7. Jayne #4
“First question,” he says. “Is there anything you’re not telling us about Liz Stratton or her relationship with Ben Carrera that we should know?”
There it is. I knew I could only talk my way around it for so long.
And if I’m being honest, I want him to ask, don’t I?
I want him to know. I want everyone to know.
The only reason I didn’t shout it far and wide was because Sadie asked me not to, and even though her decision was utterly baffling to me, I respected her enough to honor that.
I owe Liz no such loyalty, especially because I know it started long before Sadie thought it did.
“Last year, after spring break in Key West, I think I mentioned that things seemed really off, right? Liz was constantly partying, making the kinds of decisions that would be considered bad even by her standards. There was one night she called Sadie from Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh! How on earth did she even get there? It’s two hours from here!
And anyway, Sadie went to go pick her up because she was a better friend than Liz deserved.
I was that hoping after that, Sadie would see it was time to distance herself from Liz.
Their friendship was fine when they were in junior high, but we’re heading off to college soon.
It was kind of time to drop the deadweight—no offense to Liz.
“Anyway, that night I was the only one awake when they got back from Pittsburgh. Liz was still hammered, which gives you some idea of how bad she was if it was like that after a two-hour drive home. Sadie went to get the guest room ready, and I was basically tasked with keeping an eye on Liz downstairs and making sure she drank some water. She kept saying that she had something to tell me. Something about Key West and Ben? Anyway, she thrust her phone in my face and told me to just find it myself. But when I looked at it… Ugh, I hate even saying it out loud because it just sucked. But when I looked at her phone and tried to find whatever it was she was trying to show me, all I saw were texts between her and Ben. His name was saved as someone else’s, but I could tell it was him, because the texts mentioned Sadie, using a nickname only he had for her.
He called her Sunny. And it looked like they had been talking since Key West, and I mean talking a lot.
And flirting. It wasn’t just friendly stuff.
She was always the one starting it, as far as I could tell.
I wanted to ask her about it, but she was practically passing out while sitting on our kitchen barstool, and I knew I wouldn’t get any kind of answer out of her that made sense.
So I gave her phone back to her and just waited for Sadie to come get her and take her upstairs.
She was totally blacked out. The next morning she didn’t even remember getting to our house. ”
“Why do you think she showed you those texts?”
“I have no idea. I guess because she was so drunk? Maybe she felt guilty? I have no clue.”
“Did you ever confront her about this, directly, once she had sobered up? Or did you confront Ben?”
“I went to Ben first. From what I could see, it looked like he was the reluctant one in their conversations. But also, guys think with their—” I pause for a moment, choosing my words. “They don’t always think with their heads, Detective. Especially teenage guys.”
Detective Hunt chuckles. “Fair enough. Go on.”
“He more or less confirmed what I assumed. Liz was usually the one texting him first, and almost always when she’d been drinking.
He told me that he wasn’t proud of it, and it had started out harmless enough.
He was just checking in on Sadie while we were on spring break.
But then Liz kept talking to him, and he was worried about her—Liz kind of invokes that reaction in people, in case you all haven’t figured that out yet—so they kept talking.
And he let himself get caught up in it. Long story short, he told me that he would end it, and that was that.
I didn’t see any point in talking to Liz about it, because I figured that I could take Ben at his word.
And honestly, I just wanted it to be over and done with.
I knew how much it would hurt Sadie if she knew, and so I thought that if I could save her that pain by just solving it myself…
I thought that would be better, even though I knew the truth was that she would be better off without either of them in her life.
It seems so stupid and petty now. The whole time I was focusing on Liz and Ben, Mason Vreeland was obsessing over her.
Biding his time. Thinking God knows what. ”
I want to keep talking, but my throat is closing up.
“Take a minute, Jayne,” Detective Hunt says, giving me an encouraging nod. “And then I just need to know if there is anything still going on between Liz and Ben that we should know about.”
Taking a final sip of the tragic green tea they set down in front of me a thousand years ago, I allow myself to go back to the night I saw something I never wanted to see: Liz hooking up with my sister’s boyfriend.
“So,” I begin, knowing that this is the thing Detective Hunt really wants to know, even if it does nothing to help any of us now.
“One night, toward the end of school last year, Evan was in town, and we were at a party. The one I started to tell you about. Sadie couldn’t make it; she was recovering from Covid.
But Liz was there. She was hammered when we walked through the door, and it wasn’t even that late in the night.
It was clear she was going to get herself in trouble one way or another, and Evan and I tried to convince her to just leave with us.
She kept saying no, and then Ben walked through the door, and she just…
lunged at him, basically. It was clear that he was uncomfortable with it, but she made him do some shots with her, and then suddenly he wasn’t so uncomfortable.
I’ll spare you all the details, but the relevant one you need to know is that, about an hour later, I walked into one of the bedrooms upstairs to find Liz and Ben in bed together, and they were right in the middle of it.
There was no point in trying to talk to Liz in the moment.
She was trashed, and I don’t think Ben could’ve told me his own name.
Anyway, I confronted Liz about it the next day and told her that if she didn’t tell Sadie, I would.
I told her I knew about the texting too.
She accused me of snooping through her phone. ”
“She didn’t remember showing you the texts?”
“Apparently not,” I said quietly.
“And did she tell Sadie?”
“Yeah, she did. Not about the texts, though. Just about what happened at the party. Ben confessed to it too, and I thought that had to be the end of it. The end of Sadie and Liz’s friendship, the end of her relationship with Ben…
How do you forgive a guy who slept with your best friend?
I mean, come on, that’s almost painfully cliché.
Yet somehow, I don’t know, she did. She forgave both of them. ”
“But you never did.” It isn’t a question.
I shake my head and give Detective Hunt a shrug.
“Come on, hasn’t someone ever hurt somebody you love?
Even if that person forgives them, it’s so much harder to forgive them yourself.
Because you saw the pain they caused. You had to clean up the mess, the aftermath.
Sometimes seeing it is worse than experiencing it yourself.
And when it’s your own sister, your twin…
Short answer, no. I never forgave Liz. I still haven’t forgiven her, and I don’t think I ever will.
Sadie didn’t go to school for the entire week after it all came out.
And if she wasn’t going, I wasn’t going, so we stayed in the house.
” I smile in spite of myself—it’s a memory brought on by terrible circumstances, but it was honestly the most fun we’d had together since middle school.
“And we ate takeout and messed up my Dad’s Netflix algorithm permanently by bingeing every episode of Dawson’s Creek.
It’s a long series, Detective, but we just lay on the couch together, and I hugged my sister a lot, and I promised her that everything would get better.
I would give anything to do that again, just one more time.
But things didn’t get better, did they? If only I’d known then. ”
“And what about Mr. Carrera?”
“I saw what happened. I don’t blame him quite as much as I blame Liz. It definitely showed me what kind of guy he is, for better or worse. But Sadie loved him and wanted to make things work, so I put on my supportive sister hat and went along with it. He seemed to feel genuinely bad at least.”
“What makes you say that?”
I smile, because this is a good story to tell. “He legit gave Sadie the Say Anything treatment. You know, that old movie with John Cusack? It’s one of my dad’s favorites.”
“I know it.”
Of course he does. Judging by his age, Detective Hunt was probably a teenager when it came out in the eighties.