“Yes. ’76 or ’77.”
“Remember, Freddy? Right around the bicentennial. Bill and Mary took in those two girls.”
Summer’s eyes went big.
Freddy said, “I thought there were three of them.”
“No, that was Kate. The kid with the summer home. Jesus, Freddy, I remember the ’70s better than you do, and I was just a child back then.” She smirked.
Summer looked at her. “Kate Sharkey?”
“That’s right. Is that who your story is about?”
“A little bit. Yes.”
“Oh, well, then in that case,” Lena said. “I got stuff to tell you.”
SUMMER TOUCHED THEphone in her lap, turned on the voice recorder, and set it on the table.
For the next few minutes, she sat there, rapt, as Lena told her about fourteen-year-old Kate Sharkey hitchhiking to town and staying in her family home for two weeks before anyone realized she was there all by herself. “I worked behind the counter at Grumley’s, and she’d buy food there. Say it was for her family,” Lena said. “She was coming in almost every day, buying not just food but toys. Coloring books. Candy. Plastic pants. Said it was for her little sister, Kimmy.”
“I don’t remember that at all,” Freddy said.
Lena shot him a look. “You didn’t work behind the counter with me, did you?” She turned back to Summer. “Anyway, Kate comes in one day. She’s exhausted. In tears. She’s got a little girl with her who’s about Kimmy’s age, maybe a year younger, and she confesses to methat she’s been staying in the house alone. That she’s been ‘hiding from her cheating asshole dad’—that’s her words—and waiting for her brother, but she doesn’t think he’s ever going to come meet her.”
“Kate Sharkey didn’t have a brother,” said Freddy.
Summer’s eyes felt salty and dry. She realized it was because she hadn’t blinked in several seconds.Quentin. If you are out there, I hope you are listening to this.“Kate did have a brother,” she said, very quietly. “A half brother. She didn’t know about him, though. I mean. I didn’tthinkshe did...”
“She said her brother asked her to take care of this little kid. I guess the two of them had gone to his girlfriend’s house. It was the girlfriend’s little sister, and he’d asked Kate to take her away and watch over her till he and the girlfriend could come and pick her up. Well, weeks went by and she couldn’t handle it anymore, so she gave the little girl to Bill and Mary and they took her in. No one could get a handle on who this kid’s sister was, because she wouldn’t talk. Wouldn’t answer questions. But then a day or two later, the big sister actually shows up. Kate brings her over to Bill and Mary’s. Hitchhikes back home. Fourteen freakin’ years old.” Lena looked at Freddy. “Say whatever you want about her, but Kate Sharkey was a true badass.”
Summer said, “Did you ever find out who the girls were?”
She nodded. “They were both from that crazy Gideon compound. The one that those two murderers burned down?”
Summer touched her phone, thinking,Oh my God. Oh my effin’ God. “The two girls,” she said softly, waiting. “Were their names Nicola and Renee?”
Lena shook her head. “I mean, they could have changed them to that,” she said. “I’d sure as hell change my name if I were a Gideon.”
“What were their names when they lived with the Grumleys?”
Lena smiled, the memory so clearly alive and glittering in hermind. When she spoke, she sounded like a grade-school kid, thrilled with herself for knowing the right answer. “The big one was named Elizabeth,” she said. “And the little girl was named Jenny.”
ONCE SHE WASback on the 405 and she had service again, Summer’s phone began buzzing wildly with voice mails. She listened to them over her Bluetooth—five messages from Dean, almost all of them repeating the same information: Quentin hadn’t killed himself. And most likely, his confession for Mitchell Bloom’s death had been coerced.
She stared through his sunglasses and smiled.I knew it, she thought.I knew that wasn’t you.
Summer called Dean from home and updated him on all the information she’d learned. When she was through, he said, “So you’re doing this right? You’re continuing withClosure?”
“Do you think I should?” she asked. Because honestly, that had been her reason for calling. To get his permission to go ahead with this podcast, in spite of everything it had caused.
“I think Quentin would have wanted you to,” he said. “Don’t you?”
“Yes,” Summer said, relief sweeping through her. Then she hung up, climbed into bed, and slept for twelve solid hours.
Forty
June 23, 1976
