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Betsy lay down next to her and stared up at the ceiling. She reminded herself that everything she was doing, she was doing for this child. Or, at least, she was doing it more for Marisa than she was for herself. Frankie could wait a few minutes. He’d regain control of this Red Rocks madness—whatever it was and whatever he’d done.
“No, Crissy and I didn’t always fight,” she said. “We used to be close.”
“What happened?”
Marisa was too young for the whole truth. Besides, how would she even begin to verbalize such things to this thirteen-year-old? Someday, maybe. But maybe not. Probably not. Crissy’s past wasn’t hers to share. So, instead, Betsy offered up her own demons. Her own history.
“Well, I was a hellion in high school. I’ve told you that. And she wasn’t,” she said quietly. Her mind was in two places: she wanted to be present and honest about her adolescence and why she and Crissy had grown apart, but she was also turning over in her head the myriad questions she had for Frankie. She was, more and more, clinging to the idea that the death of Crissy’s friend was just a horrific fluke, but she knew in her heart that it wasn’t.
After all, the Morleys were dead, and Futurium was buying what had been their casino.
“You said you smoked a lot of marijuana. That seems so not a big deal,” said Marisa.
“It’s not now. It was then.”
“What else?”
“I once stole a neighbor’s car. I knew they kept the keys in the mudroom, and they hardly ever locked the front door. Fortunately, I had my driver’s license, and the neighbors didn’t press charges. They were good people and even went along with my charade that they had loaned me the car.”
“Why did you do that? Why did they?”
She took a deep breath. “Who knows why I stole their car. I can’t remember. I probably wanted to go somewhere. I was pulled over on the way to Burlington, but I don’t recall a particular destination. I mean, I was alone. I think I said something about birthday shopping for my mom. And why didn’t they press charges? They liked my mom: schoolteacher and widow. They liked Crissy. Why make all of our lives harder than they already were? I guess that was their logic.”
“What else did you do?”
“In the Vehicle Screwups Department, I crashed my mom’s car into the back of some crazy big piece of farm equipment. A manure spreader. It was going, like, fifteen miles an hour on some narrow, two-lane road, and I had this new BlackBerry—”
“A BlackBerry?”
“An early sort of smartphone. You could text on it using this little metal toothpick-like thing. And that’s what I was doing. Driving with my knees and sending someone a message. Ran right into the back of the manure spreader, set off the airbags, and totaled the car.”
“Were you hurt?”
“Kind of. By the airbags, mostly. That really screwed up my mom’s and Crissy’s life. My crashing the family car.”
“But you had insurance, right?”
“Uh-huh.”
“So, what was the big deal?”
She recalled their mother’s frustration. The borrowed cars. The arguments with the insurance company. Finding rides to work and whatever musical Crissy was in. The canceled dentist appointment that was held up as emblematic of what a train wreck of a human being she was.
“It was one massive inconvenience. And it was embarrassing. Betsy Dowling humiliates the family once again. Schoolteacher’s kid fucks up one more time.”
Marisa cuddled against her, something she’d never before done in bed. They’d snuggled on the couch watching TV, but this was new. The child was warm like a puppy.
“Tell me the carnival story,” she said.
“Again?” Betsy forced a small chuckle for her benefit. She’d told it twice before.
“I like it. It’s funny.”
And so she did.
“Well, I was seven and Crissy was eight, and our stepfather took us to the Champlain Valley Fair,” she began. The annual fair, held the week before and during Labor Day weekend, was the biggest of Vermont’s carnivals and agriculture shows. “There was a ring-toss game, and if you won, the prize was one of those antique-looking dolls, where the head is made of glass and the doll has a hoop skirt and glass shoes. They were about two feet tall.”
“They would have scared me.”
