LITMIR.BIZ

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out. That had been established long ago, though none of the boys had been at the scene when Emma was attacked.

      Emma cocked her head, frowning.

      “They all came forward to the police,” Jamie reminded her. “You saw them. They admitted to it, and you said so, too. But that was before you were . . . hurt.”

      “But he came back?” She asked it as a question, clearly confused.

      “I never heard that. You never said that before. He’s a police officer now.”

      “They came back,” she said, looking past Jamie as if to the long-ago past.

      Jamie waited. She realized her heart was pounding triple time, like she’d just run a blisteringly fast race. Emma had never said as much about the night she was attacked, at least not to Jamie’s knowledge.

      And there was no way Cooper Haynes had attacked her. No way. As she’d said, the man was a police officer now, and he’d been a decent guy in high school, too. After Emma’s attack, a group of her male classmates had come forward and told the authorities that they knew she was babysitting and had decided to scare her. Emma was a popular girl they all liked. Halloween had been less than a month away that night, so they’d decided to spook Emma and therefore tapped on the Ryersons’ windows, rattled the garbage cans, found one unlatched window that would creeaaakkkk when they seesawed it back and forth. It was teenage high jinks; nothing sinister. According to them, Emma had come out on the porch and good-naturedly told them all to go back to fourth grade where they belonged. Two of the guys, Race Stillwell and Dug, who was really Patrick “Dug” Douglas, had been on their way to “haunt” Emma when Jamie ran into them leaving the Stillwell party just as she was arriving to it that night. In fact, they were the two boys Emma had yelled to as she stood on the porch, but there had been a number of others there, too, Cooper Haynes among them.

      Jamie, like almost everyone else, had learned this information when it was reported in the paper. She could still recall Mom swearing softly beneath her breath after reading it, crumpling up that newspaper into a myriad of tight, little balls, her face a cold, stone mask. Jamie had gathered the pieces of newspaper surreptitiously from the trash and unwrapped all the little balls till she found the offending piece of print about Emma’s classmates. She, too, had felt a wave of fury at them. How could they? How could they? And yet, it was clear that whatever had happened to Emma was after they’d all left.

      Now she looked at her sister and asked cautiously, “Who came back?”

      Emma, who’d been gazing in the direction she’d said she’d seen Cooper go, jerked as if goosed. “Who?”

      “The night you were hurt at the Ryersons’? You just said ‘they came back.’ You mean the guys from your class.” She swallowed and added, “Cooper.”

      “Cooper Haynes. You had a crush on him. That’s why you wanted to go to the party.”

      “Yes,” Jamie admitted. Clearly, Emma had that information, so it was no good denying it. “But was he one who came back?”

      “He liked me.” She sounded wistful. “They all did.”

      “They did,” Jamie agreed. “You said they came back,” she reminded her, opening her driver’s door. Emma remained outside, staring down the road, almost as if she were waiting for something. “You’d better get in before it starts raining again.”

      “It won’t rain.” She turned her face to the sky.

      “Or hailing.”

      Emma took a few more minutes and then finally climbed into the back seat again.

      Jamie drove away from the school and in the direction of the Thrift Shop, a route that took her past the police station.

      “No one ever said they came back,” Jamie said, hoping for even the slightest bit of further information.

      “No one ever said they didn’t,” said Emma wisely.

      “Who came back?” Jamie was tired of this pussyfooting game.

      Emma’s eyes were glued to the police station as they went by. Jamie flicked a look at the unimposing, one-story, tan brick building, but her gaze came right back to Emma in the rearview mirror.

      “We should tell Dad that Mom died,” Emma said, meeting Jamie’s eyes in the rearview mirror. “That’s the right thing to do. You always need to do the right thing.”

      “Dad knows,” Jamie told her.

      Emma nodded gravely. “He’s an asshole, but Mom still loved him. He should be with us, too.”

      Jamie clamped down her frustration. It felt like there was something very important in Emma’s revelations about “they all came back,” but maybe it was blither-blather. A lot of what Emma said was. Sometimes she repeated things she’d heard on television . . . even from commercials . . . that she incorporated into her own reality.

      But still . . .

      “We’re going to spread Mom’s ashes today, and I doubt our father can make it,” said Jamie.

      “All you can do is ask,” Emma said in an eerily on-point mimicry of their mother’s words and tone.

      “You’re right about that.”

      Ten minutes later, Jamie watched her sister mount the rear steps to Theo’s Thrift Shop’s back door and disappear inside. She drove home slowly, reviewing their conversation. Talking to Emma was like starting ten different conversations and never finishing even one. Was her comment about her guy classmates even true? The boys’ statements had been vetted by the police, and Cooper had even gone on to become part of law enforcement himself.

      You really, really don’t want him to have any part of it.

      “Let it be Race, or Dug, or any of the others,” she said aloud.

      If it was even true.

      Which was unlikely.

      Most people had initially believed it was the Babysitter Stalker who’d attacked Emma that night. Jamie had wanted to be in that camp. But further information on those other attacks had poked holes in that theory, and it didn’t appear to be so. Jamie had wanted that version to be the truth so she wouldn’t have to look at anyone close to Emma: her friends, her boyfriends, anyone.

      How did she know how you felt about Cooper?

      Was it more obvious than you believed?

      The thought made Jamie cringe inside even now, decades . . . a lifetime . . . later.

      She spent the rest of the day on her laptop, researching her next moves. She could get an Oregon Reciprocal Teaching License, which was good for a year, while finalizing other requirements. The school year had already started, so it was unlikely she would get a full-time job somewhere, but currently, substitute teaching was all she could probably handle anyway.

      She drove back to the school at three to pick up Harley, who was standing outside the front doors with a group of girls, huddled under the front overhang, though the rain and hail had been replaced by fretted clouds. This was promising, Jamie thought. Harley made friends fairly easily when she wanted to. It was the wanting to that was hard to define.

      She got out of the car and started heading Harley’s way. Maybe the fact that school had only been going a few weeks was working in her daughter’s favor. Relationships hadn’t gotten cemented in concrete yet.

      It didn’t bode well, however, when she realized Harley was a few steps away from the group of about six girls, with others coming outside and joining in, their voices growing louder as more kids exited the school. Jamie felt oddly exposed as she walked across the parking lot and toward the steps, wondering if she’d be heard over all the excited voices if she yelled to get Harley’s attention.

      “Hey! There you are!” a voice cried above the rest. “Jamie!”

      It was coming from behind

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