Ben:???????????????What happened after the police came?
Gil:?????????????????They had me come down to the station a couple days later. I gave them a DNA sample—I guess I didn’t have to, but I said, “Look, if it’ll help, just swab my cheek or do whatever you wanna do, I don’t care. I know I didn’t kill nobody.”
Lucy was found an hour later, walking barefoot down the two-lane road that led out of town, still in her baby-blue dress. A man named Billy Jack spotted her as he headed out of town to visit family.
Billy Jack:??????I was just driving, and I saw this girl walking. I hadn’t heard nothin’ about a missing person or anything like that, but she looked like she was in trouble, you know? She was barefoot and walking all funny. Staggering around like a drunk. She was wearing this dress—like a nice dress. And it was filthy. Like she’d been rolling around in the mud or got up to somethin’。
So I stopped, ’cause I’m not gonna just keep driving when this girl is clearly in some kind of distress. I rolled down the window and hollered, “Hon, you need some help?”
She stops, and she looks over at me. And I’ll tell you what, I damn near had a heart attack. She had this huge welt on her forehead. Clothes soaking wet, and her makeup was all down her face. She had blood caked to her hair, I think, but it was hard to tell. Could have been mud. She was a mess.
You know how you can look at people sometimes and tell they’re not all there? Man, when she looked at me, she didn’t see shit. The lights were on but nobody was home. She looked like a ghost in a goddamn horror movie.
Anyway, she just turns away and starts walking again. Or staggering, really. So, I’m like, shit, I can’t just drive away. And I’m sure as hell not going to drag this girl into my truck with me.
So I call the cops and tell them where she is and say I’m gonna slowly follow her until they get there because I’m real worried. I didn’t know this at the time, but they had every cop in town out looking for Lucy because they’d already found Savannah’s body and feared the worst, you know? Anyway, a cop gets there so fast. I could see him in my rearview mirror, doing like a hundred.
The cop catches up with her and I wait around for a bit because they want me to give a statement. An ambulance comes and at least seven other cop cars. I’d never seen such a ruckus in Plumpton before. One of the cops tells me about Savannah and I’m just like, shit, this girl must have gotten so lucky. And the cop was like, “Yeah, no kidding, hope she can tell us who did this to them.”
I don’t think that a single cop at that scene was thinking that this girl was the one who killed Savannah. Everyone was so relieved. They thought that Lucy was dead too and they were so happy to have found her.
We didn’t know. We couldn’t have even dreamed it.
CHAPTER SIX
LUCY
The wooden stairs creak as I walk up to them, much worse now than when I was a kid. I’d have a hell of a time sneaking out these days.
I glance back at Dad as I go. He’s in the kitchen, taking a breath so big I can see his shoulders rise with the effort. My presence makes many people uncomfortable, but none more so than my own father.
I think about Nathan, standing in the corner of his bedroom yesterday, rambling about work as he watched me pack. I could feel the nerves rolling off him.
Fuck, he reminds me of my father. Wonderful. My therapist is going to love this.
The master bedroom door is cracked and I can hear the sound of a humidifier coming from inside. I press my hand to the wood, nudging it open.
Mom sits on the bed, back propped up with pillows, legs stretched out in front of her, one in a giant white cast. Her blond （fake, she’s brunette like me） hair is pulled up in a ponytail, and she’s wearing a full face of makeup. I’ve rarely seen Mom without makeup. Plumpton is the sort of town where people drop by unexpectedly.
She spots me creeping at the door and smiles. “Lucy! I thought I heard you down there. Come here, hon.”
I step inside. The master bedroom used to have an elaborate gallery wall over the bed of me growing up—at least a dozen pictures of me being cute as hell throughout the years—but there’s a large blue and white quilt there now. It was probably handmade by Mom, but I’m still a little salty about being replaced by a blanket.
“Hi, Mom.”
“Come here and give me a hug. I know I look dreadful, but don’t worry, I’m fine.”
She does not look dreadful. She does look older, though. Maybe that was what she meant by dreadful. My mom, like her mom, is blessed with smooth, beautiful skin that has always made her look a good ten years younger than she really is. Now, at fifty-five, she’s starting to actually look like she’s in her fifties.