Savage Lane (30 page)

“You didn’t do
everything
.”

Her dad was still staring at the TV. He waited, the way he always did when he was trying not to get angry, then he said, “What do you mean?”

“You can call your girlfriend,” Riley said, “ask her where Mom is.”

On “is” he lost it and flung the remote at the TV, smashing the screen, and screamed, “Shut the fuck up!”

Riley had never heard her dad scream so loud at her, or his face get so red. She seriously thought he was going to have a stroke. She didn’t care, though. He was so mean, such an asshole.

“I hate you so much!” she yelled, crying so hard she could barely breathe as she ran upstairs.

Justin had found the joysticks and was playing Xbox again. What was wrong with her family? Why was everybody acting so cold and insane? Didn’t they even
care
?

Whatever, she couldn’t deal. In her room she was still crying when Elana FaceTimed her.

“Is she home yet?” Elana asked.

“No,” Riley said. “Why do you think I look like
this
?”

“Did she call or text?”

“No, and can you stop asking questions?”

“Sorry,” Elana said. “I’m freaking too and my mom’s so upset. Why did you run off the bus?”

“What?” Riley asked, distracted, thinking about Karen. Yeah, right, she was upset. It was all just an act.

“Why didn’t you walk home with me?” Elana asked.

“I don’t know. I just wanted to get away from everybody.”

“I know, it was so bad, everybody reading about our moms on their phones, and now it’s worse.”

“Worse?”

“Did you go on Facebook yet?

“No,” Riley said.

“Don’t,” Elana said. “People are such assholes. I’m serious. I unfriended like ten people before. Okay, maybe not ten, but I unfriended people. They posted that video and they’re laughing about it, making jokes. They said our moms should be, like, mud wrestlers. I unfriended Hannah Goldstein. She was so mean, saying that my mom and your dad were having an affair, and they were planning to elope together, and that my mom… I can’t even say it. It’s so horrible, I hate these people so much.”

Riley hated looking at Elana on FaceTime right now, because she reminded her of Karen. They had the same hair, the same shaped mouth.

“I think it’s true,” Riley said.

“What’s true?” Elana seemed confused.

“What everybody’s saying,” Riley said.

“Saying about them having an affair?”

“No, what they’re saying about
everything
. I think it’s
all
true.”

Riley and Elana had known each other for years and, like a lot of best friends, knew each other’s thoughts.

“Oh my God, I can’t believe you think that,” Elana said.

“My mom’s gone,” Riley said. “If your mom didn’t do something to her, then where is she?”

Crying, Elana said, “Oh my God, you too? I can’t… I can’t take this anymore.”

“They had a fight at the club,” Riley said. “Your mom threatened my mom. Everybody saw it, it’s so obvious, it’s on
video
. Stop crying, stop being such a baby, and go ask your mom what she did. Maybe my mom’s still alive. Maybe the cops can still save her. Maybe—”

Elana cut off and the home screen appeared.

“Ask her!” Riley screamed at the phone. “Fucking ask her!”

Then she tossed the phone away onto her Foof. Sobbing again, she hated Elana so much and didn’t see how they could ever be friends again. She hated her father and her brother and all her friends—she hated everybody. She wanted to go online and take down her Facebook. Worse, she just wanted to crawl into a hole and disappear. Or not just disappear—die. She wanted to die.

“Where are you, Mom?” she said, her lips quivering so much it was hard to speak. “Where
are
you?”

M
ARK KNEW
what he had to do next. He’d been kidding himself, in denial, hoping that Deb would show up after being missing for two full days, that there would be some miracle explanation for all of this besides the obvious one. He didn’t want to believe it, but staying in denial was causing his family pain, hurting his relationship with his daughter, and he needed things to return to normal for his own sanity, if nothing else.

Karen had said she would stop by after school today, but she hadn’t shown. Was she avoiding him for a reason? He needed to talk to her in person, to get some clarity.

“Going out for a few!” he called out near the staircase, but he didn’t wait for a response from Riley or Justin. When he left the house, several reporters there asked him questions—“Have you heard from your wife yet?” “How are you and your family holding up?” There were others, but Mark blocked out the noise, waving the reporters off, waving his arms in front of his chest. Near Karen’s house there were more reporters gathered, but he ignored them and approached the front door, noticing that her car was in the driveway. So she’d returned from school as he’d suspected, but hadn’t contacted him or come over to his house.

Hmm.

Figuring she wouldn’t answer if he rang the bell, he texted her:
I’m outside lemme in
. About a moment later the door opened just wide enough for him to slip inside.

Standing face to face with her, he was convinced she was hiding something.

“Have you heard from her?” she asked.

“No,” he said.

“Shit,” she said. “I wish there was something I could do. I’m so, so sorry.”

This sounded sincere, but it could be an act.

“What’re you sorry for?” He was examining her closely, looking for a sign of guilt. A “tell” they called it in poker.

“That you have to go through all this,” she said. “What else would I be sorry for? ...And why are you staring at me like that?”

“Nothing,” Mark said, noticing that she was blinking a lot. Was that the tell?

“How are you?” she asked. “How are your children?”

“How do you think?” he said.

“It’s so awful,” she said. “And I’m so, so sorry.”

Was all of this a sort of confession? Was she showing remorse? Maybe it was a mistake to give her the benefit of the doubt before, telling her he believed she was innocent when there was so much obvious evidence against her.

“You don’t look good,” she added. “Come in, sit down.”

“I’m fine right here.”

“Are you mad at me?”

If she were guilty and asking this, she was a total psycho.

“Sorry I didn’t come by before,” she said. “I was planning to call you later. I just had such an awful, awful day. I couldn’t deal with talking about it. People at work are thinking horrible things about me, and a detective came to talk to me at school. It was the most humiliating experience of my life.”

“Why?” Mark asked.

“Why?” Karen was pretending to be confused.

“Yeah, why?”

“Why what?” She was squinting. “Are you sure you’re okay? You’re acting really weird. You’re scaring me, Mark.”

He wanted to hate her. After all, this was the woman who may have killed his wife, his children’s mother, who may have ruined his entire life. But it was hard to see her for what she was—a calculating, cold-blooded murderer—when he couldn’t deny that she was still the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen.

“You killed her, didn’t you?” He didn’t mean to say this; it had slipped out.

Karen’s eyes widened and now
she
was the one not blinking. “Excuse me?”

“Please,” Mark said, “just tell me why.”

She backed away a few steps and it occurred to Mark that she might try to kill him too. If she felt threatened, thought he was going to blow the whole thing for her, why wouldn’t she try to take him out? It seemed crazy that she’d try something like that with her kids at home, but maybe that didn’t matter to her.

“You,” she said softly. “You really… believe this.”

“Well, I’m just telling you how it seems.”

“What about what you said before? About how you don’t believe what people are saying? How you’re on my side?”

“I see it differently now,” Mark said, looking at her face, but also watching her hands closely to make sure she didn’t suddenly reach for a weapon. “Come on, you can be honest with me. Everybody saw you at the country club, fighting with Deb, and they know what was going on with us. It’s only a matter of time till the cops find out the truth about what happened.”

“I thought you were crazy before,” Karen said. “I thought it was a midlife crisis or something, a delusion. But it’s more than that, isn’t it? You’re officially out of your mind.”

“Why couldn’t you wait?” Mark said. “Deb and I were splitting up. You would’ve had me anyway. But instead you had to
kill
her?”

She didn’t answer; he could tell her mind was churning. Was she going to confess? Say it was a crime of passion? Would she explain how she’d done it? Give all the gruesome details? Or maybe she’d kiss him, beg for forgiveness, finally admit how in love she was with him and how she’d killed Deb in a jealous rage. It was so Romeo and Juliet—even though Mark wasn’t sure what the plot of Romeo and Juliet was, he knew it was like that. He wouldn’t forgive her, of course, he
couldn’t
now, she’d gone way too far, but he wouldn’t mind being kissed by her. He’d been waiting so long, had so many fantasies, he just wanted to finally experience what it was like to kiss her, even if it was right before she went off to spend the rest of her life in jail for murdering his wife.

He may have even pursed his lips a little, waiting for her lean in for the big moment, and was actually surprised when he heard her saying, “I really don’t know why you’re doing this and, honestly, I really don’t care. If you want to live in fantasy land, live in fantasy land. Be my guest. But we both know that nothing was going on with us,
ever
, and you have to go outside right now and tell the reporters that and call the police and tell them too. Maybe I was a little too friendly with you, maybe some people got the wrong idea, but I didn’t
do
anything. If you care about me at all, you’ll call the police right now and tell them the truth and put an end to this fucking bullshit.”

Mark wished he could feel sorry for her. She was still playing the role, pretending to be innocent. She was so far gone, so deep in love, that she had totally lost touch with reality.

“I want you to be honest with me about something,” Mark said. “Did your love for me drive you crazy? Is that why you were so cold and distant yesterday, because you felt guilty? Were you holding your love in, the way I’ve been holding it in for years, and it suddenly burst out? Not the love, the emotion, the violence. Is that why you did it? Is that why you killed her?”

Karen was shaking her head. “You’re horrible,” she said. “You’re a fucking monster.”

“Look who’s talking,” Mark said.

“Get the fuck out of my house.”

Karen had opened the door and was pushing Mark outside onto the porch. As the door slammed, reporters swarmed him, shouting questions. He wasn’t sure if he couldn’t understand what they were saying, or he was just too overwhelmed. He heard the names “Deborah” and “Karen” but the rest sounded like noise. He couldn’t believe this was actually happening, that it had come down to this, but it had.

He’d officially lost her.