They Just Don't Know You

Chapter 32

Jade's POV

Monday, October 7

I know the script. I've read it in countless books, and seen it play out dozens of times on TV. All week, in the back of my mind, I knew how it would probably end. 

What I didn't understand was how mind-numbingly awful it would feel.

At least I'm not alone. Karl and Perrie are in the living room with me, six hours after the Huntsburg police found Ellie. None of us went to school today, although Perrie's day was more eventful than ours. She showed up an hour ago, battered and bruised, and Nana has been handing her fresh ice packs every 15 minutes.

We're arranged stiffly on her uncomfortable furniture, watching Channel 5 news coverage scroll across the screen. Their local reporter, Leoni, is standing on Echo Ridge Common, her hair whipping across her face as the leafy branches behind her sway in the wind. 

She's been talking nonstop since we turned the TV on, but only a few phrases sink in:...dead for more than a week...foul play suspected but not confirmed...yet another taunting message found this morning near Echo Ridge High School...

"Great timing, Leigh-Anne," Karl mutters. 

Perrie's sitting next to me on the couch. One side of her jaw is bruised and swollen, the knuckles on her right hand are scraped raw, and she winces every time she moves. "Someone needs to pay this time," she says in a low, angry voice. I reach for her uninjured hand. Her skin is warm, and her fingers wrap around mine without hesitation. For a couple of seconds I feel better, until I remember that Ellie is dead and everything is horrible.

Every time I close my eyes, I see her. Working the shooting range at Fright Farm, trying to stand up to Jordan. Wandering around the halls at school looking sad and worried. Swaying and rambling her way out of the Fright Farm office on the night she disappeared. I should have pushed her harder to tell us what was wrong. I had a chance to change the course of that night, and I blew it. 

When my phone rings with the familiar UK number, I almost don't answer it. Then I figure, what the hell. The day can't possibly get any worse.

"Hi, Norma," I say tonelessly.

"Oh, Jade. I saw the news. I'm so, so sorry about your friend. And I saw-" She pauses, her voice wavering. "I saw your email. I wasn't sure what I was looking at until I zoomed in on the uniform and saw...his name."

"Did you think it was Karl at first? Because I sure did." I'm surprised to find that beneath the heavy misery of Ellie's death, I can still manage to spare an undercurrent of anger for my mother. "How could you not tell us? How could you let us live a lie for 17 years and think our father was John the fucking stuntman?" I don't bother keeping my voice down. It's not like anyone in the room doesn't know what's going on.

"It wasn't a total lie," Norma says. "I wasn't sure, Jade. The stuntman happened. And, well...James Elliott also happened, a little while afterwards." Her voice drops. "Sleeping with a married man was a huge mistake. I never should have gone there."

"Yeah, well, he shouldn't have either." I don't have any empathy to spare for the man in that photo. He doesn't feel like my father. He doesn't feel like anything. Besides, keeping the marital vows was his job. "But why did you?"

"I wasn't thinking straight. My father was gone, memories of Amelia were everywhere, and I just...I made a bad choice. Then the timing of the pregnancy fit better with the, um...other situation, and I wanted that to be true, and so...I convinced myself that it was."

"How?" I look at Karl, who's staring at the floor with no indication that he's hearing any of this. "How did you convince yourself of that when- what was his name again? James?- looked exactly like Karl?"