Chapter Thirteen #2
“Exactly,” Emmy said. “Anyway, my mother refused to buy them. She was a teacher, too. She told me kids don’t need a reason to go around sticking out their tongues.”
Skylar grimaced. “It’s kind of gross. Girls sticking out their tongues.”
“You’re right.” Emmy hadn’t looked at it that way before, but she imagined that Myrna probably had. “Skylar, I really need to talk to you about Mandy.”
Skylar’s gaze went back to her phone, but not in defiance.
The screen stayed black. She twisted the phone in her hands.
Emmy watched tears well in her eyes. Pam hadn’t asked about Mandy, but it struck Emmy as odd that Skylar’s first instinct was to complain about her mother instead of asking if her friend was okay.
Talia had said the two girls had a falling-out recently.
Maybe there had been more to it than that.
Emmy asked, “Was something going on between you two?”
Skylar didn’t respond, but her expression gave her away.
Emmy checked in with Pam, who’d gone as silent as her daughter. The woman had spent most of her adult life anticipating the meaning behind every question. She was clearly suspicious of every word that was coming out of Emmy’s mouth.
Emmy pivoted. “Skylar, I’m gonna talk to you like you’re an adult, even though you’re technically not one yet. Is that okay with you?”
Skylar looked at her mother. Pam gave a wary nod.
“I think you already know what happened yesterday. Somebody came into Allison’s house and murdered her. Then they shot Mandy in the head.”
The tears started to fall.
“Mandy is okay for now, but I don’t know how long that’s going to last. No matter what, she’s going to have to live with what happened for the rest of her life.” Emmy suddenly found her lungs incapable of holding a full breath. “And she won’t have her mom around to help her work through it.”
Skylar wiped her tears with the back of her hand.
“None of that is your fault.”
Skylar’s lower lip had started to tremble.
“That’s the same thing I told Talia when I spoke to her yesterday.
” Emmy understood the particular pain of being a teenage girl who took on all the blame in the world.
“I know you’ve been raised to be skeptical of the police, but I’m being straight with you.
There was nothing you could have done that would’ve stopped what happened. ”
Skylar gulped down a sob. She gripped her phone in her hands.
Pam shifted her weight. She was looking out at the creek. Tears wept from her eyes. She could be a nasty piece of work, but no mother wanted to see their child in pain.
“I was—” Skylar sniffed. “I was so mad at her.”
Emmy could see the relief that came with the confession.
“She was all bruised and—and I begged her to tell somebody, but she wouldn’t, and she said if I told anybody else, then she would tell my mom that I did something bad that I didn’t do.”
Pam’s eyes narrowed. Emmy held up her hand, silently begging her not to interfere. “Where was Mandy bruised?”
“Her arms and back. She tried to hide it, but I saw when we were changing out for gym and I asked her what happened and she locked herself in the bathroom stall and started crying.” Skylar looked back up at Emmy. “I wanted to tell, but she threatened me.”
Pam jumped in. “Threatened you with what?”
Emmy said, “Mandy’s in the hospital. Does it matter?”
Pam looked chastened. The question had snapped her out of defense attorney mode.
“No, it doesn’t matter.” She knelt down beside her daughter. “You’re not in trouble for anything. I want you to answer Sheriff Clifton’s questions.”
Skylar took a shaky breath. Then she nodded for Emmy to continue.
“When did you see the bruises?”
“When we went back to school. I don’t remember exactly when.”
School had started two months ago. Another recurring theme. “Did Mandy tell you who hurt her?”
“We didn’t talk anymore after it happened.
Not about real things. It was hard to be around her.
Like, if you brought it up, she’d ignore you like you didn’t even exist. But it was hard not to say anything, ’cause she’d show up at school wearing long sleeves and it’d be six hundred degrees outside.
And one time, she changed the part in her hair to the other side and she said it was to try something new but I could tell she was covering a bruise. ”
“Do you think she told Talia who bruised her?”
“Talia doesn’t confide in me. She and Mandy kind of pushed me out. Like, we were still friends, but they were best friends.”
Emmy knew about those types of relationships. It was hard not to hang around hoping to be let back in. “Do you have a guess about who could’ve hurt Mandy?”
Skylar’s shrug indicated the answer was obvious. “Bill.”
Emmy took a moment to think about her next question. “Did Mandy ever tell you that Bill hit her?”
“No, but everybody at school knew about Allison, so it made sense that Bill started hurting Mandy, too.”
Pam shushed out a low breath, but she said nothing.
“But you never heard it from Mandy, and you never saw it happen yourself?”
“No.”
“Okay.” Emmy studied the girl’s face for deception but couldn’t find any. “Did you notice anything different about Mandy lately?”
“Yeah, after Bill moved out, she seemed better. Mandy effing hates Bill. We all do. He’s an asshole.
Always trying to control things. Telling us we’re not as pretty as we think we are.
That we’re gonna hit a wall when we turn thirty.
Like, he’s not exactly a catch. Dude sells coffee makers to rich people, and he wouldn’t even have that job if his mama didn’t own the company. ”
Emmy thought that was very astute. “How was Mandy different after Bill moved out? Can you give me some examples?”
“Not so stressed all the time. Smiling more. Joking. She stopped pulling out her hair. Started eating like a normal person. Talia told me Allison took the locks off the cabinets and the refrigerator. Bill put them in a while ago. He said he didn’t want them to get fat.”
Pam covered her mouth in horror.
Skylar continued, “Mandy was really looking forward to her next birthday, ’cause her last birthday she had a party at the movie theater with just a bunch of friends, and Bill pitched a fit and made Mrs. Vickery let him come, too.
Like, what was he doing there? Nobody likes him.
He just sat in the back and rolled his eyes when we laughed at anything. ”
Emmy tried to gently steer her back to Mandy. “Did anything else about Mandy’s life change when Bill moved out two weeks ago?”
Skylar shrugged, but said, “She could finally sleep, you know? She used to just lie in bed at night waiting for the fights to start. Like, even if they didn’t fight, it kept her awake just worrying that her mom was gonna get hurt again.
So I think that was the big thing. She could sleep through the night without worrying her mom was gonna, like, die. ”
Emmy tried to clear the shard of glass from her throat. She knew exactly what that felt like. “Did Mandy ever say anything about leaving town, or Allison taking her away?”
“No,” Skylar said. “But she woulda been so relieved. That’s all Mandy ever wanted was for them to get away from Bill.
She used to make up stories about it when we were little, like that a handsome prince was gonna save her, or maybe she was secretly royalty and her real dad was a rich duke and he was gonna fly her home in his private jet and stuff like that.
But she stopped when she got older ’cause what’s the point? Nothing ever changed.”
“Did Mandy ever talk in concrete terms about her real father?”
“She never knew him. Mrs. Vickery wouldn’t say when she asked. Just got real quiet.” Skylar shrugged. “I mean, maybe she still dreamed about him being a duke and taking her away. I dunno. You’d have to ask Talia.”
Emmy thought about the way Mandy had pulled at the restraints tying her to the hospital bed when she’d talked about getting away. Emmy had assumed she was thinking about her attacker, but maybe she was thinking about her life.
She asked, “Did you notice anyone new hanging around Mandy? Not just lately, but in the last year?”
“I don’t know.” There was something different about Skylar’s shrug this time. She was closing back up, worried about getting herself or Mandy in trouble. “Like I said, she didn’t talk to me about real things.”
“Talia told me that there was an older man in Mandy’s life. That he had a job.”
Skylar started nodding. She’d clearly noticed something was going on. “That makes sense.”
“How so?”
“She had money lately. More than usual. Like, she was buying things online, and there’s no way Allison would ever let her do that. Bill was always screaming about money. They weren’t allowed to buy anything without his permission.”
“What was Mandy buying?”
“Stuff from Nike. She had it sent to Talia’s so Allison wouldn’t find out, and Talia told me that the receipt was almost five hundred dollars.”
Emmy was going to have to go back harder at Talia. “Do you know if Mandy used a cash app or Venmo to pay for it?”
“Talia said she used a gift card, but Mandy wouldn’t say who gave it to her.”
The girl’s relationship with Talia seemed to be closer than she’d earlier described. “Did you ever notice if Mandy had another phone? Like a flip phone?”
Skylar shook her head. “Allison gave her an old iPhone. That’s all I ever saw her use.”
“Did Talia tell you that she saw Mandy leave school in the older man’s car?”
Skylar looked away again. She knew more than she’d wanted to say. “Yeah, but she didn’t see the guy. We were trying to figure it out. Like, who could it be.”
Emmy waited for the girl to look back at her. “Did Talia tell you anything about the car?”
“Just that it was old. Like, dude was broke. And then he gave Mandy all that money for clothes. That didn’t seem right. Guys don’t do that kind of thing unless they expect something back for it.”