The Guilty One by Sophie Littlefield Read Free Book Online Page A

too.
    The moment in the diner, when the girl took the book from her backpack—that had been an aberration, because Maris was mostly beyond feeling these days. Even when she had seen her car window in bits on the ground, even when she was bent over that patch of weeds, it felt as though it was happening to someone else—or more precisely, that it had happened to her in the past and she was reliving it from the distance of time.
    The girl was washing her hands at a tiny sink bolted to the wall near the refrigerator. Above it was a drawing of a car next to a building, done in impossibly bright colors: purple shadows and orange bricks. She dried her hands on a towel and twirled. “Good as new,” she said. She’d changed into plaid madras shorts, the sort old men wear for golf.
    â€œYou never told me your name,” Maris said.
    â€œPet. Short for Petra.” The girl smiled. “I’m like half Czech. Try having that name in middle school.”
    Maris was about to say that she understood—other than the character on Frasier, she’d never met another Maris.
    The thing about her name, though. Maris Vacanti. It was distinctive—it was recognizable. She had a trick, one she’d started using shortly before the trial started. What made it possible: she had never formally changed her name. For the first three years she and Jeff were married, she still went by Ms. Parker at school. Later, after Calla was born and Maris cut her hours and eventually quit teaching altogether, she meant to get around to changing it. Their mail came addressed to Mr. and Mrs. Vacanti; bills and magazine subscriptions and Calla’s school directory listed her married name. Even her family eventually starting using Vacanti, and still she never submitted the paperwork, and when she renewed her driver’s license and did the taxes every year there was some small . . . satisfaction? Was that what she had felt, holding this small part of herself back, seeing the name Parker on the forms?
    Had some part of her always known about Jeff, about what was dormant in him even then?
    â€œMaris Parker,” she said firmly, banishing the thought. She held out her hand, and the girl took it, squeezed rather than shook.
    â€œMaris?” The girl said. “Do people ever call you Mary?”
    â€œSometimes,” Maris said, and then—for no reason at all, it just popped into her head—she said “Actually, my friends call me Mary.”
    â€œOkay. Mary. So, I have to ask, what the fuck are you doing in this neighborhood?”
    Maris laughed the fake little laugh that she used to buy herself time. Framing how she wanted to say things—not that she had ever been the type for conversational chatter; she’d always preferred to speak precisely. But these days, there was always the equation, how much to hold back, how much to reveal. “That’s a long story. Am I keeping you from something? Work?”
    â€œNah.” Pet fluttered a hand. “I don’t have to be at work until four. I’m just killing time until then. I ought to be studying, but I was going to go to CVS—but, you know, I can do that whenever. Do you need . . . ?”
    She let the sentence trail off. Maris looked down: was it that obvious on her, the damage, the aimlessness, her need for escape despite having nowhere to go other than Alana’s? Jeff had tried to talk her out of leaving like this. So had Nina, for that matter. At the time Maris had felt defiant. Now she just felt ridiculous.
    â€œI—I could stand to rest in one place for a while. I have some things I need to figure out.”
    â€œWell, you’re welcome to stay here. I’ll probably just draw.”
    Maris looked at the colorful drawings tacked around the room. “These are yours?”
    Pet’s smile faltered. She stared at the floor. “Some of them. Most of them.”
    â€œPet . . .