Amber’s words came out in a rush. “They were watching the news last night and Helen started saying how she was going to kick your ass when you came back. Margaret told her off, then later they met in the yard—we didn’t know Margaret planned on fighting her or we would’ve stopped her. Helen had a shank…” Amber was crying so hard she couldn’t finish.
“Did she stab her? Is she in the infirmary?”
Brenda was shaking her head, tears running down her face too. “She didn’t make it.”
I started to cry, deep gasping sobs. Both of the girls were still trying to fight their own tears, all of us helpless to comfort each other with an embrace, the security cameras watching. When I finally got control of myself, my sorrow had turned to pure rage.
“Where’s Helen?” I was going to fuck her up good.
“She’s in segregation,” Brenda said. “They’ll throw her into maximum now. She’ll never get out of Rockland.”
It meant I was safe. I should’ve been relieved. I got up and paced my cell.
“Why did Margaret fight her? She should have waited until I got back in here.”
“I don’t know,” Brenda said. “She was always telling us to walk away from stuff. And she was really tired lately—and sore. It doesn’t make sense that she’d take Helen on by herself.”
Amber said, “She left something for you in her cell before the fight. Her roommate gave it to us.” She glanced up at the nearest camera. “We’ll get it to you later.”
The guards called out, “Count!” and the girls went back to their cells, after we promised we’d see each other at chow in the morning.
Later, when lights were out, I thought of Margaret and how she’d managed to avoid fights the whole time she was in prison, until this last one. Then I remembered the last time I saw her, begging me for a massage, saying that she didn’t know how much longer she could live in there, her body in constant pain. Had she picked a fight with Helen knowing she’d lose? And knowing that it was the only way to make sure Helen could never hurt me again?
I was devastated, thinking that she might have sacrificed herself for me. Then I remembered something else Margaret had said, when we were talking about Nicole. “You can’t blame yourself for something someone else chose to do. You didn’t force her into that truck, and you didn’t kill her. Blaming yourself is just weak, and it pisses me off hearing you punish yourself, like you don’t deserve to ever be happy or something. I don’t want to hear that crap out of your mouth again.”
And so I tried to think of Margaret now, finally free from pain, maybe dancing with a gorgeous man, spinning around and around in a long, flowing dress, a beautiful smile on her face. She’d told me that death wasn’t the hard part, living was. I tried to find peace in knowing that the hard part was over for her.
* * *
Amber showed up at my cell the next day with some papers bundled together in a makeshift book. On the front Margaret had scrawled, For Toni. After Amber left, I took a breath and opened the book, wondering what had been so important that Margaret had made a point of leaving it for me. Inside the first page she’d tucked a note:
Toni, if you’re reading this, I guess the fight didn’t go so well. I just hope I took that bitch down with me!!! I planned on mailing this to you but didn’t get a chance to finish. You’ll do fine. See you on the other side, kid. Love, M.
My eyes filling with tears, I flipped through the pages and cried even harder when I saw what she had done. She’d jotted down recipes, household tips, life lessons, inspirational quotes, jokes, anything she thought would help me survive on the outside. Anything she thought a mother would tell her daughter.
For the next few days, I spent a lot of time in my cell, thinking about Margaret, how much she had meant to me. Brenda and Amber were also grieving, and we had a makeshift memorial for Margaret in the yard, sharing stories. Now that Helen was out of the picture none of her friends messed with me, but there was still some tension. I wondered how long it would take before my case would go before the Court of Appeals. Angus was trying to get a hearing, but he said it could take up to three months.
One day, when I’d been in for almost a week, I had a visitor. The visit wasn’t scheduled, so I was surprised when one of the guards came to get me. I was even more surprised to see my visitor was Suzanne.
“What’s going on?” I sat down across from her.
She eyed me from the other side of the table, which was covered with bags of chips, a couple of chocolate bars from the vending machine, and two cans of Coke. “You’ve lost more weight.”
I pulled at my shirt, made a face. “I’ve been under some stress.”
She pushed a chocolate bar and a bag of chips at me. “Here. Eat up.”
She was looking at me expectantly and I got the feeling she wasn’t going to say anything until I ate something, so I unwrapped the bar and took a small bite. The heavy sweetness made me feel sick. My lawyer had told me our chances of getting out looked good. Did Suzanne know something Angus didn’t?
She glanced at the guard watching the room and he gave her a nod. I was also getting the feeling this visit wasn’t on the books. Suzanne looked back at me.
Still unsure of what this was about, I kept my mouth shut. She said, “How much do you know about the investigation?”
“Not much. They’ve been keeping us in the dark.” I shared what I knew so far. My lawyer had told me Shauna and Frank McKinney had been denied bail, but McKinney was in protective custody because he’d been a cop. Once the police had reviewed Ashley’s tape and all our statements, they pulled in Kim and Rachel for questioning. “We know they were arrested,” I said, “but we don’t know what the charges were and haven’t heard anything since.”
Suzanne was nodding as I spoke. “I have some friends on the force. They told me Kim rolled right away on Shauna.”
“You know what really happened that night? Were they all involved?”
She nodded again, her eyes sad. “I’m bending the rules, but I wanted you to hear it from me.”
I sucked in a big lungful of air, bracing for what was coming next, then said, “How did they get her out of the truck?”
“Kim says that after Shauna told them Nicole had been messing with Rachel’s boyfriend, and that Nicole was the one who told Kim’s mom she was gay, they were furious. Shauna wanted to get back at Nicole, and the girls agreed.”
“Did they plan on killing her?”
“Doesn’t sound like it. They were just going to get her alone and humiliate her by stripping her down, taking photos, then spreading them around. They’d been harassing Nicole all week, phoning her, threatening that they were coming for her.” I thought of how thin Nicole had gotten those last few weeks, how she’d stolen the pills because she couldn’t sleep. I could well imagine how terrified she must have been, how alone she must have felt not being able to confide in anyone, how she hadn’t wanted to be home alone that Friday.
“They were waiting outside your house. When they saw you all leaving together, they followed you to the lake.” I remembered that night, the heat coming through the windows, Nicole’s bare leg brushing against mine, her face serious.
“They parked their car and snuck up on the truck,” Suzanne said. “When they realized you guys had left Nicole by herself, they figured you’d be gone awhile. They sent Cathy to lure Nicole out of the truck.”
Cathy, who’d spent the next seventeen years smoking and drinking everything in sight. I started tearing at the chocolate bar wrapper, ripping the corner off into little bits, my fingers itching to attack something, anything.
Suzanne’s voice got lower, more serious, her gaze flicking to my hands as she said, “Cathy told Nicole she’d been at the party below, seen her drive by, and just wanted to talk so they could clear the air.”
I felt sick. “That’s why she got out. She thought she could fix everything.…” Sunny, sweet Nicole, who wanted to be everyone’s friend.
Suzanne paused, letting
me gather myself before she continued. “After Nicole was out of the truck the other girls rushed her and ordered her to take off her clothes. When she refused, Rachel punched her. Kim says Nicole tried to hit back, but then both Kim and Shauna attacked her, knocking her down.”
I stared at the little pile of ripped plastic in front of me, my eyes filling with tears as I saw my sister falling to the ground, imagined her desperate pleas, her eyes searching for Ryan and me, praying we’d come back and save her.
I could barely find my voice, whispering, “What else? What else did they do?”
Suzanne told me the rest of the terrible story. While Kim and Rachel slapped and kicked Nicole, Shauna grabbed the tire iron from behind the truck’s seat. The girls stopped, scared now, but stood frozen while Shauna, in a rage they didn’t understand, hit Nicole several times in the head and the face. By the time they finally pulled her off, Nicole was unconscious. Shauna told them they’d all go to jail for assault if Nicole lived, so they had to kill her. She made Rachel hit her with the tire iron too.
I held up my hand. “Give me a minute.” The tears were running hard, and I wiped them on my sleeve, fighting the brutal images twisting through my mind.
Suzanne said, “Maybe I shouldn’t—”
“No.” I shook my head. “I have to know. Keep going.”
Cathy and Kim refused to hit Nicole, but once she was dead they helped take off her clothes and drag her body to the water. Kim, hysterical by this point, wanted to go to the police, but Shauna said she’d be arrested as an accomplice. They all snuck back to Shauna’s, thinking that they could shower there, that her dad would be working late and no one would ever know. After the trial, Kim fled town and hoped to never come back, but then Shauna tracked her down and told her she had to return to help “clean things up.”
Rachel had confessed as well, saying Shauna had delivered the worst of the blows. Rachel had only hit Nicole in the body, never in the head, and she’d been terrified of Shauna. She was also charged with Nicole’s murder.
When the police searched Shauna’s home they found Nicole’s necklace in her jewelry box, with some trace evidence still on it. It made perfect, terrible sense that Shauna hadn’t been able to part with the gift, a symbol of her father’s betrayal and a trophy of her destruction of Nicole.
After Shauna was confronted with the evidence and the testimony of the other girls, she turned on her father. She hadn’t realized that he’d started fooling around with Nicole until later that July, when he begged off from an annual family camping trip, sending Shauna alone with her uncle and aunt. A week later she came home early and discovered her father in bed with Nicole. They’d fought and he swore he’d break it off, but that wasn’t enough for Shauna.
“What happened to Nicole’s clothes?” I said. “The tire iron?”
“They were in the trunk of the car—along with the girls’ bloody clothes. Shauna was supposed to get rid of them, but when McKinney came home in the morning, after the other girls had left, he noticed some sand on the car tires.”
“He realized they’d been at the lake?”
Suzanne nodded. “He confronted her, and she told him everything.” I could well imagine that fight, Shauna trying to hurt her father with all the vicious details of how she’d killed Nicole. “He dumped the tire iron into the ocean, burned the clothes, cleaned up the car, and they never spoke about it again until Shauna called him, saying that Cathy was starting to talk about that night.”
“Did Shauna kill her?”
“Looks like it was Frank McKinney. They found hair and DNA samples on some of his clothes. That might not have been enough, but a witness saw a man matching his description down at the pier the night she was killed.”
I remembered how Frank had defended sending us to jail. You two would have ended up there eventually.… Was that how he justified killing Cathy? She was just a drug addict? I wondered if Cathy had trusted him at the end or just needed the money for drugs so bad she threw caution to the wind. I sat back in my chair, thinking of Nicole, Cathy, Ryan, of all the ruined lives since that night, of all the ways Shauna’s hatred and jealousy had destroyed so many people over the years.
Suzanne said, “A lot to take in, I know.”
“You’re not kidding.” My mouth was parched, my head pounding. I grabbed one of the cans of Coke, opened it, and took a long swallow. When I was finished I put it down and looked at Suzanne across the table, remembering how tough she’d always been on me and wondering what was going on with her now. Was it guilt?
“Why are you really here, Suzanne?”
She looked around at the other inmates and their visitors, then back at me.
“Lots of my parolees over the years have claimed they’re innocent.…” I held my breath, waiting. “You’re the first one I believed.”
I was glad she’d said it but still angry that I’d been caught up in a system where it didn’t matter what Suzanne believed, the law had decided I was guilty and she had to make sure I followed the rules. But there was something else, something she wasn’t saying—I could see it in the way she was looking at me, like she was waiting for me to connect the dots. I thought of all the times she urged me to stay away from Ryan, reminded me over and over.
“Did you know Ryan and I were meeting each other?”
“Of course not. I would’ve suspended your parole immediately.” Her face was serious, but she held my gaze a minute too long.
She pointed to my half-eaten chocolate bar.
“Are you going to finish that? Men don’t like skinny chicks.”
I smiled at her.
* * *
A week later, Angus told me Ryan had recovered enough to be sent back to Rockland. This time I sent a letter and we began to write. We were hesitant at first, reserved in our writings, but slowly we began to open up, getting to know each other again as we shared our daily lives on the inside. He talked a little about things he wanted in the future, like a better job and his own place, but he didn’t really say much about a future with me, like he wasn’t sure how I felt about that yet and was waiting until we were released.
I thought about my own life a lot, whether I wanted to stay in Campbell River—with Ryan, I hoped—or go somewhere else and start fresh, especially now that there was so much media attention to our case. But I still had unfinished business in Campbell River. The story wasn’t over yet. Not for me, anyway.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CAMPBELL RIVER
OCTOBER 2013
Three months later, our cases were overturned and our records expunged. There were a lot of media waiting outside the prison for me, but I refused to answer any of their questions and pushed my way through. Stephanie came to pick me up, with Captain. Turns out she’d decided to foster him after my parole was suspended the first time.
“I had a feeling you would come back and I didn’t want anyone else to have him,” she said.
Captain was ecstatic, jumping over the seat to greet me, his tail whacking both of us, his tongue trying to wash every part of my face. I laughed, then cried into his fur.
We drove to the campsite. The media hadn’t found out yet where I was going to be staying. When I’d been arrested the second time and sent back to Rockland, I’d called Stephanie. She’d gone to the campsite and collected my stuff from the manager. Then, when I found out I was going to be released, she paid him to keep his mouth shut. When I tried to thank her, she said, “Don’t worry. I’ll make you work it off.”
A few days later, I took a walk on the beach with Captain, noticing all the fall leaves that now covered the ground, breathing in the crisp air. When I got back, Ashley was waiting on the front porch.
She looked good, with her hair dyed a more natural dark brown. She was still wearing all black but she’d removed the Goth jewelry and only had a silver chain around her neck.
“Hey, how are you doing?” I said as I stepped onto the porch.
“I’ve been better.”
??
?I bet.” I sat on the chair across from her and unclipped Captain. He made his way over to her, nudging her legs. She scratched his ears for a minute.
“It’s hard, kind of feels like I lost my mom and my grandpa, like they’re dead or something.”
I nodded, understanding, thinking about my own parents.
“It’s like I don’t even know who they are. My grandpa, it’s weird hearing everything that happened, what he did. I really loved him, you know?”
“Lots of people have two sides. Maybe everything just got out of hand for him and he didn’t know how to stop things once they went that direction. He lost control.” I’d thought about that a lot in prison, trying to correlate the Frank McKinney from my youth with the man who’d slept with my sister and helped cover up her murder, then killed Cathy to keep her from talking. I knew how important his career had been and how much he loved his daughter, but I was still shocked at how far he’d gone to protect everything.
“I guess.” She was quiet for a minute, then said, “In some ways, I understand my mom more now. Like why she married my dad so young, why my grandpa seemed kind of distant with her, why she was always so jealous if he spent time with me.”
“They had a complicated relationship, lots of resentment.”
Ashley nodded. “My dad and I are trying to work things out, or at least we’re talking about stuff more. I missed the first semester of school.… He doesn’t want me to stick around here, listening to all the gossip, so he’s sending me to a private school in January. It has a really strong arts program.”
“That’s good.”
“Yeah.” She glanced in the direction of Aiden’s trailer. “And I broke up with Aiden. I think my mom was right about him.”
I thought of Margaret. “Sometimes moms are.”
She looked back at me, fiddled with Captain’s collar, straightening it for him. “What about you and Ryan? Do you think you’ll get back together?”
I looked down at the leash in my hand. “A lot happened when we were inside. Prison changes people. It’s hard to get back to who you were before.”