Page 51 of The Five Year Lie

Huh. Looks like Drew Miller isn’t known to the Lowden Police Department. But there has to be some connection to that town.

He’ll find it.

17

ARIEL

“I really appreciate this,” I tell Larri as she merges onto 295 North. “I wasn’t sure who else to ask.”

“Don’t thank me until we get there,” she says over the growl of her ancient Subaru. “This car hasn’t been so far from home in months. But I think she can make it. What did you bring for lunch?”

I bribed Larri with food so she’d agree to drive me to Lowden. “We’re having curried chicken salad with grapes on a croissant. Vinegar chips and a soda. You won’t regret this.”

“Dessert?” she presses.

“Whoopie pies and iced coffee with that caramel crap in it that you like.”

“My queen.” She grins. “But you know I’d drive you anyway, even without the fancy lunch? You’ve asked me for something maybe once in eight years, and I ask you favors, like, daily. You are shit at taking help from other people.”

“Not true. I take help from my mom every single day.”

“Good,” she grunts. “That woman owes you on a karmic scale for being a shit mother.”

“You’ve met hertwice.”

“Twice was enough,” Larri says.

I’m sure she’s referring to the night of a group show our studio put on the year before I met Drew. My parents had shown up,which surprised me. My mother was all smiles. But I watched my father stroll across the gallery with a scowl on his face.

He stood in front of my display and said something snide about how he’d paid a quarter million dollars for my college education so that I could make a few bowls. And instead of arguing with him, my mother only smiled harder.

But I didn’t really blame her. Picking a fight would only have made it uglier.

“Swear to God you and Tara had the same set of parents,” Larri says. “But yours had money, so it was easier to hide how fucked up they were.”

“Money hides many sins. How are things with Tara?”

Larri’s face drops. “A little less tense? The dealer hasn’t made any new threats for a couple of days. Either that or she hasn’t told me.”

Ouch.

“We need her to know that Tara’sdonebeing intimidated by her. Except we’re really fucking intimidated by her.”

“Is there anyone you can call? Would the police get involved?”

Larri shakes her head violently. “The police won’t just cart her off to jail because Tara says she’s bad news, right? They might pick her up and question her. Ten minutes later she’d be banging down our door scaring the shit out of us.”

“Right. That was a super naive suggestion, huh?”

She laughs. “A little. But you wear it well. And don’t forget that Tara is no angel. The woman has dirt on her. She did some favors for her back in the day—made some deliveries. It was years ago, but she’d throw Tara under the bus in a heartbeat. You can go to prison just for helping out.”

“I did watchOrange Is the New Black.”

Larri hoots. Then she shakes her head. “I’m not a violent person, but I would kill this woman if I thought I could get away with it. She’s terrifying—but not like you’d expect a drug dealer to be, you know? She looks normal, but the threats that come out of her mouth are fucking scary.”

“Yikes.”

“I offered to take Tara for a weekend up in Acadia, just the two of us. I think a getaway will do us some good. We’ll turn our phones off for two days and forget about the world.”