Hayley’s blue eyes, identical to her sister’s down to the golden flecks that speckled her irises, stared hard, searching. “What about her? Where are we supposed to look? And at what?”
Taylor shook her head. “Don’t know.”
They stood there a moment as the December wind kicked up and erased the message on the water.
“That scarf is pretty atrocious, Taylor.”
“Yeah, it is majorly fugly. I’ll wear it once for Aunt Jolene. Then I’ll ditch it on the bus. I’m just saying …”
Neither girl knew it right then, but the night Katelyn Berkley died was the beginning of something that would change everything.
Everything.
Every. Single. Thing.
chapter 4
THE DAY AFTER CHRISTMAS IN PORT GAMBLE was completely out of whack. Certainly, some things seemed the same on the surface. Plastic bags of gift-wrapping and ribbon were stuffed in alleyways or burned on the sly in backyard fire pits. Children re-examined their haul with an eye toward who’d given them the best gift and who’d screwed them over with something that wasn’t even worth returning. A few shoppers descended on the town to make the most difficult of returns: handcrafted items. It was hard to say a pair of mittens was the wrong size or the painted jacquard stemware was something one already had.
As the artist accepted the returns, the lies were told. On both sides.
“I love them, but I have six pairs already.”
“I have a matching hat that you might like to go with it.”
Pause.
“I wish I had known. I just bought one yesterday.”
Nothing was open on Christmas Day. Another lie.
The mittens were, indeed, ugly.
Lies on both sides. That happened in shops and households all over town.
Sandra and Harper Berkley had a Christmas holiday that not a soul on earth would want. Their daughter was dead. Gone. She was in the chiller at the Kitsap County morgue in Port Orchard waiting for the indignity of a knife tip down her skin, a saw through her skull, and the cool voice of the county’s forensic pathologist as she gently picked through the flesh and bone of what had once been a beautiful girl.
And while it was the end of Katelyn’s life, it was the start of something else.
Katelyn was Sandra’s last great hope. And a kitchen appliance in the bathtub had stolen it from her. She surveyed her situation and dealt with her disappointment and heartache the best way she could.
She threw a poison-tipped dart at Harper.
“You know, if we didn’t have that stupid restaurant, you’d have been around more.”
He shook his head. He’d expected her attack. “Everyone works, Sandy. Are you really going to blame me for Katelyn’s death?”
“Daughters need their fathers.”
Harper stared hard at his wife, weighing a rebuttal that would drive the point home without setting her off. “They also need a sober mother.”
It was the wrong response.
Sandra balled up her fist and jabbed at Harper. He stepped back, his wobbly wife no match for his still-agile reflexes. When the emotion of the moment cooled enough for her to realize what she’d done, Sandra started to cry.
Harper put his arms around her and cried too.
They’d been bonded by the joy of the birth of their daughter. She’d been the glue that held them together when their marriage was at its most fragile.
As they lay in bed in the early morning hours after their daughter had died, Sandra cried quietly into her pillow. Her eyes were red, a color borne of agonizing grief and too much alcohol. She wondered how Harper could find enough solace to actually sleep.
Yet, Harper was far from asleep. He was only pretending to avoid talking to Sandra. Everything out of her mouth was tinged with anger and blame. Sandra was that kind of person: bitter, jealous, and completely unsatisfied with her lot in life. Where some might have found pleasure from seeing the joy on others’ faces, Sandra merely wondered why God hadn’t given her whatever it was that they had.
A new car.
A bigger house.
Diamonds instead of CZs.
The happiness that came with relationships.
A daughter who would lift her out of Port Gamble.
Side by side in silence, both wondered if the death of their daughter would bring them closer.
Or would it be the excuse they’d sought to end their marriage?
ALL OVER PORT GAMBLE, the young, the old, and those close and distant to Katelyn thought about her. As she lay on her bed and typed on her laptop, Taylor Ryan could see the inky water of Port Gamble Bay. She had been overcome by emotion in a way that seemed more painful than cathartic. Her eyes finally stopped raining.
She IM’d Beth:
I FEEL SELFISH. 4COL! SEMZ RONG 2 GRIEVE 4 K & B GR8FUL 4 MY LYF & MY SISTER’S LYF. I KNOW ACDNTS HPN EVRY DY. I ALSO KNW DAT K WZ
On the other hand, Hayley didn’t fight her thoughts about Katelyn. She let them tumble from her, texting her ponderings to Colton about what could possibly have led to this very moment.
KATELYN WAS IMPLODING OVER STARLA. SEEMS SO UNFAIR. INSTEAD OF GETTING HELP, SHE WAS SHOVED ASIDE LIKE TRASH. PEOPLE AREN’T TRASH. NO ONE DESERVES TO BE DISSED LIKE THAT. KATELYN JUST WANTED STARLA TO LIKE HER AGAIN. I KNOW SOME PEOPLE THINK THAT KATELYN HAD SOME KIND OF GIRL CRUSH ON STARLA, BUT THAT’S NOT TRUE. THAT’S JUST THE KIND OF THING MEAN GIRLS SAY TO MAKE EVERYONE LAUGH.
Night owls Beth Lee and her mother, Kim, were still very much awake in house number 25 on Olympian Avenue. While they watched lateevening TV together (something that Kim said provided mother-daughter bonding time), Beth got out her phone and started texting. She was a facile texter, easily keeping an eye glued to the movie and the other on the task at hand. Every once in a while, Kim would chuckle and pat her daughter on the leg, and Beth would pause her texting to make eye contact. The minute Kim looked over at the screen, Beth would start up again.
MIGHT NOT ACT
As her husband buzz saw-snored next to her, Valerie Ryan said a silent prayer. She wanted to send something out into the universe that would provide some healing. She was a believer in the power of a positive message.
Katelyn, stay close to your mom and dad. They need you and they will never stop loving you. Where we are living now is not the end of things. You aren’t dust. You aren’t alive only in a memory.
Almost two hundred miles away in Portland, Colton James felt sick to his stomach about what had transpired just a few doors down from his house in Port Gamble. He wasn’t stunned about it, like his mother and father were. Colton had seen Katelyn over the past few months as she declined from a reasonably upbeat, moody teenager to a more sullen and distracted person. He read the text message from Hayley and texted back. Usually he was a brief texter, just a few words or even a solitary letter to convey what he wanted to say. This time he wrote out his thoughts more fully. He wanted to share. He needed to make a point.
I’M BUMMED ABOUT HER 2. SHE WZ WEIRD LATELY, BUT ALW NICE 2 ME & MY MOM. SHE 1CE GOT MY MOM’S PAMPERED CHEF PIZZA CRAP @ HER HOUSE. SHE MADE 4 KINDS OF PIZZA W/MY MOM. SHE REALLY LYKD KATELYN. SAID SHE WZ SPECIAL. WISH WE CUD TURN BACK TYM & CHNG THE 1 LIL THING THAT WUD CHNG EVRYTING. DUM, RIGHT? THINGS LYK THAT CAN’T HPN.
Next door to the Berkleys, Starla Larsen picked up her phone and touched the Facebook icon. There were lots of messages posted about Katelyn on her wall, as well as just about every other wall belonging to anyone who attended Kingston High. She went over to Katelyn’s wall. Starla hadn’t been there in a while.