“What are you saying?”
“It was one thing to poke around and ask a few questions, but now I’m going to be asking in an official capacity. And I have no doubt Heil is going to tell everyone to keep their mouths shut. Remember, he’s worried about his own liability in this.”
“I don’t care about Heil or that the damn alcohol came from his bar.”
“That may be. But he cares. And people aren’t going to want to speak out against him.”
She shook her head. The sheriff was missing the point. He needed to focus on Billy’s friends. He needed to interrogate Jo. “You’re still going to try, right?”
“Yes,” he said.
“Even Jo? Because I know she knows something about that night that she’s not saying.” She wanted to be present when he questioned her, but knew he’d never allow it.
“I’ll talk with her.” He paused. “I need you to be patient a little while longer. Like I said, it’s a sensitive matter, and I don’t want people to clam up before I even get started. You need to be patient and let me do my job.”
She didn’t respond, and continued squeezing the keys in her fist.
“I’m serious,” the sheriff said. “Let me handle this.” He waited for her to say something. When she continued giving him the silent treatment, he said, “You know I never would’ve closed the case if we would’ve found his arm with the body. If we would’ve had all the evidence back then, things would’ve gone differently.”
When she still refused to acknowledge what he was saying to her, he asked, “Did you hear me?”
“Oh, I heard you,” she said, and turned her head away.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Caroline woke to a wet stickiness between her legs. She tossed the covers off. The sheets were stained with blood. Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God. What happened to her last night? Her underwear was soaked. She pulled at her nightgown and found the back of it spotted red. It took a few more panicked seconds for her to understand.
She jumped from the bed and felt a warm gush between her legs. She cupped her hand over her private parts as if she had to pee. She peeked into the hallway, looking, listening for any sounds. The bathroom door was wide open. She made a break for it, not knowing what else to do. She stripped off her pajamas and cleaned herself with a washcloth. She knew she needed supplies. She had read all about menstruation from the stupid pamphlets the nurse had handed out during the school year. But it wasn’t until she had read Judy Blume’s Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret did she fully understand what was coming. It wasn’t like her mother had ever sat her down and had “the talk” with her. She wondered if there were parents who actually did stuff like that with their kids.
She doubted it.
What she knew about sex she had also learned from reading books. The information the other girls her age had imparted was mostly misinformation, like how you couldn’t get pregnant the first time, how anal sex wasn’t really sex. Books set Caroline straight. They saved her from the embarrassment of having to ask her mother to explain.
Although she had to give her mother props for standing up to the school board when they had threatened to remove some of the more graphic health books from the school library. Caroline’s mother had stepped out of her dark place and into the world, rallying a group of women’s rights activists into the largest protest the school had ever seen. With the support of the librarians and most of the other mothers behind her, the books stayed on the shelves. She was proud of her mother and embarrassed, too. The subject of sex had made Caroline feel all weird inside. It was a subject her mother cared about deeply.
She sometimes heard strange sounds coming from her parents’ bedroom, the moans, the creaking bed, the thumps and crashes. Once, she banged on the door, shouting for them to stop, thinking they were killing each other. They never answered her cry, but the rest of the night had been eerily quiet. She shuddered. Don’t think about it. No child ever wanted to think about their parents having sex, let alone the loud boisterous kind her parents had.
She searched in the cabinet above the toilet for supplies. Nothing. Her mother had never stayed at the cabin for more than a day or two, except for this summer. None of her feminine products were stored here. She guessed Gram went through her phase already, meno-something. What was she going to do? No way could she tell her mother. But what other choice did she have?
She thought about buying supplies at the Country Store. What if someone saw her? She’d die of embarrassment. Maybe she should tell Megan and she could help, but it felt too personal, a private matter she didn’t want anyone to know about. She plopped on the toilet and covered her face. Stop being a baby, she told herself.
“Caroline,” Gram said in a soft voice, and knocked on the bathroom door.
“Yeah,” she said, wiping her eyes. “Just a sec.” She grabbed a towel and wrapped it around her. How was she going to get out of the bathroom without anyone knowing what happened? Her pajamas were stained, and she was still bleeding. “Gram,” she said. “Are you still out there?”
“Are you okay?” Gram asked.
“I need some help.” She opened the door a crack and waved Gram inside. She didn’t know which one of them was more embarrassed when she showed Gram the pajamas and underwear.
“Oh,” Gram said. “Is this the first time?”
Caroline nodded.
“Do you want me to wake your mother?”
“No.” She shook her head.
Gram touched her arm in a sympathetic way. “Stay here. I’ll bring back some clean clothes. We’ll go the store. I planned to go today anyway. You can come along and get what you need.”
Gram returned with clean clothes. “Use these for now.” She handed Caroline a stack of cloth rags she was supposed to put between her legs. She must’ve made a face, because Gram said, “It’s what women had to do before. It won’t kill you to use them for a little while.” She left Caroline alone in the bathroom, mumbling on her way out something about Caroline’s mother and not being better prepared, not stocking up for what was obviously coming.
Caroline stuffed a cloth rag in her underwear and pulled on her shorts. She felt as though she was wearing a diaper. She didn’t want any part of this. She finished getting dressed and met Gram in the kitchen.
“I stripped your bed,” Gram said. “I’ll go to the Laundromat later. Now, let’s get to the store. I have a long list.”
* * *
At the Country Store, Mrs. Nester made a point of ignoring Caroline, maybe because Gram was with her, and maybe because she regretted giving Caroline the old newspapers. Gram went about getting the food and paper products on her list. Caroline lingered in the candy aisle, working up the nerve to go down the aisle where the feminine products were located. She took a deep breath and turned the corner, pretending to be lost, looking for something, anything other than what she was there for. She plucked the first box of pads she saw off the shelf and tucked it under her arm.
With her head down, she darted away to find Gram and hide the small box in the grocery cart. She made it to the end of the aisle and bumped into someone. When she looked up, she was staring into Chris’s two-toned eye. He smiled. She fumbled the box and quickly hid it behind her back.
“Sorry,” she said, and scurried around him. She found Gram in the next aisle over, and she stuffed the box in the cart. Gram was too busy with her shopping list to notice the flustered look Caroline imagined was on her face.
Gram pushed the cart farther down the aisle. Caroline felt someone’s eyes on her back and turned to find Chris at the other end, watching her.