Laura Lippman - To The Power Of Three

She was prettier than Dale remembered, but perhaps he simply hadn’t seen her since she passed through her awkward stage. Josie had been, well, monkeyish as a child, small and tanned, her nose a little large for her face, her cheeks pinched. She was still tiny, but the cheeks had filled in and the nose had receded, and there was no denying that the light-colored eyes gave her face an almost mystical cast. She made her way carefully along the front row, only to find that every chair was filled.

Susannah, who had the usual forethought to include Josie among those who would be seated for this brief memorial service, looked puzzled. She craned her neck, searching for the impostor among them. “What’s that?” she whispered, pointing to an impossibly large woman with a strange red rash visible on her bare arms and legs. The woman was at the end of the front row, on the other side of Chloe, who had engineered the seating so Glen, Thornton, and Susannah were between her and Dale.

“I haven’t the faintest idea,” he began, and that was all Susannah needed to confront the woman. He couldn’t hear Susannah’s whispered exhortations, but everyone was treated to the woman’s vehement protests. Finally Susannah’s gentle voice rose in frustration: “The girl is on crutches. She was Kat’s best friend. You can’t possibly expect her to stand.”

The large woman moved, although not without quite a bit of muttering, and it seemed at first that she might leave the cemetery altogether, as if this would prove she was the wronged party. Instead she settled for forcing her way into the front row of those standing.

Josie swung toward her seat, murmuring “I’m sorry” over and over. But for what? For the little scene over the seat, which was not her fault? Or for Kat’s death, which also was not her fault? Or was it? What the fuck did that one-line letter mean anyway? What truth did Perri want Kat to tell; what secret hung between them? Dale had sources inside the police department. He knew that Josie had been evasive with the detectives, obstructionist even. But why would Josie lie? Chloe insisted Josie had adored Kat.

Once Josie was settled in her seat, Chloe turned and held the girl’s hands in hers. Even from the other end of the row, Dale could see she was gripping them much too tightly, and her voice was inappropriately loud for this somber setting.

“I always thought,” she said, “that Kat would be safe with you.”

If he had been next to Chloe, he would have whispered some reprimand out of the side of his mouth or put a restraining hand on his ex-wife’s arms.

But Josie, tears in her eyes, merely said, “I did, too.”

Sergeant Lenhardtand Detective Infante stood on the other side of the drive, apart from the crowd, but in a spot where they were clearly visible to Josie. It was a cheap trick, but cheap tricks can work. We’re watching you. We’re going to talk to you again and again and again. Mr. Patel, seated behind his daughter, glared at them but did not try to approach or chase them away. How could he?

“Are these high-school girls,” Infante asked, “or strippers on a break from Northpoint Boulevard?”

“Pervert,” Lenhardt said, but Infante had a point. The girls’ idea of funeral wear was strangely provocative-short, tight black skirts with tops that hugged their bodies, leaving a strip of stomach bare. Perhaps it was a trick of memory, but he did not remember girls looking like this when he was in high school during an allegedly permissive time. The girls at Northern High School had worn low-slung jeans and gone braless, yet they had still been fresh, wholesome-looking even, with long, shiny hair and very little makeup. He would die before he let Jessica out of the house looking like this. Even as he made that vow, he knew he would be helpless to do anything about it. If this was how girls dressed, this was how girls dressed, and trying to force a kid to behave differently would be disastrous. Maybe, he tried telling himself, these getups were proof of just how innocent these girls were. Only a child who hadn’t made the connection between her body and sex could parade herself this way.

Infante nudged him, directing his attention to a short, compact beauty with her breasts pushed up into an impressive swell in her scoop-neck black top, a big gold E nestled in her cleavage.

“I never wanted to be a necklace before,”’ Infante said. “But I’m beginning to see the possibilities.”

“Hey,” Lenhardt said, more sharply than he had intended. He usually didn’t mind Infante’s on-the-prowl shtick, but these girls weren’t even legal. “Keep your gaze fixed on the Patels. We’re here to eyefuck, emphasis on eye .”

Eve was proudof her necklace, and she had borrowed a scoop-neck T-shirt from Lila to show it off, not realizing how much smaller Lila was across the chest. It had been hard deciding between a genuine gold letter and a super big one that was just plated. Val was the one who said she should go big because the necklace wouldn’t stay in style long, so Eve should get the most bang for her buck, not waste her money on real gold.

“Just make sure you paint the back with clear fingernail polish,” Val had advised. “Otherwise it’ll turn your skin green.”

It was funny how Val knew such things, because she didn’t give a damn about style or fashion for her own self. But that was the great thing about Val: She didn’t insist that everyone be like her. She just wanted the people around her to be honest, without affectations. It was okay by Val if you got caught up with wanting trendy stuff. Val wasn’t completely immune to such desires herself; she was, like, in love with her iPod. But somehow she kept it in perspective. Lila could be a little bitchy and, if she liked a guy, crazy competitive. Val was always mellow, always accepting. The only thing she despised was hypocrites. Hypocrites and liars.

The problem was, not lying was harder than it sounded, especially for someone like Eve, who felt as if she had been set up to deceive people. When she had started liking boys-and Eve had started liking boys young, back in fifth grade-it had been inconceivable that she could speak of this fact to her parents. They were so old, for one thing, and so stiff. Not only could she not tell them how much she liked boys or how often she thought about them, she found herself taking it to the extreme, insisting she had no interest in them whatsoever. If she told her parents that she liked boys, she might then have to admit they didn’t like her back.

It seemed to Eve that she told big lies only when she was trying to keep some part of herself hidden. She would start out with nothing more than a desire to conceal, to protect, and it somehow ended up being a lie. That’s why she had to continue dodging Ms. Cunningham. She’d end up telling some enormous lie to protect her secret, and it would be just like last spring all over again. Of course, the weird part about last spring was that she had tried to tell the truth about the car accident, but everyone thought it was a lie, so it had the same effect. Even Val had cautioned her not to spread stories, told her she would not put up with a friend who was a gossip.

That was when Eve had first realized that the dead lived by different rules. Well, not lived-the dead being dead-but the reputations they left behind were definitely changed for the better. Eve wondered what kind of rep she would have if she should die.

Kat’s crowd-mostly preps,although there were cheerleaders and jocks sprinkled among them, and even some drama geeks-were grouped at the front of those standing. Sniffling, holding each other, the girls presented a pretty tableau of grief. But Alexa couldn’t help thinking they knew this, which undercut the effect in her mind. It was as if they were enacting a scene from a music video. Pose, pose, pose. This is what grief looks like. Hair flip, clutch, hair flip.