“Only for delivery orders,” said Renata. She clicked open the order database on a laptop next to the cash register. “I can check our old orders. Do you remember where in the cemetery you found it?”

“I found it by a grave. The name on the tombstone was Jenny Stills,” said Rachel. “She was a teenage girl who died here in the early nineties.”

“Jenny Stills,” said Renata, her hand frozen above the keyboard. Her voice was filled with a mixture of recognition and sadness. “I haven’t heard her name spoken for years.”

“You knew Jenny?” Rachel felt a thrill of excitement. “Were you friends?”

“I knew her from school. We weren’t really friends.”

“Do you know how Jenny died?” Rachel asked.

“I was in Europe with my parents that summer. It was a sort of sixteenth-birthday present. Dad bought antiques and we vacationed. We were gone for almost three months. Missed the first few weeks of school. By the time I came back, Jenny was long dead. I heard it was in an accident. A couple of boys died in a car crash that summer, so I assumed that’s how Jenny died, too.”

“You didn’t ask?”

“There was nobody to ask. Her mother was dead. Her sister gone. The town had a collective trauma. Nobody wanted to talk about what happened that summer. A few months later, there was a ceremony to install a memorial for the car crash victims. I was surprised that I didn’t see Jenny’s name on the memorial. I asked my teacher. He said that Jenny wasn’t killed in the car accident. That she drowned. I was shocked.”

“Why were you shocked?”

“Everyone knew that Jenny was a strong swimmer. I couldn’t believe that she of all people would have drowned. It was around that time that the graffiti began to appear, too.”

“What graffiti?”

“Rude sexualized drawings with dumb jokes about Jenny. I didn’t understand why people would be so mean about a dead girl.” Renata flushed suddenly, as if embarrassed by the memory.

“Her tombstone had been graffitied with the word ‘WHORE.’ Do you know why someone would do that?” Rachel asked.

“Can’t believe it still goes on after all these years,” sighed Renata. “After Jenny died, her name became synonymous with being a ‘slut.’ Interchangeable, really. Boys would rate girls on what they called the ‘Jenny Stills index.’ A girl who put out would get a nine or ten on the ‘J.S. index.’ That’s what they called it. There was other stuff, too, that they used to say which I can’t even describe because it was so crude. I’m sure you get the picture. I feel bad. I turned a blind eye like everyone else. I learned that it was better to shut up.”

“Why was it better to shut up?”

“There was a girl at school who’d been Jenny’s friend. The boys teased her terribly, and made comments suggesting she was easy. I never stood up for that girl. I feel bad about it now. In those days, I was afraid they’d all turn on me. That I’d become the next Jenny Stills. That girl left town for college and never returned.” She paused. “Now that I think about it, I guess I did the same.”

“Was Jenny bullied when she was alive? Teased or harassed by boys?”

“Jenny was very pretty and nice, but she wasn’t popular. I don’t think she could shake off the Stills name. Jenny and her sister didn’t look at all alike. Everyone knew that her mother had two kids from separate fathers. In those days, that sort of thing was still scandalous.”

“You’re the first person I’ve spoken with who seems to have really known Jenny,” Rachel said. “It’s amazing to me that you remember her so vividly.”

“I’ve never forgotten her,” said Renata. “Mom gave Jenny and her kid sister a ride home once. They’d been waiting out a thunderstorm at the gas station by the Old Mill Road junction. The man in charge wouldn’t let them inside the store to take shelter from the rain. Said something about how he’d known the Stills family for years and they were perfectly capable of walking home in any weather,” Renata recalled, scooping up another bunch of roses and clipping their stems. “My mom was furious. She flatly refused to put gas in her car at that service station after that incident. Even if she was running on empty. Said she wouldn’t give her business to that horrible man.”

“Was his name Rick by any chance?” Rachel asked.

“Yes, it was. Actually, Mom donated some flowers to a retirement home a few months ago and she saw him there. He was one of the residents. She told me about it on the phone. Anyway, after that incident with the thunderstorm, Mom tried to help the Stills family. She’d sometimes leave a bag of clothes or a hamper of food on their porch at night. She told me not to say anything if I saw Jenny wearing my hand-me-downs. Said it was kinder to give people charity without them knowing where it came from.”

She glanced at her laptop. “I’ve found something. Mom’s received several orders in the past to deliver a premium bouquet to Jenny Stills’s grave. They were online order paid for by PayPal. There’s no information on the sender. But there’s a card. Let’s see what it says.” Rachel waited while Renata scanned the computer.

“Isn’t that strange!” said Renata. “All the orders request the exact same message on the card.”

“What’s the message?” Rachel asked.

“‘Forgive me,’” Renata read out. “That’s the message. It just says: ‘Forgive me.’”

36

Rachel

The Golden Vista retirement village was on the edge of town, opposite a field of overgrown grass littered with rusting car chassis and abandoned tires. The complex consisted of single-level brick buildings in a garden setting. Raggedy pines obscured views of the town dump. The garbage couldn’t be seen, but Rachel sure smelled it as she walked to the reception building.

A woman at the reception desk gave Rachel a visitor’s badge and directed her to a recreation room down the hall where the residents were relaxing after their early dinner. Most of the residents sat on plastic bucket seats and wheelchairs arranged around a chipped upright piano where a woman with bright lipstick sashayed her shoulders while singing an old Beatles tune.

Rachel beelined to a man sitting in the corner, wearing dark pants and a pale wrinkled shirt. His skin clung to his bones so tightly that Rachel could see the outline of his skull. He grimaced as she approached, flashing nicotine-stained teeth almost as a warning. Like a cat hissing, thought Rachel as she pulled over a chair.

“You’re Rick? You used to own the gas station on the Old Mill Road?” Rachel asked.

“What do you want?” Rick snapped.

“Do you remember Jenny and Hannah Stills?”

He shrugged. “There were hundreds of kids who came into my store, stealing when I wasn’t looking and tracking in mud. And sand. I never knew their names. Never wanted to know.” He closed his eyes and pretended to go to sleep. Rachel could tell from the tautness of his body that he was awake.

“I gave you their names. I never said they were kids,” Rachel said carefully. His eyes opened at being caught out.

“I know you know them,” said Rachel. “What will it take for you to tell me what you remember?”

“Fish burger and fries,” he said, sitting up. “From Admiral’s Burgers. Downtown. I tried to get them to deliver once. They said we’re outside their delivery zone. The staff here won’t get it for me. They say it’s high in sodium and cholesterol. Too unhealthy.” He laughed hollowly. “Look at me. I’m a dead man walking and they’re worried about my sodium levels.”

“I’ll arrange your burger and fries if you tell me what you remember about the Stills family,” Rachel promised.

“I knew the mom from when she was very small. Her granddad would send her to buy liquor. Never any food. Only liquor. A bottle a day. He’d rather his kid starve than miss out on his drink. Sometimes, little Hope would come in and her face would be swollen. Black eye. Cut lip. When Ed Stills was sober, he adored that girl. When he was drunk, he was as mean a drunk as you’ll find anywhere.”

“What happened to Hope’s daughters. Jenny and Hannah?”

“I told the police everything I knew about those girls,” he said.

“Which was?”

“That I didn’t see a thing. Nothing. I don’t know nothing. Not a thing. And between you and me, even if I did, I wouldn’t say.”

“There were some teenage boys who used to drive around in a pickup. They’d get gasoline from your store. Sometimes shoplift, too,” said Rachel. “Do you remember them?”

“Lots of kids drove pickups in those days. Today they’re driving Jeeps. In those days they had trucks,” he said dismissively.

“This pickup was a regular. Try to remember,” Rachel pressed. “It’s important. I think they might have been involved in Jenny Stills’s death.”

“All I can tell you is that I called the ambulance that night because that little kid was messing up my floor with all that blood. I took her down to the beach in my old truck. I was shutting down for the night anyway, so I drove her. Got there before the cops and the ambulance.”