Chapter Seventy-Eight. Melanie
CHAPTER SEVENTY-EIGHT
MELANIE
Everyone has taken their seats in the audience. Magnuson, off to the side of the stage, pulls the rope to open the sequined curtains, which glint in the beam of the tripod construction lights.
The girls come out, big smiles on their faces, fringed skirts swinging as they strut in silver cowboy boots to Shania Twain’s “Man! I Feel Like a Woman!” The music blares from a single speaker in the back, plugged into the same power strip as the lights.
The audience whoops, the feeling in the room swelling with the music, everyone hungry for entertainment, for escape.
I’ve tucked myself into the dark back row with a borrowed laptop, pulling the computer tight onto my lap and angling the screen away from everyone. My fingers fumble the trackpad, scrubbing too fast through files, and I pray that no one notices.
When they handed the SD card over, the girls told me what happened in fits and starts—the key code, slipping over to the model home, searching the place. How Hannah kept lookout while Sarah Lynn pocketed the card. How Olivia warned them Cat was coming back.
But she was alive when we left, Hannah whispered. I swear, Mom.
I believe you, baby. I’d pulled her in, kissed her hair. But this could still be evidence. Someone else could’ve come after you looking for it.
Now, here I am, hunched in the corner with the laptop balanced on my knees, heart racing as the first clips flicker to life. I do believe the girls, but I need to know what’s in these videos before I hand them over to Dad.
The camera is aimed to capture The Hollow, and up the bank, there’s a good bit of road and the construction trailer. There are clips of white-tailed deer picking through the trees in black-and-white moonlight, of Mark going to and from the trailer, of construction vans passing by.
Then I find it: the night of the party.
My breath stops. Girls and boys drinking, smoking, climbing the rocks.
Beer cans crushed into the mud. I watch as the girls—my Hannah among them—step naked from the trees, and I slap a hand over the screen, fingers trembling.
I can’t help thinking, of course, about Kennedy Claire, tricking me into taking all my clothes off, right there in The Hollow. And, of what came after.
I want to throw a blanket over Hannah in that video, want to shield her. But I watch through my fingers as the girls link hands, as they leap together into the dark water.
I look up now to see them all, crisscrossing each other on the stage, shaking their hips, sending their fringe into a flurry, their big red-lipsticked, white-toothed smiles never wavering.
In a small town like Anhalt, with everything the girls have sacrificed, everything they’ve put into the community and their reputations, all their big hopes and dreams of futures as bright as Fourth of July sparklers—I understand why they wanted to keep this footage secret.
I click forward, skipping past the kids, past the reckless energy of them, all wild motion and smoke drifting like ghosts. I skim the rest of the night, the cop cars and forensics vans. The footage colorizes with the morning light.
My heart aches when I see Cat walking up to the construction trailer, knocking on the door.
I watch her have a conversation with Emily that looks tense, Emily’s arms folded across her chest, her mouth a tight line.
Then Cat walks away, and I freeze the image, just before she disappears from the frame, because it’s the last photo that will ever be taken of her.
Alive, at least. The heaviness of that slides through me, settles in my gut like something rotten.
I hit play. I scan through hours of white-coated technicians carting evidence bags from The Hollow. I’m just about to jump far ahead when I see a truck pull up. And all the hairs on my body stand up in unison.
Because it is a white Chevy Silverado. Just like Cat described. Just like she pointed out. I watch it park against the curb. A man exits, his back to the camera as he climbs the steps of the construction trailer.
I lean so close, the screen fogs with my breath.
The man knocks, the door opens, and Emily greets him.
There is no audio, but the video quality is crystal clear.
She pulls something from her purse. An envelope.
She hands it to him, and he tucks it into his jacket.
When the man turns, I feel the bottom drop out of me.
It’s him.
The man Cat swore was following her. The one from the coffee shop in Austin. The one who toured the model home with his pregnant wife.
Cat was right. He had been following her.
And it looks like Emily was paying him to do it.
The music ends abruptly, and Kennedy Claire takes the mic.
I join the applause, a beat late, because my mind’s been spinning somewhere else.
Everyone around me is clapping, and the rumbling vibration sets me uneasy, like when you stay too long in a hot tub.
I find Emily in the crowd, cheering for Olivia, leaning her shoulder into Mark, smiling like a woman free of her own competition.