way I’ve viewed you ever since Mom died, when you got depressed, has been through this distorted lens, blurred by my own guilt and shame about Sophie, and lately, exacerbated by Coleman and Leon. It’s been overwhelming for you and Sam at times. I know that. I’m sorry for that. I need to knock it off. Is that why you’ve been so angry at me?”
“Maybe. I don’t know. I’m struggling so much, still, after all these months.” She turns away and looks out the window. “I guess I have my own anger.”
The air in the room seems to have stilled, the whooshing of the trees fading into the distance. I have to admit, a part of me isstill waiting for Jess to say she knew about Allison but didn’t warn anyone. That she was vicariously finding satisfaction in the awful retribution Allison was doling out to random individuals.
It’s not that I think my sister’s a sociopath, capable of anything remotely like this, but I guess I’m realizing she’s not only stronger than I think, but she might also be more resentful and vengeful than I realize. When she said to me after the rape,Crosbie, it’s fine. I was date-raped, taken advantage of, but I don’t want to report this. Leave it alone. I’ll be okay,I didn’t think she’d be okay, but she convinced me that she was bullheaded enough to keep on keeping on. But for these past days, I’ve watched the glint of anger in her eyes gleam a little too brightly.
I’m overly familiar with how hot the desire for revenge can burn, sear everything and make it hard to heal.
“I mean”—Jess turns back—“one day Allison asked me why I wasn’t angrier at all the people on the side who don’t care,” she says as if she can read my thoughts. “That people will stop at stoplights and follow all sorts of little rules, but when it comes to the big stuff, to really caring, being decent and stopping bad things from happening, they turn away and allow others to do awful things, especially when there’s money involved. She mentioned once that all the enablers deserved to be shot right along with the perpetrators. I got a strange feeling. But I figured she was venting like the rest of us.”
“Venting is okay.” I state the obvious. “Exacting revenge via murder? Not so good. I haven’t murdered anyone, but what I did for Railes was all born from the same well. From anger. I guess I’m learning, Jess.”
“Learning what?”
“That I can’t do the healing for you. I’ve been trying so hard for so long to shield you from pain—the pain of losing Dad, then Mom, the devastation from the rape ... It was foolish of me. All I can do is try to support you in whichever way you want.”
The intensity of Jess’s emotions crowds her eyes. She brings her knuckles to her mouth and presses them into her teeth. “It’s okay,” I tell her, pulling her in—like a sister, dammit, not a mother. “You can let it out.”
Chapter 56
Two and a Half Months Later
I pull my boots on and throw on my coat. I grab my bag. It’s early November, and the air carries a raw humidity that promises snow. I pause outside and look to the mountains, which appear as massive, hovering humps in the gathering early light. Hunting season has arrived, and some wise elk have come down from the higher regions to the safety of areas closer to town. It’s too dim to see them, but I can smell their strong, ungulate scent—hide mixed with dried hay. In the distance, I hear a reedy cry.
As I head to my car, my phone lights up. It’s Jeremy, saying hello. He’s on the East Coast, well into his work morning. I tell him I’m off to the office but was delayed admiring the elk. He writes back:poor you, halted by all that beauty!He tells me he misses the mountains. I tell him I miss finding that perfect Pad Thai for lunch.
The “on-and-off” nature of his relationship with the gal he was seeing in New York switched to permanently “off” when he returned. A month later, he called me. We took to spending long hours on the phone chatting about all my and Jess’s losses growing up, about Mark Coleman and Leon, about Allison, about all my guilts.
We talked about his past, too, about how he grew up in the shadow of his older brother, who became a physician, about how his dad always thought his journalistic endeavors were never going to amount to much and how he found himself constantly wanting to prove him wrong.
We chatted and chatted until, somewhere along the line, we began touching base every day. We almost set in motion a plan that had him coming out to visit this month, but mutually stepped back from it with some relief, agreeing that I still have a lot to process after Allison, and he has some sorting out to do after his breakup. We’re tentatively planning on something in the late spring or summer if we’re still up for it—and I’m hoping we will be because, I have to admit, the thought of it kind of makes my heart sing.
When I get to the office, I’ll be preparing for a deposition on the Robbie Ridgeway case. Since the Confession Artist insanity spent itself, I’ve been working hard with Greene and Alderson, who are trying to help the DA’s office pin Clarissa’s death on Aaron Lasserio and Robbie Ridgeway.
We may never be able to demonstrate Ridgeway hit her over the head before she went in the water, that she didn’t hit it on a rock on the way down. But Lasserio has already sung and maintained that he was following Ridgeway’s orders to stalk Clarissa and scare her off. Given the other facts—that Lasserio tried to get rid of her personal items and that Ridgeway also hired Lasserio to keep an eye on me because I was looking into her death—it was sufficient evidence to get the DA to open an investigation into Clarissa’s death.
In addition to all the other evidence, that Clarissa died from a hit to the head before water entered her lungs and that Ridgeway’s truck was in the same area as Clarissa the day she was out in the field taking samples before she was murdered, we have a statement from Palmer Edmonds, Jeremy’s connection on the Blackfeet Reservation. Edmonds wouldn’t talk to Paxton, but he did talk to me once Jeremy put in a good word, and it turns out he has a photo of the graffiti on Clarissa’s car.
Clarissa had texted it to him along with a message that she was getting scared that Ridgeway or one of his men might harm her. The DA believes, at the very least, that a case can be built on circumstantial evidence because he had the most to lose from Clarissa’s studies of the fen on his property.
Not only was one of his sketchpads from his ranch found in her backpack—proving she had some connection to his ranch—but Lasserio worked for Ridgeway, acted as his henchman, and Ridgeway owned, through inheritance, the storage shed where Lasserio kept her backpack after she died. Greene and Alderson are certain that the DA will assemble a good case against both Ridgeway and Lasserio.
When the elk are finished chatting and begin to move out of the field toward the ridges, where they’ll go higher as the sun rises, I take one more gulp of cold mountain air and go back into my garage to hop in my car.
Jess has been making good progress in therapy, and already in the past two and a half months, I’ve watched her getting calmer and stronger. She’s returned to being energized about her work at Rotical, and she’s also back to her podcast, even doing several episodes on vigilantism.
She and I have come to an understanding that I will give her the space she needs to live her own life and she’ll respect me enough to communicate honestly with me about how she feels. And Sam? He’s in therapy, too. He tells me all about the sandbox with the dinosaurs that he gets to play with at his therapist’s office. I’m beyond pleased he’s remained just as talkative and inquisitive as ever.
Deputy Zane is finishing his rehab and will be back at work in the new year. I visited almost daily during his rehab and don’t plan to quit bugging him, either. I tell him he’s the baby brother I never had and that it’s my right to spoil him.
Plus, Vivian, Gus, and Lauren—all strangely linked by Allison—have come together and frequently meet. Both Jess and I have spent time with them, too. All three have gotten their fair share of media attention since news of Allison’s rationale for picking her victims went public. They’ve also decided to give Jeremy an interview on their own personal involvement with Allison, whether in group therapy or simply from seeing her in town in a restaurant, as Lauren used to.
