The Girl Who Stopped Swimming - By Joshilyn Jackson Page 0,97

over, why she had fallen asleep when, if she hadn’t, she would have been there to pull Molly out. So she had lied, first insisting to Moreno that there was no boy, because the latest crush was naked Jeffrey Coe. Then she’d said she never planned to meet Molly and that she’d been watching TV with Bet in the rec room. Bet, with much more to hide, had backed her up.

Thalia took her eyes off the road long enough to look Laurel up and down, assessing her. “You’re about to stroke out, Bug,” she said. “Chill. We know where she’s going.”

David closed his phone. “They’ve sent out a dispatch. Cops along the highway will be looking for Sissi’s car. Also, they’re sending a Teletype ahead to the police in DeLop—”

Thalia snorted. “There are no police in DeLop.”

“To whoever has jurisdiction there,” David said, impatience coloring his voice.

“Are they calling in the feds?” Thalia said, perking up. “Federal agents are very often hot.”

“No,” David said. “She called this ‘interference with custody,’ not kidnapping. A sheriff, I would guess. He’ll keep driving past Sissi’s place until they show.”

Thalia was moving at a good clip, weaving around the big trucks that used 29 as an access road to 65. The highway was lined on both sides with strip malls and gas stations. Every four or five miles, Laurel knew, there would be another Waffle House.

“Surely someone will see the car and stop them,” Laurel said.

“It’s a P.O.S. red lemon with one blue door,” said Thalia. “It’s not like it blends.”

“They’ll call my cell when they have her,” David said, and he sounded as calm as Thalia.

Laurel could have clubbed them both. They were acting like they were going to pick Shelby up at the movies. Laurel dialed Sissi’s home again. She listened to the phone ring and ring.

“You’ll run your battery down and not have it when you need it,” said Thalia.

Laurel snapped the phone shut. Sissi had both girls in the car with her right now. Assuming Sissi wasn’t stoned to the gills and didn’t plow them into an embankment, Shelby would be fine until they got to Sissi’s house. It was the hour that followed that was making the pit of Laurel’s stomach feel like a clenched fist. Even if they made good time, there would be half an hour, forty-five minutes, maybe more, between the time Sissi got home and Laurel’s car pulled up.

Shelby would be loose in DeLop with Bet Clemmens, close to alone. Laurel didn’t count Sissi as any sort of supervision. She imagined the blue-tinged flesh of Sissi’s pale legs resticking itself to the vinyl of the sofa as her body sank into the custom groove she’d worn in its cushion. Laurel imagined Sissi’s bleary eyes drifting shut. Shelby would be on her own. With Bet. It could not happen.

Laurel said, “What if Sissi doesn’t get stopped?”

“If she scoots through, would it truly be the end of the universe?” Thalia asked. “You’re being overly dramatic. Coming from me, that’s quite a damnation.”

“Leave her alone,” David said. He spoke with almost no inflection, but it came out ice-cold. “Why did you come?”

“To drive, David. So you two could make your calls. You’re welcome.”

“I have a Bluetooth,” David said. “And it’s not being a jerk to my wife.”

“Stop it,” Laurel said.

Thalia said, “I haven’t started. All I said was half an hour in DeLop might do Shel some good. She needs to see that not everyone in the world lives in a place where they genetically engineer the pansies to match the mailbox trim.”

“I said leave her alone,” David said. “This isn’t the time to . . . be you.”

“Go to hell,” Thalia said without rancor.

“You’re both missing the point,” Laurel said. She couldn’t blame them. She’d missed it, too, for days, her eyes focused only on Stan Webelow. But who had kept her focus there? Every time her gaze had strayed from him, Bet Clemmens had been there, saying she saw Molly going into Stan’s house, saying Shelby had seen Molly with Stan, too.

David and Thalia were sniping back and forth at each other, Thalia’s voice winding around his, while his curt responses were like punctuation, periods and exclamation points that ended her sentences before Thalia simply started on a new one.

Laurel stopped listening, closed her eyes as they passed yet another Krispy Kreme. She was seeing Molly Dufresne again, waiting in the Hawthornes’ backyard.

Shelby was late.

A couple of hours ago, Shelby and Bet had gone to their