Moonstone (27 page)

Joy raised her eyebrows.

“I nearly lost my position over it. I should have…The only reason I didn’t was because of the Padgetts. Do you remember Sadie Padgett? She was a classmate of ours.”

Joy nodded.

“Sadie and I were old friends, but I’d gotten to know Sadie’s younger sister, Hannah, because she was friends with a few of the swimmers. One in particular—Cammie. Cammie and Hannah were dorm mates their first year. I hadn’t planned on dating Cammie. She was twenty-one and a party girl. Just like Hannah. The two of them were trouble. Anyway, about the time I decided that I needed to break things off, someone told my boss who I was dating.”

“Oh shit.”

“Yeah. The Padgetts were on the university’s board of trustees. Mr. Padgett was an alumnus of the university. Sadie had gone there too. Family tradition. Anyway, I got a call from Hannah basically asking me if I wanted her parents to pull a few strings for me. I told her no. I’d made a mistake, and I knew I deserved to be fired over it.” Kelsey cleared her throat. She stared down at the bowl of pasta. Finally she set the bowl on the coffee table and took a sip of wine. “Hannah went behind my back. I didn’t ask for the favor, but then it was done…and what I didn’t know then was that paying that favor back would change everything.”

Kelsey took another sip of the wine and then eyed Joy. She wanted to tell Joy the rest of the story. She needed to tell someone. But she couldn’t help wonder if Joy would think she was crazy—for everything that happened. Joy got up and turned off the TV. It had been tuned to the news, but the volume had been muted. She settled in on the sofa again.

“You can’t stop there,” Joy said.

Kelsey stared at the dark TV screen. If she told Joy everything, there was a good chance that she’d do more than ruin another night. Kelsey glanced at Joy and finally said, “I’d already handed in my resignation letter to the Dean of the College. I admitted that I’d made a mistake and apologized for everything. Took full ownership, you know? I figured my coaching days were done, but I didn’t care. I wanted to move on even if I didn’t know what I was going to do next. But the next day, the head coach called me in and said I wasn’t losing my job. The university had accepted the apology and recommended I take a week off on unpaid administrative leave. She said that so long as I had no contact with Cammie outside of the swimming pool, that’d be the end of it. Cammie had admitted that she was the one who’d asked me out and that we’d already broken things off.”

Kelsey shook her head. “I walked out of that office thinking I was the luckiest SOB ever. The next day, Mr. Padgett called. He said he needed a favor. That’s when it sunk in. I felt like I’d signed a contract for something without even knowing it. I’d been part of some hushed backroom deal. I’d never felt so awful. I’d been ready to pay the price for dating Cammie—but I hadn’t agreed to anything more. And I knew it was too late to back out. Strings had been pulled for me and I had to say yes to whatever it was that the Padgetts wanted.”

Joy whistled softly. “So what’d they want you to do?”

“Keep an eye on Hannah. Mr. Padgett only said that Hannah had gotten herself in some trouble at school and he wanted me to talk to her—convince her that the most important thing was graduating. It didn’t sound like a big deal at first. I figured the trouble probably had to do with her grades. Or too much partying. I had a friend pull up her record. Her grades were bad and she wasn’t on course to graduate unless she stayed a fifth year and repeated some failed courses. But that wasn’t all.

“What wasn’t in her record was the real problem…Hannah called it The Exchange. She was dealing. Vicodin, Percocet, muscle relaxants…all prescription medication. Someone would have a legit prescription—or manage to slip pain meds from their parents’ or grandparents’ medicine cabinet—and they’d sell those leftover pills to one of Hannah’s points. That’s what she’d call them. Points. Then she had a half dozen points who sold for her. Hannah was rarely involved directly in any of the deals. She managed all the money and kept the supplies. And she knew everything about everyone. No one else knew exactly who was in charge. Hannah always acted like she had a boss. But she didn’t. It was just her running everything. And it was a crazy perfect system. Too many people were involved to point fingers, but no one knew exactly who was at the center of it…”

Kelsey sighed. She took another sip of the wine and stared at the nearly empty glass. She thought of slowing down only when it was too late. “What I never could figure out was why she did it. She didn’t need the money. It seemed like a big game—Hannah never took anything seriously. I think she only wanted to see how long she could get away with it—and how much money she could make. Hannah’s parents didn’t ask me to get her to stop. They only wanted me to make sure she graduated. Their big plan was just to get her out. I guess they both thought Hannah would stop once she graduated. And they needed someone to monitor her in the meantime so things didn’t get out of hand…So I stepped out of the frying pan and into the fire.”

Joy shook her head. “Did she graduate?”

“It took her five years, but she graduated. I sweated every day of that fifth year, but I think she planned it out that way. She wasn’t stupid. She knew exactly how much money she could make hanging around another year. And she liked the adrenaline rush of every deal she orchestrated. I swear her father paid some of the professors off. A lot of people knew about The Exchange. It never made sense to me that cops didn’t come sniffing. But Hannah could be charming as hell. Probably she’d even charm the cops if they had come around.”

“And did everything stop when she graduated?”

“No. But it wasn’t my problem anymore.” Kelsey paused. She didn’t add that there was more to the story. She couldn’t admit the rest of it. She’d stopped taking Vicodin for the shoulder. Oxycodone worked better on the pain and didn’t make her stomach cramp like the Vicodin did. That was her excuse for a long time. And Hannah gave her the pills at half her usual price so she didn’t need to deal with a doctor warning her about the number of pills she was taking. Having Hannah out of her life had put an end to the supply of pills. She knew that she could make an appointment and have a doctor write a prescription for pain medication. She had the MRI to prove that she needed drugs. But she’d set Hannah’s graduation as the end point. She’d stopped taking everything. And over time, the pain had eased. Then…

“One day, out of nowhere, Hannah showed up in my life again. I hadn’t heard from her in eight years and then there she was dancing at this club. She was lit. But still flirty and charming everyone in the place. What was weird was that she’d always dated men. I had no idea what she was doing at a lesbian dance club kissing all these women. My guess was that she was only there to deal.”

“When was this?”

“About three years ago.” Kelsey paused. “I convinced her to leave the club and come home with me to sober up. She was a week out of rehab and she promised me she was trying to clean up her act. Apparently she’d started sleeping with women and was looking for a hookup…” Kelsey shook her head.

“She was a mess. It wasn’t the prescription pain meds then. She’d gotten into other stuff and she was using more than she was selling. And drinking too much. She’d gotten a DUI and when they tested her blood, they’d found enough reasons to send her to jail. But her parents brokered a deal for her to go to rehab. As soon as she got out, they gave her money to start over. I think she really wanted to get her life together.”

“And you two started dating?”

“We started hanging out. I wouldn’t have called it dating. Her parents found out that I was in the picture again and they called me up. Her mom told me this long story of how she’d already tried to kill herself once and they were worried she’d do it again. She was on meds for depression. But she’d mix other medications in from time to time…”

Kelsey cleared her throat. The story had so many twists and turns. Joy didn’t need to know everything. Despite the promise she’d made to herself, she’d started taking the pills Hannah had again. She felt better on the oxycontin than anything else, but she’d never ask a doctor for it. She’d never asked anyone for it. Hannah had simply handed it to her.

“She was living on a houseboat then and against my better judgment I moved in with her. Her parents paid all the bills. We started sleeping together.” Kelsey paused. Up to this point, the story was easy. What came next wasn’t. “For a while, it was okay. But she didn’t like that I had to wake up early to go to work.”

Joy glanced over at Kelsey. “Were you still coaching then?”

“I’d moved on to a different university, but yeah, I was still coaching.” Kelsey reached for her wineglass. It was empty. Her hand shook when she set down the glass. “She wanted me to quit my job. Mornings were the worst. She’d throw things at the alarm and cuss me out for waking her up. Then she’d get mad if I came home late. I started walking around on pins and needles.”

She realized she was holding her breath and tried to relax. She hadn’t told anyone the truth about what had happened. After a long pause, she continued, “She was always blowing up about something but then we’d have a few good days…I didn’t realize how bad things had gotten until my car was stolen. That was when everything hit me. I drove a beater. It was a ’93 Nissan Ultima with nearly two hundred thousand miles. No one would have wanted it, you know?”

“I remember that car. You bought it the end of senior year. I thought it was a cool car.”

“It had two different colored fenders because I’d bought it off the junk lot. Four wheels and one hubcap.” Kelsey smiled. “Not cool. But it got me to work on time. Anyway, I reported it stolen. A few weeks later, the cops found the car. Someone had dumped it in Fremont. The car was laced with meth residue and they totaled it.”

“Like the cops said would probably happen with your Audi.”

Kelsey nodded. “This morning was a little déjà vu.”

“Did you think it was someone Hannah knew?”

“That wasn’t my first thought. She’d told me that she’d stopped meth—stopped everything except Percocet and her anxiety meds. She’d been in a car accident when she was eighteen and had this neck issue so the Percocet was every day. And her therapist had her on a bunch of different things to manage what she said was anxiety. Turns out you get bad anxiety when you’re on meth. And when she had access to acid or ecstasy, she liked adding that in too. Pot was always around, but she didn’t smoke too much. She said it made her depressed.”

Kelsey stopped and shook her head. “I know this all probably sounds crazy, but I kind of got used to it all.” She paused. “When I mentioned that the cops had found the car, Hannah freaked out. She thought the cops would think we were the ones with the meth since it was my car and she got pissed that I’d reported it stolen. Nothing made sense. I kept telling her that the cops wouldn’t think the meth was ours and she got more and more worked up about it.

“But she’d been acting crazy for weeks before then. This was just what set her off. I had no idea what I was dealing with…She’d go on these cleaning rampages that would start at midnight and then the next morning I’d wake up and the place was a bigger mess than when I’d gone to bed. It was amazing how much she could tear apart things trying to clean out one kitchen drawer.”

Kelsey laughed. The sound was hollow. She cleared her throat and continued, “I told her I thought she needed her psychiatrist to check the dose on her meds and she really got upset. Started screaming that I was the one who was making her need the meds and then when I asked her to calm down, she slapped me. At the time I thought that maybe I’d deserved it. Clearly the meth thing had panicked her and I knew even mentioning her anxiety meds was a sore subject. The slap didn’t hurt, but it brought everything to a head. I was ready to leave then, but Hannah was in such a mess that I knew I couldn’t. We went to sleep that night without another word. The next day, she goes and buys this Audi. She handed me the keys and told me to shut up about my old Nissan.”

“What?” Joy’s look was incredulous. “She bought you that Audi?”

“Brand new. Don’t ask how much it cost fresh off the lot. The money wasn’t hers—it was her parents’. But when I called them up to try and get everything straightened out and have the car returned, they told me to keep the car. They’d heard about our fight and begged me to stay.” Kelsey shook her head. “It makes me sick to think about how much that car cost new.”

“Wait a minute, who’s the Audi registered to?”

“Me. I made sure the paperwork was all in my name and paid all the taxes. But her parents paid off the loan.”

Joy was quiet for a long minute. “Was that the only time she hit you?”

Kelsey stared at the wineglass. She wished she’d left that detail out. Talking about it made everything real and she longed to pretend that it hadn’t happened. Or that it wasn’t a big deal. But it had changed everything. “It didn’t hurt. It was only a slap and there’s not much too Hannah. She’s always been a lightweight.”

“Still…”

Kelsey shook her head. “I know it sounds crazy, but that person who slapped me wasn’t the real Hannah. That’s what I told myself anyway…She’d go into these rages. It wasn’t targeted at anyone. She’d throw things and hit whatever was in range like an animal thrashing around and then the next day she’d apologize for everything and be the sweetest person you’d ever met. The nice Hannah would go on for weeks. She’d bring home flowers and get us front row tickets to a concert or box seats to a baseball game. Then out of the blue, a bomb would explode. I never knew when to expect it. I learned to stay out of her way.” Kelsey cleared her throat and forced a smile. “Some days it was hell living with her. But then we’d have a good month and I’d think everything was going to be fine. I was scared of her moods. She’d come unglued about things I wouldn’t even expect. A spoiled banana. Or being out of sugar. The houseboat was a constant mess and she blamed me for everything.

“One day, I’d had enough. I packed up everything while she was sleeping. I left the Audi and the keys. I moved in with a friend from work. We’d had our last bad fight and I was done. That’s what I told myself. Then I went into work that Monday and my boss handed me a termination letter. Someone had told him what had happened with Cammie all those years ago. It wasn’t hard to figure out who told them.”