Meg had no doubt. “Oh, yeah. But I’d rather face her wrath now and have her get it out of her system.”
Curt started the car. “Are you sure this is what you want to do? I could drive you home.”
“No, I want to talk to her before any more time passes. It’s better to face the hard stuff as soon as possible.”
She watched him. She felt like she could watch him all day long and never get bored. His dark hair hung around
his face. He had soft splotches of freckles on his nose and his eyes were rimmed with ridiculously long lashes. She even liked the small pimple he had near his nose, like an errant beauty mark.
Curt touched her hand. “I’m glad we did this.”
She knew what he meant by
this.
That they declared themselves, that they told Krista last night that they liked each other. Krista had taken it harder than Meg had thought she would. Meg wouldn’t have even thought of liking Curt except Krista had sounded like she was getting bored with him.
But at the party, when they finally told her, Krista had yelled and created a scene, just when everyone was leaving. Then she jumped in her car and roared off, leaving Meg stranded. But at least they had done it. The hard part was over. Now she just had to persuade Krista they could still be friends.
After the party, Curt had offered to drive her home, then somehow they found their way over to a farm road not far from his house and sat in the warmth of the car, turning the heater on when they needed it, and talked.
They talked about everything: their favorite music, their favorite books, even their favorite food—he loved beets, she hated them. She told him how she wanted to be a veterinarian. He confessed that he hoped to be a philosopher or a rock star. He couldn’t sing and didn’t know how to play guitar so, at the moment, he was leaning toward philosophy.
“How do philosophers earn money?” she asked him.
“I dunno. Maybe by writing books about what they think, about how they see the world. I’m not sure. Maybe they just end up teaching, but that wouldn’t be so bad. I just like thinking
about everything: why we’re here, where we’re going, what it all means. The things no one talks about in school.”
“Are you an optimist or a pessimist?” she asked.
“At the moment, optimist.” He looked at her and smiled. “Usually somewhere in between.”
After talking for about three hours, there had been a long silence. Then Curt had leaned close and kissed her.
They hadn’t said much for a while, trying to find all the ways their mouths could come together, a puzzle they turned this way and that to find the best fit. Other than gently touching her breasts through her shirt, he hadn’t tried anything else. She was glad he hadn’t; she wasn’t sure she could have resisted him. With him, her body seemed to have a mind of its own.
Toward morning Meg had curled up in his arms and fallen asleep. She thought he had slept too.
“Did you sleep?”
“Not much. Too busy thinking.”
“That’s your job, philosopher,” she teased him, then turned serious. “Are you going to get in trouble?”
“What? You mean about staying out all night long? Naw.” “Your parents don’t care.”
“Not really. They’re too busy to care. They’ve probably both already gone to work and might not even realize I didn’t come home. They’d notice the car was gone. I think they figure I’m incorrigible.” Then he laughed.
That was one of the things Meg loved about him—his laugh. It was a deep laugh that pulled her into the joke. She could hardly hear it without breaking out laughing herself. Intoxicating. She realized she felt hungover though she had only drunk half a beer at the party.
Meg laughed as he started the car. “You’re lucky. My mom would kill me if she knew.”
W
hen Claire and Rich stepped into the Jorgensons’ kitchen, Roger Jorgenson was hunched over the newspaper at the large wooden table with a cup of coffee in his hand and the remnants of scrambled eggs in front of him. Emily Jorgenson was standing at the sink, putting dishes in the open dishwasher. She turned slowly to face them when they walked in the door.
Emily knew immediately. Claire could read it on her face, the way her eyes dropped, then filled, the way her mouth quivered, the way she wiped her hands as if to rid them of some horrible grime.
Roger might have known, but was not allowing it in. He scrunched the paper down and looked angry at the intrusion, mad that his daughter’s misbehavior was continuing to ruin his day.
“I need to get to work,” he barked.
“I’m so sorry to have to tell you …” Claire started, but her words were arrested by a low intake of breath, close to a growl coming from Roger. Emily bent over the sink so precipitously it looked like she was trying to throw herself into the dishwater.
Roger stood. The newspaper fell out of his hands, drifting to the floor like a faint shadow, what the world had been before. Claire began again. “Bad news .”
Claire felt Rich’s arm on her waist. “I’m so sorry, but Krista has been found .” She was having trouble getting the words out. But they had to hear it, the quicker the better. “Krista’s dead. We found her below the Maiden Rock.”
Roger asked, “The Maiden Rock?” Something safe to focus on, puzzle over, the site of the accident.
“My baby,” Emily collapsed, holding her stomach, leaning into the cabinet doors beneath the sink. “Not my baby. Oh, God, why?”
“What happened?” Roger was still standing by the table, making no move to go to his wife. He asked the question gruffly as if he needed something concrete to understand, to grasp.
“We’re not sure yet. It isn’t clear. Somehow she fell. It looks like she broke her neck. It would have been instantaneous. No pain.” Although Claire wasn’t sure about all this, she hoped it would comfort them. How could anyone tell how quickly death came? But Krista looked like she hadn’t moved after her fall.
“Somehow? What do you mean?” His voice rose and he turned to look at Claire and Rich.
“We’re not sure how it happened. We might never know.”
“That’s impossible. You tell us our daughter’s dead and we might never know how she died.” His voice was filled with rage.
Rich stepped in front of Claire. He said, “Roger. We’re so sorry.”
“You’re sorry. Hell. What do you know? What do you know?” Roger slammed his chair into the table and then stomped out of the room.
Emily whimpered.
Claire bent and pulled the crying woman into her body, wrapping her arms around her. Emily needed someone to hold onto, it was clear she was drowning. Sobs clenched her body and she gave in to them.
After some time, her crying weakened and she looked up at Claire. “What do I do now?”
Claire knew she needed to pull her back into the world. Give her a task, something to do. “Let’s sit at the table.” She helped Emily up.
The woman shook herself like she was shedding an old skin and ran her hands down her shirt. “Would you like some coffee?”
Rich spoke up. “I’ll get it. You sit down.”
Rich pulled two mugs out of a cupboard—one from the Bank of Alma, the other from the Farmer’s Cooperative—and filled them up with dark coffee. He handed one to Claire and sat at the table with the two women.
“I can’t believe this.” Emily stared at the middle of the table, at nothing.
“I know,” Claire murmured, letting the woman talk.
“She was such a good kid. Happy, trying everything. How can all that be gone?” Emily looked up at them.
“Not all,” Claire said, knowing Emily had to feel the deepness of her loss, but wanting to say something positive. “In some way she will always be with you.”
“But I want her.” Emily hit the table with her fist as her face collapsed, but she kept looking at them.
“Yes, I know.” Claire said.
This statement rocked Emily. She roused. “What about your daughter? Have you found Meg?”
Claire shook her head. “Not yet. I’m going right out to look. I wanted to come and tell you the news first. Search parties are combing the area around the Maiden Rock as we speak.”
“Oh, God. What happened? What were those kids doing? Why were they hanging out at the Maiden Rock?”
“I know this is hard, Emily, but I need to ask you a few questions about Krista. It might help us understand what has happened. Was she having any problems lately? You notice any change in her behavior?”
Emily looked confused. “Like what? School? Here at home? She was doing fine. Nothing was wrong. She’s always been kind of keyed up. That hasn’t changed.”
“Was she ever depressed? Get really down about something?”
“Once in a while, around her period, she’d have a crying jag, but the next day she’d be over it. No, she was happy. I don’t think she had anything going on. I would know, wouldn’t I?”
“I’d think so.”
Emily’s head jerked. “What are you saying? Do you think she jumped? Do you think she tried to kill herself?”
Claire didn’t want Emily to go any further with that thought until they had more evidence. “No, I’m not suggesting anything like that. It’s just … we’re trying to see what might have happened. Could I take a look at her room? Would that be okay?”
The need to get out and look for her own daughter was overwhelming. But Claire wanted to quickly check Krista’s room before anyone else got a chance to touch it. Families had been known to withhold information about suicide notes. Under twenty percent of suicides left a note, but they were always worth looking for. She knew cases where a note cleared up deaths that might otherwise have been thought murders.
A suicide note, or evidence of drug use were what she would be looking for. A quick sweep. She had to get back to Maiden Rock and look for Meg.
“Of course.” Emily stood and wiped down her shirt again, her hands needed to keep busy. “I don’t know how clean her room is. You know how kids are. I try to keep on her about her room …” Her voice trailed off.
“Just show me the way.” Claire followed her out of the kitchen, leaving Rich at the table.
Claire walked behind Emily through the dining room, then up very steep stairs. The farmhouse was old, probably built in the twenties. The stairs had been crammed in, like an afterthought.
“You have to walk through Tammy’s room. Then Krista’s room is off of that,” Emily explained. They walked through a sunny room that had ballerinas on the walls, and plastic horses lined up on top of a long bookshelf. “She’s at a friend’s. Oh, how will I tell her her sister is dead?” Emily sank down on Tammy’s bed and started sobbing. Through her tears, she waved a hand at the bedroom door.
Claire gently pushed open the door to Krista’s room. The one window in the small room faced east, a splash of sunlight played on the wall above the headboard of the bed. The cover on the twin bed had been pulled up but not straightened. Three pillows were mounded together. A small CD player sat next to the bed with a huge pile of CDs and earphones dangling off the bedside table.
Claire scanned the room quickly. Nothing jumped out at her. No note sitting on the pillows, on the desk, propped up on the bookshelf, easy to find. Suicide notes didn’t tend to be hidden.
A pile of photos was displayed at the end of the bed. Claire picked one up from the bed. Krista. Tip dyed blonde hair that spiked out around her face and behind her ears. She looked so alive.
As she looked down at the pile of school photos, her eyes easily picked out the picture of Meg. She lifted it up automatically. Dark hair pulled back in a loose ponytail, a hint of lipstick. Looking so grown-up. Where was her darling daughter now?
Claire strode into the other room and knelt down in front of Emily. She took her shoulders in her hands and waited until the woman looked at her. “Emily, I’m so sorry. I can’t tell you how sorry. I’ll come back and look some other time.”
Claire suddenly couldn’t wait another minute to go look for her own daughter.
***
Even though her shift was over, Amy had decided to drive by the fire that had been reported just as she was leaving. It was on her way home. She knew the woman who owned it. Letty. Amy had babysat her nephew Jared when he was little.
As she drove up to the fire, she was happy to see the volunteers were already there, spraying the fire with foam. The trailer looked like a total loss. The smell was of burned plastic and torched wood. A horrible combination. She wondered if the fumes that were billowing out from the trailer were toxic.
She got out of her car and watched the four volunteers work the rig. She recognized John Dixon. He gave her a nod when he saw her, but didn’t stop working.
Trailers were the worst for fires. Amy doubted they ever saved one. It was like lighting a bag full of gas fumes. Everything was flammable.
At least, it didn’t look like anyone had been there. No cars were parked right in front of the trailer. But when she walked around the side of the fire rig, she saw a small car tucked into the weeds. An old Pontiac, it looked like. She walked up to it and tried the door. When it opened, she stuck her head inside.
She noticed two things that made her stop breathing: a set of keys on the driver’s seat and a kid’s carseat in the back. Letty and her son. Amy hated to think where they might be.
***
After one last kiss, Curt dropped Meg at the end of the Jorgensons’ driveway. Meg started down the rutted road. She couldn’t believe what she had done: stayed out all night with a boy, making out. If she pulled this little escapade off, it would be great. But what if she got caught? There’d be hell to pay.
The Jorgensons wouldn’t probably get that mad if they caught her sneaking back into their house, but she was sure they would feel obligated to tell her mother. Then she’d be in big trouble.
Her mom. Meg didn’t even want to go there. It wasn’t that her mom would punish her so terribly—worse, she’d probably pull one of those you’ve-really-let-me-down strategies.
To avoid worrying about her mom, Meg went back over the events of last night. Thinking about Curt made her feel like she was swimming in really deep water—exciting and scary at the same time.