That Night

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  For all the people around the world who dedicate their lives to helping animals, whether it be working in shelters, volunteering, forming rescue groups, or fostering animals in need. Thank you.

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Acknowledgments

  Also by Chevy Stevens

  About the Author

  Copyright

  CHAPTER ONE

  ROCKLAND PENITENTIARY, VANCOUVER

  MARCH 2012

  I followed the escorting officer over to Admissions and Discharge, carrying my belongings in a cardboard box—a couple pairs of jeans, some worn-out T-shirts, the few things I’d gathered over the years, some treasured books, my CD player. The rest, anything I had in storage, would be waiting for me. The release officer went through the round of documents. My hand shook as I signed the discharge papers, the words blurred. But I knew what they meant.

  “Okay, Murphy, let’s go through your personals.” The guards never called you by your first name on the inside. It was always a nickname or your last name.

  He emptied out a box of the items I’d come into the prison with. His voice droned as he listed them off, making notes on his clipboard. I stared at the dress pants, white blouse, and blazer. I’d picked them out so carefully for court, had thought they’d make me feel strong. Now I couldn’t stand the sight of them.

  The officer’s hand rested for a moment on the pair of my underwear.

  “One pair of white briefs, size small.”

  He looked down at the briefs, checked the tag, his fingers lingering on the fabric. My face flushed. His eyes flicked to mine, gauging my reaction. Waiting for me to screw up so he could send me back inside. I kept my expression neutral.

  He opened an envelope, glanced inside, then checked his clipboard before dumping the envelope’s contents into my palm. The silver-faced watch my parents had given me on my eighteenth birthday, still shiny, the battery dead. The necklace Ryan had given me, the black onyx cool to the touch. Part of the leather cord had worn smooth from my wearing it every day. I stared at it, felt its weight in my hand, remembering, then closed my fingers around it, tucking it securely back in the envelope. It was the only thing I had left of him.

  “Looks like that’s it.” He held out a pen. “Sign here.”

  I signed the last of the documents, put the belongings into my box.

  “You got anything to dress out in?” the officer said.

  “Just these.” The officer’s eyes flicked over my jeans and T-shirt. Some inmates’ families send clothes for them to wear on their release day. But no one had sent me anything.

  “You can wait in the booking room until your ride gets here. There’s a phone if you need to call anyone.”

  * * *

  I sat on one of the benches, boxes by my feet, waiting for the volunteer, Linda, to pick me up. She’d be driving me to the ferry and over to Vancouver Island. I had to check into the halfway house in Victoria by seventeen hundred hours. Linda was a nice lady, in her forties, who worked with one of the advocacy groups. I’d met her before, when she’d taken me to the island for my unescorted temporary absences.

  I was hungry—I’d been too excited to eat that morning. Margaret, one of my friends inside, had tried to get me to choke something down, but the oatmeal sat like a lump in my stomach. I wondered if Linda could stop somewhere. I imagined a Big Mac and fries, hot and salty, maybe a milkshake, then thought of Ryan again, how we used to take burgers to the beach. To distract myself from the memory, I watched an officer bring in a new inmate. A young girl. She looked scared, pale, her brown hair long and messy, like she’d been up all night. She glanced at me, her eyes drifting from my hair, down to the tattoos around my upper arm. I got them in the joint—a thin tribal bar for each year behind bars, forming one thicker, unbroken band that circled my right biceps, embracing me.

  The officer yanked the girl’s arm, pulled her to Booking.

  I rubbed my hands across the top of my head. My hair was short now, the middle spiked up in a faux-Mohawk, but it was still black. I closed my eyes, remembered how it was in high school. Feathered and long, falling to the middle of my back. Ryan liked to wrap his hands in it. I’d cut it in prison after I looked in the mirror one day and saw Nicole’s hair, thick with blood, and remembered holding her broken body in my arms after we found her that night.

  “You ready to get out of here, Toni?” A friendly female voice.

  I opened my eyes and looked up at Linda. “Can’t wait.”

  She bent down and picked up one of my boxes, grunting a little as she lifted it. Linda was a small woman, not much taller than me. I was just a shorty at five feet—Margaret used to say a mouse fart could blow me over. But Linda was about as round as she was tall. She had dreadlocks and wore long flowing dresses and Birkenstocks. She was always railing at the prison system. I followed her out to her car, my box in my arms, as she chatted about the ferry traffic.

  “The highway was clear all the way out to Horseshoe Bay, so we’ll make good time. We should be there around noon.”

  As we pulled away, I watched the prison grow smaller in the distance. I turned back around in my seat. Linda rolled the window down.

  “Phew, it’s a hot one today. Summer will be here before you know it.”

  I traced the lines of my tattoos, counting the years, thinking back to that summer. I was thirty-four now and had been in custody since I was eighteen, when Ryan and I were arrested for my sister’s murder. We’d been alone with her that night, but we hadn’t heard Nicole scream. We hadn’t heard anything.

  I wrapped my hand around my arm, squeezed hard. I’d spent almost half of my life behind bars for a crime I didn’t commit.

  The anger never really leaves you.

  CHAPTER TWO

  WOODBRIDGE HIGH, CAMPBELL RIVER

  JANUARY 1996

  I skipped my last class and met Ryan in the parking lot behind the school, where the “shrubs,” the kids who liked to party on the weekends, hung out. Other than the coffee shop at the arena, it was the only place we could smoke off school grounds. The nearby residents didn’t like it, but they didn’t give us too much hassle unless someone was revving their engines or had their stereos blasting. Then the cops would come by, checking to see if we were drinking or smoking pot—and someone usually was, but I never did, not at school anyway.

  Woodbridge High was old, and in need of a serious face-lift. The siding was washed-out blue where it wasn’t covered by graffiti, which the janitor was constantly trying to remove. There were about five hundred kids at the school, which we
nt from grade eight to twelve. My graduating class had about a hundred and twenty kids, and I didn’t give a crap about ninety-nine percent of them.

  There were a few of us that day, clustered around our vehicles in groups. The girls with their long hair and bangs teased up, wearing too much dark makeup and their boyfriends’ jackets. The guys with their Kurt Cobain hair and the hoods up on their trucks, talking about carburetors and Hemi engines. Most of us were dressed grunge, flannel shirts, ripped jeans, ragged sweaters, everyone in darker colors.

  Ryan was leaning on his truck, talking to a couple of his friends. He smiled when he saw me, passed a smoke. “Hey, babe.”

  I smiled back, took a drag. “Hey.”

  I’d been going with Ryan Walker since last July when we hooked up at the gravel pit, which was where the guys went on the weekends to four-wheel-drive and have bonfires. He drove a badass Chevy truck—which he worked on all the time, the only thing we ever fought about. I’d known who he was for a while, always thought he was cute, with brown shaggy hair and thick brows, almost-black eyes, long eyelashes, a killer smile that made his mouth lift up on one side, and this way of looking at you from under the brim of his baseball cap that was super-sexy. But he had a girlfriend for a few months, a blond chick. After they broke up he didn’t seem interested in anyone else, like he’d rather just do his own thing or hang out with the guys. He had a reputation for being tough, which was hot. He didn’t fight for no reason, but if someone tried pushing their weight around or was talking shit about his dad, who’d been in and out of jail since Ryan was a kid, he’d take them down. Mostly, when he wasn’t with me, he spent time with his friends, working on their trucks, fishing, dirt biking, or four-wheeling.

  There wasn’t much else to do. Campbell River’s a small coastal town on the northern part of the island, population who-gives-a-shit. I’d grown up there, but Ryan’s family had moved down a couple of years earlier from northern BC. Everyone in Campbell River either worked as a logger, at the pulp mill, in the mines, or on a fishing boat. Ryan worked part-time at one of the outdoor stores. I used to go there sometimes, pretending to look around but mostly trying to catch his eye. He was always busy helping some customer, though, so I’d given up.

  One night last summer, I’d been at the pit with friends, smoking a joint and taking it easy, when Ryan came over and started talking to me, asking how my summer was going. I tried to play it casual, like it wasn’t a big deal, but my heart was pounding like crazy. He said, “You want to go for a drive?” We flew up the gravel hills, spraying mud out behind us, the engine as loud as the music—AC/DC, “Back in Black.” I laughed, feeling alive and excited. He said, “You’re some cool chick.” Later we shared sips of Southern Comfort around the fire, his arm warm behind my back while we talked about our families, my constant fights with my mom, his problems with his dad. We’d been together ever since.

  I took a drag of the smoke. Ryan watched, giving his lazy smile as he leaned against his truck, one eye half closed, his hair winging out from underneath his ball cap. His friends had drifted off. It was the first week of January, and cold, but he wasn’t wearing a coat, only a thick brown sweater that made his eyes look like dark chocolate. He tucked his fingers into the front pocket of my jeans, pulled me close so I was leaning against him. He didn’t work out much but he did lots of physical labor—his body was hard, his stomach muscles tight. He was already six feet, so I had to reach up to give him a kiss. We made out for a while, the smoky, bitter taste of tobacco tangling on our tongues, his unshaved chin scraping against mine. We stopped kissing and I buried my face in the warmth of his neck, smelling his boy smell, feeling an ache all down my body, wishing it was just us, all the time, like this.

  “Can you come over tonight?” he whispered in my ear.

  I smiled against his skin. “Maybe.”

  Even though I’d turned eighteen at the end of December, I still had a curfew on weeknights. Weekends, my parents were a little easier—I just had to call when I got where I was going, to let them know I was okay, and I couldn’t stay out all night unless I was sleeping over at a friend’s, but my mom was a hard-ass if I was even a minute late. I tried to spend as much time as possible with Ryan, going for drives, messing around in his truck, his basement, wherever we could be alone. We’d gone all the way after dating a couple of months—he was the first boy I’d ever been with. His dad had been at the bar, his mom, a nurse, working late at the hospital. We smoked a joint, then made out in his bed, Nirvana playing softly in the background, the sweet scent of a candle mixing with marijuana. I was excited, my head spinning from the pot, my body grinding against him, our naked chests warm against each other. We took off the rest of our clothes, shy under the blankets. “Do you want me to stop?” he whispered.

  I said, “No,” and stared in awe at his face, wondering how a boy could be so beautiful, the way he spoke, his voice, soft lips, dark eyes, everything so damn sexy. And I felt beautiful too, a real woman, the way he looked at me like he couldn’t believe I was there, in his bed. I was nervous, awkward, then my body just took over, pushing and pulling, grabbing at him. He moaned into my mouth and I caught my breath, holding it against the pain. Our eyes locked. I felt him move inside me, knowing that he was the only boy I ever wanted to be with, would ever do this with.

  He was sweet about it afterward, asking if I was okay, bringing me a towel and a glass of water. We cuddled, my head on his chest. I traced my fingers along his ribs, the fine sheen of sweat in the candlelight, kissed the scar on his side from when his dad pushed him out of a truck, and he shyly said, “I love you, Toni.”

  * * *

  I heard laughter and looked to my left. Shauna McKinney and her girls were sitting on the tailgate of one of the guys’ trucks. I hated it when they hung out back. Kim, Rachel, and Cathy weren’t as bad as Shauna, but together they were some serious bitches, the I-don’t-give-a-crap-about-anything-especially-not-you kind of bitches. Shauna was popular and pretty, with her long auburn hair and big blue eyes, played lots of sports, and had a super-athletic body.

  She always seemed to have the latest gadgets or clothes and was the first kid in our class to have a decent car, a white Sprint her dad bought her. She exuded confidence and had this way about her, like she wasn’t intimidated by anyone. She was smart too, got really good grades but made fun of teachers behind their backs so the other kids still thought she was badass.

  Most of the girls in our class either feared her or desperately wanted to be her friend, which I guess was kind of the same thing in the end. Rachel Banks was her main henchwoman. Rachel used to be chubby when we were little kids and got picked on a lot, even after she lost the weight in high school, but then she started hanging around Shauna and people stopped messing with her. She was still curvy, with thick, straight brown hair, always wearing baby doll dresses with tights or short plaid skirts and knee-high socks.

  Kim Gunderson was a ballet dancer and tiny, about my height. She wore a lot of black clothes, leggings with oversized sweaters and cool boots, and talked really fast. I’d heard rumors that she was gay, but no one knew for sure. Cathy Schaeffer was almost as pretty as Shauna, with long white-blond hair, pale green eyes, and a serious rack. Cathy was crazy and funny, always doing wild shit at parties. She also smoked, which was why the girls came out back.

  I’d known all of them as long as I could remember, even used to be friends with Shauna. When we were twelve or thirteen, she liked this game where we’d call a girl up and ask her to come over, then call her a couple of hours before and say we didn’t want her to come anymore—sometimes we’d just take off before the girl arrived. Shauna was also really good at mimicking people—she’d call a boy and say she had a crush on him using a different girl’s voice.

  When I told Shauna I didn’t want to play the games anymore, she stopped talking to me for a week. I was devastated, especially when she and our friends walked by me in the hallway like I no longer existed, whispering and rolling their eyes.
I went home crying every day. Finally, Shauna came up to me after school and said she missed me. I was so relieved I forgot what had even started the fight in the first place, forgot I didn’t like how she was treating people.

  Shauna was the daughter of a cop, Frank McKinney. Everyone knew him. He coached baseball teams and hockey teams, stuff like that. McKinney, as most people called him, wasn’t around Shauna’s house a lot when we were kids—he was usually at the station. Shauna’s mother had died in a car accident when Shauna was five, and her grandma looked after Shauna but she wasn’t very with it. At birthday parties she’d serve up a bunch of chips and hot dogs, put in a movie, then disappear into the other room for hours. Frank McKinney and his wife had had Shauna when they were eighteen or something. He was a big guy but not fat, just muscular and tall, and he walked with a confident swagger. He had a Tom Selleck mustache, a deep voice, wore sunglasses, and chewed gum, snapping it between his teeth. You could tell he was a cop even when he was in casual clothes by the clipped way he spoke, using short words and acronyms. And you could also tell his job was really important to him—he sent his uniform out to be dry-cleaned, kept his shoes polished, and his police cruiser was always clean.

  Sometimes I got the feeling he was kind of lonely—he spent a lot of time sitting by himself, reading a book in the kitchen or watching the news. I don’t think he dated much, and the few times he had a girlfriend they didn’t seem to last long. We all felt bad that Shauna didn’t have a mother and we knew it bothered her too, the way she would talk to our moms when she was at our house, polite and sweet, helping clean up after dinner, like she wanted them to like her.

  Most of us kids were kind of scared of McKinney, but it wasn’t like that for me. I just felt sad for him, though I was never really sure why. Whenever I thought about him, it was always that one image that held fast, him sitting in the kitchen for hours, the newspaper or a book in front of him, a cup of coffee, and the way he’d look up and out the window like he was wishing he was out there in his car, on patrol. Like he was wishing he was anywhere but in that house.