Page 22 of They Say a Girl Died Here

Thanks for letting me offload about Lila and Bonnie. I’m not always such a whiner.

Anytime. It must be so hard for you all. And their parents.

Yeah, Lila’s left but Bonnie’s are still here. Out on Archer. Same house. Anyway, I gotta sleep. Lucky enough to have some farming to do tomorrow.

Anna sent her a good night and then opened her laptop and the document with only a title. In the quiet darkness, she jotted down a summary of the time in the cemetery, adding Melissa as a potential inclusion subject, then played back the recording of Jamie, his quiet disembodied voice her only company as she made notes. Both he and Melissa were still haunted by the loss of Lila. It was strange to think of them all partying downstairs. Had they been in this room? She wished time could fold and she could see it. Looking down at her document, she added, My connection. They used our new house as a party house. Have I started to feel the ripples myself even without knowing them?

She knew what a psychologist would say—she was exploring other people’s traumas as a way to avoid facing her own, but she had no intention of writing about that. She wouldn’t even put the piece in—if she did ever submit it—under her own name, just in case anyone recognized it.

They say a girl died here. She added Grandma’s creepy sentence as a subheading. A title and a subheading and a bunch of notes. The whole notion of the article was starting to feel more concrete, and she closed the laptop down before her self-doubt crept in. Maybe she’d never show it to anyone. Maybe she’d just write it for herself to prove she could, college degree be damned.

With her bedroom curtains still open, she stared out at the moon until the darkness began to fade, and finally she drifted into sleep.

23

It hadn’t been hard to find where Bonnie’s parents lived. Archer was a pretty enough street of one-level houses, off the far end of Main, past the gas station, with maybe about twenty dwellings. The Buchanans’ was the only place with a memorial tree on the front lawn, a small plaque there commemorating their daughter, with a jug of flowers at its base. Anna looked at it through the living room window.

“She’s got the plot out in the cemetery, but we sprinkled some of her ashes at the tree.” Sandra Buchanan brought in two mugs of coffee and sat carefully opposite Anna. “We like to have her close. Couldn’t do what the Clarkes did and move away. But then, we’re Harper’s Creek people. Didn’t have anywhere else to go.”

Anna murmured a thank-you and took the mug. Looking at Sandra was like seeing who Bonnie could have become if she’d been allowed another twenty years. Sandra had the same full lips and slightly crooked teeth that Bonnie had in the poster picture. The same dark hair, although Sandra’s was streaked with silver. Any of the glow of youth she might once have had, however, was long gone, sucked dry by grief, and she was too thin.

“You know what made me mad? Still does?”

All the way to the house, Anna had juggled various lies to tell in order to get inside and have a conversation, and in the end she’d decided to go with the truth. She was writing about the dead girls and loss. It had worked. There had been no hesitation; Sandra had invited her straight in, thirsty to talk about Bonnie, to bring some part of her back to life in the desert spaces of her heart.

“What’s that?”

“The way Bonnie didn’t get the press and attention Lila did. Like somehow Bonnie wasn’t so special, you know?” There were bitter creases around her mouth as she vaped. “Because Lila was going to be the homecoming queen and Bonnie was just an average young woman in an average job.” Tears welled up in her eyes. “No kid is average, though, are they? You average? Bonnie was just as important as Lila. She wasn’t even twenty, for Chrissake.” She sniffed back the tears that threatened to spill and sipped her coffee.

“If you really want to know how the grief feels after three years,” she continued, “for me, being here? It’s Groundhog Day. You seen that old movie? Every day I have the pain of her loss. I get up, I shower, I make Don his lunch, send him off to work, stare at the TV, pretend to care about making dinner, watch more TV with Don, and then go to bed, ready to repeat it all over again. Some days I walk around the town and imagine Bonnie’s with me and we’re going into Kearney or getting breakfast at the diner like we would when she was small and it feels so real I think maybe I’m going crazy. Things like that. But there’s never a day when she’s not the first thing I think of and the last.” She exhaled another cloud of cherry smoke. “People say it gets easier. It doesn’t. We loved our girl. She was a good girl.”

The phrase made Anna prickle. No one had said that about her. A good girl. Untarnished. No, the words that had been used about her had been nasty and accusatory, but at least she was alive. What had happened to her was bad. What had happened to Bonnie was worse.

“Did she ever go up to where I live now? Someone told me Beech House was a party house back then. Because it was empty.”

“Yeah, she did sometimes.” Sandra smiled wistfully. “The kids all thought us parents didn’t know, but we’d rather they were partying there than sneaking into bars someplace out of town. They weren’t hurting anyone. Bonnie might not have been on any teams or been a cheerleader or prizewinner, but she liked high school. All the kids knew each other. Small place.”

“How much has Bonnie’s murder changed how you view Harper’s Creek as a community?”

“People were kind at first. And then they sort of withdrew. Or we did. But no, I don’t trust it anymore. We lock our doors at night. Never did before.”

“I can understand that.” She quickly jotted it down. She hadn’t wanted to record talking to Sandra. It was too personal. This was her child. Anna wouldn’t forget the pain in her voice anyway.

“Did Bonnie know Lila Clarke well?”

“Only in passing. Bonnie was as shocked as anyone when Lila was murdered, but she never thought Jamie had done it, even when the police were pressing him hard. The kids, they saw it all different. They knew Jamie loved her, even the older kids knew that.”

It was true, kids did see things differently. Anna wondered how quickly adults forgot the tight world of teenage life, where that bubble is the only thing that matters. It loosens in college and then disappears completely, maybe, but in high school there is nothing else but the social hierarchy and the world of your peers.

“Most of Bonnie’s friends went off to college, but that wasn’t for her. She was always a homebody. She took a job in reception at the dental practice in town and wanted to train to be a dental assistant. Got a dentist in the family, you know? Doing well. So she saw it as something secure. She stayed late a lot studying, using their computer. Was quieter there, she said.” Sandra’s chin rose. “We were real proud of her.”

“I can see that.” It was hard seeing how fragile Sandra was, even after three years. Would that awful pain ever dull?

“I mean, don’t get me wrong, my girl was no angel.” Sandra let out a surprising small laugh. “She could have real moody phases. Got that from me. She was in one before she died. I think all the studying was getting to her. That’s what Don said. She didn’t have a boyfriend, so he figured it had to be the pressure. Hurts him that the last time we saw her she was in a foul mood. Bit back at him over something and nothing. But I don’t think of that. I think of all the good times, you know? I know she loved us. He knows that too. Not that he talks about her much. Not to me. That’s his way. We’ve coped differently. I can’t go in her room, but he sits in there for hours.” She looked up at Anna with earnest hope. “Will you write about Bonnie as much as you write about Lila? Not just as an afterthought?”

“Of course.” Anna nodded. “Of course I will.” She paused. “Would I be able to look in her room? I’ll be very careful.”

There was a moment’s hesitation, and Anna felt the weight of all that grief and trust being placed in her, then Sandra nodded. “I won’t come in with you, but okay.”