by Kara Thomas
“What are you doing?” I finally ask.
After a beat, he says, “I am trying to decide if there’s a way to ream you out that doesn’t involve your mother.”
“Didn’t you tell me that Mom doesn’t need to know everything that goes on around here?”
Tom’s eyes fly open. “You think this is funny? I keep my gun in the safe in here.”
His voice cracks on the word gun, sending my guts into a knot.
“How did she kill herself?” I’ve asked him before, of course. The answer never changes. But now Tom’s refusal to tell me the truth feels like another notch in Ethan’s column.
Tom stares back at me, unmoved. “I swore to your mother that I would never tell you that.”
“That’s bullshit. I can handle it.”
Tom slams a hand on his desktop. “It’s not up to you.”
For a second, I really think he’s going to lose it on me. But his expression softens. He runs his hands down his face. Takes an audible breath and stares at me as if for a moment he’d forgotten that I’m sitting here.
“You’ve got to be up early for the parade tomorrow,” he says. “We’ll talk about this some other time.”
“I want to talk about it now,” I snap, hating how I sound like a petulant child.
Tom sighs and reaches for the second drawer of his desk. He roots around and emerges with a bottle of bourbon and a glass. I blink at him as he pours himself two inches and tosses it back.
“Why do you have that in your desk?”
Tom swirls his glass, his eyes on the dregs clinging to the bottom. “Your mother doesn’t like me drinking.”
“Because you did it too much after Jen died?”
Tom pours himself another generous helping of bourbon. “Right you are.”
As he knocks back the second glass, the pit in my stomach widens. “Do you need to do that?”
“Monica, if you want me to talk about something I really don’t want to talk about, then yes. I need to.”
Tom closes his eyes. Tilts his head back. When he opens his eyes again, they focus on me. “What do you want to know?”
Everything. “Why didn’t you confront me when you realized I took Jen’s phone?”
“I wasn’t entirely convinced it wasn’t your mother who took it. She doesn’t know I kept it when I canceled Jen’s phone number.”
“But why did you keep it?”
“Monica. If your child took her own life, you would want to examine every single thing she did leading up to that moment to figure out why.”
“So you knew she’d been talking to Ethan McCready. He was the last person who called her.”
“Yes. When I learned it was his number, I lost my head and said some things to him that I shouldn’t have. Accused him of things.”
“You thought he had something to do with it?”
“The kid had a suicide attempt in his past.” Tom swirls the dregs of liquid in his glass. “So yes. I thought he had something to do with it.”
“But he knew something was wrong, and he tried to tell you. And you didn’t listen. You didn’t listen when he tried to tell you about what he saw at the Berrys’ the night of the murders.”
“He didn’t see anything, Monica.”
I swallow the bulb of anger tightening in my throat. “Have you ever stopped to consider that maybe he did? That maybe Jack Canning didn’t do it?”
“A number of times, yes.”
It’s not what I expected him to say. The steely resolve he had when I confronted him weeks ago is gone.
“Then why didn’t you try harder?” I demand.
“We talked to Juliana and Susan’s friends,” Tom says. “We didn’t leave any stones unturned. No one wanted to hurt those girls.”
“Did you talk to Carly Amato?”
Tom blinks with droopy eyelids. “Who?”
“She was friends with Juliana.”
“The name doesn’t sound familiar. But if they were friends, someone must have talked to her.”
“Well, she could have lied to protect whoever did it. You just said you’ve considered that Jack Canning didn’t do it.”
“Sweetheart.” Tom’s eyes are red and glassy. “Just because I’m not one hundred percent certain doesn’t mean that I don’t believe in my heart of hearts that he did it. I believe the man who killed those girls is dead.”
Hearing him say it feels like a fist coming down on my heart.
“I believe the man who killed Jen is dead,” he says, and my eyes water with hot tears. “I blame Jack Canning for killing her. I know you wish there was someone still here who we can blame. I wish it sometimes too.”
I wipe my face with my pajama sleeve. Tom grabs the box of tissues on his desk and hands them to me before sitting back down.
Once I’ve wiped my nose, I look up at Tom. “Did you know it was Ethan McCready sending you the letters in your desk?”
Tom shuts his eyes. “I suspected it, yes.”
When Tom opens his eyes, he pours himself another shot of bourbon. When he meets my gaze, he sets the glass down on his desk instead of knocking it back.
“Why?” I whisper. “Why did you keep her phone?”
Tom watches me through bleary eyes. “Every now and then, I look at those calls. I’ve memorized the numbers, but I just keep going back to them like they’re a code I can’t crack.” He pauses, his gaze flitting to the bourbon on his desk. “I listen to her voice mail, hoping I’ll hear something new. I assume it’s the same reason the McCready kid sends me those letters. We think if we ask enough times, the answer will change.”
My throat is tight. “I can’t stop hearing the sound of Mom’s scream,” I say. “In the car, after she picked me up that morning. Are there things you can’t stop seeing or hearing?”
Tom nods. He closes his eyes and tilts his head all the way back until I can barely see his face. When he sits upright again, he says, “The dog was curled up next to Susan’s body, shaking. The damn thing had Jules’s blood all over his paws.”
Tom has never told me anything about what he saw in the Berrys’ house. He must be drunk to be telling me something as intimate as Beethoven, Susan’s beloved dog, lying next to her lifeless body.
Something occurs to me. “The dog. Wouldn’t he have tried to attack the killer?”
“Someone Jack’s size would have been able to throw a dog off of him.”
“But was the dog hurt? Limping or something?”
Tom’s face falls, and I know that he hadn’t thought of that. Or he did, because he’s a good cop, and he wrote it off, because even good cops make mistakes.
A perfect storm for a shoddy investigation. The police were blinded by emotion, more prone to overlook small details.
Like how strange it was that Jack Canning walked out of the Berrys’ house without a very large dog bite.
* * *
—
Preparing for the homecoming parade in the morning feels like sleepwalking through Monica 1.0’s life. I don’t recognize myself in the bathroom mirror as I go through my game makeup routine, applying false eyelashes and lining my lips in red. Everything is the same, but it’s different.
We’re marching in the parade and performing to the marching band’s music; it’s a watered-down, simple routine centered on a kickline. Still, Coach ordered us to be in full competition dress: slicked-back buns, rhinestones adhered to the corners of our eyes.
The parade starts in the high school parking lot; once we’re all here, Coach lines us up for inspection. The parking lot is filling rapidly with sports team members in uniform, band members carrying unwieldy instruments. A girl is blowing into a clarinet, tuning it shrilly.
A whistle pierces through the din. Around the parking lot, people are dropping what they’re doing to find the
source of the noise. Mrs. Lin, the student council advisor, climbs onto the back of the pickup truck hitched to the senior class float. She sticks two fingers in her mouth and whistles again.
“Find your groups, please. Class court members should report to their floats. If you’re marching and on homecoming court, find your class float at the end of the parade route for the crowning ceremony.”
The band launches into a practice run of Sunnybrook’s fight song, and we run through the routine. They kick off the parade, us dancing behind them, and the other sports teams and the class floats bringing up the rear.
When we reach the corner of Main Street, someone shouts my name from the crowd. My brother is jumping up and down, waving at me. He’s camped outside of Alden’s grocery with TJ Blake and his mother. The sidewalks are packed, and the police have the side streets blocked off. The crowd goes wild at our high kicks. While they’re clapping, I sneak a wave at my brother.
A flash of blond hair, and our eyes connect. Me and Allie Lewandowski. She stares back at me, coldly, and I stumble, sashaying forward with the wrong foot.
What is she doing here?
She didn’t go to Sunnybrook High School; she hasn’t coached here for years. Paranoia wallops me as I entertain the idea that Allie being here has something to do with our meeting.
I screw up the routine and add in an extra step, colliding with the dancer in front of me. We’re at the end of the route, in the CVS parking lot. I can’t think over the buzzing in my ears.
Ginny. I have to find Ginny and tell her Allie is here. I wade through the crowd at the end of the route, looking for her strawberry-blond bun. We all look the same in our uniforms, our identical hairstyles.
Someone grabs me by the shoulder, pulling me back.
“Monica,” Alexa says. “We have to go to the float for homecoming court.”
I open my mouth to give her an excuse, but the crowd starts going wild. The class floats are approaching the end of the route, a police officer directing the trucks pulling them into the parking lot.
Alexa tugs on my hand, and we follow the junior class float. It’s a giant papier-mâché of a shark head. Hanging between two palm trees is a banner reading GRAB SHREWSBURY BY THE JAWS.
The other court members are already on the float, plastic leis around their necks. The driver—one of the juniors’ parents—slows to a stop in front of CVS.
“Come on, come on.” Mrs. Lin hurries over to Alexa and me, passing us each plastic leis. This part always annoys her, how all the girls on the team who make homecoming court choose dancing in the parade over riding on the float. Or at least, she thinks we have the choice.
One of the guys on the float holds a hand out to Alexa, helping hoist her up. Once she’s settled, he reaches for me. I balk.
“Monica,” Mrs. Lin snaps. “I need you on that float so we can start the ceremony. The police have to reopen the road in fifteen minutes.”
“I decline the nomination,” I say. “Give it to someone else.”
Alexa stares from me to Mrs. Lin. “Can she even do that?”
Before I can open my mouth, two guys on the float reach down and grab me by the forearms, pulling me up.
Mrs. Lin hurries off to make sure the Kelseys, both on the homecoming court, have made it onto the senior class float behind us without incident. I rub my forearms, the skin smarting from where the guys grabbed me.
The sight of the crowd gathering in the parking lot waiting for the coronation sends a shot of panic through me. I drape my lei over my head, heart hammering, scanning the throng of people for Allie Lewandowski.
I finally spot her in front of the post office adjoining the CVS. She’s standing next to a tall guy wearing a beanie and a Sunnybrook cross-country sweatshirt. He’s almost a foot taller than she is; his head is turned to the soccer coach standing next to him, but his arm is around Allie’s waist.
Brandon. Brandon and Allie.
Somewhere, someone is shouting into a bullhorn.
“And now, your junior class homecoming court!”
More cheers, nearly drowning out our names. When they get to mine, I try to duck behind Alexa, but it’s too late; they’ve both seen me. Brandon is clapping, slowly, a deer caught in the headlights. Allie’s arms are folded across her chest. They both seem oblivious to the fact that the other is staring straight at me.
Kelsey Butler and Joe Gabriel win homecoming queen and king. While they’re being crowned, I hop off the float and wend my way through the dispersing crowd. The cop manning the end of the route is having little luck shooing people out of the street.
I pass through the CVS parking lot and out onto the sidewalk. Keep walking until I spot them in front of the playhouse. Ginny and my brother. Petey is talking a mile a minute, and she’s smiling down at him, nodding along. Always a good sport.
“Where’s Mom?” I ask Petey when I catch up with them.
“At home doing work. TJ’s mom brought me.”
Ginny’s eyes meet mine—she can tell I’m upset. I shake my head. Not here.
I put a hand on Petey’s shoulder. “Can you go find TJ? Ginny and I have to be somewhere for dance team.”
“But she downloaded Clan Wars. I was telling her about the update,” he whines.
“Petey. Please.”
He gives me a frosty look and trudges off to where TJ and Mrs. Blake are chatting with a woman outside of Alden’s. Ginny’s voice is in my ear: “What’s the matter?”
I nod to the alley walkway between the playhouse and the library. Ginny and I slip down it and emerge in the rear parking lot.
“Allie Lewandowski’s here,” I say. “With Brandon, the cross-country coach.”
I can’t tell if she’s putting two and two together—seeing me inside Brandon’s office and my reaction to seeing him here with Allie today. My calling him Brandon and not Mr. Michaelson, like everyone else does.
If Ginny knows, she doesn’t say anything. But her face is grim. “Last night…I poked around online a little. I tried to find the names of guys from the Sunnybrook area who also graduated from Hamilton the year before the murders.”
My mouth goes dry.
“There were only three guys who met the criteria. One of them is Brandon Michaelson.” Ginny eyes me. “I looked into him more and found him on Newton High West’s athletic records website. Allie was on it too. She graduated the year before. She got a scholarship to Oneonta for cheerleading.”
I lower myself to the curb, sit, and lean forward, resting my elbows on my knees. If Brandon was dating Allie at the time of the murders, it doesn’t mean he’s involved. Carly had said Allie’s boyfriend’s friend was the one who was selling pills. He was the one Juliana was afraid of.
But Brandon knew. If Carly was telling the truth, Brandon was in the car when the other guy stopped to make a deal. Brandon helped his friend beat the shit out of the guy who ratted him out.
It was five years ago. People change.
A dueling voice in my head jumps in. He was still older than you are now. He knew better.
“It doesn’t matter,” I whisper it, as if saying it out loud will make it true. It doesn’t matter who Brandon was back then, because nothing is going on between Brandon and me anymore.
You made out with him in his car during the memorial.
I bury my face in my hands. Breathe deeply for a minute before I look up at Ginny. “Brandon was Allie’s boyfriend, and his best friend was the drug dealer. Carly didn’t say which one the pickup truck belonged to.”
“So what do we do?” Ginny says.
“I don’t know. We have no proof of anything. We have a rumor from Carly that Brandon was friends with a drug dealer who may have possibly killed Juliana and Susan. We have a dead man’s statement that he saw a pickup truck that night. And then a story about someone fighting with Juliana on
the deck that the cops already think is a lie.” I rub my eyes. “Who’s going to believe us?”
Ginny’s mouth forms a line. Shouts of excitement echo in the alley behind us. People are filtering through it, heading for their cars parked in the lot.
“Congratulations!” A man accompanied by a trio of kids gives me a thumbs-up. It takes me a moment to remember the lei around my neck. When he and the kids are loaded into their car, I tear the lei off.
“I can’t do this,” I tell Ginny. “I can’t go to the game or the dance and act like everything is normal.”
“You have to,” she says. “There’s nothing we can do right now. You’re just going to make your mom and stepdad more worried about you.”
She’s right. My eyes prick with tears. “Can you come? I know you didn’t get a ticket to the dance, but you can come to Kelsey’s party.”
The faintest trace of a smile passes over Ginny’s lips. “Monica. That would be the exact opposite of acting like everything is normal.”
* * *
—
To everyone’s surprise, Sunnybrook defeats Shrewsbury 50 to 44. It’s the first homecoming game we’ve won in four years; as a result, the mood at the dance is even more raucous than normal. Three seniors are thrown out for showing up drunk, and all night teachers have to pry people off each other for violating the no-grinding rule.
Alexa is breathless on the ride back to her house, undaunted by the fact that Mrs. Coughlin reamed her out for dancing inappropriately with Joe Gabriel, even going so far as to threaten to tell Coach.
“I love him,” Alexa says, lowering the window and tilting her face to the cool night air. “I’m going to lick his face tonight.”
“You’re demented. He’s a douchebag.” Rach isn’t looking at either of us, her eyes on the road. She’s been quiet all day. It worries me; her being this moody means she’s more likely to get obliterated at Kelsey’s party.
They bicker all the way to Alexa’s about whether or not Joe Gabriel is a douchebag. I can’t keep up; Brandon won’t stop invading my thoughts. The look on his face when he saw me at the parade.