Kimberly McCreight - The Collide

“Is there anything she could say that would make you forgive her?” I ask. Partly because I want him to tell me how I should.

Gideon considers the question for a minute. “Probably,” he says. “People who live in glass houses, you know? You’re saying you can’t forgive her? I mean, no matter what?”

“I’m not sure,” I say, and I realize then that whether or not I can forgive my mom isn’t even the thing that’s bothering me most. I’m just not sure what is. “I’m going to call Jasper’s house, see if I can reach him.”

“You think he knows something?” Gideon asks.

“No,” I say. “But he knows me.”

Jasper’s mom answers on the third ring. “Hello?” Mad, already. Like we’re in the middle of an argument. And she doesn’t even know it’s me. Things are only going to go downhill once she figures that out.

“Can I please speak to Jasper?” I ask brightly.

“He’s not here,” she snaps. On second thought, she knows exactly who I am.

“Oh, I, um, tried his cell phone, and it’s not working. . . .”

Dead silence. She also knows that Jasper’s phone isn’t working. She is maybe even the reason why.

“Could you tell him that Wylie called?” I ask. “And that I’m home?”

“I am not telling him a goddamn thing.”

Click.

She’s hung up on me. My chest is burning as I grip my phone. I know that I shouldn’t take her venom personally. But that’s easier said than done.

I still have the phone in my hand when the doorbell rings. I want to feel a happy surge: it’s Jasper! But already I know it’s not.

“I’ll check who it is,” Gideon offers as he gets up to peek out the window. He turns back to me. “Rachel.”

Gideon opens the door and Rachel steps into the foyer, dressed, as usual, in an elegant, perfectly tailored black suit and expensive-looking four-inch black platform heels. Rachel’s thousand-dollar rock-star shoes are her screw-you to lawyerly convention. Somehow, she makes this seem brave.

“Glad to see you made it home,” she says, and there goes a bolt of lightning. Her feeling, gone before it’s even really there. And right now I am definitely too worn out to chase it. “I just wanted to check in and make sure everything was okay.”

I stare at her. “I was just sitting here reading the note my not-dead mom left me. So define ‘okay.’”

“Oh, right,” she says, looking past me. Perplexed. (Maybe.) Flash. Crackle. Gone. “Well, I came by to remind you of the bail conditions: greater Newton area. They can use it against you at trial if you violate, even by accident, not to mention that they will revoke your bail, instantly. It’s not worth it.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” I say. Though I am already pretty sure this is yet another of my lies.

“Good. Also, we got the first set of discovery disclosures from the prosecutor’s office today,” Rachel goes on, glad to change the subject. Now her feelings are steady, loud and clear: calm, confident, focused. Whenever we talk about my case is the only time they are ever like that. “They’re, let’s just say, interesting.”

“Interesting how?” Gideon asks when I am too slow on the uptake.

“They’re thin,” she says, pleased with herself now. “Like remember those matches they supposedly had in the first interview?”

“What about them?” I feel a flutter in my chest. The matches really bothered me, right from the start. If they did find matches under my bed, I worried that maybe I did do something awful to Teresa and just don’t remember. Because in some small, dark corner of my mind, I still don’t trust myself, not completely.

“They’ve disappeared, apparently.” Rachel shakes her head in disbelief. “Now, I don’t know if they lost them or if they never had them or what. But they’re gone.”

“That’s great news, right?” Gideon asks, looking over at me. I’m afraid there’s a catch. “Does that mean they’ll drop their case?”

Rachel shakes her head again. “I wouldn’t get ahead of ourselves. They still have proof that the fire at the hospital was intentional. It was ‘constructed from combustible materials.’ Meaning, apparently, whoever set it didn’t need a match.”

“Maybe Teresa?” I ask. I’ve thought a lot about that excitement I sensed from Teresa at the weirdest times. Like she knew something big was coming.

“Pretty sure they still have you in mind.”

“Combustible materials? They grabbed me off the bridge,” I say. “Not to mention, they took everything off me. How would I even have—whatever that is—to set a fire?”

Rachel takes a breath and looks down, like she’s reluctant to say the rest. To spare my feelings. No, like she knows she should feel that way. No flash. No crackle. I don’t think she feels anything. “Jasper is their theory. They have him on tape, remember, sneaking in to see you.”

For a split second I feel betrayed by Jasper. Even though I know he wasn’t involved. That’s the true danger of the most outrageous lies. Somehow they take on the possibility of truth.

“But he didn’t—”

“It doesn’t matter what actually happened, obviously,” Rachel says. “It matters what they can get a jury to believe.”

“Then make sure that doesn’t happen!” Gideon snaps, and he’s pissed. Probably more about our mom for him. “Isn’t that your job?”

Anger. (Maybe.) Flash. Crackle. Gone. That’s fair: she saved my mom’s life, got me out of jail. How much more is she really expected to do?

“There’s a limit to my control over this situation,” she says carefully and calmly, and this much is definitely true. “I will do the best I can, but there will be regular people with their own imperfect opinions involved—juries, prosecutors. These people make random, stupid choices.”

“Did the police ever find Quentin?” I ask, partly to change the subject, partly because I do feel way more bothered about his whereabouts now that I’m out.

Rachel frowns and shakes her head. But I feel a twinge of something. Flash, then gone. I am pretty sure it could have been guilt, though.

“You did ask them to find him, right? You told them he was at the jail, that he was alive?”

“I made a judgment call, Wylie.”

“What? You told me you were looking into it!” I shout. And—stupidly—I feel like I’m going to cry. “He could be anywhere!”

Scared. That’s how I really feel. Quentin being alive and out here makes me scared. I don’t want to give him that power. But it’s a fact.

“In my judgment , admitting that Quentin visited you in jail could make you look like his accomplice, Wylie. It could even end up linking you to Cassie’s death, which, you know, was another theory they have—that you’ve killed a girl with fire before.” Rachel stares me straight in the eye. Calm. Steady. Controlled. “They probably never would have found Quentin anyway. It’s not like they have sophisticated resources. I’m sorry that I lied to you. But I truly thought it was in your best interest.”

I wonder for a second whether she thinks I imagined Quentin or made up that he came. I never told Jasper about Quentin coming to see me, that I knew for sure he was alive. And that’s the real reason, I think. I was afraid that maybe it never happened.

“But what if Quentin has our dad?” I ask.

“He doesn’t have your dad,” Rachel says. Guilt. (Maybe.) Flash. Crackle. Gone. She feels absolutely 100 percent sure of this fact, though. But then again, people who are totally sure can also be totally wrong. Being an Outlier has taught me that much. “And if he does, I swear to you, Wylie, I will make it my mission in life to track him down myself and make sure he pays.”