“Please, just read it.” Jen placed it on the table in front of Annie.
“Should Katie and I leave you two?” Janine asked.
“Please.” Jen nodded.
“Stay,” Annie said. Her voice was commanding enough that no one dared to move as she opened Abe’s note card.
“‘Dear Laurel,’” she read in a hauntingly mocking voice. “‘I am so sorry about the video game. It was unkind’”—eyebrow raise—”‘and I would never really hurt you. I know it was wrong, though, and you’re not worth it anyway.’
“This is great stuff, Jen,” Annie said. “You must be so proud.”
“Don’t read it aloud,” Jen said.
“Are you worried, Jen, that people will find out your big secret? That your son is a sociopath?” Annie said. She lifted the note and cleared her throat. “‘You guys hurt me by going off together, even if Colin’s your boyfriend’—”
Annie stopped and frowned.
“This can’t be true.”
Jen shifted nervously.
“Katie,” Janine said in a chirp. “Let’s go find Mrs. Meeker and apologize to her.”
Jen watched Annie’s face turn ashen as she read the rest.
… even if Colin’s your boyfriend.
I thought we were all friends together, which is why I yelled when you two started locking me out of the room and why I was hurt when you guys went places on the weekends and didn’t invite me.
What I’m supposed to do is not focus on that but on the good parts, like how Colin helped me with the music for my video game.
I regret calling you both bad people and throwing your special keychain. I’m sorry it broke.
Congratulations on graduating eighth grade and thank you for inviting me to your party.
From, Abe Pagano
* * *
“Laurel.” Lena had sprinted to the fence to catch up with her. “You’re hard to catch up with.”
“Hi, Mrs. Meeker.”
There was a glow band around Laurel’s neck and several around her wrist, but even with a pink light cast over her face, how had Lena missed it?
The dimples, the brow. It was breathtaking how, from some angles, the girl was all Tim. The hair was Tim’s mom Angela’s—a weak-willed, spoiled woman—but Laurel didn’t need to hear about Angela just now.
“Thanks again for the party,” Laurel said.
“Are you having fun?”
“Yes.” And then she hesitated and inhaled, just like Rachel. “Did you know?”
“No.”
“Aren’t you mad?”
“Actually, I’m thrilled. We need to tell my daughter Rachel.”
“Will she hate me?” Laurel asked in a flat, low voice.
“She’ll be overjoyed. She used to ask for a sister all the time.”
Laurel smiled. Her dimples deepened.
The protein-bar wrappers, the keys. Lena was fairly certain what had been happening in the woods over the past month and Laurel was not going through that gate.
“You’ll be like peas in a pod. You know what?” Lena held out her hand, made her voice as firm as possible. “Let’s go and call her right now.”
* * *
Annie’s pupils were dilated as she looked rapidly between the note and Jen. When she spoke, her voice was strangled. “How old is he? She’s only fourteen.”
“Twenty-five,” Jen said.
“Where is he?” she said. “Right now. Where? Find him.”
Jen looked around the party. “There, by the edge of the lawn.”
With her caftan billowing behind her, Annie marched across the lawn.
“Last song,” the DJ shouted. “Get your dance on, people.”
Jen stood still and watched Annie disappear through the open gate and into the woods. Afterward, she thought of the many other things she might have done, but she supposed she wasn’t the type of person who took action when Abe wasn’t involved.
CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE
Annie was going to kill him.
She hurried along the forest trail, barely aware of the uneven rocks beneath her flip-flops. All she could feel was this nuclear rage, capable of stripping the entire damn forest down to pebbles and sticks.
But when she saw him in the moonlight, sitting cross-legged on Waterfall Rock, the power drained away. She was aware of the thin fabric of her dress, the flimsy rubber soles of her shoes.
Colin jumped to his feet. “Mrs. Perley,” he said.
He’d always been in the background.