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“You didn’t offer to take Rhonda Jean to the bus station?”
“She didn’t ask me.” Todd’s voice rose, defensive. Eddie had struck a nerve. “She just packed and left. Like Gretchen said.”
“You could have driven her!” Gretchen’s voice was high and wobbly, near tears. “She’s just a girl alone! You know what happens on that road, especially at night! We all know!”
“Those are just stories,” the long-haired kid said, though he looked like he was about to throw up.
Gretchen whirled on him. “Rhonda Jean is dead!” she screamed. “Are they just stories now? Someone stabbed her, and we all know what happened! The Lost Girl got her!”
“Gretchen, shut up,” Kay said, angry.
“What’s the matter with all of you?” Gretchen looked around the room. Her cheeks were splotched with red. Todd shifted in his chair, the long-haired kid looked down at the floor, and Kay still looked angry. “Don’t you care?” Gretchen shouted. “She was our friend!” When the room still rang with silence, she got up and left, banging the front door behind her.
Into the silence she left behind, I said, “Who is the Lost Girl?”
“It’s a stupid legend,” Kay said, her voice thick with disgust. “It’s been around forever. Like there’s some girl haunting Atticus Line, killing hitchhikers. It’s idiotic.”
I looked at her angry face and realized she was afraid. I remembered the blast of cold I’d felt on Atticus Line, the memorial to Katharine O’Connor.
“Listen,” Todd said, his voice still defensive. “The point is that we can’t help you. We don’t believe in ghosts. We didn’t know Rhonda Jean very well. She was just passing through, like the rest of us. No one even saw her leave.”
The long-haired kid looked up and took a breath.
“I did,” he said. “I saw her leave.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
That’s bullshit,” Todd said.
The long-haired kid looked uncomfortable. “It’s true. I saw her.”
“Mitchell, be quiet,” Kay snapped. “We don’t even know who these people are.”
“My name is Eddie Carter, and this is my wife, April,” Eddie said. “We’re just passing through, like you are.”
“What did you see when Rhonda Jean left?” I asked Mitchell.
Mitchell glanced at Todd, who was glaring at him. Then he looked at Eddie. When he spoke, he directed his words at Eddie, as if there was no one else in the room. “She didn’t say goodbye to any of us, like Gretchen said. I was up in the parking lot, having a smoke last night. I was sitting on the back bumper of the van. I just needed to be alone for a few minutes, you know?”
“I know,” Eddie said.
Mitchell nodded, his shoulders relaxing an inch. “Rhonda Jean came up the steps. She had her backpack on. She didn’t see me. She just walked right past, headed out to Atticus Line.”
“What time was this?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Midnight, maybe. I don’t know.”
“What was she wearing?”
“Jeans and a T-shirt, I guess.” Mitchell still directed his words at Eddie, as if he’d asked the question. “It was a hot night. She started walking up the road. I thought maybe I should call out to her, ask where she was going. You know, say goodbye or something. But her head was down and she was just walking, like she was deep in her head. And I barely knew her. By the time I’d thought about whether to say goodbye, she was already too far away.”
Silence hung in the room for a minute as we all took this in. He’d sat and watched Rhonda Jean walk off to her death. If he’d said something, would she have turned back? If he’d called to her, was it possible this wouldn’t have happened?
“Is that all?” Eddie asked.
Mitchell shook his head. “A truck came down the road. Rhonda Jean put her thumb out to hitch, and it stopped.”
I felt my fingers dig into the fabric arm of the La-Z-Boy chair, and I tried to breathe. “What kind of truck?” I asked.
