For some reason my mind is full of images of dolls. They’re enhanced like Barbie but they’re not her. They’re sluts. Zeroed in on men. Any man. Whether married or not. An army of vicious, self-gratifying females.
I breathe hard, pulling my energy inward, needing to calm myself. Not now, I warn myself. Not ever, if I can help it.
But can I help it?
The doll images slowly coalesce into one face. One I knew all along. The one that started it all . . .
Emma . . .
Chapter Seven
River Glen High’s media room was festooned with autumnal banners made by every class, basically declaring why their class was the best. Lots of stars and exclamation points and #1 signs in green and gold, the school colors, along with pictures of pumpkins, cornstalks, and scarecrows. There was a DJ setup at one end whose playlist was thumping so hard you could feel it in your chest. Harley walked in behind Marissa, who was trying to fight off a deep fury at her mother and doing a half-assed job.
“My dad has to be here. He has to! She made it a prerequisite. So now he’s over there by the door, and I know he hates it. He says he doesn’t, but he’s just being nice. He hates it. He’d rather be home.”
Mr. Haynes, the cop, had picked Harley up, and she and Marissa had taken the back seat, leaving him to be like a butler, driving them to the school. He’d let them out and then gone to park. They’d entered without him, but Marissa had said he always listened to what her mom wanted because, well, she was the real parent.
“It pisses me off,” she said now.
Harley knew how she felt. She hated being blindsided by parents, and they always, always seemed to want to do it. Like they were incapable of not screwing their kids up. She’d said as much to her mom in the heat of an argument once, and her mom had thought about it for a moment and said, “I guess you’re right,” which had annoyed Harley, probably way more than Marissa was annoyed, because she’d really kind of wanted Mom to go ballistic and have a parent fit, but Mom generally just looked faintly amused, like Harley was reacting just the way she expected.
It sucked.
“Let’s go over by the DJ.” Marissa was already threading her way there.
Harley wasn’t sure her ears could take it, but she didn’t want to appear to wimp out. God no. At her old school, she had a reputation as one of the bold ones. She was the friend her friends turned to. A leader, one of the teachers had said, which made Harley secretly proud.
She’d tried to explain that to Mom, but Mom had typically shot her down with, “Be careful. Sometimes being in the vanguard boomerangs.”
Being in the vanguard? Harley had had to look that one up. Basically, it meant being on the front lines, first, ahead of the pack. She liked that, but not the comment that it could boomerang.
Beyond the thumping noise, she had butterflies in her stomach. They’d been there all day. She would rather die of a million paper cuts than admit that to Mom, though. She’d been purposely blasé about the whole move and change of schools. She’d almost welcomed it in the beginning, because things had gotten weird with her friends or, more accurately, her boyfriend. Only he hadn’t really been her boyfriend. He’d made out with her on Rich Renley’s porch swing and had tried to feel her up, which she’d kind of gone with for a second or two before she pushed his hand away, which had only emboldened him, and then . . .
She squinted her eyes closed at the memory of his crowing and bragging to all his friends about things that had not really happened. Things had gotten really bad after that. Rather than fight and try to explain herself, she’d just ignored it all, but her reputation had tanked. Bold? A leader? She’d cried herself to sleep and had jumped at the chance to move.
“Too loud?” Marissa said near her ear.
Harley’s eyes popped open. “Nah. It’s all right.”
“C’mon, there’s Lena and Katie.” And with that, she grabbed Harley’s arm and dragged her toward her friends.
* * *
Jamie walked into Leander’s Wine Bar, her inner eye still seeing Cooper Haynes’s black Explorer and the lifting of his hand behind the windshield as Harley ran out of the house to meet Marissa and the girls both slammed inside the vehicle. She’d raised a hand in return and then gone back inside as the black SUV pulled out of the drive.
Leander’s was a tiny, long, and narrow place with a gray, leather banquet against one long wall, and small, square tables dotted the length of it, where Vicky and a couple of friends were already seated. Vicky had grabbed two of the tables and a number of loose chairs and was seated talking to two women who looked vaguely familiar, but whom Jamie didn’t know. Vicky scooted over and Jamie took a seat on the banquette. The women were mostly friends from high school, too, and they knew Emma, having been in her grade.
“God, you look just like your sister,” the one named Jill declared.
“You do,” another, Alicia, agreed. She was not a River Glen alum but almost acted like one.
“Except Emma has those big, blue eyes,” Vicky said. “You have . . . ?”
“Brown,” said Jamie.
“It’s such a terrible shame about her,” said Jill. “Was it that Babysitter Stalker killer? I mean, I never knew. We never heard.”
“The guys were all in such trouble for scaring her. It like scared them straight,” Alicia agreed.
Vicky lifted an arm to signal to the woman in black pants, blouse, and apron behind the bar. “When you have a chance?” she called loudly, wagging a finger at Jamie. “We need another glass.” She turned to Jamie. “You okay with red?”
“Yes,” Jamie said. The bottle on the table was almost empty. She hoped it wasn’t too expensive; she thought she might be expected to order another.
You should have said you wanted a glass of white.
She could feel tension building inside her. She had a small amount in savings, but there wasn’t a ton of money for extravagances. She wasn’t even sure how much Vicky and her cohorts would become her friends. She almost wished she’d stayed home.
Home. She was still bothered by the fit Emma had thrown when she’d learned they were not spreading Mom’s ashes till Sunday.
“She needs to be in the garden!” Emma had yelled on the way home from Jamie picking her up at the Thrift Shop.
“Sunday’s only a day and a half away,” Jamie had tried to explain. “Dad and Debra will come over and—”
“She’s waited and waited for you, and now you’re here. She needs to be in the garden today. You promised!”
“Would you prefer Dad and Debra not come over?”
“Mom didn’t like them!”
“And she had good reason,” Jamie agreed quickly. “But he is our father, and Hayley’s grandfather, and I invited him in the thought that . . .” She sighed, losing steam herself. “That this could be a starting point for us with him.”
Emma’s face was a hard mask. She wrapped her arms around herself. “When Mom doesn’t like someone, she takes care of things.”
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning, you should take care of things, too. Be like Mom.”
Come home. Jamie remembered her dream and shivered a little bit. “Our mother’s dead, and I want to spread her ashes in the garden as much as you do.”
“Not as much as I do!”
“Okay, not as much as you do.