CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Ash came, and some squad cars, and a team of EMTs. They put Audrey on a stretcher. Another EMT made me come with him to an ambulance parked outside. I breathed deeply and pain flexed through me. I still had spots in front of my eyes. Ash sat with me. I told him Audrey had killed Danielle. And her stepfather, a long time ago.

The EMT tended the cut on my hand, picking out shards of glass. He checked my blood pressure and my heartbeat and peered into my eyes. I didn’t care if he could tell I was on drugs. Lying down was nice. Cops crammed the place, bustled around urgently. Strangely, I felt hungry. Ash got somebody to give me a candy bar, and I grew stronger with the first bite. From the back of the ambulance I watched the people come and go, talking into their phones.

They took me to the hospital and kept me overnight, for observation. My ribs weren’t broken, only bruised, but the doctors were worried I had a concussion. I told them I didn’t have insurance, and they let me go in the morning. I changed out of the gown they’d given me and back into my dirty clothes, smelling like vodka and rust. I took a cab to my car, still parked at Audrey’s apartment complex. I got in and drove home. I slept for two days, waking periodically and swallowing the pain pills they’d given me at the hospital before drifting off again.

I woke early in the morning to the noise of the garbage truck muscling down the block. I listened to the neighborhood getting ready for work, to the rattling cart of the homeless guy who stayed in my neighbor’s carport. I showered and dressed carefully, mindful of my bruised ribs.

I went out for coffee, bought the Chronicle, and spread the paper over the café table. I read each article carefully. Kelsey Langford was her real name. The papers talked about Danielle and Brandon, and also the fire in Nebraska, when Kelsey was fifteen. I sipped coffee and examined the articles. They’d got hold of some old photos from her high school yearbook. Sophomore year, the year of the fire. They printed a school portrait of a pale, dark-haired girl, her bangs nearly covering her eyes. Next to it was a team photo of the cheerleading squad in pyramid formation. She was second from the top. Her face was so small it looked like dots.

In the best image—a candid shot, full color—she wore her cheerleading uniform, a short skirt revealing bony teenage legs. Audrey held a soft drink can. It was fall, late afternoon. Gold light fell her face. Her lashes cast shadows. The camera had captured some element in her face of darkness, of death, of the coming winter. She looked strong and damaged, eerily adultlike.

I recognized myself in some of the articles: “Langford was apprehended after an altercation with a local woman . . .” Those people, Kelsey Langford and a local woman—they sounded like strangers. I folded the paper and left it on a bench.