Page 19 of Broken Things

“Okay, let me get this straight,” I say. “Someone else knew about Lovelorn and decides—what? To mess with us? To make us think we’re going crazy?”

“Maybe,” Mia says. “Maybe whoever it was—”

“The Shadow,” I interrupt her.

This time, she does turn around, releasing the wheel with a small sigh. “What?”

“I’m not going to keep saying ‘someone’ or ‘whoever it is,’” I say. “We might as well name him. He might as well be the Shadow.”

“That’s so heteronormative,” Abby says. Her eyes are closed. “How do you know that aguykilled Summer? Why not a girl?”

“Would have to be a guy,” I say. “You never met Summer. She was fierce. Could take your eyes out with a penknife. And someone knocked her down and dragged her halfway across the field.”

Abby opens her eyes, tilting her head back a little farther to look up at me through her lashes. “A guy, or a strong girl.” Then she settles into her original position.

“So, the Shadow,” Mia resumes, emphasizing the word and giving me adoes that make you happylook in the rearview mirror. “Maybe he wanted us tolookcrazy, not just feel crazy. If the cops wouldn’t believe us about Lovelorn—which they obviously wouldn’t—no way would they believe us when we said we didn’t have anything to do with the murder.”

“Hmmm.” Abby has her eyes closed again, fingers interlaced on her stomach. “Maybe. That’s a lot of planning, though. There’s another possibility.”

“What’s that?” I say.

She sits up finally, twisting around in her seat so she can see us both at once. “Maybe he just wanted to play. Like forrealreal.”

There’s a long moment of silence.

I clear my throat. “Owen knew about Lovelorn,” I point out. “He’s the only one who—”

Mia cuts me off before I can finish. “Owen never read any of our stuff,” she says.

“As far as we know,” I correct her. I still haven’t told her that I saw Owen yesterday, and that he asked after her. And I’m still notplanningto tell her. Mia’s not exactly up for any LifetimeFriendship Achievement awards. Besides, it’s for her own good. She was always so sure he couldn’t have done it, that hewouldn’thave. But she wasn’t there that day he clocked Elijah Tanner in the face and just stood there staring while Elijah howled and blood came out from between his fingers.

I never understood how she could protect him even after he broke her heart. Then again, I protected Summer even after she shattered mine.

“Please.” Gone is innocent-wounded-Mia, with her big eyes and trembling lip and constant kitten-up-a-tree act:I’m a victim too, I just played along, it was never my idea, none of it was my fault. Now she’s all fire and brimstone. “The cops weredesperateto stick the murder on Owen. So was the prosecutor. If he did it, he’d still be rotting in Woodside. He was acquitted, remember?”

“Maybe because the cops screwed up,” I say, even though she has a point.

Hank and Barbara Ball live in one of the cottages: a prefab double-wide souped up with fake siding and a screened-in porch, like all the other backcountry cottages plopped-and-dropped on two-acre parcels back in the 1970s. Even the hummingbird feeder comes standard, I bet. That’s the type of rustic crap the summer people go for. I’ve never even seen a hummingbird around here.

I can’t remember visiting Summer at the Balls’ house more than a few times, but I recognize the turnoff right away, still marked by a dented mailbox sporting a faded American flag motif. Ahand-painted wooden sign tacked to a birch states simplyBalls.

Abby thinks this is hilarious. “That sign is ambiguous,” she says. “What does it mean? Balls for sale? Balls go here? All balls welcome? Free balls?”

“All right, all right, let it go.” The whole Balls things would be funny if Hank Ball weren’t so damn mean. Mean—and creepy as hell. I remember one time we stopped by just to getReturn to Lovelorn, and in the middle of a pee I could have sworn I saw an eye staring in at me through the keyhole. Summer swore up and down it hadn’t been her, either.

The driveway spits us out through the chokehold of summer blackberry bushes and overgrown pine trees into a narrow clearing where the cottage, looking even sorrier than I remember it, sits among a surf of trash, old furniture, and abandoned car parts.

I remember that Mr. Ball was always fixing something in the front yard—rehabbing a crappy desk no one would buy even new, or fiddling with an ancient grandfather clock he’d bought at a yard sale—but it looks like things have been breaking a little faster than he can keep up with.

An orange cat watches our approach from the porch railing, and I get a bad feeling in my stomach. We shouldn’t have come.

But it’s too late. Even before Mia cuts the engine, the cat startles off around the house. A second later, Barbara Ball comes out onto the front porch, holding a dish towel, hobbling the way old women do when they’ve been on their feet all day.

And she is—old, I mean. Older than I remember her. Sadder-looking, too.

“Can I help you girls with... ?” She swallows the rest of her sentence just as soon as she recognizes us, and for a long moment no one says a word.

Finally, Abby breaks the silence. “Get any hummingbirds?” she asks, gesturing to the feeder. I glare at her. She gives me awho, me?face.

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