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Meaghan: She…
She has to take a deep breath.
Meaghan:I know this sounds crazy.
Me: You can tell me, Meaghan. What did she do with the needle?
Meaghan: She grabbed my hand and stuck it between my fingers.
It took me a moment to recover from that. Between the fingers or toes is a common place for junkies to shoot up. I shuffled some papers around in the recording to find what I was looking for—a newspaper article that talked about how Meaghan was taken into custody and eventually charged with involuntary manslaughter of Connor Shealy. She was supposedly high as a kite on opiates when the wreck happened. Meaghan immediately knew what I was looking for.
Meaghan: I never touched the stuff before Ruby shot it into me, I swear. They say I probably used it at the party before I left, but I didn’t. Meaghan burst into tears. I didn’t. And no one believed me.
Including her foster mom, apparently, who gave her back to the state.
Chest heaving, I pause the recording as I reach the bench on the other side of the lake, the same bench Jake and I rested on last night, and I splay my hand across the side where he sat. My eyes drift back to the woods where he threw the beer bottles. How much of this does he know? If he was supposedly drunk and passed out and doesn’t remember much from that night, what did they tell him happened, then?
Part of me wants to believe he doesn’t know the full extent of it. He knows it’s not good, sure. But I hope he never learned what they did…allegedly did. Shot her up with drugs, possibly morphine or fentanyl (something Ruby would’ve had at her disposal), to make it look like the fault was hers. That he wasn’t a part of ruining this girl’s life and has been okay with not speaking up about it all this time.
That he doesn’t end up being that person who’s just sorry they all got caught.
I take my earbuds out and shove them into my pocket. Look out over the lake and toward the swarm of busy bees on the other side getting ready for the charity brunch. My eyes land on Magnolia and my stomach jumps. Her attention is fastened to me again, all the way in the distance.
Maybe something within her knows. The mother inside her senses the dark, threatening energy I’ve brought into her house and around her family. I didn’t just bring a suitcase and a fake smile with me this weekend.
I’ve brought trouble.
So Magnolia doesn’t thinkI’m uneasy with our eyes locking, I sit on the bench for a good while and pick at my cuticles. Watch as the sun rises and revel in the warmth it brings. Wonder if the lake is actually big enough to be considered a lake; it’s really more of an oversized pond.
When I’m confident enough time has passed that my leaving doesn’t look like retreating, I take the asphalt path to the other side of the lake-pond. I want to get a better look at the rest of the property, and it only takes about a five-minute walk to get there.
The guest house and pavilion are closer to the water than the main house, the back porch a mere couple yards from the bank, the walking path ending just before. In the distance, the metal roof of something crests the top of some pear trees. The stables, perhaps.
I pause my brisk walk for a moment and take it all in, how pretty and private this property is. It’s too bad there’s so much ugliness inhabiting it.
Someone startles me. “Scarlett!”
Preston? But his voice is getting swallowed up by the breeze. I can’t tell where it’s coming from.
He pops up on the back porch, a large tattooed arm waving around to get my attention. He’s smiling a genuine smile.
My feet immediately start toward him. “Morning!” I yell back, plastering on a smile of my own, but with him, it’s not fake.
He takes a long pull from his cigarette, the tip glowing orange. “Morning!” Smoke curls from his nose as he breathes it out. His hair isn’t tied back today, it’s a flurry of dark tangles around his shoulders. He must have just woken up. “Jake still in bed, huh?”
“Yeah.” My feet halt and I’m still a good distance away, though between the porch slats I can see he has on nothing but a pair of plaid boxers.
“Figures,” he sighs. But he doesn’t say it in an annoyed way. More of like in an adoring younger brother way.
Silence falls between us as we decide if we want to continue the conversation or part ways. I settle on continuing the conversation, but before I can think of something to talk about, he adds, “Have you had breakfast yet?”
“Not yet.”
“Guessing Ruby or Mom haven’t offered.” It’s a rhetorical statement. But, in their defense, I didn’t really give them a chance to. He takes another drag. “Well, get that cute little butt up here, then.” He watches as he puffs the smoke into the atmosphere. “I have coffee.”
I chuckle and head for the back-porch stairs. He had me at coffee and cute little butt.
The inside of the guest house is just as Gothic chic as the main house, though way smaller, but it smells like I’d died and gone to bakery heaven as I follow a shirtless Preston into the kitchen. He’s taller than Jake, his shoulders broader, and he looks like he could be a bodybuilder. Whoever loves him is a lucky man.
