poor girl. I know you two didn’t get along. Believe me, I had half a mind to throttle her myself when you were in school, but I always had the sense that she was struggling with something at home.”
“That’s why I’m here,” Josie told her. “I know you had to meet with Vera on several occasions when Beverly and I…”
“Got into fights? Vandalized each other’s lockers? Each other’s cars?”
“I only vandalized her locker and car because she did it to me—and she spray-painted foul words on my stuff. All I did was break the lock on her locker and toilet paper her car.”
Lisette regarded her with a raised brow, but Josie could see a small smile on her lips. “How about the time that Beverly pushed you down the steps at school and so you punched her in the face? She had a black eye. You were both nearly suspended. You both should have been suspended, really. I wore the principal down.”
“She could have killed me,” Josie said. “It’s never okay to push someone down the steps.”
“Is it okay to punch people in the face?”
“Okay, I was a hothead. Is that what you want to hear?”
Lisette laughed. “I’m giving you a hard time, Josie. You were a teenager, raging with hormones, and you were still trying to process all the abuse you’d endured before you came to live with me. I still think you would have benefitted from therapy, but you refused.”
The game finished, Lisette victorious. Josie took the cards and shuffled them for another round. “I didn’t need therapy.”
“Pah!” Lisette said, laughing. “You need therapy right now.”
Josie bristled but said nothing. She knew Lisette would not budge on this issue. “My point is, Gram, that you met and spoke with Vera many times. I need to know anything you can tell me about her.”
“Well, let’s see,” Lisette began as Josie dealt the cards for their second game. “What I remember most is that Vera had barely any control over Beverly. I was essentially a single mother raising a hotheaded teenager, just like her, and I handled it just fine. Vera was… a mess. Weary, as though she was at the end of her rope with Beverly. Then again, she was pretty strung out on painkillers most of the time. At least when you two were in high school.”
“We’ve been told that she had an accident.”
“Yes,” Lisette said. “She mentioned that at one of the meetings with the principal, about how her back was bad and her surgery had failed, and that being called to school so often was a trial for her. She used to complain about having to get a ride. She didn’t drive, evidently—or she couldn’t, because of her back.”
“Who drove her to school? Do you know?”
Lisette shook her head. “Some guy. I only saw him a couple of times. He never got out of the car. Just dropped her off and picked her up.”
“What kind of car?”
Lisette smiled. “A blue one. That’s all I know, dear. Sorry. It was a very long time ago.”
“That’s okay,” Josie said. “Vera referred to him as her friend, not her boyfriend?”
“Yes,” Lisette said. “I don’t think they were romantically involved. At the meetings, she never talked about anyone besides herself and Beverly. I don’t think there was a male in their lives. She always talked about how she had to ‘get’ a ride, like it was a major inconvenience. She talked a lot about her back issues, but she never said anything about having someone around to help her.”
“Do you think she was as badly injured as she said?”
Lisette thought about it a moment. “She was definitely injured, no question there, but she seemed to get around just fine whenever I saw her. Vera’s problem was with drugs, not pain.”
“What makes you say that?”
Lisette sighed, meeting Josie’s gaze head-on. “Josie, I had had enough experience with a drug addict to know the signs.”
“Right,” Josie said. When Josie was three weeks old, one of the women who cleaned her parents’ house had set the place on fire and kidnapped Josie. Josie’s biological parents hadn’t been home that day. They’d left their babies with a nanny. At first it seemed that only Josie’s twin, Trinity, survived. Everyone in Josie’s biological family believed that Josie had perished in the fire. In reality, her abductor, Lila, had brought her to Denton, and in an attempt to get back together with her old flame, Eli Matson, Lisette’s son, she had passed Josie off as their