Listen for the Lie(58)

“Hey.” She flexed her biceps. “I’m strong.”

“Lifting-a-dead-body strong?”

“He wasn’t a big guy.”

I gave her a skeptical look.

“It took fucking forever,” she mumbled. “Thank god I had a hatchback. I could just sort of drag the body in there and cover him with a blanket.”

I barked out a laugh. I quickly clapped my hand over my mouth to cut it off. “I’m sorry. It’s not funny.”

“It’s hilarious.” She poured a shot of tequila into a glass and nudged it in my direction. She poured one for herself and immediately tossed it back.

I lifted mine as well, but hesitated as I watched her fill her glass again.

“That’s why you left college,” I said quietly. “Your mom keeps telling everyone that you missed home, but that wasn’t it.”

She rolled her eyes and threw back the second shot. “Who the fuck misses Plumpton? No. I didn’t like college. I’m supposed to take out tens of thousands of dollars in student loans just so I can sit in a lecture hall while a bored professor recites everything I just read in the wildly overpriced textbook? No thanks.”

I watched as she downed another shot. She lowered the glass to the bar, and I reached for her hand, lacing our fingers together.

“I’m sorry that happened to you.”

She shrugged.

“Seriously, Savvy,” I said softly. “You don’t have to pretend with me that it wasn’t a big deal.”

She nudged her glass with her finger, glancing up at me briefly. She lifted one shoulder, like no big deal, but her eyes told a different story. She squeezed my hand tightly.

“He deserved it,” she whispered. “And so does Matt.”





CHAPTER THIRTY


LUCY




Maya comes out of the office after five. There are only two other cars left in the lot, and I’m guessing hers is the purple hatchback. I lurk next to it.

She stops short when she sees me. Her car key is sticking out from between two fingers, like they always say to do to ward off would-be rapists.

“Lucy.” It comes out as a gasp, like she’s scared.

She probably is, come to think of it.

I raise both my hands in surrender. “I just want to talk.”

She squints at me. She was a teenager last time I saw her—eighteen, just graduating from high school and getting ready to leave for college.

“I shouldn’t have told her.” I can still see Savvy sitting on her bed in her tiny apartment with the sloped ceilings. “Fuck. She’s still a teenager, but…”

“You were a teenager when you killed him?” I’d guessed, and she’d nodded, clearly relieved I understood.

Maya stares at me. She and Savvy never looked much alike. Maya’s hair is lighter, the kind of blond that people usually have to buy from a bottle. Her features are sharper than Savvy’s were—the long nose and pointed chin are different from her sister. She’s wearing a full coral skirt and a button-up white blouse with a rounded collar. It’s a sweet outfit. Savvy didn’t do sweet.

But the eyes are the same. Blue, furious. Sweat trickles down my back.

“Can we go somewhere?” I ask. “It’s hot out here.”

“I don’t have anything to say to you.” She presses the button to unlock her car.

“Please, Maya…” I take a step forward but then trail off, because I don’t know how to start a conversation about this.

She glares at me. “Look, I know that everyone has decided you’re innocent now, but I still don’t want to talk to you.”

Everyone’s decided I’m innocent? That’s news to me.

“It’s not that,” I say. She opens her car door and throws her purse inside. I say my next words in a rush. “I know about Troy.”

She slides into her car seat, gathering her skirt up so it won’t get caught in the door. “I don’t know who that is.”

I grab the door before she can shut it. “The man Savvy killed.”

Her head snaps to me, her face draining of color. She stares at me for a minute.

“Get in the car.”

Maya starts driving, and then seems to think better of taking me wherever she was originally thinking. She pulls into the parking lot of a long-deserted restaurant and parks beneath some trees.

“That was his name?” she asks. “Troy?”

“Yes. She didn’t tell you?” I unbuckle my seat belt so I can face her. I can’t stop noticing how her white shirt is still pristine, even though it’s the end of the workday. I would have spilled my coffee and lunch on it by now.

She chews on her bottom lip and shakes her head. “And I didn’t ask. I don’t think I wanted to know.”

I’d wanted to know. I wanted to know his name and what he looked like and what blood smells like when there’s that much of it.

Maya looks at me quickly. “Do you know his last name? I’ve always wondered if maybe someone knew that it was Savvy and they’re the ones who—” She stops as I shake my head.

“Troy Henderson. I looked into it years ago. Hired a PI, actually.”

I didn’t have the money for it back then, but it was my only solid lead, and I refused to tell the police about him. I wouldn’t betray Savvy like that.