“She was going to see him, he wanted to meet. And she was going to blackmail him. Demand money.”
“Blackmail?”
“He was the only person I had ever been with. But apparently he used to brag to her about others. She said she would go to the police and tell them about all the underage girls he had been with.”
Callie is confused for a moment, until she’s not.
Annabelle seems to understand. “I just did it. Once. I got in to the car with him and that was it. I don’t know why. I guess I wanted to know what she was abandoning me for. Our mother had left a few years before. Our father was… checked out. She was all I had. And then, I didn’t even have her.”
Annabelle slept with her sister’s older lover out of spite? Loneliness? Curiosity? She supposed it doesn’t matter now. Her own head throbs thinking about the mental gymnastics. The claustrophobia of keeping a secret for this long. And this man, this man who was juggling girls, playing them against one another. This man was Callie’s father too. She has to push the fact out of her mind while she’s sittinghere with Annabelle, or else she’s afraid she won’t be able to do it, won’t be able to ask the things she needs to know. She can’t be the daughter and the cop, can’t hold those two halves of herself together while she’s in this room.
“Why did you leave the note? In the factory?”
“After… after I had Blair. I knew it was far-fetched, that she probably wouldn’t ever see it. But I guess I just thought, I had so much. I had to try. If she was out there, I wanted to share with her. I wanted her to know I was okay. That I could take care of her.”
“I see,” she says. But Callie doesn’t ask whichsheAnnabelle means. Either answer too unbearable, too sad.
A dull pressure forms at her temples. She doesn’t know what to do with this information. It had been what she wanted, but now? Now what does she do? Destroy this woman’s life? Hurt her children and her husband? Or let her keep lying? How much choice does she have? Healy and Nixon hadn’t been able to find a DNA match linking her to the crime, maybe they never will. Callie is the only one who knows everything. And she knows better than anyone what it means to have a secret—for years no one knew the extent of Jenna’s problem, so long as Callie showed up to school with her hair brushed, her homework done, her pencils sharpened. A secret can feel like a form of control, but the secret is controlling you. And the magnitude of this secret she’s uncovered here makes her head spin.
She takes a deep breath. “I want to find out what happened to Sabrina. I’d like to find a way to do that without implicating you in any way.” She doesn’t know if this is a promise she can keep. But she’ll try to find the answers. And she won’t sacrifice Annabelle to do it. She’s already been through so much. Whatever she keeps from Ben and her children is her own burden to bear. None of this conversation would be admissible in court. It hasn’t been recorded. She hadn’t read Annabelle her rights. She doesn’t have any corroborating evidence. But now she knows one half of the story, which is so much more than she had before.
Annabelle is quiet for a long time. When she speaks again her voice is barely above a whisper. “How did they find… who…”
Callie hears the words she can’t make herself say,Who found the baby?She weighs her options. At the beginning of this case she would have told the truth, would have savored the chance at righteousness. That is was Jenna, her mother, who found the child. Jenna whose life was marred by what Annabelle did. But she knows it isn’t that simple. That Annabelle, and in her own way, Jenna, were both the same. Two women doing what they felt they needed to in order to survive. And Jenna somehow finding her way to the same man, this Coyote, after all of that.
“Someone out walking,” Callie says.
Annabelle watches her carefully. Another question in her eyes. Someone who keeps secrets recognizes withholding when they see it.
Callie relents. “Jenna. Your neighbor. She was out delivering papers.” She won’t tell Annabelle that she’s Jenna’s daughter. She doesn’t want this visit to take on the air of a vendetta. Because even if it started that way, things have shifted now.
“Have you asked her about him?” Annabelle asks. “The Coyote. She knew him too. She tried to talk to me about it once. I couldn’t do it. Maybe if I had everything would have been different. Maybe if I had let myself hear the truth… I don’t know.”
“You mean she tried to warn you about him?”
“Maybe. Maybe she did. I wasn’t able to listen. I blew her off.”
It makes no sense. Why would Jenna have warned Annabelle about this man, then gotten pregnant with Callie a year later?
Unless Jenna hadn’t had a choice.
She hates this man, the Coyote, with every cell in her body. Realizes, with a wave of nausea, that to hate him is to hate a part of herself.
ANNABELLE
You didn’t die, like you thought you would.
Instead, you rose up on shaking legs and walked through the woods. You took what you needed from the house when you knew you had to leave. Hitchhiked to the bus depot, hoping the rags in your pants would be enough to stanch the blood for the time being. Used the cash from Della to buy a ticket that trembled in your hand.
But the driver didn’t even glance at you or your ticket. You could have been holding a McDonald’s receipt for all he knew. He only looked at you when you hesitated too long, eyeing the empty seats, unable to choose one. Were they assigned?
Everything okay, miss?His voice snide. You managed a nod and sat, were dismayed when you looked up and saw his eyes on you in the huge panorama of the rearview mirror. You slid down in your seat—winced at the pain—and still, you were caught in that reflection. Violet rings under your eyes, the blue of a vein standing out along your neck.
You rested your head against the window, banged your skull when the bus hit a pothole. Sleep came eventually, a deep, dreamless sleep like falling into a pit.
Figuring out howto survive in your body was one matter. To find food and money and a place to sleep, all the mechanics of keeping the machinery of yourself humming. Your was mind another. For along time, you survived on inventing stories. The ones you clung to were the ones in which everyone was okay.
Sabrina came back, heard the baby’s cries, swaddled it—her—tight in a soft cloth. She had done it. Gotten the money, the apartment by the sea, the stroller. She shook the rattle and the baby laughed at the clatter of dried beans in the tube. The ocean crashed and hissed along the shore while the baby slept. Sabrina’s hair salt-tangled, her face a little rounder, the hollows of her body filled up with slices of boardwalk pizza and soft serve, a sprinkle of freckles across her cheeks. More beautiful than she’d ever been. Happy.
