Fuck, she really did tell her everything. Clarisse probably knows more about what happened than Abby does. While she's listening she pulls the tie out of the end of her braid, grabs the dark brown, wooden comb she keeps on her bedside table, starts to drag it slowly through her hair. It's a comforting thing.

There isn't an answer for her question, not really, but it feels disingenuous not to reply to it. Abby doesn't stop combing. "Me."

If she heard about everything, she knows about Joel. She doesn't know the extent to which Abby went to find him, because Ellie doesn't know that either, but she was out of her mind over it, for years. If she had to hold a kid at knifepoint to get information on his whereabouts? She probably would have done it. She would have done anything. She isn't a good person either.

"I'm not defending it," she adds, "It wasn't right. It was fucked up, but it happened."