I STAYED SITTING in the wet leaves. I knew once I got up, it would be real. Mark stood four feet away, hands on his hips, looking down at me. It was hard to read his expression. Maybe I was going to find out if he was capable of murder today after all.
I knew if I started talking, I was only going to dig myself into a hole. Once I started talking to Mark, I couldn’t stop until I had admitted every feeling, thought, and secret in my head. I fought the urge to speak as long as I could, mere seconds that felt like hours. There must have been some story I could tell, some reason I was in the woods behind his house.
“I . . .” I opened my mouth emitting some sound, hoping a concise, reasonable story would come out once I started.
“Virginia!” someone shouted through the woods, and we both turned toward the voice. A young boy in a ratty camouflage jacket stomped through the leaves and branches toward us. The crunch of his footsteps was loud; we should have heard him sooner. He must have been standing still—and close—for a long time, but he was acting as if he had just discovered us. I wondered if Mark realized it too.
“Virginia,” he repeated, now close enough to stop walking and talk to us. I didn’t recognize him at all, but he knew me. “I told you not to take the shortcut through the woods. The leaves are wet and all over. It’s hard to stick to the path.” He extended his hand to mine and pulled me to my feet.
“JP, right?” Mark asked the boy.
“Yeah.”
Mark was trying to process the information. He looked to me for answers. “You know him?” he asked, which felt accusatory after JP’s greeting, whoever JP was.
“Yes,” I said without hesitation.
JP took over again before I could get myself in trouble. “Virginia is my tutor.”
A tutor. That was a nice thought, that someone would hire me to have influence over their child.
“In math,” I added, to be part of the lie and hit Mark where it hurt.
He just nodded, having no choice but to believe it. “She was always great at math. I had Virginia in my class a long time ago.”
Not that long, I thought.
Mark looked at me like he was replaying footage of our past. I wanted him to stop. The way he was looking at me, it was nostalgic. It was warm and it let hope creep in—not the flawed generic hope that kept me going but the specific Mark-and-me hope that kept me from moving on.
“We better get started,” I said, turning to JP and breaking Mark’s gaze and its power over me.
“See you around, Mr. Renkin.” JP turned back toward his house.
I stepped to follow him, looking briefly up at Mark as I passed him, a small smile escaping that I quickly sucked back in. He stood there watching us walk away for what felt like an unusually long time. Go back in the house, I thought. Finally, I heard leaves crunching behind me where we left him. I didn’t turn back. I looked forward at the back of the lanky teenager who was a mystery all his own.
I FOLLOWED JP onto his front porch before it seemed safe to address reality. Calling it a porch was generous. It was some rotting elevated wood slats in front of the doorway. He opened the door, content with me following him inside.
“So, I’m going to go,” I said, unsure if that was rude. Did I owe him something for saving me?
He turned back to me. “Oh, yeah, sorry. I knew your sister. That’s how I knew who you were.”
I just nodded, still not sure if it was OK for me to leave yet.
“You were spying on him,” he said, nodding toward Mark’s house.
“No, I wasn’t.”
“Then what were you doing in the woods?”
“I don’t have to explain anything to you.”
“Whatever, I guess I should have just left you there then,” he said.
“Sorry, no . . . I appreciate it. It’s personal, OK? But I wasn’t spying on him. I was just in the woods and that’s where I ended up. It was bad timing I guess.”
“You mean because he and Ms. Willoughby were fighting?”
“Who’s the one spying now?” He was standing still in those woods too, taking in a show. “Do they fight a lot?” I asked, hoping my savior knew more about their relationship.
He just shrugged. “I don’t know. I try to stay out of people’s business.”
“Except mine.”
“I guess. You can go now.”
“OK,” I said, backing off the porch. “Thank you.”
“No prob,” he said as he walked inside and shut the door.
THE QUICKEST ROUTE back to my car was through the woods, but I was feeling less adventurous. I walked down JP’s driveway toward the road. The day had just started and already sufficiently sucked. Then I remembered Brandon’s text. He’d found Gil. I quickened my pace, not a run but more than my morose tromp.
One more bend and I would be at the bottom of the hill. That’s when the car pulled up. A green Blazer that decimated my eager, proactive mind-set and left me empty. The passenger window slid down as the car slowed next to me.
“You need a ride?” Mark asked, leaning over from the driver’s seat.
“No, it’s fine,” I said, trying not to look directly at him.
He drove away, and I thought I had dodged a bullet until he pulled over on the side of the road ahead of me. He turned the car off and climbed out. He was waiting for me.
I had few options to get away from him, but it didn’t matter; this was what I wanted deep inside. I kept my pace as steady as possible until I was almost at him. “What are you doing?” I asked.
“That was a quick tutoring session.”
“What do you want me to say?” I said as I reached him.
“I knew you weren’t his tutor. It’s seven in the morning. He has school soon, and you aren’t an early riser.” His voice softened on the last part, emphasizing he knew something about me.
“Things change.”
“They do.”
“He knew my sister. That’s why I was going to see him. I don’t know why we lied.”
“I don’t need an explanation,” he said as he stepped toward me. I curled my hands into nervous fists, but I didn’t retreat. “I like seeing you. I don’t like it when you ignore me in town.” He took another step closer.
He didn’t elaborate on the last time I had ignored him in town. It wasn’t like most times. I had been caught. He caught me, and we had looked at each other in an unavoidable way until I had to flee. It was his birthday and I was trying to be seen, but not like that. Not in front of Hunter and not in front of my sister. Not me panicking. Not me running.
His birthday. I always found a way to be seen on his birthday. Every year, I told myself it would be the last time. Every year, I failed. When we were together, his birthday was a big deal. I planned it for months. I would cook; I would arrange surprises; I babysat tiny Jenny like crazy for weeks to earn enough money to pull it all off. That night in mid-September, he could do anything to me. He didn’t have to ask; he didn’t have to be cautious or ease into things, testing the waters. He could do anything. It made him so happy.
The weight a school-age girl gives to a birthday is almost inexplicable. At that age, they’re so rare. You can count them on your fingers and toes. Birthdays still seem so very special, and that’s how I treated his birthday even though he’d had plenty. I knew it was an attention he would never get elsewhere. It’s an enthusiasm that only an adolescent brain can generate.
That’s why, once a year, I found a way to be seen. I showered and did my hair; I put on real clothes; I applied makeup, all just enough to look fucking banging without appearing like I was trying to. Just more like, maybe I looked like that all the time because I was so successful and well-adjusted without him. Then I would plant myself around town, waiting in my car until I saw him, jumping out with perfect timing to cross his eye line. I didn’t make eye contact. I could never know if he ever even saw me, but believing he did filled me with such endorphins that I thought maybe I would be all right after all.
By midnight, when I realized he had not been so enraptured by memories and my success-oozing beauty that he was at my doorstep begging to have me back, I would crawl into bed, cry to the point I might have an aneurysm, and vow not to do it the next year. This year, though, I knew he saw me and I knew why he didn’t show up on my doorstep. Jenny appeared out of nowhere and I was unprepared. The fragility of my act was not structured for flexibility in the face of the unexpected. I reacted like a freak, ten times more so in my head than anywhere else. The crying that night was worse than any years in recent memory. But now, now Mark was standing in front of me, telling me he liked seeing me, telling me he didn’t like when I ignored him. It was a tempting redemption I struggled to fend off.
I turned my head away. I wasn’t strong enough to say anything. He entered my space. His hot breath cut through the fall air. I could smell his scent, and with it came memories. I felt like I was sixteen again, when we were at our absolute best.
“What about Hunter?” I asked as I turned to face him again.
“Fuck Hunter,” he spit out as he lunged toward me, putting both hands around my face. The force pushed me back against the Blazer. Before I could react, he was kissing me.
I knew I should push him off. I knew he didn’t deserve me. He was an asshole, a pedophile, a cheater, but I wanted it and I let him kiss me.
His hands left my face and slid into my jacket, cupping my waist. Every second I let him kiss me undid years of healing. I didn’t want to go back to that dark place he had left me in. I was finally feeling alive. I was hunting Jenny’s killer, outsmarting Detective Colsen, leaving my apartment regularly. I couldn’t go back to that place.
I put my hands on his chest and pushed him back. He seemed shocked. I’d never said no to him before.
He inched back toward me, but I slid off the Blazer, allowing for more room to evade him.
“This life I made after you . . .” He shook his head. “It’s not what I want. I’m miserable. Ginny, please . . .”
“I hate when you call me that.”
“Isn’t this what you want?”
I honestly didn’t know. Part of me wanted to let him screw me right there against the Blazer in the middle of the road. Part of me wanted him to take me back to his place and hold me as we sat on his swing, talking about the future. Part of me wanted him to have a heart attack and drop dead at my feet. But the largest part of me wanted to walk away, to not look back, to cry alone in my apartment that night but never give him the satisfaction of knowing how I felt and what the past eight years had been like for me.
“No,” I said.
I started walking away before he could respond. I was walking away from Mark Renkin. For eight years, all I’d wanted was the power to say no. To have the last word. For him to regret ever letting me go. I was done with Mark Renkin, and I hoped he would never affect my life ever again.
“Then stop fucking calling me,” he yelled at my back.
I stopped in my tracks. I turned, looking at him like he was crazy. “What are you talking about?”
“The calls, almost every Saturday. I know it’s you. I have caller ID.”
“I call you?”
“Jesus, how messed up are you? You don’t know you’re calling me?”
I choked hard on the emptiness in my throat. Is this what I was doing when I was blacking out? I was embarrassed, ashamed, and afraid of myself. I didn’t want to hear any more. I started walking away again, as fast as I could without actually breathing.