“You don’t want to help,” she said, her voice like a dull blade. “People always come here to write a book or make a TV show or a podcast or whatever. But you . . . you give us a room for children at the library, all as a way of buttering us up?”
Allison was directing all this at Carson, but Stevie was there, curling up inside, as the entire town of Barlow Corners turned to watch Allison remove the bones of Carson’s spinal cord one by one. The most charitable of the expressions showed embarrassment; most were cold and disgusted. Stevie felt herself getting a bit faint. She considered simply dropping to her knees and crawling away, under the picnic tables, out of the tent, across the green, into the woods, never to emerge. Nate and Janelle watched from maybe ten feet away, helpless. They may as well have been on the other side of a moat full of alligators.
“I’ll tell you what you can do,” Allison said. “You can take your picnic and your food trucks and your podcast, and you can shove it.”
“I really just want to dialogue. . . .”
Allison gripped the plastic tablecloth of a nearby picnic table, and Patty Horne hurried up to her.
“Let’s go,” she said to Allison. “Let’s get out of here.”
“I’m fine,” Allison said, her voice dry.
Allison lowered her gaze from Carson and looked at Stevie for a long moment. Stevie couldn’t read her expression, but whatever it meant, it propelled Stevie backward and away from Carson and out the side of the tent. She quick-walked across the green, not looking back. She could hear footsteps behind her, and Nate and Janelle caught up.
“Yiiiiikes,” Nate said. “Wow. Wow. Wow.”
“You okay?” Janelle asked.
“Fine. I just . . .”
“Yeah. We saw. Everyone saw.”
They stopped once they reached the statue of John Barlow. The base was large enough for all three of them to sit, and they could hide around the back. Looking at it up close, Stevie could see that it wasn’t a particularly good statue—it was slightly formless, a generic figure of a man on a generic rendering of a bored-looking horse.
“It’s ugly, isn’t it?” said a voice from behind them.
Patty Horne had left the tent and come to join them. She walked up, hands tucked in her jean pockets.
“I remember when they unveiled it,” she said. “They pulled off the cloth and everyone was quiet for a moment. My friends and I burst out laughing. And . . . don’t worry about Allison. She doesn’t mean it.”
“It definitely sounded like she meant it,” Nate replied.
“Well, she probably meant it for him, not for you. We get . . . tired’s not the word. . . . We get inflamed, I guess, when people come back and try to make something of the case. It’s like we heal and then the wound opens again. It was hard enough for me, but Allison lost her sister. It doesn’t matter that it was in 1978.”
“I’m not here to inflame, or . . . anything like that,” Stevie said.
“I know you’re not. You’re a kid.” The slight was inadvertent, Stevie felt, and she didn’t take it personally. “Some days it still feels unreal, like a story about someone else. Other times, like tonight actually, it feels like it just happened. I can remember so much about it—how it felt. It was warm like tonight. We would sit here on the green or go down to the Dairy Duchess for ice cream. I still go there sometimes and half expect to see Diane waiting tables.”
She seemed lost in thought for a moment, looking up at the strange metal head of John Barlow, then she snapped back to the moment.
“Want to come over to the bakery with me?” she asked. “Have some cake and relax while whatever’s going on over there blows over?”
She did not have to ask twice.
8
THE TINY BELL ON THE DOOR OF THE SUNSHINE BAKERY TINKLED AS the group entered. There was a crepuscular quality to the bakery, lit only by the distant streetlights outside and the faint purple twilight. The cakes were dark figures in the glass case.
Patty turned on one of the overhead lights, which elongated the shadows. It was a cheerful kind of creepiness. It turned out that the lingering smell of cake was different, and maybe even better, than cake in the oven. Someone needed to turn it into a scented candle, pronto.
“Pick whatever you like,” Patty said as she lifted up the leaf in the bakery counter to step behind it. “I’ve got some leftover red velvet, a golden vanilla, and double chocolate.”
“Red velvet for me, please,” Janelle said. She was back at the counter, examining Patty’s work.
“You should come back in someday,” Patty said. “I’ll show you how I make the silicone molds. You seemed interested in that.”
Janelle’s head shot up upon hearing this.
“She’s like the Hulk,” Nate explained. “But instead of transforming when she gets mad, it’s when she sees crafts. And she doesn’t turn big and green. She just makes crafts. So not like the Hulk, really.”
Patty blinked slowly.
“Chocolate, please,” he added.
Stevie walked around the bakery and looked at the photos on the walls.
“This is your dad, right?” she said, pointing at one of the pictures.
“That’s him,” Patty replied, carefully lifting out a massive piece of chocolate cake for Nate. “Well spotted. How did you know?”
“He was in the group photo of the statue unveiling.”
“Oh yeah! My dad was in it, and the mayor and the sheriff and Mrs. Wilde, and I forget who else. Someone took the picture for a local guide, but they submitted it to Life and it was accepted. It was a huge deal. My dad hated having his picture taken. That picture and the one you’re looking at, those are really the only two good ones I have. He was a private guy, hardworking. Greatest Generation type. What kind for you?”
“Oh—chocolate?”
Patty chopped off another massive hunk of cake.
“Allison seemed really hopeful about the diary,” Stevie said. “But then, she said everyone just humors her?”
“She asks every new detective about that diary,” Patty said, passing the cake to Stevie. “If they haven’t found it by now, I don’t think they’re going to turn it up at this point, but it gives her something to hold on to, I guess. I don’t know if it’s better for her to have hope about that or let it go. It’s complicated. You said red velvet, right?”
Janelle nodded. Another heroic slice was produced.
Patty made herself a cup of tea and sat down at the table with them. She pulled the tie from her ponytail, letting her dusty-blond hair fall over her shoulders.
“So this is about a podcast, huh?” she said. “You want to know our stories? I’ll tell you mine, if you want.”
“Do you mind talking about it?” Stevie asked. “Even now?”
Patty shook her head. “It’s nothing I haven’t said before. I’m lucky to be able to tell the story. I would have been there that night. Todd, Eric, and Diane were my friends, my gang. The only reason I wasn’t there was because I was in trouble. I have survivor’s guilt. It feels like my duty to talk about it.”
Having said she was willing to talk, Patty drifted into silence for a moment. Stevie, Janelle, and Nate looked at each other and ate cake for a moment until Patty stirred herself.