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“It’s funny,” he says. “I’ve heard from Mrs. Wallace and Mrs. Handy independently of each other; they both wanted this case reexamined, for very different reasons. But the one thing they share is a belief that someone else was there that night. Any thoughts on who that might be?”
My breath feels ragged in my throat. Sometimes in my memories, there’s no one there. No party raging outside. Just the three of us locked in that room, as it twisted and swirled in my drug-induced haze. SometimesI’mkissing Steph, then suddenly she’s Evan. Memory is a kaleidoscope.
Harley lifts his palms. “Maddie, I’m not trying to upset you.”
How? How could he imagine that this would not upset me? A line from that article comes back to me.It’s like he doesn’t even understand that real people were involved. As if he thinks that the people in his story are characters in a book he’s writing.
How could I have been so stupid to open up to someone like this, to think it might help. To think I could go back there and find something new.
“It’s time for you to go,” I say. This is the second time I tried to talk to him, then decided against it. I am aware that this makes me seem unstable. Maybe I am.
There’s a hard knock on the door and I spin to see Badger cupping his hands up to the glass. I practically run to go let him in. When I turn back, Harley is on his feet, shoving his phone in his pocket.
“What’s wrong?” asks Badger, maybe clocking my expression. “What’s happened?”
“Look,” Harley says, walking toward us. He lifts his palms. “This is what I know. You, Ainsley, Sam, Steph, and some other kids from the school headed up to Evan Handy’s the night of Steph’s murder and the Wallace girls’ disappearance. Kids from other schools heard about the party and it got wild. By the end of the night, a girl was killed, another was badly wounded, and two more were missing. Evan Handy went to jail for Stephanie’s murder, and he is presumed to have killed and hid the bodies of Ainsley and Sam Wallace, something he denies.”
I push into Badger and he pushes back, puts a tight arm around me. He smells of axle grease and paint. I realize that I’m crying, remembering this thing I’ve tried to push away, forget, move on from. Everything is still there, just beneath the flimsy surface of the life I’ve tried to build on the quicksand of this trauma. Harley was right. The past is alive and well.
“But there are a lot of questions. For example, Evan’s mother’s car, which he used to flee the scene. There was no physical evidence in that vehicle to indicate that the Wallace sisters were ever inside.”
Which is why he was never charged with that crime. No one could explain how Evan killed Steph, chased me into the woods, left me for dead by the river, then took Ainsley and Sam, killed them, and hid their bodies so well that no one would ever find them. The timeline didn’t work. It was one of the things that obsessed my father.
“You weren’t the only people there that night,” Harley goes on, urgent now. “Maddie, no one reasonable thinks you hurt anyone. Evan simply didn’t have time. Why is it so inconceivable that someone else was involved?”
It takes me a moment to form my answer. Finally, the truth.
“Because that would mean that there aretwomonsters. Not just one. And whoever it was is still out there, hurting people.”
Harley sighs, looks back and forth between Badger and me. “Andmaybeif that’s true, thenthat monster knows what happened to the Wallace girls. Finding him might be the key to answering that question, finding Lolly, and the other missing women.”
It’s on the tip of my tongue, my secret, the little collection of gifts that I have hidden in a box in my room.
“Think about it Maddie,” he says, quietly. “Badger. Let me take you back to Handy house. Let’s walk around and see what you remember. And if it’s nothing, okay. But maybe being back there will shake something loose.”
“You’re not the police,” says Badger, shifting his body so he’s slightly in front of me, keeping Harley away. “We have no reason to talk to you about anything.”
“Just the truth. That’s the only reason.”
“We know the truth.”
“Do we?” asks Harley. He raises thick eyebrows. “Maybe we know part of it. But not all.”
“I heard you’re going to see him,” says Badger, moving away from me, taking a step closer to Harley, who backs up. Badger’s a big guy. He’s quiet but he has a temper and I know it’s boiling. I can feel it.
That’s news to me. The thought of it fills me with dread, that Harley Granger will be sitting across from Evan, listening to his lies.
“I’m guessing you’ll have a camera crew there, right?” Badger goes on. “Because you’ve come here pretending this is about justice, about Steph and Ainsley and Sam. But really, it’s about you, isn’t it?”
Badger points at the stack of books on the signing table.
“People die, suffer, spend a decade trying to find some peace and you exploit what’s happened to them for your own personal gain. The advertisers for your podcast, your book contracts, your speaking engagements. How much are you bringing home a year? These are real lives. It’s not fiction.”
Harley just smiles and shakes his head like he’s heard it all before and nothing phases him.
“You sell pain, man.That’syour gig,” Badger continues.
Harley finally speaks up, sticking out a defensive chin. “I’m a writer and journalist. I tell the truth and people pay because they want to hear it.”
