“Where was her mother?”
“I don’t know. I never found out.”
“What did he do to Lynn?” I didn’t want to know. I really didn’t.
“I don’t know. I didn’t come out of the closet. But whatever it was, he’d done it before. She was expecting it. And despite her fear, she kept me safe. She let him take her, and she left me there so I wouldn’t see it.”
“When did you come out of the closet?”
“I don’t remember. I didn’t get to see Lynn for a few days after that. When I finally did, she was quiet and reserved. She was a different Lynn. He’d hurt her. I just didn’t know how, because she protected me from all of it. I wish she’d told me. I wish I knew what he did.”
Again, I said nothing.
“After about a week, I went to talk to her at school. She looked down at the picture she was drawing and she said very quietly, ‘I wish Shelly had been there. Shelly would have grabbed him by his nose, chopped it off, and then fed it to him.’”
I remained silent.
“I looked down at her drawing, and she had drawn three girls. There was me, and I knew it was me because she’d written my name underneath. And then there was Lynn. And on the other side, there was someone else. She wrote Shelly’s name under that one. All three of us, in the picture, were clasping our hands together.”
“Had you met Shelly before that?”
“I didn’t meet Shelly at all. Not until years later. She was part of Lynn’s life, not mine. But it made Lynn feel safe to think of us as a unit, so she often drew pictures of us together, even though we’d never met.”
“And Shelly was the fierce one?” I asked.
She smiled, finally. “Shelly was the fierce one. Everyone was afraid of her. Teachers. Lynn’s mom. The school principal. Even Lynn’s dad was afraid of Shelly.”
“Did they have a need to be afraid of Shelly?” I asked softly.
“Oh, yes,” she said on a sigh. “Everyone needed to be very, very afraid of Shelly. She’d do anything to protect the people she loved, even back then.”
I didn’t know what else to ask.
“Can I tell you a secret?” she asked me so quietly that I barely heard her.
“Sure. You can tell me anything.”
“Shelly scares the fuck out of me,” she whispered. “She’d do anything to keep Lynn safe.”
That was what I was afraid of.
14
When I got out of the shower, Ash was making breakfast. Rather, she was burning my house down, because the smoke alarms were going crazy as she stood in front of the back door, waving smoke from the kitchen with a big cookie sheet.
She winced as I rushed into the kitchen. “Sorry,” she squeaked. I could barely hear her over the blaring alarms. I rushed to open all the windows, turned on the fan over the stove, and I took the cookie sheet from her, fanning it directly below the closest smoke detector. “Sorry,” she said again when the room got quiet. “I was trying to make breakfast for you.”
I stopped, took hold of her shoulders, and kissed her forehead. She nearly melted under my regard, and I lingered with my lips on her forehead until she went completely soft.
While I was in the shower, she’d applied her makeup, so she’d gone from fresh-faced to emo in minutes. It was always startling to see the transformation in her, but it did fit her. She was damned adorable when she was all made up. And if I said that out loud, she’d probably leave and never come back. She took a lot of pride in her evasion techniques, and I’d learned long ago that her makeup was a stealth move. She felt safer behind the layers of mascara and eyeliner. Out of all Lynn’s friends, Ash was the master of disguise. Or at least I’d thought that out of all Lynn’s friends Ash was the master, until I met Shelly.
Shelly was a study in contradictions. She wore high heels and pearls, and when she was angry, she had a noticeable Southern drawl. She’d grown up in the South, where Lynn’s grandmother was from. But under Shelly’s perfect exterior beat the heart of a killer. Lynn had never believed me when I’d expressed my concerns about Shelly. “She’s just protective of me,” she’d said.
Bullshit.
I stopped waving the cookie sheet and looked down to find Ash staring up at me, her head cocked to the side. “Penny for your thoughts,” she said quietly.
“Honestly, I was thinking about Shelly.”