Page 82 of She’s a Doll

“You said you didn’t remember what happened,” Ginger argued weakly. “And then later, you told me it was him, but that didn’t make sense. Kyle was . . . Kyle had never been . . . and now this? I don’t . . . I don’t understand. I never did. Why do you hate him so much? Why do you think Kyle killed Lucy?”

“Why do you?” Nicola replied.

Ginger exhaled sharply and shifted in her seat. I saw her hand on her bag, nails short and dull, which didn’t seem right. Ginger liked pretty nails. She always had. Even back in primary school she used to color her nails in with markers and Wite-Out.

“Please don’t do that,” Ginger said.

“Why not?” Nicola said, voice sharper now, her anger leaking out into her words, making them quick and barking, like bullets spat out of an automatic rifle. “You wouldn’t be here, with me, the sad, broken, crazy lady, if you thought he was innocent. You think maybe, just maybe, I’m right. You think maybe, just maybe, he did it.”

“Why do you think he killed Lucy?” Ginger asked again. “Please.”

“She told me.”

“Who?”

“Lucy.”

Ginger’s plain nails dug into the sides of her plain handbag. “I shouldn’t have come here.”

“You wanted an answer,” Nicola said. “I gave it to you.”

“No,” Ginger said, her own voice sharpening for the first time. “No. I wanted the truth, not this. Pretending she’s here, pretending she’s haunting Kyle, that’s . . . that’s not right, Nicola. Lucy is gone, but that doesn’t mean you get to use her like that. She deserves dignity.”

“Oh, I don’t think Lucy is really all that concerned with dignity. I think her priority is bringing her killer to justice, don’t you?”

“She’s missing,” Ginger reminded Nicola. “She might not even be dead.”

“She’s dead. She’s been dead for years. She was murdered the night of your tea party.”

“How do you know?”

“Lucy told me.”

“If you try to tell me you’re a psychic, then I get out of this car, and I don’t come back,” Ginger said. “Do you understand? I mean it, Nicola. I know I’m not as smart as you, but I’m not an idiot. I’m not going to buy the ‘I see dead people’ line. I want the truth.”

“Sure,” Nicola replied, voice tight. “I understand. The truth.”

“So tell me the truth.”

“Lucy told me,” Nicola said again, slow and low. “At your tea party. She told me Kyle was coming over to her house that night, and she was scared of him, didn’t know how to tell him she wasn’t interested. I tried to tell the police, years ago, but they didn’t believe me. Honestly, I didn’t fully believe it myself. Not until he hurt me.”

“And that’s the truth?” Ginger asked.

“That’s the truth,” Nicola lied.

“That’s why you vandalized the sign at the mall? Why you sent us all those posters in the mail? Why you hacked into Lucy’s account and sent him all those messages?”

“Yeah,” Nicola said.

A silence descended, thick and heavy. I couldn’t tell how long they sat like that, without saying a word. It might’ve just been a moment, stretched long by an eddy in the time stream. Or maybe it was just them, sitting side by side for a minute, then two, then four, not saying a word.

I stayed still, hidden in my pile of rubbish, watching Nicola’s eyes in the rearview mirror, Ginger’s hand on the edge of her purse.

“You sounded like her,” Ginger said finally, voice soft and unsure again. “In those messages. You sounded just like her. And I don’t just mean the voice message. The text ones too. You sounded so like her it was . . . it was scary.”

“It’s your turn,” Nicola said.

“My turn?”