“So, Tabitha,” John said, lowering himself into the visitor’s chair by the window, which had a very stunning and healing view of the island’s garbage dump. “Your name is Tabitha, isn’t it? Tabitha Brighton of New Canaan, Connecticut, and you’re eighteen years old? Because that’s what it says here.”
The girl, who’d been taking a large slurp of her milkshake, stopped midswallow and stared owlishly at the driver’s license he’d pulled from his shirtfront pocket. She had mouse-brown hair that was currently parted in the middle and hung like curtains on either side of her face. It gave her an innocent and rather nunlike appearance.
And like a nun, she didn’t lie. Slowly, she nodded. “Yes,” she said in a tiny voice. “That’s me.” Then she burst into tears, this time noisily, with large, gulping sobs. “Are you going to arrest me?”
“Oh, sweetheart,” Marguerite said, moving to wrap the girl in her arms. “Shhhh.”
John was more glad than ever that Marguerite had come along. He also wondered if Tabitha had noticed Marguerite had not said no.
“Well,” he said. “Why don’t you tell me what happened first, starting with how you ended up here in Little Bridge to begin with.”
The girl gave a tiny shrug—all she could manage with Marguerite sitting beside her in the bed, her arms still around her. “I . . . I don’t know. I’d always heard Little Bridge Island was a nice place.”
“Right,” John said. He’d heard this a thousand times—maybe a hundred thousand times—in his lifetime. “Everyone thinks Little Bridge Island is a nice place. It’s one of America’s top tourist destinations. But usually when people come here they rent an Airbnb or a hotel room. They don’t break into a public building, squat in it, and then vandalize it with trash and graffiti.”
Tabitha’s eyes overflowed again. She looked as sorrowful as any human being John had ever seen. . . .
And yet he thought he saw a spark of indignation in her hazel eyes, as well.
“Just because some people reject societal norms and resist total assimilation to the dominant culture doesn’t mean our values don’t have worth,” she said in a shaky voice.
It was obviously something she’d learned by rote.
John didn’t have to ask where she’d learned it, either. He’d heard it—like he’d heard the thing about Little Bridge being nice—a thousand times.
But he’d only heard what Tabitha was spewing from one person . . . and that person’s followers.
He closed his notebook with a snap.
“Okay, Tabitha,” he said. “Where is he?”
She blinked several times. “What—who do you mean?”
“Dylan.”
“I—I don’t know any Dylan.”
“Oh, you don’t? Dylan Dakota?”
She shook her head. “N-no.”
“Never heard of him?”
“I t-told you. No.”
She was a very bad liar. Not only did she not make eye contact when she lied, but she did the same thing that Katie did when she lied, which was to glance up at the ceiling and far to the right, as if the way out of the difficult situation she suddenly found herself in might be found there.
This made John feel slightly more sorry for her, but he still had to do his job.
“Don’t give me that, Tabitha,” he said, sternly. “Only one person in this town goes around spewing that nonsense about societal norms and resisting total assimilation, and that’s Dylan Dakota—whose real name, in case he failed to mention it, is Lawrence Beckwith III. I know he probably told you some fanciful tale about being raised in an orphanage in Morocco, but guess what? Larry is from Cleveland Heights, Ohio, where his father owns a very popular chain of tire stores, and his mother is a homemaker. Larry himself graduated from Ohio State—although I’m sure he wishes it was Brown or Dartmouth or some other Ivy League school so he could brag about how he dropped out because he was rejecting our society’s dominant norms. Maybe that’s where this sense of entitlement he has comes from—that he never got the fancy art degree that he feels he deserves from a top-tier school. Anyway, I don’t know about any of that, and I don’t care. I just want to know where I can find him so I can arrest him for what he did to you and your baby and Miss Montgomery’s library. Do you have any thoughts about that?”
She swallowed, her stare still glued to the ceiling. “I . . . I don’t know Dylan Dakota or this Larry Beckwith person. And I don’t know what happened to me. I gave birth, and it was beautiful, and then I fell asleep.” She finally brought her gaze back toward his. Now she was telling the truth. “When I woke up, the baby was gone, and some lady was there.”
Marguerite had drawn her arms away from the girl and slipped off the bed. “Is that what you’re going to tell your daughter about her birth when she’s older? How beautiful it was, giving birth to her on the dirty floor of an unfinished building surrounded by empty liquor bottles and pizza boxes and without an epidural or any medical aid?”
“And you didn’t fall asleep,” John added. “You passed out from blood loss. Your so-called friends abandoned you. Not one of them has come here to visit you or even called to see how you’re doing. And that lady was the children’s librarian, Miss Molly Montgomery. If she hadn’t found you, you’d be dead. Same with your daughter. Someone—I’m guessing it was your good friend Dylan—put her in an empty box of trash bags and dumped her in a bathroom at the library. She’d have frozen to death if Miss Montgomery hadn’t found her.”
“I—I don’t believe you.” Tabitha reached up to wipe her tears with one of the napkins Marguerite had given her. “This is what he said you people would do. Try to demonize us for rejecting the materialism and technology of today’s world.”
“No one’s demonizing you, sweetheart,” Marguerite said in a kind voice. “We’re trying to make you see common sense. Eat a chicken nugget.”
“Who’s he?” John asked. “Dakota?”
“You fear us, you know,” Tabitha said, her eyes still bright with tears, but also now with defiance. Nevertheless, she listened to Marguerite and nibbled on a nugget. “That’s what he says. He says you fear us because we reject your definition of happiness, finding fulfillment in a life without money, mortgages, material goods—”
“We found cell phone and laptop chargers all over that room.” John felt more sad than angry. “For a group that rejects material goods, you sure seem to enjoy going on Facebook.”
“Only so we can spread our message of peace and love.”
“You know, Tabitha, we’re on the side of peace and love as well,” he said. “Your side, and the baby’s. We know what happened to you was traumatic . . . probably so traumatic that you haven’t even been able to face it. At likely the most vulnerable moment of your life, you were left for dead by people you thought you could trust. Let us help you by finding these people and stopping them from ever doing this to anyone else. Because next time, there may not be a Miss Montgomery around to save them.”
Tabitha’s eyes went right back to the ceiling. “There isn’t going to be a next time.”
“What are you talking about?” He shook his head. “Are you telling me that Dylan Dakota isn’t going to take advantage of some other naive girl like you, get her pregnant, and then leave her and her newborn baby for dead somewhere?”
For the first time, she smiled at him. It was a wan and sickly-looking smile. But it was a smile just the same.
“Yes,” she said, looking him dead in the eye. “That’s what I’m telling you. Because Dylan loves me. He loves me and the baby. And he’s going to come back for us. Just you wait and see.”
Chapter Seventeen
Molly
“No, Miss Molly.”
Elijah leaned across Molly’s desk and pressed the receiver, ending her call to his mother before it had even connected. “Please. Please do not call my mom.”
Molly looked into his suddenly pale face and felt that she had no choice but to relent. He was her patron. More than that, he was a child.
“Fine, Elijah,” she said, slowly lowering her handset. “Then tell me the truth about where you got this camera . . . and why you don’t want your mother knowing about it.”
Elijah let out an exaggeratedly large sigh and slumped in the child-sized chair, which for him was not entirely too small. Like a puppy, his hands and feet were large, but the rest of him hadn’t quite caught up.
“Okay, look. I didn’t just find my dad’s camera. I found it a few days ago, and I got this idea: a lot of the girls in school—the Snappettes, especially—want headshots. Not selfies, but, like, real professional headshots. They have this cheer camp they all go to every summer, and there’s this parade in New York City. It happens around Thanksgiving—”
Molly tried to keep the impatience out of her tone. “The Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade?”
“Yeah, yeah, that’s it. It’s this real big deal. They have to send in a headshot for it and also for the camp, or something. I don’t know. So when I found my dad’s camera, I thought, why not start my own business, offering to do headshots for the girls? I mean, I can do it way more cheaply than the regular guy they use. Plus, like, they know me. I’m not some creep—”