JANE SLEPT IN the bed that should have been assigned to Adam’s roommate. The new semester would soon be here and St. Michael’s would likely assign a new student to share the room. She had a sense of a clock ticking, that the existence she had made for herself here, this limbo, could not last. Adam, forsaking the German girlfriend, was typing on the computer, trying to figure out who had created the Liv Danger page, when she finally fell asleep.
When she woke the next morning, he was already awake and showered. The local news played on the TV. Jane sat up in the bed and noticed a cup of coffee and a plate of bacon and toast that Adam had brought to her from the commons.
“Breakfast in bed. I’m touched,” she said. “Thank you.”
“So what do you do today?”
“I’m going to go to my mom’s house and see what files she has on the crash. What the investigators said.” She ate the bacon and watched the news. The anchor started talking about a bizarre arson case in San Antonio, ninety miles away, five homes, just built, gutted by fire. One family had already moved in, and they interviewed the woman, upset and distraught. Her name across the bottom of the screen: Brenda Hobson. Her son was in the hospital with smoke inhalation and she was begging if anyone had any information on the fires, to please contact the police.
“That is just straight-out crazy, burning down all those houses,” Adam said.
I know her name, Jane thought. Blinking, staring.
She’d compiled a list of names of people who had helped her after the crash, when she wanted to write thank-you notes, but Mom said it wasn’t necessary. Brenda Hobson was one of the paramedics who had responded to the crash.
“I’m going,” she said, full of resolve. “To San Antonio.”
“What?” Adam said, who had stopped typing on his computer to watch the news story.
“That woman was a paramedic at the crash, her house and every house around her burns down, and now someone is saying ‘All Will Pay’ on my Faceplace page? It can’t be a coincidence.”
“You don’t have a car, and I have class today,” he reminded her. “And I don’t know if talking to her is a good idea. She’s not going to be at her house, how will you even find her?”
“My mother has a car,” she said. “You have a car you could loan me, you know, if you were like a really good friend to me.”
“No, Jane. You don’t drive anymore,” Adam said. “Bad idea.”
She let it go for the moment. She had an idea. She got dressed as he turned away, pulling on jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt, and she grabbed her backpack and headed out the door.
* * *
Rather than hike across south Austin into Lakehaven for two hours, she took a rideshare car from a few blocks away from St. Michael’s, so her mother wouldn’t see she was still on the campus, to a shopping center near her mother’s house. She had decided it would be better to approach it on foot; that way she could make a better case for borrowing her mother’s spare car to take to San Antonio to see Brenda Hobson. She would look needier. After the rideshare car pulled away, she started her short walk to her mother’s house.
Lakehaven hadn’t changed much. Lava Java was still in the main shopping center; there was still a line of cars with high school parking stickers working their way through the drive-through at McDonald’s (there was no golden-arches sign, though—Lakehaven had strict signage controls, so the fast-food joints were tastefully marked with subtle letters against cool marble). It must have been a late-start morning; she remembered the joy of those infrequent days in school, when the teachers had meetings and the school didn’t start for two extra hours. She walked past signs urging either a yes or no vote on a massive school bond. She kept her eyes to the sidewalk, not wanting to look up. She had felt nervous passing the sign that read Lakehaven, Pop. 3,975.
This was where she grew up, but now it felt like enemy territory.
She walked into an older neighborhood not far from the high school. Two turns down was the cul-de-sac, Graymalkin Circle. She stood at the circle’s entrance. She hadn’t been back since last Christmas. The houses lay ahead, both of them. Norton. And Hall. She thought of the line from Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet: Two households, both alike in dignity, in fair Verona where we lay our scene…she had had to reread it to catch up for her classwork her senior year, having read it as a freshman, to finish a senior thesis for honors English on Shakespeare. She had no memory of having read it before or having watched any of the film versions, from the classic one with Leonard Whiting and Olivia Hussey to the modernized approach with Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes.
And suddenly David, walking next to her, laughing on this sidewalk, his smile bright as the sun, walking her home not because he was her boyfriend but because he was her neighbor, braying out words from the prologue they’d studied that day as freshmen: Ancient grudge! New mutiny! Civil blood! And fatal loins! Not just loins, Jane, but FATAL loins! Poisonous loins. We’d all better be careful. Did you think we’d hear about loins in English today?
She put her hand over her mouth. David was gone.
It was a new memory. Did that really happen? Or was it her imagination stretching to bridge the gaps, the ever-dangerous threat of confabulation? She had no idea. She stood on the sidewalk, shivering, his words and laughter ringing in her ears. It would have been freshman year, right on the twilight where she began to lose her memories.
Did this mean she was breaking into the borderlands of the memories she’d lost?
If it was an emotional block, was it crumbling, now that she was confronting the crash? Or just a strand of memory, easing back into place, not to be repeated.
Oh, please, she thought. Please come back to me.
She stared at the two houses at the end of the cul-de-sac. “Bury their parents’ strife,” Shakespeare had written. That hadn’t happened.
Both yards were on an incline, studded with oaks. The houses were large even by Lakehaven standards, two stories. Her mother’s brick house had a wraparound front porch, empty now. The Halls’ house had a limestone exterior; it was a bit larger. Jane walked toward her house, but she kept her gaze on the Halls’ front door. If Perri came out of it toward her, she would be ready.
She walked past the parked car and glanced in: a backseat with blankets and duffel bags, in the driver’s seat a man working on a computer tablet. She walked on and she heard the car door open behind her.
“Jane?”
She stopped, turned. Her breath caught in her chest. Matteo Vasquez. The reporter. The last time she’d seen him here at her house was when her mother was bringing her home from the hospital. They’d cooperated with his first story about her, but not the last two in his “Girl Who Doesn’t Remember” series.
“Hi. Do you remember me?”
“Yes,” she said. “I remember you. What do you want?”
“I’m writing a follow-up story on you. It’s been two years. I would love to interview you for it. See how you are. People would like to know how you’re doing.”
“I doubt that. Get away from my house.”
“I’m on the street; it’s public property,” he said, trying to smile. He looked bad, she realized, red-rimmed eyes, in need of a haircut.
“I don’t want to talk to you.”
“Where are you living?” he asked. “You’re no longer enrolled at Saint Michael’s. I called.”
“Here.”
“I’ve been here for two hours and I didn’t see you walk out.”
“Can’t you just leave me alone?”
“I’m not at the paper anymore,” he said. He had a thin, reedy voice, a habit of his tone rising at the end of sentences as if he was always interviewing, always asking a question. “I’m freelancing. So, you know, a story like yours, I can sell it to a much bigger paper.”
“I’m not that interesting.”
“Did the memories ever come back?”
She decided to answer. “Not all of them. Not the past three years.”
“So your memories only go back to when your dad died. See, that’s what makes it so great. It’s such a good framing device, your two tragedies…”
At that point she turned away. He hurried after her. “I don’t mean to upset you, Jane.”
“Well, you have. I don’t have anything to say.” But then she realized, yeah, she did. What if she told Vasquez about Liv Danger, and Brenda Hobson? Of course Brenda’s misfortune might be a coincidence. She had no idea, and if she was wrong, she would sound crazy. It was better to wait. That would be so satisfying, to send a reporter after Kamala, hiding behind the Liv Danger name. But she didn’t—she couldn’t, not until she had proof.
“What if I talk to Perri Hall? Wouldn’t you want to tell your side of the story?”
“I’m not interested in what she has to say.”
“Kind of amazing you’ve both stayed in your houses.” Trying to provoke her, she thought. If he was camped out here, maybe he was waiting for Perri Hall, too. “You know, another article on you could be a big help.”
“How? You wrote my dad killed himself and he didn’t. You wrote I tried to and I didn’t. You told the world I was awful.”
“I never made a judgment about you,” he said.
“You told. You made so many more people hear about me…” As if he had exposed her, naked, to an unkind audience.
“Jane. Lots of movies come from magazine articles. Saturday Night Fever. The Fast and the Furious. If I can tell the end of your story, that you rose above what happened, then there could be real interest from Hollywood.”
If I rose above what happened. Above David’s death and losing my memory and walking around homeless with a brain that won’t always help me. She wondered what he would say if she told him she’d just recovered a memory. She stood still while he approached her and handed her a business card. The name of the Austin paper was scratched out, a cell phone number and an e-mail address written in by hand. “If you change your mind,” he said.
“The sunlight hurts my head. Excuse me.” She walked across her front yard and up onto the porch.
She hesitated at the front door. She sensed the weight of Matteo Vasquez’s stare on her back. This was still her home, right? She shouldn’t have to ring the doorbell to go inside, although she knew that was what Mom would prefer. Mom would be annoyed with Jane if she just let herself in. But. But. This was Jane’s house, the one she had grown up in. She still had a key and she hoped it would work. She felt a brief terror that Mom might have changed the locks. She had threatened to before, saying, You’re living on the street, with a key and a driver’s license that could bring some street lunatic straight here? No! But the key worked. She opened the door. There was no ping-ping-ping of the alarm system; so Laurel Norton must be home. She glanced back at Vasquez, who stood by his car, digging through one of the duffel bags in the backseat, glancing up at her, watching her, hopeful.
Like a guy who needed a movie deal? What did “freelance” mean for him? He’d lost his job? She knew the guarded look of homelessness; was Matteo Vasquez living out of his car? He might be more desperate for a big story than ever.
She slammed the door.
“Mom?” She called. Loudly. “Mom?”
No answer.
“Mom?” she yelled up the stairs. No answer.
Jane wandered into the kitchen. She was thirsty. She poured herself a glass of water and drank it slowly. There wasn’t a lot of food in the refrigerator—half a casserole, a few half-full jars of condiments. Four bottles of white wine, chilled. That seemed a lot for a person living here on her own.
She spotted her mom’s Filofax on the kitchen counter. Laurel had always kept a paper calendar. She thought it more elegant than always tapping at a phone screen, “like a woodpecker,” as she once put it. Jane looked at today’s date. Mom had an appointment and she would be back in an hour. The handwriting was neat and small. She flipped through the previous few weeks and the approaching weeks. Her mother had a few business appointments, usually marked with initials of the person she was meeting. In addition to writing her mom blog, she had run a charity for the past several years, helping deserving students overseas get needed books and supplies. Jane wondered exactly how much money her mom had raised. When she had been a volunteer supreme at Lakehaven’s schools, she’d been very good at getting people to donate money.
She went into her mother’s home office. Once, before everything fell apart, when her blog was getting nearly two hundred thousand unique visitors a month, it had been featured in an Austin design magazine. The antique desk gleamed. Books filled the bookshelf. There were very few papers on the desk; before, it was always full of file folders related to her volunteer work for the school district. Or she volunteered to help other charities. But Laurel didn’t seem to volunteer anymore. There had not been a single such entry in her carefully maintained calendar. Now there was only her charity.
Of course not. No one wants her around. You made sure of that when you crashed the car.
Jane opened the elegant wooden file drawer (Laurel Norton never would have had a metal file drawer in the house). The top drawer was full of printouts of her blog postings; she liked having a paper copy to read through when she wanted to revisit an article. Jane went through the drawers, and in the bottom one, stuffed at the back, was a file labeled Accident. It needed no further explanation. She felt a sickening sense of relief that it had been so easy to find. Initial news clippings, sparse on details, then “The Girl Who Doesn’t Remember” pieces by Matteo Vasquez. There was a sheaf of notes from the lawyer her mother retained when the Halls temporarily sued the Nortons (Cal Hall then dropped the lawsuit, suddenly, and at his lawyer’s advice settled immediately for the proceeds from the Nortons’ insurance company, with no punitive damages) and a set of medical reports and photos.
There were no transcripts of police interviews with Jane, because her mother had refused to allow them. As a minor, and under the protection of the Fifth Amendment, Jane could not be compelled to talk to the police. Not that she knew anything helpful to say to them anyway. There was also a complete file of Jane’s social-media postings, presumably pulled by lawyers for both the Halls and the Nortons, to assess whether or not Jane was suicidal or violent or lying about her amnesia, even though she was hardly on social media after the crash. She read through her scant postings before the crash: chatting with Kamala (who kept encouraging her to find a boyfriend), a few postings with Trevor and David about falling behind on a school group assignment, a single post with David about “working on their secret project.” Whatever that was—something for school, she guessed. No sign of depression, no drunken posts or selfies. No venting, no anger. Nothing to indicate she was thinking of taking her own life, or felt a desire to kill David Hall.
Jane took a fresh piece of paper from the drawer.
She wrote out a time line for Kevin from what she had been told, from the investigator’s reports and phone records, from the newspaper reporters who had talked to students at the high school and at least two people who had seen them out in Lakehaven that evening, and from the investigator’s more detailed notes of how the evening unfolded.
3:00—During our entrepreneurship class, where we had to turn in our phones for the class period, David passed me a note via Amari Bowman, who sat between us. I read the note and did not write a note back to him, but Amari, who was watching, saw me nod at him. I don’t know where this note is. After the crash, Amari told this to her parents, who then contacted the Halls. (This according to a note in the investigator’s file.)
4:05—School ends.
4:15—Trevor Blinn told police he saw David and me leave school together, in my car. He saw us walking to my car and he started to walk over to say hi to us but we appeared to be arguing or having an emotional discussion; this kept him at a distance. Before driving off in my car I apparently texted my mother from the car, telling her that I was studying with friends at the Lakehaven library and then going to a group study session for math, which I was having trouble with. These were both lies. Presumably whatever we were doing had to do with the note he passed me.
4:20—David texted his mother saying he was staying after school and playing basketball with a friend and then working with another friend on a science project, and would grab some dinner out. I don’t play basketball and we don’t have science together, so that was a lie.
4:30—Neither David nor I respond to after-school texts from Kamala Grayson. Kamala told the investigators that this was unusual.
6:00—David texted his mother that he was fine but might be late (not home until ten on a school night). He did not mention my name. Where we were for nearly the past two hours, I don’t know.
7:30—We ate dinner at Happy Taco off Old Travis, there was a cash receipt, time-stamped, found in my wallet. I paid for dinner. We ordered a taco plate, an enchilada plate, and two sodas. We sat in a back booth. Later the investigator got video from Happy Taco that showed us entering and then leaving shortly after 8 p.m. (Investigator took statement from HT manager Billy Sing.)
7:40—Kamala Grayson got a text from Amari Bowman (yes, same classmate from entrepreneurship) that David was with me at Happy Taco. The investigator had the texts in his report to the Halls:
David is here with Jane, they are sitting on the same side of the booth, whispering. Jane looks like she is crying. David is stroking her hair! WTH!
Kamala’s answer: I’m sure there’s a reasonable explanation. They’re old friends.
7:55—Kamala texts David: Babe what’s up?
7:58—He responds to Kamala: Nothing. Helping a friend with a project.
8:00—She responds: Not what I heard.
8:03—He responds: I’ll talk to you tomorrow.
8:04—She responds: No, David, we’ll talk now. You, Jane, Happy Taco?
8:06—He responds: Tell Amari I can see her texting you. Good night. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.
She attempted to phone him, leaving seven voice mails (the last at 9:00 p.m., he never responded).
8:10—David gets a text from Trevor Blinn: Hey what’s up? Need to talk to you.
David never responded to Trevor’s text. Trevor did not call back or text him again.
8:15—I text my mother that library has closed but I am going to study at Kamala’s house.
8:43—In David’s pocket there is a cash receipt, stamped with this time, indicating that we bought a crowbar at Tool Depot in Lakehaven. Crowbar not found in car. Why did we buy a crowbar and where did it go?
10:12—9-1-1 receives call regarding car crash. Police and ambulance dispatched. No one saw the actual crash, but a man named James Marcolin living on ridge above High Oaks Road heard it, wasn’t sure at first if it was a crash, and after several minutes went across street down the hill and found the car. Only two other houses along ridge above road—one neighbor out of town, other neighbor did not hear. David died at the scene, half in, half out of the car. I was still in the car, buckled in, unconscious.
Ambulance arrived and crash investigation team arrived, I was taken to hospital. My mother and the Halls arrived separately at the scene, then Mom went on to hospital. I remained in a coma four days.
Six hours. What had we done? Where had we gone? Jane thought. According to the paperwork: Eaten a tearful dinner, bought a crowbar. That left a lot of time. An hour and a half later we were in the crash, heading away from home, heading to nowhere.
She kept writing, mostly from the investigator’s report:
Items found at the scene: My phone, just outside the car, screen broken. David’s phone, in his pocket, neither phone was making a call at the time of the crash. Also found: backpacks from school, a folding stadium seat, reusable shopping bags, empty bottled waters, library book. Found next day: suicide note that looked to be my handwriting, along with loose change from tray in car, this was down from the crash site, not noticed during the night.
She thought there would be more. There wasn’t.
The roads were dry; conditions were fine for driving. That said, thirty-nine percent of the fatal auto accidents in Texas involved only one car. Thirteen hundred dead a year. Jane’s accident was in that large group.
The suicide note pretty much sealed the deal in terms of Lakehaven opinion.
The suicide note also meant people might well slam doors in her face. People weren’t just going to open up to her after two years. The case was closed. She would have to think about how to find out what she wanted.
She finished making her list of people to talk to: witnesses like Trevor Blinn; the lawyer for the Halls, Kip Evander; and his investigator, Randy Franklin. Maybe they could help her. They would likely say no, but she had a sudden urge for action.
She paged through the rest of the file. There were mostly printed e-mails from her mother’s lawyer, strategizing before the Halls surprisingly dropped their case. At the back of the file was a plastic bag, taped to the inside of the heavy manila cardboard of the file. She froze: It looked like there was blood along the edge of the paper. Brownish now, not red, folded so she couldn’t read what was on the paper. She pulled it free of the file and carefully unfolded it. It was very fine, thin paper torn along one edge, but not from a spiral notebook:
Meet me after school in the main parking lot. Don’t tell anyone. I need your help but it concerns us both. I’m in bad trouble. Will you help me?
It was in a plain, blocky, noncursive handwriting; like most kids their age, Jane and David hadn’t learned cursive, because they were on keyboards and screens so much, and his printing wasn’t so different from the penmanship of their earlier school days. Or hers, for a matter of fact.
I’m in bad trouble.
For a moment she stared at the note as if it was a bizarre artifact. The note David had passed to her in class? It must be. And it had blood on it…from the crash? Her blood?
How did her mother have this and why had she never shown it to her? Or to anyone?
It concerns us both. What did that mean? It was formal, but that was how David talked even when they were little, pleading his case to a teacher or coach. He was serious, thoughtful.
Jane folded the note back into the plastic sheeting.
She heard the garage door opening. Mom, home. She quickly tucked the plastic bag, with the note inside, into her front pocket and stuffed the file back into the drawer. She folded her time line and stuck it into her other front pocket.
She called, “Mom, I’m here,” as she walked from the office into the kitchen.
“Sweetheart!” Laurel Norton stood at the sink, tentatively sipping a glass of water. She was dressed in a stylish blouse and blazer and a pair of slacks, her hair immaculate, her makeup perfect. She set down the glass and hurried to Jane and gave her a gentle hug. Jane could hear the soft sniff of her mother, checking her for odor.
“I wanted to see you. Where were you?”
“I had a meeting for my charity. If you had called on that phone I pay for, I would have canceled it to be here.” Laurel intensified the hug, presumably to take the sting out of her words.
“Sorry,” Jane said. Laurel released her and studied her daughter’s face.
“Well,” Laurel said. “Are you here to stay?” She could hardly keep the tension, and the hope, out of her voice.
If Jane confronted her mother about this note, she might not get the car. And she needed the car. She wanted to ask, but she decided to play out the moment, see what happened, see if they could have a normal conversation. This would be good practice, she thought, for interrogating her witnesses.
“I told you I would call you if I didn’t have a safe place to sleep at night. But I do. OK?”
“OK. You appear to have a relationship with soap and shampoo, so I believe you.” Laurel ran a hand through her daughter’s hair.
“I agreed to help a psych grad student who is studying memory loss. He’s trying a more direct approach with me than the first therapists. I had a memory. One that I didn’t have before, of David and me walking home from high school. Maybe I’m starting to remember.” That was overselling it a bit, but there might be an advantage to her mother thinking she was getting better.
“Oh, honey.” Laurel sighed. “That’s wonderful.”
“That is not permission for you to write about it.”
Laurel managed to look hurt. “Baby, I’m taking a break from the blog. Who is this student?”
“His name is Kevin Ngota.”
“What kind of name is that?”
“He’s from England.”
“If you’re back in therapy, why not get an actual doctor instead of a student?”
“This is free. He’s writing a paper.”
“Just what we need, more articles written about you.” The irony was lost on the blogger. “But I hope he helps. Are you hungry?”
She was always hungry but a contrary tug in her chest made her say, “No.”
“You look skinny. Have you had lunch?”
“No.”
“Well, at least have a peanut butter sandwich.” Laurel turned to get the fixings from the pantry, not waiting for Jane to say yes or no to her offer.
“I can make my sandwich. I can make you one, too,” Jane said. It would be a nice thing to do, what with the lying she was doing right now.
“I’ll do it,” Laurel said. “Let Mama take care of you.”
Jane sat down. Laurel set down the sandwich and a glass of iced tea. Jane ate, and Laurel watched.
The price of the sandwich became clearer. “If you’re in therapy, then maybe you should consider, you know, a more permanent situation. With an assortment of actual doctors. And being off the street.”
“I don’t need a psychiatric hospital, Mom.”
“It’s not just the amnesia. It’s the depression. It’s the self-destructiveness.” Laurel raised a finger for each malady. Then she closed her hands and put them over Jane’s. “You could come home, be off the streets, or wherever on South Congress you are”—she had been monitoring the rideshares. “They could give you the help you need.” Jane waited for her to mention taking rideshares to the cemetery and High Oaks, but for once her mother decided not to say anything.
“I’m staying with a friend and you don’t need to worry about me.”
“Of course I worry. I want you home and safe, where I can watch you.”
The unsaid words: because you’re broken, damaged, aimless. Jane finished the sandwich. “You know my price.”
Laurel’s mouth twitched. “This is my home, our home, Jane, and I’m not selling it. The Halls can sell.” Jane could see her mother’s jaw shift into a teeth-gritting position.
There was nothing more to say. So Jane finished her sandwich. “When I was unconscious after the wreck and you were staying in the room with me, did I ever say anything, you know, while I was not conscious or asleep or anything?”
“Other than mentioning the deer?” The lie her mother would not let go of, even now.
“Anything about David being in danger?”
A pause. Laurel Norton’s mouth quivered slightly, then settled. “No, you said nothing more. Why do you ask?”
“For the new therapist. He asked me.” Little white lie number one.
“Well, I’m not sure what a good idea this grad-student therapy is.” Laurel air-quoted “grad student” and then folded her hands. “I want you to come home, please.”
I see a therapist, I make progress maybe, and suddenly she wants me home. Jane felt a shifting inside her chest.
“Mom. No. I can’t live next door to them. I don’t know how you bear it.”
“You don’t know what I’ve beared. Borne. Whatever the word is.”
“No, I guess I don’t,” Jane said. “Because I can’t live here with you while you stay here, and so I can’t be around you, and you don’t care about me enough to even find out where I’m living.”
Laurel said, “That’s so unfair. You know I care. It’s your choice not to come home. This house was what I have left of your father and you—the you that you were.” Her voice trailed off. “I’m sorry, Jane. I didn’t mean it that way.”
“I’ll go up to my room for a bit, then I’ll get out of your hair. Thanks for the sandwich.”
Her mother followed her up the stairs to the room, as if worried a memory might jump out and surprise her. She went into her room; it was clean, tidy, had been dusted, but was otherwise unchanged from when she had left it to go first to St. Michael’s, and then, when she flunked out and couldn’t bear living next to the Halls, out onto the streets. A stack of books at the bedside—last summer she had finally worked up the courage to read memoirs of people who had entirely lost their memories: a Texas housewife who had a ceiling fan fall on her head, an Arizona businessman who slipped in an office bathroom, and a Norwegian man who had fallen from a ladder. These seemed ludicrous ways to get a devastating amnesia, but they were heartbreakingly real. They never remembered anything from before their accidents. Sometimes their lives healed and their families stayed intact, other times they did not. She wondered how her story would end.
She sensed her mother follow her into the room. She nearly turned and asked her mother, Why do you have that note? Why didn’t you ever tell me? Do you know what kind of trouble David was in?
What if she knew and she had never told Jane? Why, to shield her? As if things could be worse. Laurel’s attempts to protect her—the lie about the deer running onto the road—had backfired badly.
“You see the room’s ready for you,” her mother said. “I want you to stay. Isn’t this a nicer option than a hospital? You can pretend the Halls aren’t next door. We’re all very good at avoiding each other.”
“I figured it out,” Jane said, turning to face her. “Something went out of you when Dad died. It died in you, too. And I guess you feel I’ve exceeded your amount of grief you expected to have in your life, and I’m sorry for that, but as much as I hate not having my life be what I thought it was going to be, I can’t stay here with you. I can’t live next door to the Halls. I’m sorry you’re choosing a house over me.” Burn it down, she thought. Burn the house down, then Mom would have to move. It was insane, but at times, the thought seemed to make perfect sense, and that frightened Jane.
She walked past her mother, and Laurel said, “I’ll give you money if you’ll go into that hospital. If you let them help you.”
“A hospital won’t fix me.”
“You’re depressed because you’re homeless,” Laurel said. “You won’t be homeless at a hospital. You could write your stories. I’d visit every day. You could get your life back on track.”
Jane pivoted the conversation. “You know what you could let me have? The Toyota.” It was a car she bought Jane when they were optimistic she would soon drive again. “I could use it right now.”
“For what?”
She didn’t want to explain herself or the Faceplace page. She didn’t want Mom looking at that.
“I thought, now that I have a place to stay, I might try to get a job. I would need a car.” The lie slipped out, so easy, so bold, and would surely be Laurel-approved.
“I sold the Toyota. We didn’t need it, what with you not driving and not living here.”
Great. Jane started down the stairs.
“You’re telling me a white lie, Jane. You’re not thinking about a job. Why do you need a car?”
Jane didn’t answer. She walked to the garage. Yes, there was only her mom’s aging red Volvo there.
“If you can’t get your head together, I’ll have to take action. Jane, I would have you committed rather than see you on the street.” Laurel said this to her back, iron in her voice.
Jane turned to face her. “You would really do that?”
“For your own good. No school will take you again until you’ve gotten your life back on track. What will you do without an education? You’re one hit off a crack pipe from turning into a street whore or a druggie or I don’t know what.” She stopped as if aware she’d taken a step too far.
“The vote of confidence is inspiring.” She went out the front door. She wanted the fresh air. Matteo Vasquez was gone, and she wondered for a moment if her mother had seen him, sitting in his car. She thought not. Mom would have mentioned it.
“Jane?” her mother called to her.
“What?”
“I love you. Please don’t go. Please.” But she didn’t step forward, she didn’t chase Jane down the driveway to embrace her. “Everything I’ve done. Or am doing. Is to protect you.”
Doing? “I love you, too, Mom, I really do,” she said. But she thought: I don’t trust you.
David’s note meant something. It had to, tucked away, protected, preserved. She wasn’t ready to tell her mother she had it. Perhaps it could be leverage with the people on her list. A passport, of sorts. David had been in trouble and she meant to find out what kind of trouble it was.