Alecia wondered if she actually meant to do it. She imagined a quick flash of anger, the impulse to push her, to shut her up.
“What will happen to Taylor?” Alecia was the only one who asked, and now everyone else looked away; no one had an answer. Bridget had recorded the whole fight in Taylor’s hallway, the darkened room catching the voices clearly. She’d sent it, broadcast to the world, on her Periscope account, so even the shattered phone didn’t matter.
“And Andrew? The rape?”
Nate shifted in his seat. “I sent a letter to the school. I don’t know if it will matter. I told them I couldn’t write his recommendation. I told them what he did.”
Tripp tapped the bed. “We saved the video, right, Bridge?” He leaned forward.
Bridget nodded, her eyes half closed.
“It might not matter. She’s dead. She said yes. It would be hard to prosecute.” Tripp sat back, deflated. “He’ll lose that scholarship. But he won’t pay in any real way.” He said it with the confidence of someone who’d learned the hard lessons of the law, first hand, for years.
“Hard, but not impossible,” Alecia said, suddenly wanting this, Andrew’s lost baseball future not enough. None of it enough.
Nate’s hand covered his mouth, his eye twitching. “Can I testify?” he asked, dumbly, trying too hard to save a girl who was long past saving. The offer was for himself, a balm on his guilt.
Alecia turned away, glad, maybe for the first time ever, that Gabe wouldn’t be a “normal” boy.
Perhaps Linda had been right. There is nothing so great about normal.
?????
Later, after everyone left and only Alecia remained, they watched The Price Is Right. Alecia rested her hand in the same place Tripp had, right next to Bridget’s hand. She studied her long, delicate fingers. So thin. She looked like a child, and Alecia had no idea when that had happened.
“So . . . you and Tripp?”
Bridget gave a shrug, didn’t take her eyes of the television.
“You have to say something,” Alecia said, pushing her the way you press your thumb to a recent bruise, just to feel the pain in all its newness.
“Okay.” Bridget sighed. “What will you do about Nate?” Now she looked right at Alecia’s face, almost defiant, until Alecia felt her heart fill up her chest, the pain quick and sharp, then abating.
Nate.
“I can’t make it up to him,” Alecia said, holding Bridget’s gaze. Watching her friend shake her head, agree with Alecia that no, she couldn’t. Could Nate make it up to her?
She recalled the way Nate had behaved at home on Wednesday (how lucky he was that Lucia had been killed on Wednesday, that science could prove it): attentive, gentle, his hands over hers, jumping up to answer the door, quick to sign the credit card receipt, hurrying to get Gabe a cup of milk, her a glass of water, and later, an uncharacteristic glass of wine.
She thought about how quickly she’d adapted to a life with just Gabe, how much lighter the air in the house felt after Nate had left, the cord of muscle between her shoulder blades loose and easy. She felt something else, too, away from Nate. Something new and just born, fresh but raw, stripped bare like skin after a chemical peel: Gabe might be okay. Not the child she’d hoped for, not the person she thought he would be. But he’d still be fine, just as he was. She thought of the soccer ball sticker, peeling and curled in the bottom of her drawer. It would turn yellow and gummy before she’d use it.
Was it up to only her? Would Nate even want to come home?
“He’ll come home,” Bridget said, reading her mind. She licked her lip, took a sip of the ice water from the cup on her nightstand. “You’re everything to him.” She looked away then, almost like it made her sad.
Alecia wasn’t so sure. She thought of Gabe, tucked into bed; Mandy, the baby-sitter, lying on the couch, tongue lolling out. She thought of Nate letting himself in, watching her sleep. Would he watch her sleep?
Would she always question him?
“I’m going home, Alecia,” Bridget said. “To Georgia. Just as soon as I’m better—eight weeks probably.”
“Why? The kids love you,” Alecia said, but it was a lie. They liked Bridget just fine, but they’d be fine without her, too.
“My mom isn’t well, hasn’t been for years. I’m missing this time with her. I can’t stay here. In this town, the ghost of that girl, I just can’t. That mill, that school.” Bridget ran her finger along her upper lip. “It’s never been good here. Not for me. You see that, right?”
Alecia did see it, but instead she took Bridget’s hand in hers. “What about Tripp? Holden’s mom?”
Bridget sighed, ran her palm along the top of Alecia’s hand. “We’ll have the memorial. I’ll find a tree. I’m ready. I wasn’t before, but I am now. Tripp is . . . Tripp. He’s an Oanoke lifer.”
Alecia knew and did not say that Nate was, too.
“You know, the birds did this,” Bridget said.
Six weeks ago, Alecia would have laughed at her. Bridget with her herbs and her tarot and her instincts.
“If it weren’t for them, there would have been no reporter to see Lucia and Nate at that motel. It’s like they all fell for a reason. Or a warning. We’re all too complacent here, too sleepy, too insular. Like when the mill closed, the town died, too.” Bridget continued, her eyes squinting, watching the coil of tubes running from the IV into her arm, a clear liquid dripping. “You know, they never even figured it out, what really did it. Sometimes I wonder . . .” She shook her head, her voice lowered, her fingertips trembling. “If she really was a witch. You know she saw dead blackbirds all the time? I read her journals; she said whenever she saw one, something bad happened. She had this obsession with blackbirds, ravens, crows. What if Lucia did it? What if all this is her fault?”
“She was just a girl, Bridget,” Alecia said. “Think of how many times we see birds, on the side of the road, whatever, and pay it no attention. Besides, the birds that fell were starlings, not blackbirds.” Alecia pulled her hand out of Bridget’s balmy grip, flexed her fingers. “Listen, she was just a girl with a big imagination and no one to love her.”
“Except Nate?” Bridget said softly.
That part could have been true. Nate had a flair for the girls in need. Alecia thought of herself, an ice island floating in the warm Carolina sunshine, surrounded by bubbly, sorority giggliness, and he’d reached out and saved her. Took her in, thawed her out with a heat she almost couldn’t bear.