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“Of course.” I jumped to my feet. Clothes: something tangible and straightforward. Simple. That was something I could help with. “Come to my room and we’ll see what might work.”
Sandy looked like any other affluent Ridgedale teenager in my expensive jeans and T-shirt as we drove to the public library in search of Ridgedale High School yearbooks. A yearbook seemed like our best chance—maybe our only chance—to figure out the actual names that corresponded with the nicknames mentioned in Je
And I wanted something more before confronting Steve. I had promised Sandy I would ask him about Je
Sandy and I sat down at a long table in the back with the yearbooks the librarian had collected for me. The room was crowded with mothers and young children waiting for story time. I caught Sandy watching them with a mix of amazement and longing that I knew too well myself. Maybe even a little anger because I knew that, too. Is that the kind of childhood other kids get? Yes, I thought. Yes, they do. And after raising Ella, I knew that much was true.
“Why don’t you start with these?” I said, handing Sandy the earlier and more likely irrelevant years. “Look for anything that mentions any of the nicknames. Here.” I pointed to a spot under one senior’s name in The Ridgedale Record Class of 1994. “Some of them put their nicknames right with their pictures.”
But no one else seemed to have a nickname listed anywhere. My plan was starting to feel decidedly hopeless until I reached the team pictures at the back of the book—ru
My eyes slid over the wrestling team and then swimming and then the varsity football players. No Captain, no Tex, and no Two-Six. I moved on to basketball, searching the faces of the assorted teenage boys, the ski
I looked down at a blurry, overexposed candid beneath the basketball team photo. It was impossible to make out the figures clearly—their faces fuzzy and indistinct—but there were two boys, close up against each other; one was shorter, clean-cut, with a square jaw and a flattop, and had his hand on the shoulder of a taller boy with longish hair and maybe a handsome face. In the background, a few feet away, was a much bigger guy, his back to the other two, shooting a basket. And beneath it a caption: Tex showing up Two-Six and the Captain. Even though the boys’ faces in the candid weren’t clear enough to compare to the group photo, their numbers were clear as day.
My heart was pounding as I sca
The Captain, Number 7, was Thomas Price. The boy Je
Two-Six, Number 26, was Simon Barton. The one boy who hadn’t made it out of the woods that night alive.
And Tex, Number 15, was Steve Carlson. The boy whose love had scared Je
Barbara
The doctors were back. They had work to do, and they wanted space to do it. But Barbara wasn’t going anywhere. She was sure the final blow would come the second she left Ha
Or so Steve would think, apparently. Because he was already punishing her. He’d barely spoken to her since he’d rushed from the house to find Ha
How easy it must have been for him to make the whole thing Barbara’s fault. Never mind his sins of omission.
Barbara had since learned the details of what had happened, prying them from a distant Steve one by one. Ha
Luckily, Ha
The only thing that mattered now was that Ha
“I don’t think she was trying to kill herself,” Steve had said straight off. Like he wanted to keep anyone from even hinting at suicide.
“Then what was she doing in the water, Steve?” Barbara had pressed anyway. Because how blind was he going to be?
“Maybe she wanted to be close to her—to the baby.”
“Well, isn’t that romantic?” Barbara had said. “Too bad that didn’t occur to Ha
Barbara was supposed to be worried, frantic. She wasn’t supposed to be angry at Ha
“For Christ’s sake, Barb,” Steve had snapped. “Let it go.”
How was Barbara supposed to “let it go” when it made no sense? When had it happened, and with whom? How had Ha
“You two should take a walk, get some coffee,” said the older, gray-haired doctor with the big clunky glasses. Barbara had been told several times that this utterly underwhelming man was head of the ER, but she was having a hard time believing it. “It’s important that you take care of yourselves. Stay fresh. Ha
“Sorry,” Barbara said, but like she wasn’t very sorry at all. She was gripping the arms of the chair she’d been glued to since she’d arrived. “But I’m not leaving.”
“Really, Ms. Carlson, it would be much better for Ha
They were going to do something they thought Steve and Barbara shouldn’t see, change the colostomy bag, move around Ha