Chapter 20 Jasmine
Jasmine
After the accident
Stafford’s flags were flown at half-mast the day of Dr. Kate’s funeral. The church parking lot was fuller than Jasmine had ever seen it, and cars lined the road for half a mile in each direction as people streamed in, their clothing dark, their faces pale.
Jasmine waited until the funeral started, then slipped into church and sat in the last row of folding chairs.
There were hundreds of people there, and Jasmine didn’t want a single one of them to talk to her, look at her or speak to her.
She was shaking from grief and fear. What if someone yelled at her?
What if Audrey or Stephen told her to leave?
But she had to come. Yesterday, she’d left a message for her brother, asking him if he was free to come with her, because already, she felt it—the disapproval, the censure, the fall from grace. Cash was not free.
“He’s not even in the state,” Jade said. “And why would he go to Dr. Kate’s funeral, anyway? That woman thought she knew everything. So fucking holier-than-thou.”
“She did know everything, Jade! And she was holier than everyone. Especially you.”
That earned her a slap across the face. This time, she slapped back, as hard as she could, and her mother staggered back.
“Well, well, well,” she said, taking a deep drag of her cigarette.
“The apple didn’t fall far from the tree.
” Then she laughed, an ugly, rusty sound.
“Sorry you lost your pretend mommy, Jazz. And to think, it was your fault.” She tsked, then opened the freezer and took out the bottle of vodka.
Jade’s words burned into her soul.
Dr. Kate was the one who had bought her the tampons that didn’t hurt, the one who told her about contraception if she decided to have sex, the one who was awed by Jasmine’s perfect grades.
When Jasmine was twelve and had an ear infection so bad pus was leaking out and Jade was nowhere to be found and Cash was in jail, Dr. Kate left her office, antibiotics in hand, and drove to Jade’s house, bringing her to Bitter Creek Farm, tucking her into a guest room, a heating pad under the pillow.
Damn right, she was Jasmine’s pretend mommy. The only one who’d ever truly mothered her at all.
And so she sat alone in the back of the church, crying silently as the minister talked about selflessness and service, kindness and love.
Even from the back, she heard Audrey’s sobs, and something broke in Jasmine, something that had sustained her since she could remember.
Hope. Hope that she could be different from her roots.
Hope that people would see her and think, “That Jasmine did great for herself, didn’t she?
Such a smart girl.” Hope that she would be more than Jade Malinowski’s daughter, more than the sister of a felon.
At the hospital last week, she’d been x-rayed and told to stay in the exam room.
The police came in, terse and angry, convinced this was a DUI, even though she’d been given a Breathalyzer at the scene—0.
02, not even close to drunk. They took blood from her anyway.
There were words like vehicular manslaughter.
Criminally negligent. Fifteen years in jail.
They repeatedly asked if she’d been drinking, smoking, doing drugs, not believing her.
“Kid, we know who you are,” the female cop said. “Don’t lie to us.”
This was Micah’s fault, she thought viciously.
Why had they trusted her, the party girl of the Core Four?
She had condemned Jasmine to this new title—killer.
Because that’s what everyone would think.
She wasn’t from Vermont royalty, or the all-star athlete whose mom was a decorated veteran, or a fourth-generation scion of the iconic Lola’s Bakery.
She was white trash, and she’d be treated differently.
Last week, she’d given the valedictory address, been congratulated on getting into an Ivy League school on an academic scholarship.
For thirteen years, she’d been fighting the curse of ignorance and poverty, recklessness and crime.
And she’d done it. For years, every single day, she’d given everything she had.
When word got out about her acceptance to Princeton, Jasmine had finally, finally been something more than her mother’s daughter.
But from now on, she’d be known as the girl who killed Dr. Kate.
Audrey and Stephen would never have their mother back.
Mr. Porter was a widower. The town had lost its most beloved citizen.
Beck might never play basketball again. A few seconds had erased all those years of working so hard and made her just another Malinowski who couldn’t be trusted.
She slipped out of the church early and drove to the courthouse three towns over, filled out paperwork to change her name to Tate, which, of course, rhymed with Kate, a secret homage to the kindest woman Jasmine had ever met.
Then she called Princeton to see if she could move in early.
When they asked why, she told them there’d been a death in the family.
Because it was true.