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“I guess she wouldn’t have told you.” Mrs. Hammond won’t meet my gaze. “I doubt big-city smart people would find what she did particularly admirable.”
Paul rolls his ankle, and a joint cracks. “Is there something we should know about? We want to set her up for success at Aldrich. She has a lot of promise.”
A smile forms on Mrs. Hammond’s lips. “She does have promise, doesn’t she? But...”—she takes a breath—“her last few years of high school, Raina got into some... trouble. With this doctor fella. He’s one of the only prominent people in these parts, not that he’s from here—he just practices medicine at the hospital out here becausesomeonehas to do it.” She sweeps her arm to the left. “Heowned a huge lodge a few miles away. It sits on about six hundred acres of hunting land.”
“And?” I ask.
“All of a sudden, Raina was coming home with a pretty new handbag, a new leather coat. I asked her where she got the money. She said she had some new job a few towns away, but I could tell she was lying.”
I’m trying hard not to look at Paul. It’s not hard to put the pieces together. “You think this man was giving her the money? This... doctor? Was Raina his...” I trail off, not knowing the appropriate word. Girlfriend? Sugar baby?
Judy Hammond sighs. “They were only together once. But as you probably already know, a grown man caught with a girl of sixteen is a criminal offense.”
“Raina was sixteen when this happened?” Paul bleats.
Mrs. Hammond nods soberly. “She knew that law like the back of her hand. Made that doctor pay her in exchange for her not going to the police. And he did.”
I run my fingernails against the rough threads on the couch. That’s pretty slick for a high schooler.
“The only way we found out is because one day Bill caught him paying her in this little playground behind the grocery store. Bill was furious. He shook it out of Raina. Wanted to arrest that doctor, too, but that would mean getting Raina in trouble. In the end, we let both things go. But people found out all the same. Word gets around. The doctor switched hospitals. Sold that big property. And Raina?” She stares up at the ceiling, as though apologizing to God. “Well, she was the talk of the town.She had the grades to be valedictorian, but the principal revoked the honor because of the scandal.” She clucked her tongue.
“She was dead to her father after that.” Mrs. Hammond juts a thumb down the hall, where her husband disappeared. “He screamedat her for days. Screamed at me, too, because I insisted we pay back that doctor every cent Raina took from him.”
“You didn’t have to,” Paul says. “He committed a crime, too.”
Mrs. Hammond tilts her head skeptically. “This is terrible of me to say as her mother, but I think Raina was the instigator. She lied about her age all the time. Always said she was older, and from somewhere else. We went on a vacation to Niagara Falls once and found out that she was going around the hotel pool, talking to men, calling herself Madison.” A sad smirk appears across her lips. “We sold her bags and fancy clothes, but it still wasn’t enough to pay the doctor back.”
“And how did Raina deal, after all of it was over?” I ask.
Mrs. Hammond shrugs. “You mean did she seem to understand that what she’d done was wrong? I don’t know. She seemed angry, mostly. Probably that she got found out. I’m not sure she really learned her lesson, though.”
Paul leans forward. “What makes you say that?”
Mrs. Hammond twists the hem of her T-shirt. “This January, not long after Christmas, we got some gifts from her. No return address, but fancy things.Toofancy, actually.” She glances plaintively at us. “That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? Because you know something? Because she’s doing it again?”
I look at Paul, feeling uneasy. “We don’t know. Not for sure.”
“Do you know her address? Where we can find her?”
I lick my lips. Do we have the right to tell? But then I realize that I could give a hint without actually spelling it out: “The school’s e-mail system has been hacked. Have you heard?” Mrs. Hammond shakes her head. “I can give you the website where all the e-mails were dumped. You can search Raina’s name on there. Some of her e-mails list her new address.”
Paul stands. “You’ve been really helpful. We appreciate your candor.”
Judy Hammond gets to her feet, too. Her eyes are red-rimmed,and she touches my hand before I leave. The skin on her palms is cold, papery. “When I found out she’d run away, I thought she’d go somewhere far, like Florida. But only forty miles into the city? That almost makes it worse.”
“People don’t have to run away far to escape their problems,” I say, a lump in my throat. “It’s more about changing who you are. More about inventing a new life.”
When we step outside, the air smells like exhaust fumes. Back in the car, we stare at each other for a long beat before exhaling. My mind is whipping fast. “Could she have been doing this with Greg?” Paul asks. “Doing things with him sexually, then flipping the script? Saying she’d tell on him, ruin his reputation? Making himpayher?”
I drum on the steering wheel. “And what if, the night of the benefit, he decided he didn’t want to pay her anymore? He already knew his marriage to my sister was over because of the Lolita e-mails. Raina had nothing to hold over his head anymore. So he tells her the game is over, and Raina gets mad. That cash is affording her a brand-new life at Aldrich. It’s not like she wants to go home tothis.” I point to the tired street.
“It could make sense,” Paul says.
“Except it’s all speculation right now. It’s not like we have anything concrete to prove she was running a scam.”
I get a thought and pull out my phone. I tap the app for the hack database, recalling that I’ve seen a few bank notifications in Greg’s inbox. I click on the first few. His bank alerted him whenever he’d made purchases of five hundred dollars or more—there are receipts for fancy dinners, a Nordstrom shopping trip, car maintenance. I don’t see anything suspicious. Certainly nothing to Raina.
Paul leans over to look, too. He’s so close, his chin is almost touching my shoulder. I can feel his minty breath on my skin. It makes me go a little still. “These bank alerts don’t say if Greg wrote any big checks. Or if he took out withdrawals in cash.”
