Laura Lippman - Every Secret Thing

“Shut up.”

Ronnie’s voice was almost a shriek, loud and sharp enough to carry to the pool. For a second or two, it felt as if everyone was holding their breath, Alice and Ronnie included, waiting to see if something was about to happen. But no footsteps came toward them, and the noise around the pool soon started again.

“I don’t want to talk about what happened in the past,” Ronnie said, dragging the words out as if they hurt. “It’s over, and we can’t change it. But what’s happening now-if you did it, you have to tell them. You have to take them to the missing girl, and let her mother know where she is. You can’t blame me for this.”

“Why?”

“Because I didn’t have anything to do with it.”

“Well, I didn’t do anything last time, and I got blamed.” Alice put on her bland, obstinate voice, the one she used whenever pressed to give answers she didn’t want to provide. You have to tell us what happened, Alice . Why? So we can take steps, punish the man who did this. But I wanted him to do it. I love him, and I don’t want you to punish him. You can’t love him. Why? Because he doesn’t love you. But he does, he said so. Alice, we have to know what happened. Why?

“It was your idea,” Ronnie said.

“Prove it.”

“You told me what to do, how to do it. You said it had to be done.”

Alice shrugged, her gaze fixed on the pool.

“Look, I don’t care about then.” Ronnie’s voice was increasingly desperate. “I care about now. If you don’t tell the truth, the police are going to keep coming to where I work, and I’m going to lose my job. Or the newspaper will write about us-”

“Really?” Alice had thought there would be newspapers and television shows eventually, but not so soon.

“Really. I went to see Helen and she said-”

“Why did you go see my mom?”

“Because I was looking for you. And Helen said-”

She hated to hear her mother’s name in Ronnie’s mouth. She wanted to yank it from her, scream “Snatch pops, no snatch backs” the way the tough kids did when they stole Popsicles and candy bars. “You shouldn’t call her that. Even now. She’s my mother. She’s a grown-up.”

“Helen said-”

“She’s my mom. Not yours. You have your own mother and a father, too. All I have is a mother. She’s mine. Stay away from her. Can’t you just stay away? You don’t even live next door anymore. There’s no reason for you to be hanging around.”

“I just-” Ronnie was stuttering and lost, the way she had been in class, when sister’s questions came too fast. When Ronnie began to fall behind, she could never catch up.

“My mom didn’t even approve of you.”

“Alice-”

“She felt sorry for you. That’s why she made me play with you, that’s why she let you spend time at our house.”

“I don’t-”

“Because she felt bad for how awful and nasty your family was, and how you didn’t have any real friends. But she never liked you. She made fun of you behind your back.”

“No. No, she wouldn’t do that.”

Alice had thought her final accusation would unhinge Ronnie, but she was suddenly quiet, thoughtful, dangerously close to being in control. “She liked me. She told me all the time how much she liked me. She said I was more like her than you.”

Now it was Alice’s shriek that cut through the night air. “She didn’t, she didn’t, she didn’t! You’re such a liar. You were always a liar and a loser, the girl that no one chose for sides or partners. My mom couldn’t possibly like you.”

Again, the voices around the pool stilled, waiting. Again, they resumed. Alice lowered her voice.

“Do you know why you did it? Why I told you to do it?”

“You said the baby was sick and unhappy-”

Alice’s voice, while low, was triumphant. “I made all that up. Because I knew they would take you away. I thought they would lock you up forever and I wouldn’t have to see you anymore. I didn’t know you’d be smart enough to steal my jack-in-the-box and leave it there. Otherwise, I could have said I was never there and they would have believed me because it would have been my word against yours.”

“I didn’t-I never-the jack-in-the-box wasn’t what I wanted-”

Flashlight beams suddenly began cutting paths through the woods, playing across the fence, landing only a few feet from where Alice and Ronnie stood.

“Alice? Alice Manning?” a woman’s voice called.

“It’s the police,” Alice hissed, her eyes bright with excitement. “They’re coming for you. They know who you are and what you did. They’re going to lock you up forever this time. And the newspapers are going to write about you, and everyone will know. Ronnie Fuller killed a baby. Ronnie Fuller, nobody else. Now she’s taken another baby, and she’ll probably kill her, too.”

“I didn’t .”

“I’m going to tell them you told me as much. I’m going to tell them that you said you took the girl and chopped her in little pieces and threw her in the incinerator. I’m going to tell them you did it because she looks half black and you hate black people, always have, just like last time. You told me you hate it when black people and white people have babies together. I’m going to tell them-”

But Ronnie didn’t wait to hear the rest of Alice’s manufactured history. She turned and ran, away from the lights, indifferent to the twisted vines beneath her feet. She moved with surprising grace through the dark trees, barely making any sound.

“Hurry, she’s getting away!” Alice cried out in the direction of the lights. “We’re over here, near the fence. Hurry!”

It sounded as if a dozen people were rushing toward her, but it was only two, the police detectives who had talked to her before Sharon said they couldn’t anymore.

“Alice Manning?” the female detective asked, as if she didn’t already know who she was.

“Ronnie was just here. Ronnie’s getting away. Ronnie told me-”

The detectives turned, shining their beams in several directions, but Ronnie had moved so swiftly through the trees that there was nothing to see.

“We’ll send a patrol to her house,” the woman said. She had her hand on Alice’s wrist. Why was she holding on to Alice when she should be chasing Ronnie?

“We want to talk to you,” the man said. “We need to ask you about something we found in your file from Middlebrook.”

“What file?”

“Your medical records.”

“Oh.”

“Would you mind coming with us back to headquarters?” The woman made it sound like a question, but Alice had a feeling it wasn’t. “You can call your lawyer from there if you need to. But we really need to talk to you.”

Alice turned her gaze back to the fence. The teenagers who had been allowed to take over the pool for the evening were standing at the deep end, looking toward the woods, their hands shielding their eyes as they tried to make sense of the light and noise coming from Alice’s side of the fence. She did not actually know any of them, but she might have. Her old friends from St. William of York could be among the bikini-clad girls. One of the boys could have been her boyfriend, if she didn’t already have one. She imagined confiding in one of these girls: “I have a boyfriend who’s six years older than I am. He has a pickup truck, and he takes me out driving, and he wants to marry me.” The last was not exactly true, but it was true enough. He would marry her, if she told him that’s what he had to do. He would do anything she told him to do. So would Helen, and Sharon, and even her new lawyer, that ugly woman who smelled bad. For once, everyone had to do what she said.