The Forgotten Girl (30 page)

Jason pulled into Regan’s driveway just after midnight. A single light burned in the front window, illuminating the closed sheer curtains. When Jason stepped out of the car and started up the driveway, he heard a neighbor’s dog bark, a sharp, staccato call in the night. Then someone hushed the dog through an open window, and the night grew silent again.

He tapped on the front door. The lighted curtain moved, her familiar face pressing against the window. Jason waved, and when he did, he saw the hesitation in Regan’s movement. She remained frozen behind the pane of glass for a moment, as though contemplating whether she wanted to let him in. Then she let the curtain fall, obscuring her face, and the locks untumbled behind the door. Regan revealed herself, still dressed from work apparently, and stepped back, letting Jason come inside. She didn’t say anything by way of a greeting. She pointed toward a sitting area off the foyer, a small room with bookshelves, a desk, and two comfortable chairs. Jason went in. Between the two chairs sat an end table, and on the table an open bottle of wine and a half-full glass.

“Would you like one?” Regan asked.

“Do you have any whiskey?”

“Sure.”

Regan stepped away. Jason settled into one of the chairs, the one closest to the door. He looked around the room, taking in the books and the neatness of the desk. Regan came back with a short glass half-filled with amber liquid. In her other hand she carried a bottle of bourbon and another small glass.

“I didn’t know if you wanted ice.”

“This is fine,” he said.

She put the extra glass down on the table and poured a shot. “I’m switching now,” she said. “Wine before liquor, never sicker? Did we have a saying for that in high school?”

“We didn’t drink wine in high school.”

“Right.” She sat down and sipped from the glass. “Something’s happening, isn’t it?”

“A lot of somethings.”

“I had a feeling. I don’t know why. I couldn’t sleep. The kids are at Tim’s house. I just got back from dropping them off, so it doesn’t matter if I want to sit up and sip some wine or liquor with an old friend.”

“Jesse Dean is dead. And Derrick is in custody. He’s facing a lot of heat.”

The hand holding Regan’s glass started to tremble. Her knuckles turned white as she tightened her grip. “You’re not beating around the bush with the bad news,” she said, her voice closer to a whisper.

Jason swallowed the bourbon, felt its pleasant burn down his throat. “I decided to be direct. Does it bother you that Jesse Dean is dead and Derrick’s in jail?”

Regan’s eyes slid toward Jason. “Shouldn’t it? Should I not be bothered if someone died or got in trouble?”

“Jesse Dean was a common criminal. Derrick is my brother-in-law, ex-brother-in-law, and the . . . the father of my niece. But you barely knew them. People die every day, don’t they?” Jason waited for a response and didn’t get one. He finished the liquor in his glass and reached out and poured more. He held the bottle up toward Regan, but she shook her head. “Why do you care about these two unless you have some special connection with them? You were just talking to Jesse Dean. They were talking about you out at that cabin in the woods where they were holding Hayden.”

As Jason spoke, Regan lowered her head, staring into her own glass, but at the mention of Hayden’s name, she perked up. “Is Hayden okay?”

“She is. She’s at my house with Sierra and Nora. But she said those guys talked about you a lot. And it was Hayden who was covering for them all those years after they killed Logan. Yes, I know they killed Logan. And Hayden knows. What I don’t know is why, and I have a feeling you do.” He paused a moment, preparing himself. A thought raced through his mind:
Do I really want to know?
“What happened that night, Regan? Why did Jesse Dean and Derrick kill Logan on the Bluff?”

Regan finished what was in her glass, and she reached out and poured another, the tip of the bottle clinking against the glass. She swallowed that one and sat quiet for a moment.

“You know, right?” Jason asked. “You can tell me finally?”

“I can,” she said. “After Logan fought with you over me, he came back. He found me again in the woods. I’d wandered down the trail a little bit, just clearing my head. I was worried about you and about him. And, to be perfectly honest, I was feeling a little . . . I don’t know, nostalgic, I guess. I started thinking
about graduating from high school and the changes that were coming whether I was ready for them or not. You were going away. I was going to school right here. It just seemed like . . . a door was closing on a lot of things. And after I turned Logan down, and he went to find you, it seemed like that door might stay shut forever.”

Regan picked up her glass again, but there was nothing in it to drink. She tilted it and examined the drop that remained in the bottom before she drank it away.

“Logan was upset. I could tell he was angry, and it looked like he’d been crying. He had a little scrape on his forehead as well. Do you remember it that way?”

“I know he was upset.”

Jason remembered the final punch. He held his glass in two hands and looked down at his knuckles.

“When he found me, he asked me the same thing he had asked me before. He said he wanted to be with me and would I run off with him. I told him that my answer hadn’t changed in the thirty minutes since he had last talked to me. I guess I was a little flip. I could be that way when I was a teenager.” She almost smiled. She uncrossed her legs and scooted forward in her chair. She reached for the bourbon bottle and unscrewed the cap. “If I have another one of these, I may have to use a sick day at work.”

“I’m sorry,” Jason said.

“For what?”

“That you have to tell me whatever it is you’re about to tell me.”

“I’ve wanted to tell you for years,” she said. “You deserve to know. And I deserve to get to tell you.” She poured the drink and recapped the bottle. “There was something different about Logan when he came back that night. He was crying, yes, but he
also seemed angry. Silly me, I thought I could calm him down. I thought that I could just talk to a guy like that, reasonably, and things would be okay. We were friends after all, right? He’d listen to me. He’d see me as a human being.” Regan’s voice rose as she spoke, and she seemed to make an effort to control her tone. “I’m sorry,” she said.

“It’s okay.”

“I sat down with him,” she said. “There was a log there, and we sat. And I took his hand. And I told him he needed to relax.” She swallowed. “He tried to kiss me. It was awkward. He leaned in and came right at my mouth, and I pulled away and put my hand up. He didn’t come in gently or romantically. It was aggressive, almost like he wanted to bite me or something. I pushed him back, and he came at me again. He grabbed my arm.” She pointed to her wrist. “Here. I’d never been afraid of Logan. I’d never really been afraid of any guy. But I was afraid that night. Really afraid. He seemed like he was possessed.”

As Regan told the story, she stopped looking at Jason. She stared into the room, at a fixed point somewhere in the air. But Jason knew she was seeing the events of that night playing out in her mind’s eye.

“It’s been so long, and things happened so fast, it’s hard to say exactly how it all unfolded. What I do know is that I ended up on the ground. He wrestled me off the log, and I was on my back. I felt the rocks and twigs and things pressing against my skin through my shirt. I remember that clearly, how freaking uncomfortable it was on the ground. And when he got on top of me, it hurt even more because his weight pressed me into the dirt with more force.”

An icy, churning sickness welled up inside Jason. Against his will, he pictured the scene. He also thought of all the women he
knew—Hayden, Sierra, Nora. He took a drink, but the burning was no longer pleasant. He gagged and had to swallow back hard.

“I felt my clothes tear. I felt his hands moving below my waist. I tried to fight him off, but he was a strong fucker. I just couldn’t stop him. My underwear tore, and his hands went down there.”

“Did you scream?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know if I could. Have you ever had one of those dreams where you’re terrified, just terrified about whatever is happening, but when you open your mouth to make a noise, nothing comes out? That’s what it felt like to me. I couldn’t make a sound. Or, if I did, I didn’t know I was making it.”

“I’m sorry.”

“His finger. I was a virgin then, as you could probably guess. I’d never really been with a guy in a real way. His finger. It hurt. I remember that.” She sighed and looked at Jason. “And then suddenly the weight was off of me. Whatever Logan was doing or trying to do stopped, and his body was off of mine. I thought he’d just fallen or lost his balance. I thought he was going to get right back on before I could scramble away.” She paused. “But then I saw that someone else was by us. Derrick had ahold of Logan and wrestled him off of me. And Jesse Dean was standing right there watching.”

“I remember the look on Jesse Dean’s face,” Regan said. “He looked almost pleased, like he was happy to be there, watching this happen.”

“Happy to be watching you or watching Logan?”

“I don’t know. Both. He just seemed to have a look on his face that said this was exactly where he wanted to be.” She ran her hands up and down her upper arms as though she was cold. “I rolled away. Derrick had Logan on the ground and held on to him. While that was happening, I . . . pulled my clothes back on and buckled my pants. When I got home that night, I found the blood. It was kind of a mess. But I didn’t notice it then, I don’t think. I was so relieved and scared at the same time.”

“I would guess so.”

“Eventually Logan was standing up. I thought Jesse Dean was going to jump all over him, but he didn’t. They just stood there staring at each other. That was the scariest part of the whole thing for me, that long moment when the three of them faced off that way. Do you know why?” She sighed again. “I really thought they were in it together, that Derrick and Jesse Dean were going to join with Logan and finish what he started. I was
going to run, just get out of there. That’s when Logan started mouthing off to Jesse Dean.”

“What did he say?”

“Again, I don’t remember all of it. Logan told them to leave him alone. And I know Derrick said something like, ‘You can’t get it on your own, so you have to force a girl this way.’ Jesse Dean didn’t say much. He was quiet while Derrick and Logan argued with each other. But I do remember the last thing Logan said to Jesse Dean. He said something about Jesse Dean failing two grades and how pathetic it was that he was always hanging around where the high school kids were. He made fun of the trashy little house that Jesse Dean lived in. He was lashing out, being nasty and cutting.”

“He could be that way. I’ve seen it.”

“It happened so fast, Jason. I wasn’t even sure what was going on. I thought they were just wrestling. It almost seemed playful. They were both on top of Logan. Jesse Dean raised his fist three times and brought it down three times. Just like that. Bam bam bam. Three fast, hard punches. Then Derrick was pushing Jesse Dean back, away from Logan. And Jesse Dean kept trying to get at him.”

Jason could imagine it. He remembered the quick, savage beating he had seen Jesse Dean give Brad Barnes at that party all those years ago and all over some minor slight—a jostled beer, a bumped arm. What would he do if a rich kid insulted him over his lack of brains and station in the world?

“Jesse Dean killed him,” Jason said. “Just like that.”

“Derrick eventually got Jesse Dean away, and it was Derrick who bent over the body, over Logan, and checked him out. He was dead. Derrick figured it out right away.”

“They were defending you. They should have called the police.”

The look Regan gave to Jason told him all about the foolishness of his statement. “People like Jesse Dean don’t call the police apparently. Believe me, I suggested that right away. Derrick might have suggested it too, although not as forcefully as I did. Jesse Dean had already been arrested twice, he said. He was on probation. He asked me a question that night, one I’ll never forget. He said, ‘Who do you think they’re going to believe? Me, a guy with a record, or some rich kid with a rich father?’ I understood what he meant. I believed it. They were defending me. They saved me from God knows what else. But how would the whole situation have looked? Jesse Dean killed Logan. Mostly Jesse Dean, but Derrick was there. The whole town thought of Jesse Dean as a thug, a criminal. We all did.”

“You’re right.”

Regan looked at that distant spot in the room again. “And I would have had to tell the police about it. Maybe I would have had to go to court and testify. I don’t—” She kept looking at that distant spot, but her words felt more intensely directed at Jason. “It was embarrassing. I know I shouldn’t have been embarrassed. I know it wasn’t my fault. But still . . . and, to be honest, I thought about you. I thought about the fact that you would hear what happened to me, what you might think about me.”

“You shouldn’t—”

“I did, though. I’m not telling you this to make you feel bad. I’m just telling you everything that went through my mind that night. And why things ended up happening the way they did.”

“Why
did
things happen the way they did?”

“What do you mean?”

“What happened to Logan that night that he acted that way? He seemed . . . like he’d reached some breaking point. He acted like he wanted to throw everything away.”

“He had that streak in him. He always talked about leaving.”

“But that night? So suddenly and so crazily? Why did it happen then?”

“I don’t know.”

Jason became aware of the muscles in his legs and back. They had been clenched, and he’d barely moved for several minutes. He didn’t want to stretch or stand up. He feared he’d break the spell they were under, the one that allowed the truth of that night to finally come out.

Regan said, “So they buried him out there. Jesse Dean and Derrick. I was in a fog while it happened. I just sat there in the woods, alone, while they went off and did what they had to do. And when they came back, Jesse Dean stood over me. He told me that they weren’t going to tell anyone what happened if I didn’t. And if I did say anything . . .”

“Did he threaten you?”

“He didn’t. Not exactly. He said that if I told, he’d claim I asked them to kill Logan. Even then, sitting there in the middle of the woods, I knew that wasn’t a real threat. If the police wouldn’t listen to them about what they did to Logan, why would they listen to them about anything else, right? I could have told the truth, and the police would have believed me. I had bloody underwear to show them. No, Jesse Dean didn’t have to threaten me. I wanted it to go away, to stay buried out there. I told the truth to the police when I told them that Logan said he wanted to run away. That’s not a lie. He always did say that. It’s funny the little things I remember from that night.”

“What do you mean?”

“I dropped my purse. In the middle of Logan’s . . . attack and the aftermath, I left my purse lying up there. Jesse Dean saw it and gave it to me. I’ll never forget that. Jesse Dean Pratt had just killed a guy, but he took the time to hand me my purse. My sunglasses weren’t there. I never got them back. For all I know they’re still up in the woods on the Bluff. Anyway, I don’t know when Hayden got involved. I heard there were letters and cards sent to Mr. Shaw, but I didn’t know who was writing them. I figured Jesse Dean was behind it somehow.”

Jason stood up. His body felt like a coiled spring, and he finally needed to stand and walk around the room a little bit. He heard the cap on the bourbon bottle being unscrewed, the sloshing of liquid into a glass. He’d never seen Logan clearly. Logan had always stood above him, loomed over him really, and Jason managed always to make excuses for his callous and snobby behavior. Not only had Jason not seen Logan clearly, but he simply hadn’t known him. Jason had spent the past twenty-seven years carrying around the memory of someone who never really existed. That memory was as dead as the body buried out in the woods.

Jason turned around. “I think you have a problem.”

“What?”

“The police know that Hayden was involved.”

“So?”

“Even if she doesn’t know why they killed Logan, she knows that they did it. And she wrote those letters. She heard them discussing you out at the cabin. Do you see? The police are going to come and talk to you. They’re going to want to know about your involvement, and you’re going to have to tell them.”

“I don’t care if they know at this point. I guess my kids will find out. I always thought I’d tell them when they were old enough. They might as well understand the ways of the world.”

“But the police could still think
you
were involved. They could say you were involved, that you covered up a crime.”

Regan closed her eyes. She looked like she was praying, her head slightly bowed. “What you’re saying is that I could get into trouble because there isn’t anyone to corroborate my story. Jesse Dean and Logan are all dead. Derrick is in enough trouble himself.”

“Right. And those guys . . . they may be miscreants, but their families . . . Everybody is going to think they’re guilty. That’s what the police will conclude based on their records and reputations.” Jason sighed. “Sierra is going to hear these things about her dad.”

Regan opened her eyes after a moment and said, “What if I were to tell you that there is someone who can corroborate my story? Someone I told all about this right after it happened?”