Page 21 of The Truth You Told (Raisa Susanto #2)

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Shay

October 2010

Three and a half years before the kidnapping

Hillary had never given Shay any guaranteed personal space. When she’d been a girl, she’d more often than not slept on some chair or couch in a tiny apartment’s living room. Or in the second hotel bed in those weeks in between when they hadn’t had a stable place to stay.

Shay had made a point to draw boundaries for Max when they’d brought her into the house. A direct contrast to all their childhoods.

That was all great in theory, but the real world existed, and so did Shay’s cell phone battery, which was currently at 1 percent. Shay’s charger had also decided to stop working for some goddamn reason, and the other day she’d seen Max shove their extra charger in a bag she kept in her room.

“Shit,” Shay murmured. Hard boundaries existed for a reason, and she’d had hers obliterated too many times to make the decision lightly. But there was a serial killer on the loose, and she shouldn’t drive home at two in the morning with a dead phone. She couldn’t guarantee anyone in the bar would have her type of charger, either. The answer sucked, but it was also a no-brainer.

She took a deep breath, as if she were going into a room that was on fire.

Max was at school, so she wouldn’t exactly walk in on Shay going through her shit. Moreover, Shay had no desire to go through her shit. She just needed that bag that she was 99 percent certain was in Max’s closet.

“Okay,” she said, exhaling and pushing the door open.

The shades were drawn, the lights out. Despite the fact that it was midafternoon, Shay had to give her eyes a moment to adjust to the dark.

As expected, the room was a mess. Max might be a mature preteen in some respects, but that didn’t extend to making her bed. The laundry, at least, was mostly in the hamper, but Shay suspected that was because Max didn’t want the threat of Shay coming in to collect it herself.

Shay tried not to look too closely at anything as she made her way to the closet. She’d caught glimpses inside the inner sanctum before, of course. An open door, a sick kid who needed saltine crackers or Gatorade. But she’d never gotten a really good feel for the room.

Shay wouldn’t—she wouldn’t—but she wanted to linger, wanted to get a peek into Max’s world in this brand-new way.

She knew there were posters of rappers taped all over the walls, but which ones were Max’s favorites? Which ones had earned spots closest to her bed? Shay knew there were sticky glow-in-the-dark stars scattered all over the ceiling, but were the constellations accurate? And if so, why had Max chosen the ones she had?

Teenagers had a right to privacy, but Shay wished they understood that a lot of the time, the adults in their lives just wanted to know them. To enjoy their budding personalities as they grew into who they were meant to become.

A picture on Max’s dresser caught her eye—it was of Beau and Shay making ridiculous pouty faces at the camera. A hand squeezed around her heart at the fact that Max kept it in a place of honor.

She wondered how Max had gotten a printout version of it, and wished she could ask for her own copy. But then she’d have to admit she’d seen it at all, and Shay was still debating if she’d tell Max she’d gone into her room in the first place.

Shay was cowardly hoping she wouldn’t have to.

The closet door stood ajar, and Shay nudged it all the way open with her foot. She spotted the corner of the bag at the back and knelt down to grab it.

It was pure bad luck that her arm hit a cardboard box on the way back out.

“Shit,” Shay said, dropping the bag and shifting to put the top back on.

Her hand paused midair.

Then, slowly, she hooked a finger over the edge of the box, pulling it closer.

Articles. They were newspaper articles, all carefully cut out. The ones that had jumped from page one to other sections were pasted together on cardboard paper, like a school project.

Except Shay couldn’t imagine that anyone at Max’s school had directed her to collect all the articles that had been written about the Alphabet Man.

Shay riffled through them, her fingers becoming desperate and careless the deeper into the box she went.

There was nothing else in there, but every single mention of the Alphabet Man had been preserved.

She hit the bottom and then her ass hit the ground. In the next moment, Beau squatted in front of her, concern written in every line of his face.

“You shouldn’t have come in here,” he said, like she was to blame for this.

“I needed ...” She trailed off, the excuse sounding so hollow now. Then she blinked up at him. “You’re home.”

“I got off early. I heard ... something in here.” His eyes slipped to the box, lingered. “You’re freaking out.”

“Yes,” she admitted.

“There’s no reason to,” Beau said. He’d always processed things quicker than she had.

And what he said would be true if Max weren’t who she was.

If she were just a preteen with a dark fascination with a serial killer terrorizing their part of the state, Shay would have shrugged. But Max wasn’t like every other kid. She had a police file and a psychiatrist who specialized in violent children.

“I’m sure she just wants to solve the mystery,” Beau continued when Shay just stared at him, incredulous. “She wants to figure out who it is. You know how curious she is.”

“Curious. Right,” Shay said with a nasty laugh. Anger burned bright, turning the panic to ash. Why was she the one who had to worry about Max? Beau always seemed to shrug off everything that had happened. Even when she’d finally admitted to him that she’d moved the gun, he’d simply nodded, said Good call , and proceeded with his day. In every other aspect of their lives, he carried his fair share, even more than his fair share sometimes. But he never did anything that would ensure Max wasn’t a danger to herself—or, more importantly, others. “You think this is just weird twelve-year-old girl stuff?”

Beau’s attention drifted to the box once more. “It’s all the articles?”

“From what I can tell,” Shay said, a little helplessly. “I haven’t been following along all that closely. Maybe she missed some.”

“But most,” he said, and then sighed. He sat down and leaned against the wall, his knees drawn up. He looked tired these days, ever since Billy’s funeral. Or maybe even before then? Had she missed the signs? All the anger that had flared up a minute ago died down. Beau had probably been tired since he’d decided to coparent an eleven-year-old girl. His father’s funeral had probably just pushed him over the edge. “I don’t know what you want me to tell you, Shay. I think it’s probably an odd little hobby or something, but you’re staring at me like we just found a body.”

“A hobby—”

He cut her off. “It’s not like she’s the Alphabet Man. She’s twelve.”

“But—”

“Yeah, okay, she’s had some violence in her past,” Beau continued, steamrolling over her side of the conversation. “That still doesn’t make her a serial killer. Not everyone who’s been involved in a self-defense murder then goes on to tattoo stupid messages on dead girls.”

Shay blinked at him. When he put it like that, of course it sounded absurd. All at once she deflated. “You’re right.”

“Oh, should I mark the day on the calendar?”

She kicked out at him and then dropped her cheek to rest on her upturned knees. Quietly, she admitted, “I worry about her, that’s all.”

“I know, bud,” Beau said, knocking his head gently against her own. “But she’s going to be fine. She’s a good kid. You know she is.”

“Yeah,” Shay said, just a beat too slow for honesty. But the more she thought about it, the more she realized Beau was right. Max was a good kid—someone who would buy her sister ice cream with the last of her meager savings just because Shay had taken Max to the beach. There were a million moments like that. There was the photo on the dresser. There were those silly stars on the ceiling.

Max was more than what was in her past.

A few years back, a burly, hairy, ugly trucker had become a regular at the bar. He read poetry and spouted off ancient wisdom between downing half a cask of beer each night. On his right bicep he had a tattoo, a quote from Aristotle.

“One swallow does not a summer make.”

When Shay had asked him about it, he’d told her about the year he’d spent in jail. And he’d told her about how that year didn’t define his life any more than any other year he wasn’t in jail.

One bad event did not doom a person to be evil. One good deed did not a hero make. It was all about a life built on moments and choices and actions.

“You know, she might also just be scared,” Beau offered.

The suggestion shocked Shay. She’d always thought of Max as incredibly tough, almost brave to a fault. After all, she’d dealt with the asshole who was listed on her birth certificate under “Father.” She wore her attitude as armor, and Shay had always imagined it covered just another layer of stronger armor beneath. And then molten lava at her core.

But she was just a girl, really. There was a serial killer in their area, and some of his victims were the same age as Shay.

“I’m officially a dumbass,” Shay admitted. She had been on edge for a while, but then Kilkenny had arrived on the scene. With him came the possibility of scrutiny into her life, into her secrets. She could admit she was overreacting, but she could also admit there was a reason for that.

“Yeah, but you’re our dumbass,” Beau teased, his foot nudging hers to make sure she knew he was joking.

“I’m going to have to tell Max,” she said.

“Yeah,” he said again.

“What do you think this is going to cost me?” she asked, finally pushing to her feet again.

“If you’re lucky, a bribe of no less than twenty dollars,” he said.

She made a face, but agreed. That was best case. Worst was that she’d lose Max’s trust. It didn’t seem like something she could easily get back.

“I’m calling off from work,” Shay said, and Beau raised his brows. “So that I’m here when she gets home.”

“Oof, ripping off the Band-Aid, good for you.”

“But you’re not going to be here to witness it,” she guessed.

“No, thank you,” he said. “I have no interest in the shrapnel.”

He dipped out of the room as quickly as he’d entered, and a minute later she heard the front door close.

Shay stared at the box of clippings and wondered if she should put them back how they were. Maybe not even ask about them.

She couldn’t even remember what order they’d been in, though.

“What are you doing?”

Shay startled, banging her elbow on the door, looking all the more guilty for it, she was sure.

Max stared at her from the doorway.

“I’m sorry,” Shay said. “I came in to get the phone charger. I didn’t want to be without a phone tonight ...”

As she trailed off, she waved at the elephant in the room.

A tiny, tiny, minuscule part of her watched Max’s expression closely as her attention landed on the box, on the articles.

It gave away nothing.

After several terrible seconds that felt like hours, Max relaxed and shrugged. “Okay.”

Shay opened her mouth, closed it. “You’re not mad?”

“It’s your house,” Max said, in a terrible blank voice, and Shay realized her relief from moments earlier was ill founded. Max wasn’t mad, but Shay had broken her trust. And that was a profound loss, no matter how subtle it was. Max no longer felt like this was her home.

“Max,” Shay tried, her heart breaking a little, and Max just shook her head, too quickly.

“I get it,” she said. “You needed your charger.”

That was the problem, wasn’t it? There could always be a valid excuse. Shay could have stopped at the gas station on the way in. She could have bought a replacement. She could have borrowed one of the three burner phones Lonnie kept on his person at all times. She could have done anything but barge into Max’s room without her permission.

A twenty-dollar bribe wasn’t going to fix this.

Shay didn’t actually know if it was fixable at all.

So she asked what she wouldn’t have asked if Max had given her any sign that this would blow over. “Why do you have these?”

In a box, hidden in a closet, like it’s a bad secret, Shay thought but didn’t add.

Again, she got a neutral expression. Shay hated that Max had enough experience with intense emotion that, even at twelve, she was able to hide hers.

Max just stared at her for a long time. And then she said in a flat voice, “You shouldn’t ask questions you don’t want an answer to.”