Pumpkin Roll (24 page)

They reached a door and Detective Lucille held it open, leaving just enough room for Sadie to go through, which she did.

“You just be sure not to leave Boston for another day or two, you understand?”

“Of course,” Sadie said. “I don’t have anywhere else to go.”

“We’ll be calling.”

Sadie looked out into the lobby area of the station and watched as a tall woman with bright auburn hair stood up from a chair. Her hair was short and spiky on one side, but arched over to the other side where the spiky points softened into smooth and sleek layers that followed the curve of her face in a way that was almost flattering. Not Breanna. Jane Seeley.

Jane threw a magazine on the chair and stretched her red lips into a huge grin that did little to soften the sharp features of her face. Her fingernails were bright purple, and she wore a black-and-white striped shirt—vertical stripes, not horizontal like a convict—and light-blue skinny jeans. She wore red sneakers and red hoop earrings in graduating sizes in all six piercings in her ears.

“Mama,” she said loudly, heading toward Sadie. “You finally ready to go? I’ve been waiting for, like, ever, and this place smells like socks.”

Chapter 21

Sadie felt she had no choice but to play along with Jane until they left the station and hurried toward a little red compact car Sadie remembered well. Jane had driven all the way to the East Coast for her article? Wow.

The police had kept Sadie’s clothes but given her back the coat they’d let her grab before they left the house, and for that she was grateful. It was nearly 8:30 and had been dark for hours. Once the sun went down, the day had turned from chilly to brittle. The snow had stopped and was mostly melted, except for where it clung to the concrete in patches. Once they were inside the car, Jane started the engine and cranked the heater.

“What are you doing here?” Sadie finally asked as Jane pulled into the traffic on Washington Street. “And why did you tell them you were Breanna?”

“I didn’t tell them I was
Breanna,
just that I was your daughter. I worried they’d make a big deal about me seeing you if I didn’t claim to be family.”

“And how did you know I was there?”

“Pete called Shawn, Shawn called me, and I called Pete and,
voilà,
I dropped everything to come to your rescue.” She looked over at Sadie and smiled, very pleased with herself. Jane’s new hairstyle was, as usual, too trendy for Sadie’s tastes, and the new hair color too bold for Jane’s skin tone, which was on the pale side. And her clothes had to belong to a very tall fourteen-year-old somewhere. That Jane would lie to the police about who she was wasn’t all that surprising—she was Jane, after all—but Sadie hoped it wouldn’t come back to hurt her later. Should Sadie call Detective Lucille when she got home and explain?

“Aren’t you glad I came?” Jane asked.

“Yes, I am,” Sadie said, not wanting to be ungracious. She decided that voicing her concerns about Jane’s lie to the police wasn’t necessarily a priority. “But you didn’t have to drop everything. I’m sure the officers would have taken me home.”

“Maybe,” Jane said. “After they parboiled you, mashed you into a pie, and baked you at five hundred degrees.”

Cooking analogies were not Jane’s strong suit, though Sadie was impressed Jane knew what parboiled meant. “It wasn’t like that,” she said, unsure of why she felt the need to defend the police. They hadn’t been overly nice to Sadie, but they hadn’t been terrible either. They were just doing their job. She smoothed the fabric of her gray scrub pants and realized that no one had told her how and when to give the clothes back. She certainly had no reason to keep them, though they were rather comfortable in a shapeless and unattractive way.

Jane turned onto Green Street and became part of the slow-moving herd of vehicles on the narrow street. “Oh, honey,” Jane said as though talking to a child. “It is
so
like that.”

“No offense,” Sadie said, trying to keep her tone easy, “but you’ve only been here for the ride home, so you don’t know the whole story.”

Jane smiled and picked up her iPhone from the middle console. With one hand on the steering wheel, she started toggling through her phone.

Sadie double-checked her seat belt to make sure it was secure. “Um, I don’t think it’s safe to be—”

She was cut off by the sound of a horn from the car behind them. Traffic had sped up but Jane had not. Sadie startled, but Jane caught up with the other cars without even acknowledging the problem.

“Here you go,” she said, handing the phone over to Sadie. “Tell me what they left out.” Her tone oozed vindication, and she made a quick jerk to the right, changing lanes fast enough to get honked at again.

Sadie took the phone somewhat reluctantly and pulled it closer to her face so she could read the tiny print. The first headline said “Colorado Woman Detained for Questioning in Jamaica Plain Assault.”

“Goodness,” Sadie said, scrolling down to the next one, which read “Jamaica Plain Woman Hospitalized; Is the Babysitter to Blame?” She could stomach only a few more titles before she put the phone back in the console and looked out the window, trying to get hold of her turbulent thoughts and emotions.
Not again
was the only thought that kept spinning through her mind.

The memory of another article that questioned her character was suddenly fresh in her mind. The writer of
that
article—the article that had changed everything for Sadie a few months ago—was sitting less than two feet away and driving like a true Bostonian.

“How could those stories be out so fast?” Sadie said. “It’s only been a few hours.”

“Do you have any idea how many reporters spend their day listening to police scanners in their cars so they can rush to the scene of a story?” She shook her head as though censuring this breed of ambulance chasers. “Once they grab hold of an angle, they don’t let go.”

“I’m tired of being an angle,” Sadie said, folding her arms over her chest, her residual anger toward Jane resurfacing. She thought she’d gotten over the betrayal she’d felt when the article had come out last August, but perhaps not; her pain felt as sharp as ever at this moment.

Jane didn’t answer, and they both remained silent for the rest of the drive. Sure enough, there were no less than six cars parked along the curb in front of Mrs. Wapple’s house, where yellow tape stretched across the front door. As soon as Jane parked, a fresh-faced, twenty-something-year-old girl stepped out of a black Ford Escort and came toward them with a bright smile on her face as though applying to be their newest BFF. The doors of the other cars clicked open, and Sadie dropped her head, horrified by the new development. What would Heather and Jared think of their house being on the news?

“I’ve got this,” Jane said, hurrying to get out of the car. By the time Sadie had opened her door, Jane was nose to nose with the girl, towering over her in both height and overall presence as she calmly but boldly told the woman in no uncertain terms that she was not welcome here. The other people kept a distance, but Jane looked them over to ensure they understood they were included in her instructions. Sadie wasn’t sure whether to wait for Jane or not, but when she saw a man in a truck down the road snapping pictures, she hurried to the front door, certain that Jane could fend for herself. She just wanted to get away from it all and find her sanctuary.

Her foot was on the top step when the front door opened and Pete stepped out. He didn’t hug her, but he smiled as he took her hand and pulled her inside. Once they were over the threshold with the door shut behind them, he gathered her in his arms, and Sadie heard and felt him let out a long, deep breath. Sadie closed her eyes and let herself completely melt into the embrace, wishing he would never let her go and that she could feel this safe, this secure, forever.

It didn’t last long, however. A moment later there was a light tap and Sadie pulled out of the embrace to open the door. The reporters were chatting with each other on the street, but staying away from the house.

“Can I come in?” Jane asked when Sadie didn’t invite her inside automatically. Sadie nodded quickly and stepped aside. As she closed the door, she noticed that Pete had installed the eyebolt while she’d been gone. She glanced at him, pointing toward it, and he shrugged as though he knew it was too little, too late. Sadie lifted the chain and slid it into the lock on the door, feeling better anyway.

Pete said a polite hello to Jane before turning to Sadie. “How’d it go?”

“Okay, I guess,” Sadie said as Jane dropped onto the couch and immediately pulled her phone out of her pocket, texting or going online or something. Sadie took off her coat and hung it in the closet while she continued her explanation. “They said they might have more questions for me tomorrow and that I shouldn’t go anywhere, but they didn’t hold me, didn’t even question me all that . . . energetically. Mostly they wanted me to explain my record.”

“Good,” Pete said with a sharp nod. “That’s really good.”

Sadie looked past him into the kitchen. “Is that pizza?” she asked, nodding toward the boxes as her stomach growled. Why hadn’t they eaten the beans she’d made for dinner? Then she remembered the cinnamon twists she’d set out to rise just before going over to Mrs. Wapple’s. They were surely ruined by now. What a waste.

“I’d already ordered it before I remembered you’d made those beans. Sorry. But the pizza helped take the boys’ minds off everything else.”

Sadie forgave Pete easily. Compared to everything else, wasted beans were barely worth noting.

“Pizza?” Jane said from the couch.

“Would you like some?”

Ten minutes later the three of them sat around the kitchen table. Jane was on her fourth slice of pizza, while Pete kept lifting and lowering his water glass, making rings on the Formica tabletop. Sadie had passed up reheated pizza in favor of dried-out beans. She was glad she’d tasted them that afternoon when they had been at their prime so she could fully appreciate how delicious they could be. She hadn’t worked up the strength to check on the cinnamon twists still covered with a dish towel on the counter. There were only so many failures a girl could handle at one time.

“Thank you for bringing Sadie home,” Pete said to Jane. “I hope it wasn’t too much of an imposition.”

“It was actually a nice break,” Jane said. “I’ve been knee-deep in college kids for the last week and I’m ready for real conversations, if you know what I mean.”

Shawn is a college kid,
Sadie thought to herself, but she lacked the energy to worry about Shawn and Jane’s possible relationship right now. “Will you be heading back tonight?” she asked.

“I already booked a room at the Longwood Inn over in Brookline. After I knew I was coming, I made some calls and lined up a couple interviews for tomorrow, adding a little Harvard into my Yale-heavy research.”

“Oh, good,” Sadie said, relieved that Jane hadn’t come just for her. She was feeling more comfortable with her as the intensity of the police station experience wore off. “I’m glad you didn’t waste your time, then.”

Jane looked at her. “Helping you wasn’t a waste of my time, if that’s what you’re implying.”

That’s exactly what Sadie had been implying, but she was embarrassed for having been caught. Jane continued. “I just like to multitask, that’s all.”

“Well, I really appreciate your help.”

“No problem,” Jane said with a quick shrug as she picked a piece of pepperoni off her pizza with her purple fingernails and popped it into her mouth. “I’ll be around tomorrow too if you need help with anything else.”

“Thanks,” Sadie said. “That’s very generous of you. The boys’ mother will be back tomorrow evening, so I guess we’ll be off the clock by then.”

She looked up at Pete, noting the tightness around his eyes. He must still be feeling bad that this mess had happened on his watch. But Sadie was pretty confident that once Jared and Heather understood what had happened, they would calm down. She wondered why Pete didn’t have the same confidence, however. Maybe because Jared was
his
son. Maybe because of the mysterious Michaels?

“So,” Jane said, drawing out the word until both Sadie and Pete looked at her. “Shawn said some weird stuff’s been going on around here.”