The Forgotten Girl (31 page)

Jason woke in a chair. His neck hurt from the way his head hung while he slept, and his brain hurt from the whiskey. Someone—Regan—had draped a blanket over him, and when he sat up, it fell down his body and pooled at his feet.

“Shit.”

He checked his phone. Two missed calls and texts from Nora. He called her immediately. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I should have called sooner, but I fell asleep.”

“It’s okay.” Nora didn’t sound convinced, but she was trying to be agreeable. “Hayden explained some things to me last night. She said she thought you might be out for a while.”

“I have one more stop to make this morning, and then it’s home.”

“Okay.” She paused. “I hope this is the end of all of this. It should be, shouldn’t it?”

“I think so.”

“You know the police are looking for
you
. Detective Olsen already called here once.”

“I know. I’ll get back to him in a little bit.”

“He said he was coming over to talk with Hayden and Sierra. I got the feeling Hayden might be in some kind of trouble. I’m
sure they’ll be happy to see you when you get back. Especially Sierra. She’s worried about her dad.”

“Is she okay?”

“She’s okay. I think she had a long night, but Hayden was with her the whole time. She’s a good mother.”

“She is. I know. I’m just trying to find out some last pieces of information.”

“Should I tell the police where you are or what you’re doing?”

Jason stood, trying to work the kinks out of his body. “No,” he said. “They’ll know soon enough.”

“I like living here,” Nora said. “But I like it because you’re here. I don’t want to lose that.”

“I’ll be careful. I promise.”

*   *   *

On the way, after he and Regan had mostly been riding in silence, Jason felt compelled to say something to her he’d been meaning to say since the night before.

“I’m sorry about what happened to you. With Logan.”

“It’s okay.”

“I’ve been talking to you about him a lot over the past couple of weeks. Ever since Colton came to me and brought him up again. I didn’t know that every time I mentioned his name, I was dredging up some awful memory.”

She reached out and patted his hand. “You didn’t know.” She stared out the window as he drove. “It made me angry sometimes. I blamed you, and you didn’t know. It’s why I said you needed to stop idolizing Logan. He wasn’t who you thought he was. He wasn’t who any of us thought he was.”

“You just knew sooner than most.”

A sign on the side of the road told them they had crossed into Barker County.

*   *   *

They entered a middle-class neighborhood. The houses were postwar construction, mostly ranches with neatly manicured lawns. They passed by two joggers, a healthy, smiling couple who waved without missing a step. Regan’s phone told them where to go in search of the address they found in the phone book.

“It’s up there on the right.”

They eased to a stop in front of the house. It was yellow brick with a large picture window across the front. Brightly colored perennials filled several planters on the porch.

“It’s a nice house,” Regan said.

“Not as nice as she could have been living in.”

“Should we have called her first?” Regan asked.

“This is fine.”

“Should we have called the police?”

“I’ve thought about that the whole way. I don’t think so. She’s old. Let’s make sure she still remembers what we need her to remember. And let’s make sure she’s willing to repeat the story to Olsen. If she is, she can really help Derrick. And everybody.”

“Wouldn’t Olsen have already been here? When they found Logan’s body?”

“I’m sure he was,” Jason said. “But if she hears from you, that might make her more willing to talk now. Right?”

Regan nodded and opened her door. Jason came around the front of the car, anticipation building in his chest. He took a deep breath, and when he came beside Regan, the two of them walked up to the house
together.

The woman who opened the door wore her gray hair in a short, sensible fashion. She was thin and wore a plain white button-down shirt and large glasses. She looked at the two faces before her, moving her head a little from side to side as she studied them. It didn’t take her long to smile when the recognition passed through her brain.

“Oh,” she said. “Well.”

“Mrs. Shaw?” Regan said. “I mean, Mrs. Tyndal? Do you remember us?”

“Of course I do. Of course.” She blinked her eyes. “This is a surprise. But not really surprising, I guess. It’s always good to see old friends.”

Jason stared at the woman. He hadn’t seen her in . . . he couldn’t even guess how long. He saw the familiar face from his childhood beneath the wrinkles and the years. He held few memories of her. More than anything else, he remembered this woman as a series of impressions, most of them taken in at a distance. He saw her at a few of the baseball games he and Logan played at the Little League park in town. He saw her driving away from the Shaw house, waving as she went up the street. And he remembered seeing her at their high school graduation,
standing near the back of the crowded gymnasium with a man by her side who must have been her new husband. He tried to reconcile her kindly appearance with the monstrous story Colton shared. Had this woman thrown her young son down a flight of stairs in a drunken rage?

“We’re sorry we didn’t call,” Regan said. “But we needed to talk to you.”

The woman turned her gaze on Jason. She continued to smile, but it appeared to be coming with more of an effort. “Jason,” she said, but she didn’t say anything else. And Jason didn’t know what to say in response. He averted his eyes, looking to his left and off at the house next door, another ranch with another nice yard. “Well,” she said. “Come in. Please.”

They entered the living room. A thick carpet covered the floor, muffling their steps and giving everything a hush. The room was spotless, the walls white. Mrs. Tyndal pointed to the sofa, and he and Regan sat side by side while Mrs. Tyndal brushed at her short hair with her hand and settled into an overstuffed chair. She crossed her legs and placed her hands in her lap. Before she could say anything, an elderly man appeared in the doorway that led to the kitchen. He wore long shorts and a polo shirt and carried a newspaper. He took in the scene without speaking.

“Andrew?” Mrs. Tyndal said. “These are friends of mine from Ednaville.”

He looked in their direction but still didn’t speak.

“They’re friends of Logan. My son, Logan? Remember?”

The man nodded slowly and then turned and walked back into the kitchen. Mrs. Tyndal kept a smile plastered to her face when she turned back to Regan and Jason. “Andrew is a little . . . slower these days. He forgets some things.”

“That’s okay,” Regan said.

“Yes,” Mrs. Tyndal said. “Forgetting has its benefits.” She looked over at Jason. “You know, Jason, I read about your parents’ deaths in the newspaper. I meant to send you a card each time, but I didn’t know where you were living. Apparently, you’ve been back here in Ohio for a while.”

“About five years.”

“Home is a draw, isn’t it?”

“To some extent, yes.” Jason cleared his throat. “I was going to tell you how sorry I am about Logan, but I guess it wasn’t a surprise to you that he was dead.”

Mrs. Tyndal rubbed at a thick, arthritic knuckle. “I should tell you how sorry I am for you. The two of you were close, and I know you went through some difficult times when Logan . . . when everyone was wondering where he was. Believe me, I’m sorry about that.”

“And I’m sorry too,” Regan said. “For that.”

“It’s okay,” Jason said. “I think I understand why things happened the way they did. At least from Regan’s point of view.”

“But now you want to know my side of things,” Mrs. Tyndal said. “You want to know why a mother would find out that her son had been killed and not do anything about it? Is that right?”

“Yes,” Jason said.

“It’s no surprise that I’ve asked myself that question on more than one occasion over the years. More than one.” She looked over at Regan. “But it’s not really my decision to tell that story now. I can only tell it if it’s okay with Regan. And since you’re here together, I suspect it is.”

“It is,” Regan said. “I already told him most of it. We just need you to confirm it. And, if that’s okay with you, confirm it with the police. They’re going to need to know that I told you
these things back then, right after Logan died. They’re going to need someone to verify my story. Jason’s brother-in-law, Derrick, is in some trouble. It would help to have someone to back up the story I have to tell.”

Mrs. Tyndal nodded her head slowly. As Jason watched her, he could imagine that in her mind she was traveling back all those years to a moment just a few days after their high school graduation, a day when Regan came to her apartment in Ednaville and told her a story about her son—

“The police had already been to see me,” Mrs. Tyndal said. “When Logan didn’t come home after graduation, they came and asked questions. His father called as well. He was angry, of course. Suspicious. He assumed I had Logan at my apartment, hiding him out or something. I told them all the truth at that time—I had no idea where Logan was or where he had gone.”

“That was the truth,” Regan said. “Until I came to see you.”

“When you knocked on my door, I knew you were going to tell me something about Logan. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know. Either you were going to tell me what happened to him, which I probably didn’t want to hear. Or you were going to tell me something he’d done. I thought that might even be worse.”

“Did you expect her to tell you he was dead?” Jason asked.

“No.” She lifted her hand and placed it against her chest. “I wasn’t ready for that.” She looked over at Regan. “You saw me that day. I was devastated.”

“You were.”

“I wanted to crawl in the floor and never come out. That was my child, my only child. And he was gone.” She was still looking at Regan. Intently. “You’re a mother. You know.”

“I can’t imagine,” Regan said.

“But when Regan told me the how and the why of all of it, I
understood a lot more. At first, I didn’t want to believe it. I didn’t want to hear those stories about my son, and I wanted to accuse you of lying. But I couldn’t hide from what I really knew. I realized how something like that could happen.”

“Why did you agree to keep quiet about it?” Jason asked. “I guess that’s the thing I don’t really get. And I’m not sure Regan has helped me understand either. Your son was killed. He was doing something awful, something terrible, but that doesn’t mean a mother would think he deserved to be killed. Does it?”

“Not deserved,” Mrs. Tyndal said. “I certainly wouldn’t say he
deserved
to be killed. But I could understand how it happened. Those young men were protecting Regan.”

“Okay, but wouldn’t you want the truth to come out about all of it? Wouldn’t you want the world to know that Logan wasn’t alive? That he hadn’t just run off somewhere? People were going to think he was living the high life somewhere. . . . That’s what I thought. I thought he’d turned his back on everything.”

“You mean he turned his back on everyone?” Mrs. Tyndal asked.

Jason didn’t answer right away. Regan turned her head a little and gave Jason an encouraging look.

“Yes, everyone,” Jason said.

“I had to think about two things,” Mrs. Tyndal said. “I had to think about this young woman’s feelings. And she had made it very clear to me she really didn’t want the whole story coming out. Regan, you had only come to my apartment that day because you said you couldn’t imagine me not knowing the truth.”

“I thought about my own mother,” Regan said. “I’d want her to know. And you were always so nice to me growing up. Looking back, I realize I was taking a huge risk. I didn’t know that you wouldn’t want to go to the police and have the whole story
come out, which was exactly what I didn’t want to happen. I was so dumb back then. So naive and just . . .”

“You weren’t dumb,” Mrs. Tyndal said. “You were distraught. In shock.”

“Yes,” Regan said. “I thought you’d understand. You were the only adult I thought I could turn to.”

“I understood that. The other thing I had to think about was my son. His memory. Would I want the world to think that my son was a monster? Someone who had attacked a young woman in such an awful way? That’s all they’d remember. That’s all his father would have to face over the years. I thought about it a lot when Regan was sitting in my apartment, and I decided it was better off for everyone involved if we just pretended Logan was gone. That he ran away. I would live with my private grief. I was okay with that. I’d carried things inside before. And carried them alone. Things about Logan.”

“Things about Logan?” Jason asked. “What things?”

So much had fallen away over the past twenty-four hours that he didn’t think it was possible for anything else to be revealed. But there he was on the brink of learning something else, and his stomach rose and fell with the anticipation, like someone who had just ridden a roller coaster to the top of a tall hill and was about to plunge down to an uncertain destination.

“You’ve been talking to that lawyer, haven’t you?” Mrs. Tyndal asked.

“Colton?”

“Yes. Him.”

“We all went to school together. He’s trying to find Logan.”

“His family, him and his father before him, have always been shills for my ex-husband. Whatever they do, the motivation is to
make my ex-husband look good. And to line their own pockets, of course.”

Her vitriol surprised Jason a little, although Colton had certainly irritated him on more than one occasion. “I think that’s an accurate assessment of his character.”

“And he probably told you something about me. Something about me and a staircase.”

“He did.”

“And he said that I shoved Logan down the stairs while I was drunk?”

Jason didn’t want to answer. He really didn’t need to. The answer to all of the questions was hanging in the air between them.

But Jason felt the anger rising inside his chest again, the rage at the injustice of his friend being an abused child.

“He told me that,” Jason said. “Yes.”

“But that’s not really true,” Mrs. Tyndal said.

“What’s not true?” Jason asked.

“It was Logan,” Mrs. Tyndal said. “Logan pushed
me
down the stairs that
day.”