Page 49 of All Good People Here

She slid into one of the booths, the red plastic sticky against her jeans, ordered a pinot grigio from the waitress, and basked in the unfamiliar relief of being unrecognized. Though the feeling didn’t last long—she was on her second glass of wine when she heard her name.

“Krissy?” a voice said from beside her. “Krissy Jacobs?”

Heart dropping, Krissy looked up. She just wanted one night free from the judgmental, probing gaze of others, one night where she could breathe. She assumed being recognized in South Bend meant whoever this was had seen her on the news, and strangers could be even worse than people in Wakarusa. But when she sawthe face in front her, Krissy was surprised to see it didn’t belong to a stranger after all. “Oh,” she said. “Hi.”

“Jodie.” The woman touched her hand to her chest. “From Northlake High? My last name’s Palmer now, but I was Jodie Dienner back then.”

“No, yeah. I remember you.”

Jodie opened her mouth to say something and Krissy steeled herself for the inevitable.You look so good,people had told her in the months following that infamous TV interview, their tones bright and full of condemnation.If I’d been through what you did, I’d never be able to get out of bed again,let alone put makeup on.Or when she’d turn her back, she’d hear them whisper,I can’t believe she’s got the nerve to show her face.

But when Jodie spoke, all she said was, “My god, you look exactly the same.”

Krissy searched Jodie’s face, but it looked guileless and open. “You don’t,” she said. “You look…amazing.” Krissy remembered Jodie as a wallflower. She’d always been tall and thin, but the way she’d carried herself, with a slight slump of her shoulders, had made people look right over her. She’d had dishwater blond hair that had hung limply around her face and she’d never worn any makeup or clothes that could ever be construed as trying to attract attention. The woman standing in front of Krissy now looked transformed. She was wearing a cream silk button-down tucked into form-fitting blue jeans, and though her face was still bare save for a swipe of mascara, with her hair tucked behind her ears, she no longer seemed to be hiding from the world. “I didn’t mean you looked bad in high school,” Krissy rushed to say. “Sorry.”

But Jodie just laughed. “No, no. I know what you meant.” She opened her mouth, then closed it. “Hey, would you mind…” She nodded at the empty seat across from Krissy.

“Oh, no. Please.” It made Krissy anxious to accept company,but she’d learned long ago that being widely perceived as a child killer meant her manners had to be impeccable.

Jodie placed the beer she’d been holding onto the table, then slid into the seat. “So, are you in South Bend these days?”

“No. I just had some errands up here. We’re still in Wakarusa.”

Jodie raised her eyebrows. “Really? Wow. I just assumed with everything that happened…” Again, Krissy waited for some snide remark, but it never came.

“We thought about moving,” she said with a shrug. “But Wakarusa’s home.” She forced a smile to go with the well-worn lie. The truth was she’d begged Billy to let them leave. Moving hadn’t appealed to her as much as divorce, but she hadn’t known how to survive on her own. She’d never held a single job, save her summer position at the grain elevator all those years ago. And she hadn’t known what she’d do with Jace if she and Billy split. She hadn’t been able to stomach the idea of leaving her son, nor had she wanted to live alone with him. So, she’d asked to move instead. She craved a life in the city, somewhere big and anonymous, but Billy had refused. That was exactly what they’d do if they were guilty, he’d said. If they were innocent—which they were—they’d stay in Wakarusa, heads held high.

Jodie’s eyes flicked over Krissy’s face, but she just smiled softly. “Hey, you know what I was thinking about recently? Do you remember that one time in sixth grade when Dusty Stephens ran for class treasurer and he made that speech in the cafeteria and the whole time his sweatshirt was on backwards?” She and Krissy both started grinning at the memory. “Like, do you think he knew? Was it on purpose? What was the point?” Jodie laughed and Krissy couldn’t help but join in. Soon they were both shaking with it.

For the rest of that drink and for the rest of another, the two women reminisced about their shared past, and Krissy felt lighter than she had in years.

“Do you have to go?” she asked at one point when Jodie stole a glance at her watch. Her voice was casual as she said it, but the idea of ending the night now was a wrench in her stomach. It had been a very long time since she’d felt this good. “Don’t let me keep you.”

“Sorry, but I probably should. I need to throw something together for dinner. My husband should be home by now, but he’s worthless without me there to hold his hand.” She rolled her eyes, laughing.

Krissy smiled, but it felt tight. “Of course, no problem.”

“But maybe…” Jodie hesitated. “Maybe we could do this again sometime?”

There was the slightest hint of nerves in her voice, and Krissy’s heart sank. Her old acquaintance may have been kinder than most, but Jodie clearly still thought she was sitting across from a killer.“Thanks. But you probably don’t wanna go around town with a murderer.” She’d tried to sound flip, but her eyes prickled.

Jodie gave her a long look. “I don’t think you killed your daughter, Krissy.”

Tears fell so suddenly down Krissy’s cheeks it was as if she’d been slapped. Jodie’s words felt like sunlight on her skin after a long, dark winter. “Okay then,” she said, brushing her fingers beneath her eyes. “I’ll give you my number.”

The two women got drinks again the next week and then coffee two days after that, and soon they were meeting up almost every other day. Through all their conversations, Krissy learned that Jodie had also spent her high school years burning to escape Wakarusa. Upon graduation, she’d moved to South Bend for the fall semester at Notre Dame and never left. There, she’d studied Spanish and art history—so practical, huh?—and met her husband. They’d gotten married a few years out of college, and while Jodie had dreamed of a career in the arts, she’d gotten pregnant with her firstborn shortly thereafter. Her second kid had come only a yearlater, and by the time she’d had her third, she was a full-time mom and her brain was too crammed with feeding and sleeping schedules to fit anything else. Over the years, Jodie and her husband had drifted further and further apart until she felt like they were friendly co-workers with only sometimes overlapping shifts.I still love him,she told Krissy once.But I haven’t been in love in a long time.Jodie’s story was all too familiar to Krissy, and it made her ache for her new friend. What small tragedies their lives had turned out to be.

There was something open and unassuming about Jodie that allowed Krissy to relax around her in a way she hadn’t with anyone in a very long time. The band of tightness around her chest loosened when she was with her. Her shoulders and jaw unclenched. For years, she’d pasted on tight smiles, forced cordiality, endured backhanded compliments. But with Jodie, she laughed. Sometimes, she even forgot.

Krissy was in the kitchen one morning about three months after their first run-in in South Bend when her phone chimed with a text from Jodie.The kids are at sleepovers this Saturday, so I’m treating myself to a staycation! Want to get dinner at the hotel that night? Maybe face masks in the room after?

By this point, Krissy had developed a near Pavlovian response of excitement to seeing Jodie’s name on her phone, and she felt herself biting back a smile as she typed her response.Duh! I’ll bring the masks and wine.

For the rest of the week, every time she thought about their plans, Krissy got a little jolt of excitement, and when the night came, as they ate in the hotel’s restaurant, the air felt electric. For the past few months, Krissy had felt something building between them, though what it was exactly she didn’t know. The last time she’d felt something similar had been that summer after senior year—not with Billy, but with Dave. Her friendship with Jodie felt like a fluttering, a giddiness, a literal spark. But every time herbrain went in that direction, it ground to a halt. She wasn’t gay. So perhaps this was simply what it felt like to have a real friend. Perhaps she’d been starved of companionship for so long she couldn’t tell the difference between that and romance.

That night at dinner, they split a bottle of wine, and afterward, giggling and tipsy, they took the elevator to Jodie’s floor. When the doors dinged open, Jodie walked out, but Krissy, who’d just noticed a button on her blouse had come undone, stopped.

“Oh no,” she said, laughing. “Has it been like this all night?” She looked up, fumbling with the button, to see Jodie, her fingers pressed to her lips. When they locked eyes, Jodie snorted out a laugh. “Oh my god,” Krissy said through her giggles. “It has!”

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