Envy

chapter 34

SHE MAY HAVE BEEN FUELED BY VODKA or it might have been only the enormous sadness of her loss, but Sandra Berkley made a beeline for Katelyn’s phone when she got home from the Kitsap County morgue. How could I not know my own daughter? How could it be that she didn’t tell me?

First on the list was Starla Larsen.

It didn’t ring and went immediately to voice mail.

“Starla, this is Sandra, Katelyn’s mom. Call me back when you get this.”

A few minutes later she tried again, with the same results. Sandra had half a mind to just go next door and confront Starla face-to-face, but she thought better of that. She didn’t want to fall apart in front of Mindee and Jake. They’d avoided her lately with the kind of sad, frightened look parents sometimes give others whose children had special needs, or died—suicide or otherwise.

Next she tried Hayley Ryan.

She and her sister were nosy enough to snoop in Katelyn’s room. Maybe one of them knew something.

Hayley was nearly done with the forensics book when she looked down at her vibrating phone. Her face went nearly white. It was as if she’d seen a ghost. In a very real way, with Katelyn’s name popping up on the caller ID, it was a ghost.

“Hello?”

“Hayley, this is Sandra Berkley. I have something I need to talk to you about. Maybe your sister too. I’ve tried to reach Starla, but she’s probably out running the universe.”

There was genuine sarcasm in Sandra’s voice. Hayley liked that.

“What is it?”

“It’s private. Can you come and see me?”

“Sure. Shall we come to the restaurant or your house?”

“I’m home.”

“Okay, what’s it about?”

“I’ll tell you when you get here. Bring your twin.”

Bring your twin. That didn’t sound good.

Hayley hung up and went looking for her sister. Whatever it was, this was big. It had to be, because the last time the two of them had interacted with Sandra Berkley, she’d wanted to bite off their heads and toss them out of her daughter’s second-floor bedroom.

Ten minutes later, Hayley and Taylor Ryan stood on the Berkleys’ front doorstep, bracing themselves from the cold and for whatever it was Katelyn’s mom wanted to say to them.

Sandra opened the door and wasted no time getting to the heart of the matter. There was no offer to take their coats, of a warm beverage, or anything like that. Not that they’d wanted anything, but still it was wham, bam, thank you, ma’am. She’d barely invited them in when she dropped the bomb.

“Who was my daughter sleeping with?”

“Huh?” Taylor asked, looking at her sister.

Hayley looked clueless.

Sandra had planted herself right in front of the twins and didn’t step back. She was totally invading their personal space.

“Do you know who Katie was having sex with?” she asked, her eyes fierce and angry.

It was a look neither girl had seen from Sandra, who had always seemed so fragile.

Hayley shook her head. “As far as I know, she wasn’t. And if she was, it was none of our business when she was alive.”

“Or now, when she’s, you know, not alive,” Taylor said.

Sandra’s eyes were stony. She was upset. Cold. Livid.

“Dead is the word you’re looking for, Taylor,” she said.

Taylor felt her face go pink. “Right. Dead. Well, we honestly don’t know.”

Sandra was on a mission. She needed to know. “Did she have a boyfriend?” she asked.

Hayley took that one. Taylor was unusually flustered. “She might have had someone she was talking to online.”

“This is more than online,” Katelyn’s mother said, backing up and going toward the coat tree. She started fishing through her coat pockets.

“Damn,” she said. “I can’t find it.”

“Find what?” Hayley asked.

“The pregnancy test she took,” Sandra said, now digging through her purse but coming up empty-handed. “Must have left it in the car.”

Taylor looked over at Hayley. She didn’t say it, but she was thinking that nobody takes a test for having online sex. If people did, grocery and drugstores would be selling the kits by the cartful.

“Look, Mrs. Berkley,” Taylor said. “We didn’t know her that well. Not like we did when we were little. But I’m pretty sure Katelyn would have told you if she thought she was pregnant.”

Taylor’s words seemed to soften Mrs. Berkley’s features.

“Maybe so,” she said. “At least, I hope so.”

She opened the door, which was their cue to leave. As it swung shut, the twins looked at each other.

“What you just did was very nice,” Hayley said as the pair hurried down the steps to the sidewalk in front of house number 23.

Taylor shrugged off the compliment. “That’s not why I did it. It was the truth. Mrs. Berkley and Katelyn were close. Close enough to make me wonder what it would be like if it was just me and Mom.”

“Instead of you, me, and Mom?”

“Right.”

“That’s a nice thought. Thanks for that.”

“Oh, come on. Like you haven’t wondered what it would be like as a singleton.”

Just then they noticed Teagan, loitering in the alleyway with his BB gun and a coffee can that he’d been using for target practice. Both girls thought it, but didn’t say it: Who buys coffee in a can anymore?

“Starla home?” Taylor asked.

“Yeah,” he said. “The little B is upstairs.”

“You mad at her?” Hayley asked.

Teagan lowered his BB gun. “Not really. Or maybe yes. She’s always telling me what to do. Even when I’m not mad at her, I have to get ready to be mad.”

He kicked the coffee can.

“Aren’t BB guns illegal?” Hayley asked.

“You going to tell on me?”

“No. I’m just asking.”

He shrugged. “I don’t care if they are. It’s fun to shoot stuff. One time I knocked a robin out of a tree. That was cool.”

“Actually, that’s not cool at all,” Hayley said.

“Whatever. I’m going inside. Come on and I’ll let you in.”