Heather(88)

“A necklace that Sabrina took from the Coyote—that’s what she calls the father. They were both with him, apparently. But Annabelle doesn’t even know his real name. Sabrina was always nabbing stuff from him, trinkets and whatnot.”

Jane hums. “Taking whatever she could get.”

Callie looks down the hall toward Opal’s room. It’s now or never, she thinks. “Janie. There’s something we have to talk about.” Callie reaches into her wallet, puts the green glassine bag on the coffee table.

“What’s that?” Jane asks, but Callie can tell by her voice that she already knows.

“Opal gave it to me. She was keeping it in her room. It’s the packaging that the dealers use. For drugs. But I think you know that.”

“I don’t know where she got that. Must have picked it up outside. That’s fucked up. Here, I’ll throw it away.” Jane moves to pick up the bag but Callie slaps her hand over it.

“Jane.”

“Callie.”

“It’s Damien’s, isn’t it?”

“No. It isn’t, Cal.”

“Come on, you can be straight with me. I’m not here to get him in trouble. But he needs help. If he’s on this stuff…”

“He is not on anything, Callie.”

“How can you be so sure? Why would your kid have this? And what business does he have with Billy Fauver, then? We’re looking at him for dealing, and Opal said the snake man came to your house—he’s got that black rat snake tattoo up his arm, right? She said that you and Damien fight when he shows up here. You yourself have said things are rocky between you. So now, don’t play dumb with me, Jane, please. You know how this story goes. You can’t have Opal growing up the way we did. He needs help.”

“You’re going to listen to a three-year-old? Yesterday she had a tantrum because I flushed the toilet before she could look. Callie. Please. I’m telling you. He doesn’t have a drug problem.”

“He does, Jane, and he can’t take care of you and Opal if he’s…”

Jane stares at Callie, her expression both irate and anguished. “It’s mine! Jesus Christ, Callie! The bag is mine! You are so smart but you can be so fucking stupid sometimes.”

No, Callie thinks. Oh no. She takes a long inhale. How did she miss it? It was something they talked about often in college. How they vowed to make their lives different from their parents’, but they knew that their genes could tilt them that way. “Okay, Jane. Here’s what we’ll do. We’ll get you help. You’ve been through so much. It’s understandable that you’d be trying to cope—”

“You don’t need to pull this therapist shit with me. I wasn’t using. I’m not using.”

“Then what—”

And then it snaps into clarity, and Callie has to put her head in her hands. Jane the track star. Jane the chemistry whiz. Jane isn’t using. She’s hardly touched the painkillers from the doctors, even on her worst days.

Jane is dealing.

“I would have told you, if you weren’t the damn police chief. And I don’t know. I didn’t want to know what you’d think about it. I didn’t want to put you in a bad position at work, with Frank…”

“Does Frank know?”

“No. No one but Fauver.”

“Fauver? No wonder he talks to me like I’m the biggest moron he’s ever met. I am! So Fauver knows, and isn’t he just a paragon of trustworthiness.”

“I know, he’s scum. But he was working for us, in the beginning. He had the connections who could really sell. I didn’t mean for it to become this big thing. I just … there are these mushrooms that grow here. And I had read somewhere that the Lenape used to use them as a hallucinogenic. We weren’t making ends meet. Someone stole our kayaks out of the shed. Costs were going up. Opal was six months old. Covid hit. We needed something else. Something reliable. I turned the mushrooms into powder, which made them easier to store and distribute, put into baked goods. And so, I started offering what we liked to call off-the-books hikes. They became popular. Bachelor parties. Even unofficial corporate retreats, finance guys coming down from the city in these big black Range Rovers looking for this magical trip that only we could give them, eager for stories about the Jersey Devil. Then, I don’t know how it happened, but some local kids got their hands on our stuff. We started dealing to people here. And demand got crazy. Everyone wanted in. People were coming by before weekends at the shore, driving here from Philly. We finally had some money. And Fauver could connect us to more people, so we cut him in. We could even save a little. I was doing something, Callie. Jesus Christ, I had some way to spend my time that wasn’t wiping someone’s ass or singing some dumb song or pureeing peaches or looking for the cheapest organic diaper cream online. I was dying, and then all of the sudden, I wasn’t. I had this thing that everyone wanted, that I created. I felt like I belonged in my own life. I didn’t feel like this … stranger to myself anymore.”

“You’re not still doing it, are you?”

Jane shakes her head. “Fauver is, but we’re out.”

“So the hard stuff—that’s all him? Not you guys?” Jenna. Layla Hart. All these people hurt by what was in those little green bags. If Jane has had anything to do with all that … Callie can only feel the edge of her anger, but knows it would be enough to make her whole life split in two.