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“Listen, I only have another minute, but I wanted to bring up something that’s been on my mind.” Sarah clears her throat. In the background, someone shouts, and there’s a clattering noise. Lenna has visited the prison; she pictures the harsh overhead lighting. “About that day.”
“Okay…” Lenna slows her walk.
“You know how Matilda kept saying she didn’t fire the gun? There’s part of me that kind of…believes her.”
“Really?” Now Lenna stops completely. “What do you mean?”
“I think…” Sarah pauses. “I think I saw someone out there. In the desert. Someone else.”
“What? Who?” A warm, oozing feeling flows through Lenna’s veins as she understands. “Oh come on, Sarah,” she says gently. “You can’t actually mean…”
But it’s not the first time she’s considered it. Despite her best efforts, Sarah’s theories about Gillian being alive have wormed their way into her brain and stayed there. For so long, you can believe one thing without ever considering an alternative. It’s astonishing how easily, though, your mind can be changed, if you’re open to it.
Lenna thinks of how quiet it was when she woke up on that bench next to the canyon trail more than two years before. She heard the rain pelting the wrought iron and sidewalk. She heard her own cries, too, moans so disassociated from her she didn’t even realize she was making them at first. Only, that was the thing—hadshe been making them? What if they were coming from someone else? And how had she gotten on that bench, anyway? Sarah swore she wasn’t there when she left. Had Lenna crawled up there on her own? Had someoneelseput her there?
Someone who’d fallen but hadn’t perished. Someone who’d been pushed, but who’d only slid halfway down.
Someone who could still climb up and save herself.
No,she scolds herself now. That’simpossible.And yet…
She thinks, too, of thatcrackof gunfire, Coral falling forward like a stone. And the horror on Matilda’s face as she stared down at the rifle in her hands, swearing she hadn’t pulled the trigger. She’d also overheard a cop muse, later, that the bullet’s exit wound from Coral’s body didn’t quite match up to the angle from where Matilda theoretically took her shot. Could it be explained away? Maybe. Lenna knew nothing about forensics. And as far as she knew, no one was looking into another shooter on the property.Shouldthey have?
Only, would Gillian kill her own child? Perhaps if it meant saving the people she’d once thought were her closest friends?
A chill goes through Lenna. She glances over her shoulder now, half expecting to see Gillian on the street. She thinks of the words Gillian wrote in her posts. How if Lenna and Rhiannon had just given her a chance, she would have made a great friend. It might have been possible. Imagine if they had just given her a chance. What wouldthatlife have looked like?
The street is empty. “I don’t know,” she tells Sarah. “I think we should let it go.”
“Yeah,” Sarah says, suddenly dismissive. “Maybe you’re right.”
The automated voice tells them that their call is coming to an end. Lenna promises Sarah she’ll visit soon and bring Sarah some snacks she likes from the outside. “Go kiss that baby for me,” Sarah orders. “I bet he’s getting so big.”
A warm feeling of well-being surges through Lenna’s bones. It’s mixed with sadness, of course, as she hangs up, but all at once kissing Jacob is exactly what she wants to do. And someone else, too. She reaches for her phone and opens the text.I did it, she types.Come pick me up.
Lenna waits on the corner, jiggling up and down in themidwinter California chill, until she sees Daniel’s sporty BMW round the corner. She breaks into a smile.
Daniel pulls to the curb, and Lenna runs around to get into the passenger’s door, first peeking into the back and waving at Jacob sitting backward-facing in his car seat. Daniel has put him in a knitted hat shaped like a pumpkin.
“Do you think it’ll feel scratchy?” he’d asked, still so jittery when it came to the baby. “I don’t want him to get a rash.” Jacob has fallen asleep, so clearly the hat isn’t bothering himthatmuch. He still cries, of course. Though maybe a tiny bit less. Maybe Halcyon did do something.
She opens the door and peers in at her husband, who is looking at her with sympathy and worry but also pride. They’d talked through how hard the conversation with Rhiannon would be. Rhiannon was Lenna’s first love. Herfiercestlove. It’s hard to let go of that. But now, Lenna gets that rush of surprise and also gratitude at his presence. Her second love, maybe. Or perhaps third—after the baby. Regardless. Love. She’s getting there.
“You came,” she breathes.
Daniel reaches out to grab her hands. “Babe. I’ve got your back.”
