“Just so you know, if the police come, I might have to mention some rumors I’ve heard about why you really left Middlesex. Maybe talk to some of your crew, the other business owners nearby.”
Parke looks defeated now.
“I just want some information,” Ella says. “I’ll keep it off the record. I’m just trying to help Jesse. Trying to understand her.”
Parke puts the phone back in the cradle. “You have your work cut out for you.”
CHAPTER 38
“Jesse has a high IQ. Mature for her age,” the former teacher says.
Ella feels her skin crawl. The justification of the older man. Chad Parke is in his late twenties so the gap is not a gulf. But he knows better. Particularly with a vulnerable girl who’s bounced around foster homes and is possibly looking for parental figures.
Parke sinks into his office chair, a distant look in his eyes. “She worked on the school paper and she’s a talent. Better than most cub reporters at major newspapers.”
Ella listens patiently, figuring he needs to work his way up to the damning part. Start with the rationalizations.
“I tried to help her. You know, took her under my wing. Tried to get her internships at local papers. Talked to some contacts at a couple of colleges about getting her a scholarship.”
He goes on like this. After a few minutes of babbling, delaying, justifying, Ella finally decides to cut to it. Decides to say it for him so he doesn’t have to: “And then the relationship turned into something more.”
“No,” he says emphatically. “She’s just a kid.”
Ella makes a skeptical face.
“You don’t have to believe me. No one else did either.”
“What happened?”
Parke’s jaw pulses. Finally, he says, “It started off with the school newspaper. Me editing her pieces, giving feedback on story pitches, like I did with all my students. But, like I said, she’s talented, so I probably gave her more attention. She joined the Culture Club, which I supervised. I used to take the kids—I tried to focus on kids without involved parents—on field trips to the city. I mean, New York’s a short drive away, yet many kids have never been there. I’d take them to the Met, to plays, try to expose them to the world.” He stops, thinking. “She has this way of making you forget she’s a kid. Like she’s a friend, instead.”
That part rings true to Ella. She lets him continue.
“I started to get concerned, you know, that she was misreading things. So I made sure to always have someone around when we were in the same space at school. Stopped doing things off-campus with the students. Made it clear I was engaged. But then she starts running into me places. At my gym. Then the coffee shop near my apartment. Then I start getting weird Facebook requests from people I didn’t know.”
“You think she was cyberstalking you?” Ella’s mind wanders to the Starbucks, Jesse talking about Brad’s social media posts. Her research on Ella.
He nods. “Then my fiancée…” He pauses, corrects himself, “My ex-fiancée, Mara, she comes to my place one night—she used to come over on Tuesday nights after her yoga class.” He stops, suppresses the emotion bubbling to the surface.
To her surprise, Ella feels for him. He’s lost his job, his fiancée, and he’s an English teacher, a lover of literature and culture who’s now maintaining yards.
“Mara comes in my place and there’s someone in my bed. At first, she thinks it’s me, then she turns on the lights.”
Ella’s mouth drops open. “Jesse?”
“Yes, and she’s not just in my bed. She’s naked.”
Ella feels her heart rate accelerating. He has to be lying, right? Covering up an inappropriate relationship with a teenage girl.
Parke’s staring at nothing now. “The next day, our principal gets an email from Mara. It includes a photo of Jesse in my bed.”
“Your fiancée turned on you? Just like that? Didn’t let you explain?” Ella hears the accusation in her tone.
“That’s just it. Mara swears she didn’t send the email to the school. That someone must’ve hacked into her account.”
“Do you believe her?”
“I do.”
CHAPTER 39
CHRIS
Chris doesn’t know what he expected, but she isn’t it.
In the interview room at the Union County courthouse sits a young woman … a girl. She has delicate features. Flowing black hair.
You’d expect someone her age to be crying. Terrified. But she just sits there, calm and collected.