Page 81 of The Fall of Iris Henley
My appetite is effectively ruined. I leave the pie and the coffee and a tip, and I head out to my car. The clouds are thickening, and the air feels vaguely swampy. I get into the car and roll down the windows to let the scant breeze in.
I feel my phone vibrate when I’m at a red light a block or two away.
Sure. Here you go.
I should just put the phone down. I should just wait until I get back home, get up to my lonely room, across from the dark void of his. I shouldn’t risk watching it in the car, even if I am at a stop.
But I press play anyway.
He’s sent me a seven-minute clip recording every time some kind of movement set off the camera that night.
At 10:13, the Garzas’ orange tabby tries to jump on top of a trash can and knocks it over, the resulting crash sending him skittering.
At 10:33, a red pickup truck drives past Max’s house.
At 11:04, a black pickup truck drives past Max’s house.
At 11:22, a tan pickup truck drives past Max’s house.
“Fucking Texas,” I mutter, speeding the video up to twice the speed.
11:53: A single raccoon converges on the knocked-over trash.
12:05: Another raccoon, this one with twin babies in tow, joins the first. Cute, but not useful.
12:18: A black pickup drives past Max’s house.
2:03: A Jeep drives past Max’s house.
The image isn’t clear enough to make out the license plate. But I can just make out the sticker on the back. It looks almost like a flower, a firework, but I know what it really is. It’s a pom-pom.
I didn’t leave the house that night.
But Hayden did.
CHAPTER 46
MONDAY, OCTOBER 24, 8:13PM
VARDA
The light changes color.
My palms are sweaty and shaky as I shove the phone back into my purse.It’s okay. It’s okay,I think, letting off the brake.You can’t do anything until you get home. That’s the next step. Get home. You don’t have to think or act or even feel anything until you get home.
In my mind, it plays again and again: that three-second clip of Hayden’s Jeep gliding through the darkness past Max’s fence. But that doesn’t mean anything, right? It just means she left my house the night Lynette and Rocky died. Maybe she went to pick up more snacks. Maybe she went to hook up with Carter.
But then why has she been catfishing me?
You don’t have to figure it out. You don’t have to understand it. You just have to drive home.I try to focus on the road in front of me, my eyes following my headlights along the lane.
I glance in my rearview mirror, and then feel my blood go cold.
There are headlights behind me. Headlights that have gotten very close, very quickly.
Adrenaline bursts through my blood, my heart picking up speed. I can’t make out the make or model of the vehicle, or the driver, but they’ve closed the distance between us. They’re right on my bumper. My eyes dart around, right, left, trying to figure out a place I can pull off to the side and let them around me, but there’s no shoulder to speak of.
My fingers tighten around the steering wheel. Probably just some shitkicker out for a drive, getting aggressive in his too-big truck. But then the thought occurs to me. Maybe it’s one of my shitkicker classmates, and they haven’t gotten the word that I’m innocent, and they’re taking justice into their own hands. Or maybe they just don’t care if I’m innocent or not.
