Page 83 of The Secrets We Hide
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.”
Emmy didn’t want to dwell on what the man would expect in return. “Did you know that Mandy was skipping school?”
“Yeah, all the time. Sometimes, she’d go with Talia and get ice cream and stuff. Most of the time she was on her own.”
“Do you think she was skipping to spend time with the older man?”
“It makes sense, but like I said, Mandy wasn’t confiding in me. Everything was on the surface. Except for Talia, I wouldn’t know anything about what was going on. And Talia only talked to me when she was, like, desperate. Like, she was really worried about Mandy.”
“Give me an example.”
“Everyything I just said.” Skylar shrugged. “That Mandy was hooking up with this old guy and Mrs. Vickery wasn’t paying attention and all that stuff with Bill. It’s just a lot, you know? Too much to keep up with.”
Emmy agreed. Mandy’s life had been too complicated for one sixteen-year-old girl, let alone two or even three. “Can you think back to anything recent with Mandy that sticks out? Something she said or did or might have told you in passing?”
“She got really freaked out last week.” Skylar had become more animated. She twisted in the swing toward Emmy. “Mandy, like, spends her life worrying about her mom, okay? She calls her from school. All. The. Time. When she gets there in the morning. During homeroom. Between classes. At lunch. If her mom doesn’t pick up, Mandy panics. Like, maybe she’s worried that Bill will put her in the hospital like he did the last time?”
Emmy nodded.
“So, on Wednesday, I found Mandy in the bathroom in the English pod, like on the floor pulling at her hair and sobbing uncontrollably, and I thought something really bad had happened, but it was just that Mrs. Vickery was in a meeting, so she’d turned off her phone. And then when she finally called Mandy back, Mandy couldn’t even talk ’cause she was crying so hard. This had happened, like, an hour ago, but Mandy was still crying. She went home because she couldn’t stop.”
“Okay.” Emmy took a breath so her heart wouldn’t break. She had saved the thorniest question for last. She focused all ofher attention on Skylar’s face so she could read the girl’s reaction before her mother intervened. “I just have one more question. Do you know a guy named Woody?”
Skylar was visibly shocked. Her mouth opened. “You think he—”
“Stop.” Pam pulled Skylar up by her arm. “This interview is over. Get in the house. Now.”
Skylar didn’t argue. She looked scared. Her head was down as she walked toward the house.
Emmy tried, “Pam—”
“I need you to leave right now. You can go through the gate.” Pam pointed them toward the side of the house. “I want it on the record that you’re not allowed to talk to my daughter ever again. You, too,Doctor.”
Jude nodded. “Understood.”
Emmy started toward the gate. She could see Skylar watching through the kitchen window. A few moments later, the back door slammed shut. Pam closed the shutters.
Jude said, “I gather Pam knows Woody’s reputation?”
“She’s a criminal defense attorney. Half her clients work for Woody. The other half are terrified of him.”
“Now I understand why you saved that question for last.”
“Did you see Skylar’s reaction?”
“She knows his name. She’s worried that Mandy was mixed up with him.”
“That was my read, too.”
Emmy opened the gate. Walked into the front yard. She saw a blue metallic BMW Alpina XB7 parked behind her cruiser. The twenty-three-inch wheels had custom black rims with spikes sticking out from the spokes. Her first thought was that the car cost more than the house she was living in. Her second thought was that it did not belong on this street.
Jude had done the same calculations. She stuck out her arm in front of Emmy the way Myrna used to throw out her hand when she had to suddenly hit the brakes in the car.
Then the temperature felt like it dropped twenty degrees.
