And When I Die, page 33
“She does. We just have to make a stop first.”
“A stop? Stop where?”
“It’s a surprise.”
“What kind of surprise?” Shannon asked.
“You know, I’ve always liked you. Ever since junior high.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You remember they used to sell those carnations and you could buy them and it was like a secret admirer thing?”
Shannon stopped chewing her gum as she looked at Ruthie. “Yeah?”
“I’ve never told anyone this, but I used to buy you carnations every year.” Ruthie bit her bottom lip. “All through junior high.”
“You bought me carnations?”
“I just always thought you were so sweet and pretty and nice and I just wanted you to know.” Ruthie giggled nervously. “I mean, even though you didn’t know it was me, or who I was even, because I always did it anonymously. Not that you would have known it was me. Anyway, I still thought it was a nice thing to do. Sending flowers to someone. That’s nice, right?”
“Um, actually, it’s a little weird.”
Ruthie blinked. “What?”
“I mean, it’s not like we were friends or anything, so yeah, kind of weird.” Shannon made a face. “Like, who sends flowers to another girl and you’re not even friends with that girl?”
“I told you, I thought it was a nice thing to do.”
Shannon flopped back against the seat, folding her arms across her body. “Okay, whatever. It’s totally weird, but fine.”
“I’m not weird, Shannon,” Ruthie said. “You just said I was a sweet person.”
“Yeah, okay, fine, whatever,” Shannon repeated.
“No, not whatever. You said we were friends. You said I was sweet. You just said it. ‘You’re super sweet.’”
“Okay, girl, you seriously need to take a chill pill.”
“I just … I want us to be friends, all right? And we were. We are. That day at your house and all those times you drove me home and we sang along to the radio and the lipstick you gave me. We’re friends, Shannon. You and I are friends.”
“Okay, this is getting super creepy.” Shannon blew a bubble, then punctured it with her finger. “Can you just stop the car? Now. Like right now.”
“I can’t do that. You’ll ruin the surprise.”
“Stop the car,” Shannon repeated, her voice rising.
“It’s a—”
“I swear, if you say it’s a surprise one more time—”
“I’m taking you for a picnic, all right? Just the two of us.” Ruthie smiled as she exited off the freeway and followed the road around to the entrance of her destination. “Isn’t that nice?”
“You’re doing what?”
“Taking you for a picnic,” Ruthie said.
“Taking me for a picnic? You’re joking, right?”
“This park, my dad’s boss lives close by and we came to a party over here last summer and it’s so beautiful. All I could think is how much fun it would be to come here with you.”
“Oh, my God. You called my mom, didn’t you?”
“I—”
“You called my mom and told her some bogus story about a secret drama club dinner and not to tell anyone so you could get me alone. Right?”
Ruthie squirmed. “I wanted to do this nice thing for you—for us—and I had to be sure you’d come.”
“You are seriously twisted if you think I’m going anywhere with you. God. I had no idea you were a fucking freak.”
“Stop saying that.” Ruthie gripped the steering wheel as she parked the car. “I’m not weird. I’m not a freak.”
Shannon laughed. “Yeah, okay, sure. Not at all.”
“I’m not. You know I’m not. I’m a nice person who likes to do things for my friends. Like you.”
“I knew I should have driven myself.” Shannon shook her head. “This is—you know what? Turn around and take me home, right now.”
“Take back what you said about me. Take back what you said about calling me a freak.”
Shannon rolled her eyes. “Okay. Done. I’m out of here. I saw some houses back there. I’ll just call my parents at the restaurant to come pick me up,” she murmured before she jumped out of the car.
Ruthie flinched as Shannon slammed the door and stalked off in the direction of the park entrance. She pinched the steering wheel, Shannon’s words squeezing her brain as she thought about school on Monday. She could see Shannon now, sauntering down the hall toward Chip, Mikey, Sharla, and Lyz, furtive, giggly whispers escaping those cherry red lips as she pointed Ruthie out, telling them what a freak she was, how she’d sent her flowers and tried to take her on a picnic. They’d all laugh at her, call her all kinds of names, point at her. And they’d each tell another person, who’d tell another person, who’d tell another person. It would creep across school, slow and insidious, like an infestation, growing deep and purple and ugly with each retelling. Even the few friends she had would desert her. It would stain her, brand her like the scarlet letter pinned to Hester Prynne. Every time she walked past a group of girls, they’d laugh. Every time she walked past a group of boys, they’d laugh.
Everyone would laugh.
She’d finally be the outcast she always suspected she was meant to be, but tried so desperately to avoid.
Ruthie pursed her lips, shaking her head. She’d have to convince Shannon not to say anything, that she had it all wrong. Beg, plead, throw herself on her mercy, be her slave.
No one would understand if Shannon told them about tonight.
No one would understand anything except Ruthie Stowers was a weird freak. Avoid at all costs.
She turned the key in the ignition, determination sluicing through her veins, her eyes flitting across the dancing shadows of the park. Shannon couldn’t have gotten far in the dark.
Ruthie chewed her bottom lip, her palms slick on the steering wheel as she drove toward the residential neighborhood on the other side of the park, scanning relentlessly for the bouncing blue-black curls of Shannon’s ponytail. As she crept through the quiet streets, she never even noticed the stately homes with columns, big expensive cars in the driveways, rose bushes guarding against and inviting prying eyes all at once. All Ruthie could do was knead her forehead as she muttered Shannon’s name to herself over and over, anxiety seizing her.
Her gaze swiveled left then right, sitting straight up as she spotted Shannon coming down the brick steps of a house and heading toward the street in pursuit of another house whose door she could knock on, whose phone she could ask to use. Ruthie parked the car, flung the door open, and ran toward Shannon.
“Okay, you have to get away from me now. I’m totally not kidding,” Shannon said, speeding up her walk, not even bothering to look at her, as Ruthie caught up to her.
“Shannon, please, please don’t say bad stuff about me at school,” Ruthie’s breath came in short puffs as she struggled to keep up with her. “Please don’t tell everyone I’m weird or a freak.”
“Leave me alone,” Shannon said, jogging now.
Ruthie ran after her, grabbing her arm and swinging her around. Shannon instinctively pulled back, as Ruthie clutched at her. “I’ll take you home, okay? Just—”
“Oh, my God, just stop.” Shannon backed away. “I’m not going anywhere with you, do you get it?”
“Shannon, please—”
“Look you little freak, I just want you to get away from me—”
Ruthie’s hand closed around the hard orange plastic handle of the sewing scissors hidden behind her back, the ones her mother kept in the side pocket of the driver’s side door for emergencies, like the time she was in a car accident and had to cut the seat belt to get out. The ones Ruthie found her hand sliding around as she watched Shannon bound down the brick steps of the empty mansion in search of another door to knock on.
The ones that would keep Shannon from saying horrible things about her to the whole school.
The ones that would silence her.
That’s all she wanted to do. Keep Shannon quiet.
Ruthie whipped the scissors around and Shannon gasped, pulling away, poised to bolt down the street.
“Oh, my God—”
Ruthie plunged the scissors into Shannon’s neck.
Her chest.
Her shoulder.
Her stomach.
Her cheek.
Her temple.
Her stomach.
She didn’t hear Shannon gasp or see her face crumple with pain or tears slide down her cheeks.
All she saw was the hallway on Monday morning, absent Shannon’s arrogant, gum-cracking stroll, cloud of Liz Claiborne, the tap of her pink jellies across the shiny yellow tiles. She wouldn’t huddle with Sharla or Lyz or Abby or Skip or Mikey or anyone to excitedly relay that they’d never believe what happened to her that weekend, what an awful Saturday night she had because of that gross freak Ruthie Stowers.
There’d be no stares, no whispers.
Because Shannon Kendall would not be there to tell the story.
Ruthie gripped the scissors in her bloody hand as Shannon sank to the ground, clutching her stomach, blood gushing from her wounds, coating her arms, legs, face. The crazy thing was, Shannon didn’t even scream. She just looked shocked, as though she couldn’t believe what Ruthie was doing.
She stared at Shannon for mere seconds, before she noticed the Tiffany charm bracelet glinting in the moonlight. The beautiful gold charm bracelet that swung around that slender wrist every day. Without thinking, Ruthie bent down, struggling with the slippery lobster clasp before finally it fell free from Shannon’s bloody wrist and she stuffed it into the pocket of her jeans. She’d be surprised to find the links of gold crusted with blood in her pocket that night when she got undressed for bed.
And then she ran, pumping her arms and legs until she reached the car, the driver’s side door hanging open, waiting to welcome her back. She threw the scissors down onto the passenger seat and peeled out of the neighborhood, her eyes focused only on the clear square of window in front of her as she hurtled toward the safety of home.
She didn’t look at her rearview mirror until she was out of the neighborhood. She never once turned around. She didn’t see Shannon writhing on the ground. She didn’t see her struggle to her feet, and stagger across the street to a white house with a red door, pounding on it, hoping someone would let her in.
She wouldn’t hear the furious bleating of sirens storming down the quiet street moments later. She wouldn’t see neighbors flooding out of their homes, running toward the white house with the red door, now ringed with yellow and black crime scene tape. She wouldn’t hear the gasps at the pools of blood glistening under the streetlamps, also surrounded by tape.
She wouldn’t know until later she’d stabbed Shannon Kendall seven times. Or that the woman who opened the door to a bloody, breathless, and dying Shannon Kendall rode in the ambulance with her to the hospital, for she, too, had a sixteen-year-old daughter and couldn’t bear the thought of this young girl drawing her last, agonizing breaths alone.
She didn’t know until later that Shannon Kendall’s parents didn’t make it to the hospital in time from their jovial dinner across town with another couple. She didn’t know until later that at the precise moment she and her mother sat down at their kitchen table at eleven-forty-seven that night to munch on the last two pieces of pepperoni pizza from Friday’s dinner, Shannon Kendall would be pronounced dead.
The only thought tearing its way through Ruthie Stowers’s brain as she raced home that night, her heart pounding, sweat drenching her body, the steering wheel hot and sticky with Shannon Kendall’s blood, was pure relief—relief she wouldn’t have to see Shannon Kendall in the hallway at school on Monday morning.
80
AVA
Nothing about one of the supposedly wealthiest suburbs of Houston impressed Ava as she exited I-45 at Rayford/Sawdust and headed toward Lake Woodlands. Strip malls, fast food drive-thrus, and of course, a Walmart, all bisected by a winding ribbon of freeway, which, in the short amount of time she’d been in town, seemed perpetually choked with pickup trucks, SUVs, and eighteen wheelers.
However, once she passed the drive-thru Starbucks on the corner, bland, overcrowded suburban sprawl gave way to tranquil streets shrouded in trees. In fact, a building was hard to come by, because all Ava could see were trees. Tall, thick, protective trees, hiding the homes, the people, their daily lives.
Her phone called out directions to Dr. Mason Kendall’s home. She’d been less surprised by his agreeing to speak to her about Shannon than Patricia’s willingness to talk about Ruthie. It was a burden he would always live with, a memory he would always want to share.
Ava drummed her fingers on the steering wheel as the trees morphed into still more trees and finally, a gorgeous expanse of blue lake, the surrounding bank dotted with the type of stately, staggering mansions Lake Forest had groomed her for, what she had expected from this lush Houston-area zip code.
She pulled up to the house and cut the engine, staring at the home for a minute, drinking it in. Two stories, majestic columns, crystal chandeliers blazing behind the all-glass front, even in the early afternoon. A cobalt blue Mercedes was parked in the driveway and the sight of an abandoned red tricycle in the front yard a jarring reminder to Ava that seventy-something Dr. Kendall had started a new family with his younger wife.
Ava gave herself one last look in the visor mirror before she gathered up her bag and headed up the front walk to ring the doorbell. In the distance, she could hear the loud, carefree laughter of kids out on the lake and the low buzz of water skis. She looked around at the quiet street, wondering if she should ring the doorbell again.
Just as she lifted her finger to do so, she could see the blur of a figure behind the beveled glass moving toward her. The door opened to reveal a tall, trim man in blue khakis and white button-down with the sleeves rolled up. A gold Rolex twinkled from his wrist, the liver spots of age that dotted his otherwise golden-brown hands and forearms somehow making him more distinguished, not less. He pushed back a lock of thick white hair from his forehead, which disobeyed and stubbornly sprang back into its former position.
“Dr. Kendall?”
“Please, call me Mason,” he said, his voice no less booming than it had been on the phone, the faint southern accent wobbling ever so slightly. “Have any trouble finding us?”
“Not at all,” Ava said as she stepped into the foyer, complying with his wave of the hand to follow him through the living room, which reminded her of her own house, filled with obviously expensive, though comfortable couches, a marble-topped coffee table, and decorative sculptures and lamps. Family photos, interspersed with massive oil paintings, dominated the rust orange walls. “You have a beautiful home.”
“My wife always wanted to live out here,” he said as he kicked a multicolored beach ball out of his way and turned to smile sheepishly. “I prefer the city, but you know, happy wife, happy life.”
“How many kids do you have?” she asked as they sidestepped a tower of stuffed animals that toppled over as they walked past.
“Three,” he said as he pointed her to what looked to be a den with its wood paneled walls, built-in bookshelves, and fireplace that Ava doubted saw much action. “Two with Nikki. And Shannon. Of course.”
Ava nodded as she accepted his offer of a bottle of water, taking a minute to observe the photos on the shelves of Mason Kendall, his considerably younger wife—at least a twenty-year gap if she had to guess—and their two young children, miniatures of each parent. Tucked next to a hulking medical journal was the color version of one of the grainy black and white versions of Shannon’s photo that Ava had become all too familiar with over the past few months. Mason smiled as he handed her the bottle of water from the mini fridge next to the mahogany desk.
“You have a beautiful family,” she said.
Mason glanced at the pictures, almost as if he were surprised to see himself in the frames. “Thought I’d be playing Grandpa by now, not fending off funny looks when people find out I have an eight-year-old and a ten-year-old. Hell, sometimes I’m tempted to say they’re my grandkids.”
“How long have you been married?”
“Fifteen years. Nikki was thirty-two when we met. I was zooming toward fifty-five. Took me a long time to agree to have more kids.” He shook his head. “Still takes a bit to wrap my head around.”
“As my grandmother would always say, the heart wants what it wants,” Ava said before she took a hearty gulp of her water.
“Julia—my first wife—she used to say that all the time. Of course, she and I were the same age,” he said almost sheepishly before he clapped his hands together. “I hope you don’t mind, but I invited two of Shannon’s friends to come over in a bit, since I figured you’d probably want to pick their brains too.”
“That would be great, thank you,” Ava said. “I had actually planned to ask you if you might be able to put me in touch with anyone.”
“Lyz—that’s L-Y-Z as she’ll tell you—and Sharla were Shannon’s best friends, so I know they’ll have a lot to say.”
“That’s fantastic. Thank you.”
“So, what would you like to know about Shannon?” he asked as he settled onto a brown leather chair.
“What was she like?”
A slow smile spread across Mason’s face as he drowned himself in the memories of his lost daughter. “Confident. Smart. So, smart. Straight A’s, honor roll. Without even trying. I mean, this girl could pick up an algebra book once and know how to solve every problem. I wanted her to follow in my footsteps, go into medicine, but she had kept saying she wanted to go to UT for undergrad then law.” He shook his head. “She would have been outstanding.”
“Do you have a favorite memory?”
“Day she was born,” he said without hesitation. “I had been on call for I don’t even know how long. Days. Days and days. And we were expecting her any minute, and I had my pager at the ready, just waiting. Then I decide, well, I’m just going to grab a quick minute in the on-call room. No sooner than I put my head down, my pager’s going nuts. I’m racing to get down there and Julia is moaning like crazy. I’m trying to get her to do the breathing and she smacked me in the nose.”
