“And they’d never let me go home. Maybe put me in jail, even.”
“Quinn, it’s okay. You didn’t do anything wrong. You tried to save my daughter.” In agony, Rae pulled in a quick breath. “What did you forget to tell the officers?”
On the floor, Quinn began rocking. Like a small child, overwhelmed.
“Rae, I didn’t climb over the wall only because I heard Lark shout. That’s what the police wrote up in the report. I climbed over because I heard Lark arguing.”
“She was . . . are you sure?”
“I’m positive. She was fighting with another girl. Their voices carried—it was easy to hear them. I just couldn’t hear what they were yelling about. They were talking fast, shouting at each other. Whatever they were mad about, it was bad.”
Quinn stopped rocking so quickly, Rae flinched. The moisture evaporated from her mouth.
Don’t tell me the rest. A trapdoor opened beneath her world, revealing a truth too dark to contemplate. Too dark to endure.
Quinn’s eyes misted as they found hers. “There was another girl there,” he insisted, “someone else who’d gone to the slumber party. I’m not implying someone pushed Lark in, but she wasn’t alone when she fell. I just thought you should know.”
Rae paled.
That was exactly what he meant.
Chapter 27
Rae stared unseeing at the TV.
Quinn was in his bedroom.
After finishing the story, he’d appeared physically ill. Traumatized by the memory. Rocking on the floor, his arms tight around his knees. Secrets were corrosive, especially when they were bottled up for too long. Rae knew this from bitter experience—her own secrets had weakened her relationship with her late daughter and tested her father’s love and his patience as he reluctantly learned to live with them. Quinn, however, felt somehow complicit in her daughter’s death. As if he could’ve stopped an argument between two girls from leading to tragedy.
Masking her shock at everything he’d described, she’d thanked him for sharing the true events surrounding Lark’s death. Then she helped him to his feet.
Hugging Quinn gently, his lean body slack in her arms, she proffered reassurance. I’m glad you told me. Really grateful. Now put that night out of mind. Quinn—it’s not your fault. You did great. You did all that you could when you heard the girls fighting. Lark was your friend, and you climbed over the wall to try to help her out. There’s nothing more you could’ve done.
A flurry of reassurances; he remained silent through them all, his gaze unable to meet hers when she released him. Head bowed, he’d trudged down the hallway with Shelby on his heels.
Now turmoil seared Rae’s thoughts.
Last October, eight teenagers had attended the slumber party. They formed Stella Thomerson’s crew of popular girls. Most of the girls were casual acquaintances of Lark’s. She hadn’t known most of them well enough to be at odds regarding anything of importance. Certainly nothing so earth-shattering as to lead to a shouting match outside on a snowy autumn night. In the popular crowd, Lark was an outlier. A second-tier friend, a tagalong.
She’d been surprised that Stella had invited her at all.
Wheeling her thoughts back to Monday, Rae dissected the conversation with Yuna, when she’d stopped by in the early afternoon while Quinn and Connor were hanging the decorative lights. Rae picked through everything they’d discussed with the thoroughness of a detective sifting through clues. How she’d described making a fool of herself at Griffin’s firm that morning. How the conversation veered to Lark as Yuna launched a further shock when she placed the keepsake—which Rae had assumed was forgotten, a relic hidden in her attic—on the table between them. And then described Lark’s plan.
Rae, if Lark was bragging that Griffin was her father . . . it probably didn’t go down well with Stella.
Was Lark quarreling with Stella that night? Having an argument that became so heated, they took it outside? Of the popular girls, Stella was the Queen Bee. The others did her bidding whenever she liked. She was also more reserved than some of her friends—not the sort to engage in a shouting match. At least not in Rae’s experience. In all the years she’d known Katherine’s daughter, she couldn’t recall a time she’d witnessed Stella even bicker with one of the other girls.
Rae turned and tested the possibilities racing through her mind, rearranging them like the pieces of a Rubik’s Cube. Perhaps Stella held back. If she was furious with Lark, she could’ve asked one of the other girls to do the dirty work. Argue with Lark outside, without witnesses. Any one of them would’ve jumped at the chance. A way to earn brownie points with the Queen Bee.