“—more than anyone, I thought you’d understand.” Steffani.
“I understand that you’re hurting right now.” Greer. “But what you’re talking about isn’t going to make you feel better.”
“Who are you to say what’ll make me feel better? All these years, I’ve only wanted one thing: him, dead. Can you honestly stand there and tell me he doesn’t deserve it?”
Silence—for so long, I start to wonder if the entire conversation was nothing more than a hallucination. Then, Greer says, “I’m sorry.”
“You are such a fucking disappointment.”
Footsteps cross the floor. I wrench backward, get halfway down the hall before the door slams open and out storms Steffani. Our eyes lock.
“How much of that did you hear?”
Shit. I open my mouth, ready to make up all sorts of lies, but she cuts me off. “You know what? Fuck it, it doesn’t matter.” She points to the bottle gripped in my fist. “You willing to share?”
That’s how we end up on the balcony, lounging in the oversized Adirondack chairs. When Steffani props her feet up on the railing, her jeans slide up enough for me to see another nasty scar running up the back of her calf—the skin there puckered and discolored. I try not to stare. The night air has turned crisp, and in the distance, you cansee the bridge arching across the water, thousands of stars rippling in the currents.
“It’s nice up here,” she says, burrowing deeper. “We don’t have a lot of stars where I’m from.”
“Where are you from?”
“California. Los Angeles. The closest we ever get are the airplanes flying into LAX. I mistook them for shooting stars when I was little. Made a wish every time another batch of tourists arrived.”
A gemstone dangles over the collar of her T-shirt. It reminds me of my father’s first victim, Heather Dickerson—of the lucky horseshoe necklace she wore in all her photos. The one that turned out to be not so lucky after all.
“So, Greer’s not willing to help?”
“Guess not.” She takes a swig from the bottle. “Probably shouldn’t be surprised, what with all the shit I’ve heard about her and her father.”
“What’ve you heard?”
“That she knew he was a murderer.”
What? “That’s not true.”
“Are you sure? They lived all alone, in the middle of nowhere, for decades. What are the chances she didn’t know what was happening?”
“But she’s the one who called the police—”
“Like that means anything. Maybe the guilt became too much for her.”
Greer would never,couldnever, stand by while innocent women were murdered. “You know everyone’s saying the same thing about me, right? That I knew what my father was, even helped lure girls into his truck.”
“Did you?”
“No.”
I force myself to hold her razor-edged stare. For a moment, I’m convinced she’s somehow managed to cut through all my defensive layers, that she knows about what happened in college, but then she looks away. “All right,” she says, and I allow myself to breathe again. “But just because you didn’t doesn’t mean the same’s true for her. She’s so eager to defend him—in court, on her show. She wants to help him escape justice, whereas I think men like him should get what’s coming to them.” She reaches, probably unconsciously, toward the scar on her stomach. “Some men deserve to die for what they’ve done.”
Her father. She doesn’t just want him convicted, she wants the death penalty. No wonder Greer wasn’t all that eager to help.
A loud creak erupts from the staircase.
“Damnit.” She twists to look behind us. “That’s probably the jackass who wanted to throw me out. I’m supposed to stay in my room. If he finds me out here—”
“Go.”
She’s sprinting into the hallway before I even finish the word, leaving me all alone with the bottle of wine. It’s almost full, and while I know I shouldn’t, I start slugging down the rest like it’s the only thing keeping me alive. Have they really been saying that about Greer, that she was somehow complicit in her father’s crimes? I’ve been so focused on my own steadily declining reputation, I haven’t bothered searching for smear campaigns launched against her. I have no doubt any allegations being made are just as false as the ones targeting me, but knowing she might’ve been struggling, too, makes me feel a shameful sense of relief. What can I say? Misery loves company.
