CHAPTER 21

You know, I was there the night that Grant and Perla met. Or re -met, I should say. None of us had seen Perla in a decade, and when she showed up, it was like the entire place shut down. She had just changed so much. We'd all heard she had gotten adopted by some rich family up in Burbank, and you could tell. She just, like, reeked of money and confidence. And I had been kind of flirting with Grant—I mean, we all had crushes on him then—but when he went outside to talk to her, I knew he wasn't going to come back. And he didn't. And, like, the next thing I knew, I heard they were getting married.

—Tonya Delron, gas station cashier

Dr. Maddox was late, so I spent the extra minutes lying on her couch and scrolling through Murder Unplugged 's forum, trying to find any mention of the email I had sent in. I had been intelligent about it, sending it from an anonymous email account, using a web browser on a burner device connected to a VPN. And apparently, so far, they had ignored it. No response to the email, no mention on their show, and no sharing it on their feed.

I had just gotten into a better position on Dr. Maddox's couch when I heard the office door brush open along the carpet. Turning my head, I watched as the psychiatrist bustled into the room, an overstuffed purse swinging from her shoulder. She had an iced coffee in one hand and shot me an apologetic look as she dumped her purse onto the desk.

"Traffic," she explained. "Sorry about that. Did Laney put you in here?"

I considered lying but didn't. "No. I let myself in. I hope that's okay." I pushed myself up to a seated position.

"Oh, it's fine." She opened one of her drawers and sifted through the contents before pulling out the yellow notebook. "Normally, we ask that clients wait in the waiting room, but it's fine."

I crossed my feet at the ankles and glanced at my watch—a quick dart of a glance, but one she caught.

Taking the soft chair across from the couch, she flipped open the notebook and uncapped her pen. "I'm sure you have places to be, so we can jump right in. How are things going?"

"They're okay." I switched the cross of my leg. "I guess. Same concerns as before."

"And I don't want to invalidate those concerns," she said with that same smile as before, the smile I wanted to smack off her face with a two-by-four. "But we also need to understand what is triggering those concerns and then weigh those in an unbiased way, one not influenced by our own history or emotions towards"—she glanced down at her paper—"Grant."

"Sure, of course." Look at me, easy peasy.

"Last session, we ran out of time before you got a chance to tell me your history with Grant. Let's talk about how you two met. How long ago was that?"

"Ages ago. I was only twenty-one."

"How nice." She wrote that down. "Were you in college?"

"Yes. I met Grant when I had gone home for an anniversary event of sorts. Grant and I had mutual friends, and we ran into each other there ..."

"Hey." He found me under the tree in the church's backyard. He had a cup in hand and held it out. "Want a drink? I got two."

I glanced at the red plastic cup briefly, then shook my head. "No, I'm good." I held up the joint I had pinned between two fingers. "Don't tell the others."

He glanced over his shoulder at the church. "Wow. Bold. Aren't you afraid you're going to catch on fire?"

"If only I could be so lucky," I said dryly and held it out toward him. "Want a hit?"

He paused, but only for a moment. He placed the drinks on the ground and stepped closer, his dress shoes crunching on dead leaves. When he carefully took the thin joint from me, our fingers brushed, and a shiver of pleasure ran through me. He brought it to his lips and closed his eyes as he took a deep hit. Holding it in, he passed it back to me, then slowly blew a stream of smoke from his lips. "I'm Grant Wultz. Lucy's brother."

He pointed at his chest as if I didn't know who he was, but I had worshipped Grant Wultz for as long as I could remember. I hadn't been back here since my dad was taken away, hadn't seen Grant in a decade, but he had only grown more handsome since then. Gone was the thin teenage boy with dots of acne and a smattering of facial hair. He was a man now, one with a deep voice and muscular shoulders and biceps underneath his pale-blue button-up shirt.

"I'm Perla." I leaned against the tree and took my own quick hit. "Perla Thomas. That's what I go by now. I was—"

"Adopted," he finished. "I know. I heard. My parents told me." His eyes were trained on my face, as if he didn't notice the low-cut top or tight jeans. I'd worn both for him, on the chance that he would be here—and now he was.

I looked away, aware of how important it was for me to play the right role. "You still live in Summerland?"

"Fuck no." He laughed. "I moved to San Diego. Well, I went to Caltech, then moved to San Diego."

"Caltech? For what?"

"Corporate law."

"Really? You're a lawyer?"

He tucked his hands into his pockets and gave me a sheepish look. "No. I just thought that sounded cool. I was trying to impress you. I'm a data scientist."

I brought the joint to my lips and met his eyes. "I always thought you were cool, Grant Wultz. No impressing needed."

He grinned and the expression was slightly lopsided in the most adorable way. "Yeah?"

"Yeah. Especially in your football uniform." I returned his grin. "You still got that in a box somewhere?"

He winced. "No. Can't say I do."

"Tough break." I stubbed out the joint on the bark of the tree. "I'm going to get out of here."

"Oh. Sure. Yeah. I'm sure everyone wants to talk to you."

I rolled my eyes. "Yeah. Everyone loves the freak show."

"You're not a freak show." His gaze was back, diving into mine, and I wanted to curl up in it and never leave.

"Okay." I shrugged. "Well, good to see you." I reached down and grabbed my purse off the ground. "Stay cool, Grant. See you in ten years. Maybe you can dig up the uniform by then."

I was halfway up the hill toward the parking lot when he caught up to me, his fingers curling around my arm and tugging me to a stop. "Hey, Perla ..."

I stopped, and this was it—the moment when he would either make my dreams come true or crush them into pieces.

"Take me with you."

I raised an eyebrow. "Where do you want to go?"

"With you?" He gave me a smile that managed to be both shy and cocky all at once. "Anywhere."

"I took him to my hotel room, where we fucked to a news report that was doing a recap on the Folcrum Party." I laced my fingers together and tucked them in between my knees. "That should probably have been my first clue that something was off. When he didn't turn off the TV."

"I'm sorry, the news was doing a recap on what?"

I lifted my gaze to her face, which was blank. This woman couldn't possibly be that out of touch. "The Folcrum Party."

"I'm not familiar with that term. What is that?" Her pen was perched on the page as if she planned to write down whatever I was about to say.

Part of me was relieved that she was so uninformed of depravity. The other was alarmed that the crime had fallen so far off the public radar. Then again, this was a clear sign that if I didn't step in, Leewood would rot in prison forever, forgotten.

"It was a crime that happened ..." I looked to the side, trying to place the date, as if I didn't know it. "I don't know when, exactly. Maybe twenty years ago."

"Why do you think Grant should have turned off the broadcast?"

"It was, um ..." I shifted uncomfortably in my seat. "Gory."

"In what way?" She leaned forward. This was why everyone in the nation had obsessed over this crime. When it came to bloodshed, we couldn't help but want to know more.

"It was a birthday party for a preteen. She had two friends there, sleeping over for the party. At some point in the night, her father came in and—" I broke off. "Some of their bodies were stabbed dozens of times. Like human pincushions, I think is what people said."

Her face went white. "Oh my. What a horrible event. They caught the man?"

"A neighbor heard the screams and called the police. They showed up, and the father was still holding one of the girls' bodies—his daughter—in his arms. They arrested him for the murders, but he always said he didn't do it. He claimed someone else had broken in and that he had found the girls already dead."

Her eyes were big, and this was why there had been a half dozen documentaries on the crime. Granted, it was twenty-plus years old, new atrocities replacing the old, which was why we were in a situation like this, where you said the infamous name and got a blank stare in response.

"So he's in jail now—the father?" She wrote something down.

I shrugged. "I guess? I don't know. I haven't kept up with it."

As soon as I said it, I heard the mistake. Once everything came out after Sophie's birthday, if someone reexamined these sessions, it wouldn't make sense for me to not know something about Leewood Folcrum's current standing.

But it was too late. The words were out there, and if I backpedaled now, it would only bring more attention to the matter. At least she hadn't written anything down, probably wouldn't even remember asking me the question.

Just to be safe, I glanced at my watch, then grimaced. "Oh no. I think we're out of time." I pushed to my feet and reached for the handle of my purse.

"No, it's okay. I don't have an appointment after this, if you want to finish out this conversation." She didn't move from her seat.

"I've got to go. Grant doesn't know I'm coming here, so I want to get back before he notices I'm gone. Thanks for the session." I tucked my purse under my arm.

I walked over to the door and glanced back at her. I gave her a short, nervous wave, then ducked out of the office.

It wasn't my best performance ever, but it wasn't half-bad.