I was upstairs killing time.
“I’ve got a few things to do around here,” Jake said. “Amuse yourself. We’ll drive you back later. Then we’ll pack you up and get you to an airport.”
Okey-dokey.
There was a computer in the upstairs loft.
I played Candy Crush—making it to level three before I lost all five lives. Though I had already lost five lives. Karen Greer, Alexa Kornbluth, Terry Charnow, Sarah Ludlow.
Jenny Kristal.
I felt tempted to do what I usually did on computers when I was about to get booted. I felt the pull like a drug. Like my mom must’ve felt every time she got bored going straight.
You’re not a kid anymore. You’d go to jail for this.
Yeah, I wasn’t a kid anymore. I’d already done enough jail time at juvie hall, thank you very much.
Sorry, Mom. Time to break with the family tradition. No more other childhoods for me. No more impersonating other girls. Alert the media.
Or don’t.
I thought about Ben. About what he’d done. About what they’d done for him. Was he a monster? Were they? Ben had been a kid in true peril, who’d felt entirely alone. I could relate. They’d been out-of-their-mind parents faced with a monstrous choice.
Lose one child. Or both.
Okay. Sure.
Speaking of threats. Of going to jail.
I thought I should probably hold on to Ben’s file. Why not? As collateral. Just in case.
I’d create that hole-in-the-wall like Tabs had told me to.
Bury it right here. In the lake-house computer. Close to where something else was buried. If I ever needed it, I’d know where to find it. In a new file, deep in some random program directory. With its very own password protection. Something simple I wouldn’t forget.
Let’s see . . . how about J-E-N-N-Y P-E-N-N-Y?
Sure.
The computer wouldn’t let me.
Ever play hide-and-seek and stumble across another kid in the very hiding spot you were going to use, telling you to get lost? Sorry, no room.
There was already a hole-in-the-wall in the computer.
That password was already being used.
J-E-N-N-Y P-E-N-N-Y.
Okay. I went where it led me. This way. When I clicked on that file—her picture appeared. Jenny’s. The one from the poster they’d nailed to the telephone pole in front of that pizza place—her first-grade school photo.
Why would Jake bury it? I was assuming it was Jake—Jenny Penny had been his nickname for her.
Because he couldn’t bear to look at it. That’s why.
Because even after all this time, it hurt too much.
The photo album Laurie pulled out that night had been covered in dust. Maybe Jake climbed the stairs to the loft sometimes so he could stare at her picture by himself. Allow himself to cry over his dead daughter. Alone. Without Laurie seeing.
I hoped it was like that. It made me like him a little more. Made the times he called me Jenny Penny seem less like playacting and more like wishing.
I clicked on the picture to enlarge it.
Other pictures suddenly popped up.
Hundreds.
Even as I tried to stop the vomit hurtling up my throat, even then, I remembered Tabs saying you could hide stuff in pictures too.
The door opened.
“Two more things to do,” Jake said. “Then we’ll get going.”
I nodded—it taking every ounce of my remaining strength to get my head to move because I was using almost all of it to stop myself from screaming.
“You on the computer?” Jake asked.
I nodded.
The desk faced the door, so the computer faced away from it. Away from Jake. He hesitated. Like he wanted to walk around the desk and see what I was looking at. Like he thought he really should do that.
“Just checking out Twitter,” I said.
He stayed there in the doorway.
“Okay. Another hour maybe, that’s all.”
I waited till I heard him walk down the stairs and into the back of the house.
I threw up. Over the computer. Onto the rug.
I lurched back off the chair.
I went out the door he’d just left through.
Down the stairs.
Seeing the pictures.
Those pictures.
Jake’s.
I went out the front door and ran into the woods.
The vomit-covered computer. I hadn’t bothered turning it off.