Deviant (17 page)

Almost without thinking, Abigail pulled the iPhone from the black Hermes purse Melanie had loaned her. In the past forty-eight hours, she’d keyed the pin number a few times, 9746—and had even found their
Shining
video file—but she
hadn’t mustered the courage to open it. Now, sitting in the sand all alone, Abigail pressed
PLAY
.

Waves crashed on the shore in front of her as the small screen lit up. An unpleasant thought occurred to her as she stared at the tiny, jerky image of herself. Did Becky already know what she was going to do? Is that why she’d suggested they focus on fun that day? Is that why she’d made a point to tell Abigail both the pin number and her phone’s hiding place?

Abigail: “She’s filming me.”

Squeaky-Voiced Finger: “Well stop her.”

Abigail: “I don’t know how.”

Squeaky-Voiced Finger: “Grab it, grab it, the phone, grab it.”

Becky’s face filled the screen. “HEEEERE’S BECKY!”

Popcorn. Laughter. The image spun abruptly from floor to ceiling.

Abigail thought that the video might bring her to tears. But now she was confused and pissed. The girl who’d made this silly little film was raucous, full of life. And that night, she’d killed herself? Abigail watched the video again, pausing on the close-up of her sister to study her face: bright, intensely happy, almost unbearably beautiful. She replayed. Then again.

With each viewing, Abigail’s confusion intensified. She remembered something Becky had said in the pool:
“I don’t want to get all heavy right now. We’ve got all the time in the world for that.”
She remembered how the visit to Joe at Juvie had affected her, how she had promised to break him out the following day. Something had upset her when they were with him, something she’d wanted to hide …

Abigail’s grip on the phone tightened.

Back at the house, Becky had mentioned that her computers were back on. It was one of the very last things she’d ever said, in fact. If she
had
killed herself, something must have happened to drive her to it. Had somebody wanted her to see something? Had someone been snooping around and discovered something they shouldn’t have? Was that why the computers had been confiscated?

Shite
. Abigail might have been clutching at straws, anything to believe that her sister was not consumed by depression and hopelessness—anything to ease the guilt that Abigail’s arrival had contributed to her death. But, no: it didn’t add up. Becky wasn’t that good an actress.
Nobody
was that good an actress. She hadn’t been phony with Abigail on their “fast-forward bonding day.” When she’d said that the two of them had all the time in the world, she’d meant it.

So … why? There
was
some kind of countdown in Becky’s life—but to what? She was always in a hurry. Why have a “fast-forward bonding day” if you had all the time in the world?

Abigail switched off the phone. Too hard to look at. Too painful.
Too fast, too fast
, she thought for the first time since boarding the airplane back in Glasgow. Instead, she stared straight ahead. Somewhere out there, she thought, somewhere beyond where the water blended into the horizon, was the world she had come from. A rainy, miserable, and awful world.

Only now did she wish she’d never left it.

BECKY JOHNSTONE
’
S BOOK OF REMEMBRANCE

Abigail painted the words, graffiti-style, as best she could. She filled each letter with bright colors using the brushes she had purchased right after the funeral. In the days since, she’d practiced on plain paper many times. Now she felt accomplished enough to do it for real.

Well. Close enough. It wasn’t as easy as it looked, but the end result would have to do.

The idea had struck her on the sand dune. If Becky had taken her own life—and Grahame and Melanie and the police all believed with certainty that she had; the official investigation was now closed—then Abigail wanted to understand why. The more she thought about it, the more convinced she became that something terrible had driven Becky to it, something terrible
after
Abigail had seen her last. It was the only possible explanation. There had to be clues in the past, both recent and distant. So Abigail intended to get to know her sister from start to finish.

In truth, the deeper truth, Abigail also wanted something more than the iPhone as a memento. She had next to nothing to remember Nieve by. It was too late for her. But Abigail would fill this book with every detail she could find about Becky Johnstone. She would channel every ounce of that old robot precision into this one project. If she’d done this for Nieve; if she’d created something more meaningful—anything—that would help her remember, to celebrate, to grieve … then maybe she could be at peace with Nieve, too. Free of Nieve, if she were even more honest with herself. Free of Sophie, too. Would she ever be free of the mother she never knew?

Maybe through Becky, she could be.

This book would be Becky’s biography, her legacy, her tribute. A way to cope with the tragedy. Closure. But, most important: a search for Becky’s motive.

Abigail’s eyes burned as she wrote the dates below the title, American style.

07-04-1994 – 05-08-2012

Less than nineteen years. Stray cats lived longer lives on the streets of Glasgow.
Billy
had outlived Becky. It wasn’t right. Anger welled up inside her again. But she quashed it. Paint now dry, she turned to the first fresh blank page of the book. Ever methodical, she would start at Day One. For this, she needed assistance.

A
T DINNER
, A
BIGAIL CHEWED
on the gristle that was Melanie’s beef stroganoff. All three labored over the food in silence,
their new routine. Eventually Abigail gave up trying to eat and slid the lump of meat into her napkin.

“I was wondering if I could look at some of the things from when Becky was little,” she braved. “Do you have photo albums? Her birth certificate?”

Grahame stared at her for a moment, perhaps surprised she’d spoken. “Of course.” Dinner forgotten, he stood and retrieved a photo album from his den and waved her into the living room. “Come and sit with me for a while, come.”

Melanie continued to eat, head bowed, as if she hadn’t even heard the exchange. Abigail swallowed and nestled into the sofa beside her father.

He took a deep breath before speaking, his eyes on the album. “Listen, Abigail. I know this must be impossibly difficult for you. But I want you to know two things. The first is that you, here, now, becoming part of my life—it’s a miracle. I cannot even begin to tell you how grateful I am. The second is … I want you to understand it’s not your fault. Becky was—well, she was mixed up. But this had nothing to do with your coming here. Do you understand that?”

Abigail bit her quivering lip to stop the tears. “How can you be sure?”

“Here.” He handed her a clean tartan handkerchief from his trouser pocket then drew another deep breath. “Let me tell you a story. Dennis—Mr. Howard—and I had a best friend at school.” He flashed a bittersweet smile at the memory. “Ian Baker. Bakes. Inseparable from kindergarten. As teens we went a bit wild. Drugs, booze, tattoos … Dennis and I grew out
of it. We were competitive academically, and we wanted to do something greater, something of service. I suppose it’s what led me to the military. But Bakes, he floundered. Got kicked out of school. Turned to crime. He broke into a house when he was seventeen. His plan was to steal money for drugs. The woman who owned the house also owned a gun …” He didn’t finish.

“Oh, I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, me too.” Grahame absently stared down the photo album. “He was so bright, so funny. He just got into the wrong things, didn’t know when to stop, took it all too far. Of course we blamed ourselves. I gave him his first joint; Dennis showed him how to hotwire a car. Blamed ourselves like we’re all doing here now. But the truth is, for Bakes and Becky, you can’t blame anyone. All you can do is get on with things, to make sure people like them—unsettled people—have a chance, that they are given the right direction. So, no blame, okay?”

She nodded, wiping her eyes with the tartan. “Okay.”

“Are you okay?”

“No.” She managed a sad laugh through her tears. “Sorry.”

“Please, don’t apologize. I’m not okay, either.”

Abigail glanced back into the dining room at Melanie, who’d begun clearing the table. She saw now why Becky had called her the Stepford Wife. Her expression was grim, but not pained. If anyone exemplified robot mode, it was this woman. Abigail was almost envious.

“Melanie
is
okay,” Grahame said, following Abigail’s gaze. “She’s tougher than I am. A tough cookie. She grew up in a trailer park, can you believe it? Parents died when she was
fourteen. She keeps things on track. I’m so thankful to have her. I’d be a wreck without her, even if …” He swallowed. “And you. I’m saved by having you here. My lost little girl.”

Abigail nodded. She was tempted to ask what brought his lost little girl here in the first place. Grahame never once addressed the subject of Sophie Thom. Not now, not with Becky, not since she’d arrived. Was it because Sophie fell into the Becky and Bakes category? Had Sophie been nothing but trouble for Grahame? Was the whole Socialist Workers Party thing his last foray into a wilder side he’d forsaken, or maybe even a noble attempt to save the woman he loved? Were the mixed CDs the last remnant of that effort to save her?

The questions died in Abigail’s throat. Instead, she simply leaned over and hugged him.

He hugged her back.

It was the first time Abigail felt no awkwardness with her father. She didn’t let go for a long time.

I
N HER ROOM LATER
that night, Abigail opened the album Grahame had given her. The birth certificate was on the first page.
Name: Rebecca Sophie Johnstone
.

Born: 07-04-94, Western Infirmary, Glasgow
.

Wow. Not only was Becky’s middle name “Sophie”; she was born in the same hospital where Sophie had died. Three blocks from No Life.

A
BIGAIL SCANNED THE DOCUMENT
on the printer Melanie had bought, reducing it so it fit the first page of her book. Pasting the back carefully with glue, she pressed it onto the paper.
Item one: completed
. The first photo in Grahame’s album had been taken in France, or at least it looked like France; that was the Eiffel Tower, yeah? Becky must have been around two, chubby, rosy cheeked, and smiling broadly on a stone balcony—hotel room, probably—with the tower in the background. There were no earlier photographs.

So. Becky’s first years were a gap, a void. She didn’t want to ask Grahame about them. He had enough on his plate. She’d have to think of some other way. Maybe there was a pediatrician’s file or something … As she was mulling, Abigail remembered what she’d stolen from No Life, what she’d stuffed in her Nike bag, what she’d never bothered to unpack. Not that she’d forgotten, obviously, but she knew the mere sight of it would make her sick and take her right back to Glasgow. Still, there was a chance it contained some information about her mother and sister. Biting her cheek, she reached up to the hiding place in the top shelf of her closet.

Down came the backpack, flopping on her bed. Her fingers felt damp and clammy as she unzipped it and removed the familiar orange file from the bottom of the bag.

ABIGAIL THOM
.

50837
.

A wave of nausea rose in her stomach. No matter what, no matter how far she got from Scotland, she would always be Child Number 50837.

The file was divided into sections:
Information. Correspondence. Reports
.

The
Information
section was just a list of facts: her weight and height (annual measurements), hair color, eye color, where she had lived, when.

Correspondence
was similarly dull: letters about referrals, meetings, and financial considerations; there were also some loose telephone transcripts, stuffed in a folder in back.

She turned to the
Reports
section and began reading the first.

The sole existing report from Health Services indicates a home
birth at the Frederick Street Address, without medical assistance. All other reports are missing or have been destroyed.