“I know this is a shock to the system. I don’t blame you for being upset. But when you calm down, I think you’ll understand why it happened the way it did. The important thing is that it’s all in the past now. Look at how well Rachel is doing, mi amor, focus on that.” He reaches for me, but I pull back, out of reach.
“Don’t ‘mi amor’ me.” My voice trembles with the effort of keeping it low. “You lied to me, Miguel. Who are you trying to protect now? Rachel, or yourself?”
“This family,” Miguel says, his voice dropping to match my intensity. “I’m trying to protect this family. But you’re making it kind of hard.”
TWENTY-NINE
Finn gets up early Thursday morning, walks Muffinhead and then Rosie, and arrives at the Costas’ house a few minutes before eleven. He’s arranged it with Howie to work from fourPMuntil closing today so he has a few hours to kill with whatever he and Caren have planned. He tries not to show his alarm when she answers the door, her eyes bloodshot and puffy.
“Are you okay?” Finn asks. “You did say eleven o’clock, right?”
“Yup. I’m fine,” she says, her voice brittle as she steps onto the stoop and shuts the door behind her. “I just need coffee. Can you drive?” She tosses him the keys before he has a chance to respond.
Something in her tone makes him hesitate, his feet rooted to the spot. “Are you sure you want to do this?”
“I’m sure.” The words come out clipped, definitive.
He slips behind the wheel of her Honda minivan, noting how surreal it feels to be driving the quintessential suburban people mover alongside an actual Karen. He almost makes ajoke, but a glance at the rigid set of Caren’s jaw changes his mind.
He drives to Tatte, leaving Caren in the car while he gets the coffee. Inside, Finn’s eyes scan the counter eagerly, his heart sinking when he realizes Ellis isn’t working the morning shift. The flutter in his belly from thinking of her catches him off guard—an unfamiliar optimism he hasn’t felt about the future in a long time. The line moves fast, and he’s back to the car within a few minutes. Caren is sitting perfectly still, sunglasses hiding her eyes, looking straight ahead.
“Okay, what’s up?” Finn slides into the driver’s seat, handing her the coffee. “I mean, if you want to tell me.”
“I don’t even know where to begin. Turns out my daughter and Van were involved for a short time fall of her junior year, when he was a senior and he tried to pressure her into doing things she didn’t want to.”
“Gross.”
“Extremely gross. And then when Rachel refused him, his awful little sister and her friends bullied Rachel to the point that she became so depressed she basically had to leave school.”
“That is a lot to deal with. How is she doing now?”
“Now she’s doing okay. But it’s going to take me a minute to process all this. I literally just found this all out last night. I mean, I knew Rachel and Eloïse had stopped being friends, but I had no idea the crap she was pulling. She was sending my daughter suicide memes.”
“That’s incredibly fucked-up.”
“I’ll tell you, I’m glad I didn’t know about the way Van and Eloïse treated Rachel when I went to talk to Jo yesterday.” Hervoice cracks on the name. “If I had, I would have lost it on her. Jo is an entitled bitch, excuse my French, and she has raised two awful kids.”
“Wait, you went and saw Jo? What happened?”
“I kind of accused Van of maybe being the one who killed Autumn.”
“Wow.” He leans back in the seat, letting implication wash over him. “Okay, that’s a lot.”
“I know. She didn’t take it well.”
“I bet. What did she say?”
“She tried to change the subject. She did a good job actually. Turns out that Van was stealing from our neighbors, and that he gave my daughter a stolen bracelet, among other things. Jo knew, my husband knew, but no one told me about any of this. I found out everything yesterday, like a fool.”
“Oof. That’s hard.”
“Yeah, well, I know in my gut that the bracelet has something to do with what happened to me on Saturday,” she says. “I was looking for it the other day and couldn’t find it anywhere. And then the next day, voilà, it magically appears.”
“Wait, hold on a second. I completely forgot to tell you.” He puts the coffee in the cup holder and pulls out his phone.
“Tell me what?” Caren pushes her glasses onto the top of her head.
Finn fumbles with his phone, the adrenaline starting to pick up in his system. With everything going on, the text conversation he saw on the Williamses’ iPad slipped his mind. “Here we go.” He tilts the phone to Caren, who peers at the screenshots as he reads the texts out loud. “The first one says, ‘Got it and dropped it off.’ Then Miguel says, ‘We’re all good.’ Then, ‘Noproblems with C?’ And then Miguel texts, ‘She doesn’t suspect a thing.’”