At lunchtime, she heads to the hospital. The nurse tells her that Jesse’s been discharged.
“So soon?”
The nurse frowns. “Insurance issues.”
How compassionate.
Ella calls Principal Steadman on the walk back to the car.
“They what?” Steadman says in disbelief.
“Discharged her this morning.”
“For goodness’s sake.”
That was about as harsh as you could expect from Dale Steadman.
“Can you give me her address?” Ella asks. “I’d like to check on her.”
She hears typing, then he reads her the address of the foster home, which is on a rougher side of town. Linden in many ways is a small town nestled in a county of a half million residents, surrounded by an area unflatteringly called the “Chemical Coast.” The wealth gap is significant.
Ella arrives there ten minutes later. She raps on the screen door, which is torn and rickety.
A heavyset woman answers. Looks her up and down. A TV blares inside.
“Hi. Is Jesse available?”
“You the lawyer?”
“No. I’m a—” What is she exactly to Jesse? “I’m a friend.”
“The lawyer said she shouldn’t talk with anyone until—”
“It’s fine, Dori,” Jesse says, appearing from behind.
The woman—the foster mother, Ella presumes—shrugs. Totters back to the couch.
Jesse looks Ella up and down, examining the business attire. “I guess you aren’t a stripper.”
Ella smiles at that. “Wanna get a Starbucks?”
Jesse calls over her shoulder, “I’ll be back soon,” and pushes out the beat-up screen door.
At the coffee shop, they find a table in the back, away from the other customers.
They both cradle their cups—Ella a black coffee, Jesse some complicated sugar-filled monstrosity—and say nothing for a long time.
“Thanks for coming,” Ella begins.
“It was you or the lawyers. Dori said we had like ten calls. They’re saying we can sue the ice cream store.”
Ella nods. “How are you?”
“Peachy.”
Ella gives her a supportive smile.
“Can we just, you know, not…”
“I get it,” Ella says. “After what happened to me, I didn’t want to talk about it either. But I learned if you hold it all in, your mind will find other ways to deal with it. Usually, self-destructive ways.”
“Like cheating on your fiancé?”
Ella is taken aback. “What are you—”
“Brad needs to learn about the privacy settings on Facebook,” Jesse tells her. “And he spends way too much time on social media. His business conference in Atlantic City looks like torture, by the way.”
Jesse’s done some serious online sleuthing.
“I loved the sappy engagement posts. You’re his soul mate.” She says it with mockery. “But with Brad at the conference, I wondered where you’d been in that dress.”
Ella feels a tightness in her chest. Jesse grows more complicated—more interesting—by the second. She seems to be trying to antagonize Ella, push her away, but maybe she’s simply testing her.
“Wow, stalker much?” Ella says with forced nonchalance. “And for the record, Brad kicked me out this morning.”
Jesse eyes her skeptically, as if she doesn’t believe her, then seems to change her mind. “You’re better off. He’s boring as shit. He also spends too much time liking bikini-pic posts from his friends—cree-py.”
Ella’s mother doesn’t like Brad either. But that’s because he isn’t wealthy, doesn’t have the pedigree suitable for a Monroe. But Jesse’s right, Brad is boring as shit. “He’s a good man,” Ella says in tepid defense.
“Oh yes, so good. He makes sure everybody knows it. Very woke—a real fighter against racism, sexism, and every other -ism.”
Jesse’s right about Brad again. This girl’s wise for her age. This no longer feels like getting coffee with a damaged teen. More like hanging with a snarky girlfriend. But she’s not a friend, Ella reminds herself.
Ella says, “There are actually studies on virtue-signaling, did you know that?”
Jesse caresses the Starbucks cup and takes a sip, her eyes inviting Ella to continue. She’s intrigued.
“People who virtue-signal are much more likely to have what they call the ‘dark triad’ of personality traits—Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy.”