When I carried the sausages out after her, she was swinging an ax gracefully, muscles taut, brow furrowed in concentration. There was something catlike in the way she kept dismantling the hunks of wood, slicing and rearranging and going back for more.
CHAPTER 23
The red drop hovered and then sank, dispelling into soft swirls like clouds in coffee. No, like blood in water. Like the matted clumps softening and slinking away from Sebastian’s skull in Tonle Kak River.
How did Jamie die? My mind kept returning to it, a kid’s tongue slipping into the wet hole of a lost tooth. But Kristen had made it clear she didn’t want to discuss it.
She gave the jigger another shake, then pushed the bottle of Campari aside. “People think you’re supposed to shake negronis over ice, but they’re wrong,” she said. “You just stir it.”
Kristen had taken up cocktail making in Sydney, a self-taught venture involving triple sec, homemade bitters, and not one but two kinds of vermouth. Fortunately, Nana and Bill kept a fully stocked bar in the cabin’s finished basement. We’d already sampled her old-fashioneds and manhattans and were feeling a bit loose. She dropped in the orange peel and handed me my cocktail; our glasses kissed, and I took a sip.
“You’re right—I love it.” Herbaceous and rich, like drinking rubies.
“I still can’t believe you’ve never had a negroni.” She flopped onto the sectional sofa next to me. “I thought Milwaukee’s, like, a world-class city.”
“Well, Barker Tavern is still serving the prix fixe.” A few bucks for a shot of Jameson, a can of PBR, and a loose cigarette tucked into the tab—a local staple.
“Got it. So there hasn’t been much of a reason to branch out.”
The cheery demeanor, jokes tossed off like fluff in the wind: Less than twenty-four hours after we’d read the article, Kristen seemed to be doubling down on her insistence that everything was fine, that life was normal, that we had nothing to do with all that. Denial as a coping mechanism: It wasn’t how I’d handled my post-assault life, but at least I could understand it. Until yesterday, everything was fine—in the sense that no one was after us. But now? As Paolo’s wealthy father vowed to bring his son’s killer to justice?
Kristen slid her hands around the glass, leaving fingerprints in the dew. “It’s so weird to be up here without Nana and Bill. I feel like we’re teenagers sneaking illicit drinks in the basement.”
She kept doing this, too, introducing topics of conversation so I wouldn’t have time to bring up Paolo. But I knew distressing her wouldn’t help matters, so I angled for more info on Jamie: “You got to bring friends up as a kid, right?”
“Yeah, in the summer. My room had a trundle bed, which we thought was the coolest thing.”
“And you brought Jamie?” When she nodded: “It must have been nice having a friend here. I say that as a fellow only child.”
“It was so fun! We’d make up elaborate water ballets in the lake. Like, standing on inner tubes and flopping off in unison. Then we’d get mad when the other messed up the choreography.” A peal of laughter. “Or we’d take the canoe out. Me in the back, steering, of course. I’d get so bossy.”
I smiled. “That tracks.”
“We were like sisters.” Kristen sighed. “I miss her.”
“I’m surprised you haven’t mentioned her before.”
“Oh, I definitely have.”
“To me? Nuh-uh—I’d remember.”
“I for sure have. I remember telling you about my bestie and neighbor, like, multiple times over the years.”
“No way.” Had she? Had this mysterious Jamie simply slipped past my notice on earlier mentions? I’d always thought Kristen had had a lonely childhood, like me. It’d be one thing if they’d simply drifted apart, but…Lord, a dead best friend felt like something I’d know. “I saw some letters carved into a pine tree. Were those her initials, all hacked out?”
Kristen’s voice frosted over: “Yeah, I did that a long time ago.”
“How come?”
She peered down at her drink, at the red moon trapped in her tumbler. “Let’s talk about something else. Like how glad I am to be out of Nana and Bill’s house, oh my God. I can’t wait to move in to my own apartment. The past is so in my face in Brookfield.”
There was something there, something beyond grief about her friend, but I didn’t want to poke too hard. “Yeah, everyone regresses when they go home,” I said.
“Nana asked if I’d be back in time to go to church with them on Sunday. Like they’re still trying to save my soul.” She took another crimson gulp. “I think the only time they really liked me was when I was, like, ten years old and Christianity was my entire identity.”
“You called yourself a Jesus freak, right?” I teased. We’d had those what-were-you-like-as-a-kid conversations, wondering in hushed awe what would’ve happened if we’d met just a few years earlier. I myself had embodied the nerd trifecta: marching band, chess club, debate team.
Something flickered in her eyes. “Oh yes. Proud Jesus freak right here.”
“Speaking of, didn’t you say all your childhood stuff is here in the cabin?”
“Yeah, good memory. They stuffed it in the unfinished part so they can turn my bedroom into a gym.” She gestured toward a door breaking up the green-plaid wallpaper, then grinned. “What, you want to see pictures of me in cross necklaces at church fundraisers and everything?”
“Kind of!”
She chuckled, but I felt it, a shift in the air pressure. “Oh, I don’t feel like digging back there.”
“C’mon, I want photographic proof that you were on the poms team.”
“No. I don’t want to see that stuff.” Her words were sharp and the moment froze up, all awkward.
“So, you were saying,” I murmured. “Your grandparents still want you to go to church?”
“Totally. Praying the Holy Spirit will enter me yet. I’m kinda shocked they’re still holding out hope—hell, I’m almost thirty—but I guess if you believe what that conservative synod teaches, the logic holds up.” She shook her head, amazed anew. “When I went to school at King of Kings, in religion class I would pray—out loud, every single day, from kindergarten on—for my mom to become a Christian so she wouldn’t go to hell. I was terrified, and I suppose that’s how Nana and Bill feel about me now.”
“God, you poor thing. Why would they send you to that school with only one Christian parent?”
“Right? I didn’t realize how messed up it was until they were long dead.”
Oof. I rubbed her shoulder and she sipped her Negroni self-consciously.
“And then when they died, I could see my devotion for what it was. For all the talk of Jesus being my shepherd—it was the first time I realized I was a sheep.” She swallowed. “And it felt horrible. Like I’d been lied to every single day. But I guess it was ultimately freeing. Like: Now you have no power over me.”
She always talked about her parents at the cabin; being Up North made her sentimental, Lake Novak’s clear water a sluice for childhood memories. I knew her parents’ deaths had brought her fanatical youth-group days to an abrupt end. But this conversation felt…different. “I’m—I’m sorry you had to go through that, Kristen. I really am.”