Rachel blinked at me, stunned. But instead of storming off or telling me I was being rude, she nodded. “You’re right.”
Then she stepped closer and wrapped her arm around me. And, of course, I started to bawl. Couldn’t help myself. I didn’t stop until I felt someone’s hand on my back. My dad, I assumed.
“I’m so sorry, Wylie. I know how much she meant to you.” A man’s voice, not my dad. And from the look on Rachel’s face, she did not approve of his hand on me.
When I turned, it was Cassie’s dad, Vince. His hair was chin length now, his face softer with his new beard. This was the hippie Key West version of Vince. Sober for nearly a year, he had opened a kayak rental place and otherwise totally cleaned up his act. He had also gotten super New Agey weird, Cassie had told me once, but with a kind of pride. At least he wasn’t drinking anymore.
Vince had delivered the eulogy and it had been beautiful—moving and eloquent and thoughtful. It managed to bring out all the best qualities of Cassie while putting her death in a meaningful context. So perfect I would have expected to feel differently about Vince the next time I talked to him. But here he was—and there I was—thinking what I always did: that he was totally full of shit.
“I’m sorry about what happened,” I said.
He smiled then in a way that looked kindly and spiritual, but felt, in every way, the complete and total opposite. “Well,” he said, and that was all.
I waited for him to go on. To say all those things people do: it was no one’s fault, we all know how much you loved Cassie, blah, blah. But he stared at me instead. Like he was waiting not so much to hear whether I blamed myself, but to enjoy how much I did.
“Um, take care,” Rachel said finally, dismissing him.
But he just smiled at her. “It is both a tragedy and a gift that Cassie will be missed by so many.” He turned back to me. “Be sure to tell your dad that I’m sorry for his loss, too.”
Then he squeezed my arm in a way that should have been warm, but felt creepy. And what loss? My mom? He’d seen my dad so many times since then, hadn’t he?
“What a dick that guy is,” Rachel said when Vince had gone. “I know he lost his daughter and all, but I bet he was a dick way before that.”
“He’s a minister now,” I said. “Or something like that.”
“He can still be a jerk.”
“Is there anybody here that you do like?” I asked, even though I couldn’t argue with her assessment of Vince.
She smiled. “You.”
BY THE TIME my dad finally leaves—after much hemming and hawing and him saying that he’s worried about me, and me saying he doesn’t need to be, and lots and lots of details about where he’ll leave his itinerary—it is almost 9:40 a.m. I try Jasper again, but once again the call rings and rings before finally heading to voice mail.
My stomach has officially started to churn.
I move fast through the rest of what’s in the box, turning to the evidence bags. Luckily, there isn’t much that survived the fire, which is why we never received anything in the way of personal effects. Nothing my dad had wanted, anyway. The things in the evidence bags must have been thrown from the car when it hit the guardrail. A set of headphones I imagine tangled in a nearby tree. There’s one of my mom’s blue clogs, too. I always hated those shoes. I’d been trying to convince her to throw them out instead of getting them fixed again. The force it must have taken to rip the shoe off her foot and hurl it away from the car. What was she doing wearing clogs in the middle of winter anyway? I lift the shoe, only a tiny bit. But as soon as my hands are on it, I know it’s a mistake. Don’t touch the shoe. It will make you cry. When I drop it, there is an odd, hollow thump.
I move the plastic bags around until my hand lands on what’s under the shoe. Smooth and hard and kind of flat inside its bag. When I pull it from the very bottom of the box, it’s a bottle. An empty vodka bottle. A small one, the kind you’d hide in your purse, or even in a big-pocketed jacket.
“Your dad says that it would have been out of character for her to have been drinking in the car,” Detective Oshiro says from the doorway.
My cheeks burn. “How about fucking impossible?”
I look down. I shouldn’t be swearing at a police officer, not like that. But Detective Oshiro is unfazed.
“It’s possible that it was on the road where she had the accident and got mixed with—well, the scene was chaotic. There were no fingerprints on it.”
But I can tell he is only saying that to make me feel better. Or not to make me feel worse. I squeeze the cool glass tighter as I peer at the label. Vodka? There is no way. My mom only drank wine and only occasionally. Cassie’s dad, Vince, and vodka? Definitely. Even Karen, Cassie’s mom, liked her martinis. My mom? Never.
“It wasn’t hers,” I say, but it only makes me feel worse.
“Yes, that’s possible,” Detective Oshiro says.
I turn and look straight at him. The wave of sympathy that greets me when our eyes meet unleashes tears. I blink and look down before they can make their way out. Was my mother somebody entirely different from who I believed her to be? Maybe she was lying to me about much more than me being an Outlier.
“It’s not hers,” I say again.
This time when I look up, the tears are streaming down my cheeks. But I no longer care. And Detective Oshiro looks right at me and lies, just the way I need him to.
“I’m sure you’re right, Wylie. I’m sure you’re right.”
OUTSIDE THE POLICE STATION, I pull out my phone and try Jasper. I’m losing count of how many times I’ve called. It just rings and rings. At least his house isn’t far, a three-minute walk, but a million miles away from the fancy shops and restaurants of downtown Newton.
“Jasper,” I say when his voice mail finally picks up. “This isn’t funny anymore. Where the hell are you? I need to talk to you.”
I shove my phone back in my pocket, hating how completely and totally true those words feel. As I make my way up Crescent Hill Road—one block down and over from the station—the sun is warm on my face and the air smells of cut grass. I’m almost hot in my jeans and T-shirt. It’s the first day it seems like summer. And I want so much for that to feel good, but the vodka bottle is lodged too deep in my stomach, right next to all my unreturned calls to Jasper.
When I round the corner onto Main Street, I close my eyes so that I don’t have to see Holy Cow, the ice cream shop where Cassie used to work. The one where she met Quentin for the first time. There are some things I will never again be able to bear, like the sight of Holy Cow, or the smell of strawberries, which reminds me too much of the lip gloss Cassie always used to wear.
I set my eyes instead on Gallagher’s Deli up ahead. It’s one of the few not-so-nice places in town—dusty with cramped aisles that smell faintly of cat pee. I’ve only been in there once to buy cigarettes with Cassie during the week and a half she smoked. I can still remember how the smell seemed to cling to me for hours afterward. Gallagher’s means that I am almost there.
To ease the pain in my feet, I slide them back a little in my vicious, toe-gouging yellow flip-flops. I never would have put them on if I had known that I was going to have to walk so far. I dial Jasper’s number