Okay, then.
Before knowing Lauren was released, I’d thought Gia and Rachel were the only ones who could be involved. Again, it makes no sense for them to wait until now, but I can’t completely ignore the possibility. So while still logged in to my oft-neglected Facebook page, I search for Gia Williams. A few profiles have no pictures; others obviously aren’t her. Maybe she got married and changed her name. I try Georgina Williams. The second profile listed has GIA in parentheses, the picture unmistakable. Small and curvy; straight, dark hair pulled back in a messy bun; wide, full-lipped smile.
Most of the pictures show her and a man with a dark, close-cropped beard. Climbing Arizona-hued rocks; in diving gear beside a cerulean sea; roasting marshmallows over an open flame, a tent in the background. I stop at a photo of them standing beside a FOR SALE sign. He’s holding a bucket with gardening tools; she has a tape measure and paintbrush. The house, a pale-blue Cape Cod. Two-car garage. Nice front yard.
The first comment says, CONGRATS! NOW YOU’RE OFFICIALLY AN ANNAPOLITAN!
You’ve got to be kidding me. Annapolis? We’re next-door neighbors. Of all the places in Maryland she could’ve moved to. And we’re not exactly sitting next door to the old neighborhood. Annapolis is about forty-five miles away from Towson.
The picture is dated July of this year. Two months ago. Curious timing. Maybe a little too curious? More pictures show outings with other women, dinners with other couples. They all show a woman content and happy with her life, not a woman who’d poke old secrets like a bad tooth. But what the world sees—what you present to the world—doesn’t mean a damn thing.
I could send her a friend request. Play catch-up. But I need to be smart about this.
It takes a little longer to find Rachel McAffrey, now Anderson—she isn’t friends with Gia, and her page is as frequently updated as mine. But I learn she’s married with a son and she’s an attorney, which seems out of character for the Rachel in my memory. A little more digging reveals she practices family law. The house in her profile picture’s background catches my eye and, if I’m not mistaken, isn’t far from where we grew up.
A few minutes later, I have their addresses. Rachel’s is exactly where I thought, and Gia’s is so close we must’ve run into each other at some point. Annapolis is a small place. Starting points. For what exactly, I don’t know yet. I may not have made the first move, but I’m not going to sit idly by while waiting for the second.
I tick names off my fingers. Lauren. Gia. Rachel. There’s no one else I can think of.
Except the Red Lady.
Leaning back in my chair, I cross my ankles. The Red Lady. What a wretched story; what a wretched beginning to the end. Before her, my friendship with Becca, Gia, and Rachel was the stuff of every healthy childhood. All that laughter, all that sugar and spice. Look closer, though, and you’ll see the sharp teeth and smell the cruelty lurking beneath the surface.
I type THE RED LADY into the search bar but don’t press enter. I know what I’ll find: nothing. She was only ever a story. Becca’s story. And yet.
And yet.
Red Lady, Red Lady.
I rub the side of my abdomen, frowning at the memory of chanting. The four of us were still talking then. Still friends. The Dead Girls Club. Four girls with a penchant for the macabre. Reading from true crime books about serial killers and imagining what it felt like to be killed in such horrific ways. The bloodier, the better. Gruesome, certainly. Our parents would’ve been as horrified by the eager tone of our conversations as our subjects: Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy, Ed Kemper. The names of their victims never summoned as easily. They made good press only when their pictures were lined up, a grim tableau of numbers. The more the merrier, so to speak. A bigger headline.
They came first: the killers, the Dead Girls Club. The Red Lady came after. She was Becca’s boogeywoman, her avenging angel, her desperate wish for another, better life. The product of fraught emotions, her stories and overarching theme didn’t always follow the expected logic. What began as a story became something more, and what started as a chain around my ankle turned into a noose around my neck. Maybe Becca and I were damned from the first mention of her name.
How exciting, how grim, that first story. Even now, the thought of choking on all that dirt sends a chill through me. At least I think that’s how the story went: a deep hole, a dying woman. But when you recall an event, you aren’t remembering the event itself, only the last recollection. A memory of a memory. And if the mind wants something to be real, it can rearrange facts and occurrences to suit. Sometimes we make up stories to explain things to ourselves; sometimes we do it to hide the truth.
Index finger held rigid, I jab the enter key.
My search results: an Alabama ghost; an Upper Paleolithic–era human skeleton; Sekhmet, an Egyptian deity. I’ve seen the links before. Never the correct red lady, because she never existed, neither as ghost nor historical figure. And yet.
Tell a story enough, it becomes something else. To the mind at least. It felt true. It all felt horribly true. And deep inside, in a tiny part of me that’s still twelve years old, she feels as real now as she did then. If I take her away, what’s left? Cold-blooded murder.
She made me do it. I didn’t want to. I would never have hurt Becca like that.
My eyes burn, and there’s a dry click when I try to swallow. I scrape the edge of my thumbnail along the skin around my index finger until I peel away a pale comma. The small wound stings but doesn’t bleed. I scrape until it does, then blot it with a tissue.
There wasn’t as much blood that night as I thought there’d be. That’s a truth I remember. Another truth: I have no memory of burying her body. But I know I did it. I must have; I’ve a strong memory of digging, of washing dirt from my hands.
I open my drawer, swirl the necklace’s chain. Feel a tightness in my belly at the liquid sound it makes. I close the drawer, catching the tip of my pinkie finger. I shake it off with a hiss.
This is not my fault. And I can’t change what happened then. If I could, I would’ve already. All I can do is move forward. One way or another, I’ll find out who sent the heart to me. Then I’ll figure out what to do.
* * *
Ryan’s singing Linkin Park, which usually means good news. I shrug off my shoes and force myself to relax as I walk into the kitchen. He has a pot on the stove, a bowl in one hand, mixing spoon in the other.
He turns with a smile. “Hey.”
“Hey yourself,” I say. “Something good happen?”
“Indeed. I got a call today from Eloise Harding.”
“Should I recognize the name?” I say, pulling a glass from the cabinet and peering over his shoulder into the bowl. Olive oil, red wine vinegar, a scatter of spices. “Looks good.”
“Remember the four-million-dollar house with the cupula on Sharps Point Road?”
“I think so. That big gray one with the wraparound porch?”
“That’s the one. Eloise Harding lives there, wants her guest bathroom renovated, and as she put it, I came highly recommended.”
“That is good. I’m happy for you.”
He scans my face. “What?”
“What do you mean?”
“I thought you’d be happy. It could be a big deal.”