CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
Veronica stepped into Miki’s Diner, just after the lunch rush. Dick Dale’s sixties surf rock played over the speakers, the rampaging tempos and twanging guitars an uneasy match for the afternoon quiet. The tables were mostly empty. Veronica lingered in the doorway for a moment, waiting.
Then she caught sight of the person she’d come to meet: Grace Manning, dressed in the diner’s boxy pink uniform, her ticket pad tucked in her breast pocket.
Grace looked up at her and gave a little wave, motioning for her to take a seat wherever. “I’ll be there in a sec. Just got to clock out for my break.” She was already untying her apron, draping it over one arm. Veronica took a seat under the fiberglass statue of a cartoon surfer on a cresting wave, the same one she’d sat in with Keith while waiting for the verdict in Weevil’s case. She slipped out of her jacket and placed it on the seat beside her.
Grace hadn’t been able to make tuition that fall. She’d dropped out of Hearst, picking up as many shifts as she could at the diner. Veronica had only heard about it that morning, when she called Grace to tell her they’d busted Bellamy. She’d been so busy with the details of the case that she hadn’t thought to ask the girl about school. Grace, prickly and private, hadn’t offered the information until now. The news triggered a pang of dismay. Veronica and Keith had spent years on the brink of poverty but they’d always been able to make ends meet. She’d never been faced with a reality like Grace’s—a world in which she had no money and, even worse, no family.
“Hey!” A moment later, Grace appeared at the side of the booth. She set a tray on the edge of the table; it held two cups of coffee and two pieces of pie. “On the house,” she said. “One of the perks of working here.”
“Thanks.” Veronica looked the girl over. She’d expected to see Grace looking more hostile than ever, assumed she’d take the loss of her education hard. But she actually seemed, if not deliriously happy, at least amiable. Her cheeks were fuller than they’d been the last time they’d met. Her demeanor was calmer, less high-strung. “How’re you doing, Grace?”
Grace sat down across from her. “Well, my feet hurt, and some klutz spilled orange juice on me first thing this morning, but I’m doing okay.” She poured two creamers into her coffee and stirred with brisk, delicate movements. Then, in a slow, measured voice she asked, “So…this guy. He’s in jail?”
“Not yet. Right now he’s in the hospital. But as soon as they can move him, yeah, he’s going to jail.”
“In the hospital?” Grace frowned.
Veronica took a sip of coffee. “Yeah, I guess someone roughed him up pretty good. The cops formally arrested him at the hospital but the shape he’s in—they won’t be able to take him in for at least another week or so.”
“Roughed him up” is probably an understatement, Veronica thought. Sweet Pea’s fastidious attentions had left Bellamy with two broken fingers, four broken ribs, a ruptured spleen, and a collapsed lung. Veronica was glad there was no one to ask if she felt at all bad about her role in the confession. She generally didn’t like violence, but she felt that Bellamy had earned a special exception.
Apparently she wasn’t alone in this judgment. A cold smile spread across Grace’s face as she cradled her mug between her hands.
“It’s hard to say just what’ll happen next,” Veronica continued. “They’re still looking at the evidence. But the victim we found in the sand trap had strands of hair on her that match Bellamy’s.”
The body had belonged to eighteen-year-old Kimberly Weir of Odessa, Texas—otherwise known as Madelyn Chase. The scraps of human skin under her fingernails were still at the lab, but Veronica had a feeling they’d match Bellamy’s DNA too. Between that, Rachel Fahy’s testimony, and the semen sample they’d found on Grace, the prosecutors would have a strong case for conviction.
“So it’s not really over,” Grace said, looking down.
Veronica placed her hand over Grace’s. “It’s never really over.”
For a moment, they sat in silence. But there was more to say. Veronica steeled herself and continued. “I have to warn you, Grace, it’s possible you’ll face public exposure when this goes to trial. Technically, they’re supposed to keep victims anonymous; in practice it doesn’t always work that way.”
The girl nodded. “I know. I figured.” She gave a little shrug. “I told Lizzie on the phone the other night. She’s in New York now—she’s a chef, did I tell you?” She laughed softly. “I hadn’t told her any of it. I don’t know why. She’s the only member of my family I’ve ever been able to talk to. Well…her and Meg.” Her voice dropped slightly when she said her oldest sister’s name. “Anyway, I guess I was embarrassed. Not just about the job, but about…about the attack. I didn’t want her to have to know what’d happened to me. I know that’s stupid.”
Veronica thought about how long she’d kept her own secret. She’d never told her father about the night at Shelly Pomroy’s party; a part of her had wanted to protect him from that knowledge. “It’s not stupid. But I’m glad you told her. It’s a lot to go through on your own.”
Grace nodded. “It wasn’t a fun conversation. But she knows the whole thing now, and she’s the only person left whose opinion I cared about. It was good for me too. I was starting to feel myself get just a bit too casual about lying. Too inattentive to the point where selling a necessary lie turns into…losing yourself in the part.” She smiled ruefully. “Kind of an occupational hazard for me, I guess. But, Veronica, I still cringe when I remember how fucking sanctimonious my performance was when I looked you right in the eye and falsely accused a man I’d never even met.”
“Well, Grace, I know a lot about your family history,” said Veronica. “Compelling lies were a constant theme. All things considered, I’d say your grip on reality is remarkably strong.”
“Hey! Speaking of…” Grace gave another sudden, savage grin. “I am totally relishing the idea of my parents finding out what I used to do for a living. I’d love to see my mom’s face. But I already know exactly what they’d say.” She leaned forward, a wild, zealous gleam entering her eyes. “?‘And the daughter of any priest, if she profane herself by playing the whore, she profaneth her father: she shall be burnt with fire.’?”
“Nice,” said Veronica, offhand. “I’d have gone with stoning, myself.”
“That’s for witches,” Grace said. “But if you’re feeling left out, I’m pretty sure they’ve been praying for your demise too. At least since Faith went missing.” She set her mug down and looked up at Veronica, her expression suddenly hard to read. “Veronica?”
“Yeah?”
“Would you tell me if you knew where she was? Faith, I mean?”
Veronica hesitated. She’d made a promise, a long time ago. She’d kept her silence for years. But now Grace watched her with hopeful, desperate eyes—this girl with almost no one in her life, with a mattress on the floor, a legacy of trauma and loneliness and fear she was only now coming to terms with.
“All I know,” she said, “is that Duncan renamed her Lilly.”
Grace bit the corner of her lip. For just a second Veronica thought she might be about to cry. But then she nodded, and picked up her fork.
“Anyway,” Grace said, an abrupt signal to change the subject. “I’m working here five days a week now. More or less full-time, depending on how many hours they have for me. It’s not so bad.”
“I’m sorry. About, you know…Hearst. I can’t believe they wouldn’t find you any aid.”
Grace shrugged. “It’s all right.” She speared a bite of pie on the end of her fork. “I mean, don’t get me wrong—I don’t see this as some kind of awesome character-building situation that God has favored me with. But I’m not going to let it stop me. Either I’ll find the money to go back to school, or I’ll figure out a different way to get where I want to go. Hell with it, maybe I’ll just go straight to New York or London, and Hearst College can just go fuck itself.”
“Hear, hear,” Veronica said, lifting her mug in a toast. They clinked ceramic lightly over the table.
Grace’s face softened. She looked down at her pie, her lower lip sticking out in a thoughtful pout. When she looked back up, her face was pink.
“How often do people say thank you to you?”
Veronica swallowed her mouthful of coffee and cleared her throat. “?‘Thank you’ ranks just below ‘You ruined my life’ and just above ‘When I get my hands on you.’?”
“I mean, if you hadn’t kept at it, the Grand would’ve settled, and I’d still be at Hearst. I don’t know exactly why I’m grateful to you and your stupid integrity,” Grace said wryly. Then she smiled. “But Veronica…thank you.”
Veronica wasn’t sure what to say. She held the girl’s gaze for another moment, then Grace smiled, shrugged, and headed back toward the kitchen. Veronica took another bite of pie. And as she delighted in the sugary goodness, she had an epiphany. She knew in that moment she’d never be rich. Veronica found comfort in being jaded. She could imagine no greater shame than to have her emotions manipulated. To get played. So why did this “thank you” from a girl who’d lied to her, who’d tried to game the system, mean more to her than the big check from a corporate client that had been wholly in the right? Figure that one out, she thought, and maybe I can help my kids understand why their mom resigned herself to a lifetime of truck-stop pie and coffee—just like Granddad.