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“Know what?” Cam asked. “What are you talking about?”
“About how you have a thing for young girls?” Nola asked.
“What?” Cam exclaimed, a shocked expression on his face. It almost looked sincere, Nola thought. “What? That’s a lie,” he blustered.
Nola didn’t respond, just met his gaze.
“You can’t go flinging around rumors like this, Nola.” Cam grabbed her forearm and the searing look she gave him made him instantly let go. “I’m a lawyer, remember that, Nola,” he said, regaining some composure. “You start spreading these lies, I’ll sue you and you’ll lose everything you have, got it?” He nodded toward the house. “Even if it’s only that piece of crap house you live in.”
“You could,” Nola said. “But I bet your wife wouldn’t appreciate the entire town knowing what you’ve been up to.”
“Watch yourself.” Cam pointed a finger in her face. “You utter a word of these baseless rumors and I will destroy you.” With that, Cam turned and strode back up the driveway into the house, the door slamming behind him.
Joyce looked out the window, arms folded, rubbing them as if cold. She was probably running through the list of people she needed to call and tell that the police had reopened Eve’s case. Not that it was ever closed. It wasn’t. It just lay dormant for the last twenty-five years like a cicada long buried and ready to dig its way out.
Nola knew that publicly, there were no official suspects in Eve’s murder, just many persons of interest. The police looked closely at Eve’s boyfriend, Nick, and at the sex-offender son of their neighbor, Mrs. Olhauser. And there was Pedals, the homeless man who rode his bike around town.
Suspicion had fallen on Nola, though she didn’t realize it until she walked into the bathroom at school and caught a group of girls whispering about how they heard she was the one who beat and strangled Eve. Charlotte told the police that Nola had stopped by the hotel to see her at the time of the murder, that there was no way she could have had anything to do with it. But it didn’t make much of a difference.
Word of mouth in a small town was a powerful thing. A kids’ game of operator on steroids. Even now, Nola could tell by the way Maggie O’Keefe and Joyce Harper looked at her, they still didn’t quite know what to think of her, those old assumptions were so deeply ingrained. Second chances meant shit in small towns.
