LITMIR.BIZ

      CHAPTER SIXTEEN

      The wading pool at River Front Park was bone dry. A sign posted nearby touted that the empty pool was a “sign of progress” and that soon it would be “better than ever.” Kendall Stark sat on a bench and watched a man and his black Lab play Frisbee on the browned-out lawn that rolled from the parking lot to the river’s edge. She fished her phone out of her purse and texted Steven that she wouldn’t be home until late that night.

      Don’t wait up. I promised Cody some Cheetos

      today. Can you give him some? Love you!

      She added a heart emoji because she couldn’t stop herself from doing so. She’d become obsessed with emojis. It was a habit she knew she had to break.

      Chelsea Morgan parked next to Kendall’s white SUV. She climbed out of her Jeep and walked across the lot to the bench where Kendall waited.

      “I don’t want to be involved,” Chelsea said.

      Kendall looked up. “Then why are you here?”

      “Because I can feel the heat being turned up,” Chelsea said, sliding into the bench next to Kendall. “I know that she’s out there somewhere, and I know that if she’s not caught more people will die. And I can’t have that . . .” she said, her voice fading into the breeze.

      “On you?”

      “Something along those lines,” she said, her jaw tightening and her fingers nervously playing with her car keys. “I don’t think that I had anything to do with what happened.”

      Kendall watched the Labrador pull the Frisbee from the air, and then turned to face Chelsea. She studied her face. It was lined. Tired. Marked with anguish. She was afraid, that was so evident. She’d felt ambushed in her restaurant, and there was nothing Kendall could do about that. She was on a mission, and Chelsea might have something she needed.

      “When those words come out of your mouth it sounds as though you are trying to convince yourself of something,” Kendall said.

      “Maybe I am,” Chelsea said.

      Over the next hour, Chelsea talked about her former best friend Brenda Holloway Nevins. She started at the beginning—though it wasn’t as early as Kendall had thought. While they went to the same high school, they weren’t friends.

      “She couldn’t be bothered with someone like me,” Chelsea said.

      “I wasn’t an A-lister.” She laughed a little. “I mean, I have come a long way, but back then, not so much. Brenda was a climber. She was looking for people she could use to get what she wanted.”

      “Sounds like you didn’t like her at all,” Kendall said.

      Chelsea looked away, her face reddening. “I didn’t. Not at all. But here’s the truth. I was kind of starstruck by her. She was so perfect. So beautiful. There was a coldness to her, but it didn’t detract from how pretty she was. Sometimes photos look cold, but people still look and admire. You know?”

      “Yes, I do,” Kendall said. “And sometimes aloofness draws people closer.”

      Chelsea folded her arms around her chest.

      “Right. Right,” she said. “The fact that she was unapproachable only made kids want to get closer to her, like they’d cuddled up with a tiger or something and could brag about it. She’d flick away anyone like a bug on her arm. If you didn’t interest her in a way she could exploit, she didn’t have the time of day for you. Not a second.”

      “How did Joe fit in to all of this?” Kendall asked.

      Chelsea took out a cigarette. Her fingers trembled as she held the lighter to it.

      “He was everything she wanted,” she said, exhaling. “At the time. He was good-looking. Had an awesome body—especially when she got him to juice up a little—and was smart. Ambitious. She thought that he could lead her out of town and into some fantasy she’d concocted for herself. He was a nice guy, no doubt. But really, he was never going to be her ticket out of here.”

      “You said you weren’t friends in high school,” Kendall said. “How’d you reconnect?”

      Silence hung in the air. “That’s the bad part,” Chelsea said. “That’s the part where I feel kind of responsible for what happened.”

      Chelsea looked over at the river. She glanced around the parking lot. It was as though she wanted to make sure no one was there to hear what she had to say.

      That no one being Brenda, of course.

      “Why, Chelsea?” Kendall asked. “What was it?”

      Chelsea inhaled deeply and tapped her cigarette on the edge of the bench. Ash floated to the pavement.

      “The insurance company,” she spat out. “That’s where I worked. Where we worked. It gave her ideas. I gave her ideas.”

      * * *

      Brenda was alone in the employee break room when Chelsea brought in a brown-bag lunch and sat down at the table across from her. Brenda was reading a copy of Vogue and picking at the congealed contents of the bottom of her Cup O’ Noodles.

      “Sad-sack lunches,” Brenda said.

      “We make a great pair,” Chelsea said.

      “We really should go out for lunch sometime,” Brenda said, getting up and tossing the Styrofoam cup into a trash receptacle with gummed-up hinges.

      “I’m on a budget,” Chelsea said.

      Brenda made a face. “Me too, unfortunately.”

      “You’ve got a husband, don’t you?” Chelsea asked, though of course she knew the answer.

      “I do,” Brenda said. “Joe’s working things out with his business. Still. It’ll be a long time before we get anywhere, finances-wise. I just don’t know how long it’ll take.”

      “I’ll

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