Good Girls (18 page)

From the look on Jess's face, Sophie doubted it. As a matter of fact, Sophie now wondered if Jess was about to leave her here. Maybe that wasn't such a bad idea, all things considered. She pictured herself hanging out in this spot awhile, until evening, then leaning out of these shadows to hitchhike: a tree stump with thumbs and teeth.

Abruptly, she laughed.

Safe in the shade, she
watched Jess half-lift, half-drag Benny to the front. He wasn't going to be any more comfortable up there than she was, Sophie realized. She watched him settle, try to squirm into a position that didn't hurt, find none, and give up. There he sagged, Jess's sweet and fluffy lawn-gnome of a man, all buckled in and helpless. He was looking not at Jess but around her, at Sophie, as though he thought she might eat him. As though at least some of him wanted her to. He couldn't help that, of course. Poor, hurt little lawn-gnome man.

“Hop up,” Jess directed, pointing Sophie into the space next to Eddie's car seat. “You so much as touch my kid—”

“Natalie's kid.”

“You so much as look at him—”

“You think I'd hurt Eddie? My dead best friend's son? My dead son's best friend? The one friend he got to have in his entire life?”

“You touch him, I'll burn you alive. Got it?”

Grinning, Sophie knew, was a bad idea, a rebellious-teen impulse, the kind of snotty response she'd always trained on her own mother, never on Jess. But at that moment, she couldn't help it. “So. His side, my side. Got it.” She clambered back in the car.

“Good.”

“Sure thing, Mom.”

“Don't call me that.”

“Hey, Mom,” Sophie said, as Jess yanked the seat belt as tight as it would go across Sophie's chest. “Got a spare top? This one's a little”—she flicked at one blood-soaked shoulder with a thumb and forefinger—“crusty.”

Jess just slammed the door shut, went around back this time. But she stopped on the other side, opened that door, kissed Eddie, then rummaged in one of her duffel bags and flung Sophie a T-shirt without looking at her. The shirt was a Walgreens special, Sophie would have recognized it anywhere: pastel peach, scratchy cotton, no doubt bought half price, or maybe half of half price, given Jess's employee discount. It had probably come off the exact same rack where Jess had gotten almost all her own clothes and most of Natalie's, at least before Natalie discovered Goodwill and decided she had taste, and that taste mattered.

My clothes, too
, Sophie remembered,
when my mother was too horsed up to bother, which was most of the time.

“Thanks, Mom,” she said once more, to the slamming door, with only a little of the irony she was sure Jess heard, if she heard Sophie at all.

Sophie unbuckled long enough to peel her own blouse off her skin. It came away with tiny popping sounds, as though she were unzipping. There was still dried blood all over her body. But the gouges and bite marks the Whistler had left in her shoulders and breasts were already healing, on their way to gone. She ran a hand over her ribs, which were cold in the open air but broiling in the spot where the sun lapped against them.

Then the car was moving. And Benny was looking at her again, using the mirror; he was also desperately trying to avoid looking at her, trying so hard that the veins in his neck had popped up in his skin like winched cables. On impulse—after all, it was torn and bloody, too—Sophie unhooked her bra and slid it down her arms. Smiling, she lowered Jess's shirt over her head, taking her time, stretching high. It was way too small, of course, and had never before in its cheap-shirt life been filled the way she filled it now. Hideous little poor woman's shirt, scratchy on her skin, and yet impeccably clean. How, even in these circumstances, did Jess keep everything she owned so clean, like new skin?

And right then, for the first time since the graveside, Sophie felt absence in her arms again, and on her chest, in all the places where her Roo had rested.

She glanced sidelong at Eddie, whose eyes were open, drinking in the trees and the sky. Already, he was turning as watchful as his grandmother, though nowhere near as silent.

Goddamn you,
she thought, the words a rifle blast aimed at everyone, all of them, everything. Then the moment passed, and the sun seared into her neck, and Sophie hunched as low as she could go and closed her eyes.

Every time the road turned, sun splashed across her arms or her stumps. It never even soaked into her skin, just sizzled atop it like oil on scorched pavement. Finally, she couldn't take it anymore, unbuckled again, and somehow slid down the door until she was flat on the seat. Out of desperation, for distraction, she reached out, shoved aside one of Jess's clanking bags of crap, found her legs, and started stroking them. They were cold, and even crustier than the rest of her. She'd been stroking for some time before she realized she could
feel
herself.

Not her legs under her fingers, but her fingers on her legs, shooting off tingles everywhere they touched. That sensation transfixed her for so long that she didn't even notice right away that Jess was talking. But Jess was, and once she'd started, she couldn't seem to stop.

She was telling Benny everything, Sophie realized. Trying to explain what had happened on the beach, and why she'd murdered her daughter. That was certainly interesting, in its way, worth listening to, and became even more so when she looked up and caught Benny stealing another glance over his shoulder at her. This time, he looked mostly terrified, like a little boy eying the lioness at the zoo. He looked away the instant he realized she'd noticed. But a few seconds later, he did it again. And that was an amusing new game, something else that took her mind, for just a few more seconds, off the sun pouring in the driver's-side windows, searing the open ends of her stumps without cauterizing them. Eventually, Sophie squeezed her eyes shut again, forced herself still, and made herself listen to Jess, because listening—to anything—was so, so much better than feeling.

Also it really was remarkable how much Jess had right, how much she'd intuited or maybe been told. Maybe she and Natalie had had one last confab-gossip session back on the beach—Natalie always had told her mother way too much—right before Jess shot her in the face.

It was Benny, though, who got off the best line. He did it with a Jess-like directness, though in a shakier voice.

“What are you going to feed her, Jess? She's going to have to eat, you know. Sooner or later. We can't just stop at a pet shop and buy her crickets.”

That made Sophie laugh out loud, which caused Jess to glare into the rearview mirror. Benny turned again, too, and so, sun and all, Sophie rolled up on her hip on the seat, propping on one elbow as Jess's tiny top inched up her side.

“Don't look at her,” Jess snapped. And then, to Sophie, she added, “Shut up. Lie down. How long?”

“What? I didn't say any—”

“How long until you have to eat?”

“Oh. Hmm,” Sophie murmured. But she didn't say anything else, because suddenly, she couldn't. Instead, she was transfixed by the memory—specifically, of the smell—of the mini-mart where she'd eaten last. The place where she'd … Finished, as the Whistler had put it. She'd been covered in blood then, too. Her own, again, just like now. Although some of the blood, that time, had belonged to the deer that Natalie had plowed through with the GTO. The reek she was remembering now was mostly that, but also old Slurpee, reheated hot dog meat. And the counter guy, even from across the store, air-guitaring away to “More Than a Feeling” in his logo-less uniform cap, at the moment she'd caught his eye. After that, he hadn't air-guitared much; mostly, he'd fluttered like a butterfly in a net as she'd beckoned him around the counter, eased him to his knees, rested him against her thighs. She'd been able to smell him then, all right, as she'd gently removed his cap, smoothed his hair, which was thick and dark. “You are lovely,” she'd whispered over him, again and again, like a blessing, right up until the moment she'd ended him. Drained him like a Big Gulp.

Was this remorse she was feeling now?

Shouldn't there have been more of it?

“Sophie. How
long
?”

“Not for a while,” she said softly, her fingers on her severed legs and her eyes on the seat back. “At least a few weeks. I think.”

“Okay,” said Jess. “That's how long you have to live. Or convince me you should.”

“Right. Got it. Thanks, God.”

“That's right. That's exactly how you should think of me. Except that I am kinder than any God you will ever meet.”

Probably true,
Sophie thought
,
and this time kept her grin to herself.
Because I will never meet Him.

That was the last time any of them spoke until well after dusk. Even Eddie apparently slept. A canopy of shadows slid all the way over the car and stayed there, and Sophie opened her eyes. She could feel her skin, hands, her whole body unfolding into the twilight like one of those ghost-white, gorgeous plants at the nursery where her mother had once managed to hold a job for three years straight: night-blooming jasmine, night queen flower.

Her hand had never left her legs, but now it stretched all the way down to her poor battered knees, and so bumped against the paper bags Jess had stashed against the seat back. The car was crawling through traffic, barely moving. If she lifted her head, Sophie could see the reflection of Jess's face glowering in the windshield. Benny's face seemed to have frozen in a rictus smile. Possibly, he was mulling everything Jess had told him. Possibly, he was just in pain. Possibly, he was still trying to keep himself from turning around again.

The paper bags clattered quietly when Sophie rustled them. Her fingers crawled over their open mouths, slipped inside.

“What are you doing?”

You really had to give it to the woman,
Sophie thought.
She missed nothing.
“You're amazing, Jess. You really are.”

“Sophie, what are you doing?”

“What
is
all this?” Digging deep, Sophie pulled a handful of cassettes out of the nearest bag. “Whoa.”

“Get your hands off those. Those are Natalie's things. They're all I have left to remind me of—”

“I
made
these for her,” Sophie snapped, and it was as though she'd wrung Jess's neck, the way that woman gurgled to silence. Sophie held up a tape, opened the case, slid out the J-card. “I made these,” she whispered. Then she whistled. “Man, look at this playlist.”

“You didn't make all of them,” Jess muttered.

That was true, as it turned out. The next tape Sophie examined was labeled
NATALIE AND JOE, 1989.
And the next:
NATALIE LADY JANE GRAY, 2002
,
whatever that meant.

Sophie dumped those cassettes back in the bag and returned to the J-card she'd found. She'd written out these song titles more than a decade ago, drawn the little yellow and purple flowers along the border. A lifetime ago, as it had turned out.

Two lifetimes.

Not including her Roo.

Shaking her head hard, she made herself focus on the playlist. Her voice came out almost as a taunt, and she didn't care. “Seriously, Jess. Listen to this progression. ‘Eve of Destruction,' followed by ‘Radiation Vibe,' followed by ‘Heart of Glass.' I was
thirteen
when I made this mix. Natalie was the music snot, but
I
should have been the DJ. I could have—”

“
Why?
” Jess erupted, pounding the steering wheel and stomping on the brakes as she swiveled all the way around. Horns blared behind them, but Jess paid no attention. “I mean it, Sophie. Explain it to me. You were
good girls.
You were
such
good girls. You took care of each other. You took care of your responsibilities. You made your mistakes, and then made good worlds out of them. How could you be so reckless? How you could you do that? How could you do it to your
children
? In the backseat of Natalie's fucking car? With a total stranger?”

“He was a pretty hot stranger,” Sophie murmured. Way down under her ribs, something new was sprouting, called up by the heat in Natalie's mother's voice.

“That's what you've got, Sophie? That's your response? He was hot?”

“Well, he was. At least, I think he was. To tell you the truth, I have trouble remembering. So did your daughter, by the way.”

“Great. Thank you, Soph. Appreciate that. It's a comfort to know that
both
of you were too smashed even to notice the moment that defined the rest of both of your lives. And your children's lives. And my life. And the people you hurt or are going to hurt and—”

“I wasn't that smashed,” Sophie said. The song titles on the J-card beat against her eyes, buzzed in her ears like whispered words through a tin can. “Come on Eileen.” “Sisters of Mercy.” “Cat Scratch Fever.”

Okay, that last progression was a little weird.

Horns honked. Lights from the turnpike tollbooth up ahead crawled over the hood toward the windshield. Sophie saw a gray-haired cashier leaning out of her little enclosed capsule, peering down into each passing car.