The Party

by Robyn Harding

  “A normal amount, I think,” Kim added. “We’re social drinkers. Maybe a glass of wine with dinner. But never to excess.”

  “What about your daughter? Has she been caught drinking before?”

  “Never.” Kim was emphatic. “That’s why we’re so shocked. Hannah is an excellent student. She plays basketball and Royal Conservatory piano. This is completely out of character for her.”

  “You’d be surprised … ,” the male officer muttered. Kim’s eyes narrowed, a look Jeff knew well. She wanted to rip this guy a new one, tell him that her precious daughter was not a boozer, a partier, or a rebel. Hannah had been parented properly. Didn’t he hear her? Hannah played piano and basketball. She was on the honor roll.

  “Kids …” Jeff chuckled softly to deflect from his wife’s contained ire. “But we had no idea what was going on, so we’re obviously not culpable.” It was phrased as a statement, but the underlying question was clear.

  The female officer responded. “We’ll need to come by your house tomorrow. Don’t clean up or touch anything at the scene.”

  “It’s procedure,” the other officer added. “I don’t think you need to be concerned.”

  “I would hope not,” Kim said. God. She sounded like a self-righteous jerk.

  “Thank you, officers,” Jeff covered. “Feel free to come by anytime.”

  “We will.” And with that, they left.

  hannah

  THE NEXT DAY

  Soft morning light peaked its way through heavy eyelids and Hannah enjoyed a few seconds of normalcy before the events of last night tumbled into her consciousness. Oh God … She jumped out of bed without hesitation and threw on some clothes. She’d showered when they got home from the hospital, dried blood and the stink of puke swirling away down the drain. A quick hairbrush and deodorant would have to do today. Before she left her room, she texted Lauren.

  OMFG.

  The response was instantaneous: Fuuuuuck

  Hannah wrote: Going 2 c Ronni. Want to come?

  Can’t. Grounded. Again.

  Lauren seemed to be perpetually grounded, not that it curtailed her social life at all. She was an expert at playing her divorced parents off each other. Hannah almost envied Lauren’s situation. She didn’t want her parents to split up, necessarily, but it wasn’t like they actually liked each other. And kids from broken homes had so much more freedom. And then there was the guilt factor. Lauren’s dad was always buying her expensive clothes and jewelry to compensate for his lack of engagement. Hannah’s own parents could never be accused of that. Damn.

  Her mom and dad were sitting at the breakfast bar, drinking coffee and not speaking. “I need to go to the hospital,” Hannah announced. “I need to see Ronni.”

  Her parents exchanged a quick look before her mom spoke. “I think Ronni’s family would appreciate some alone time today.”

  “She doesn’t have a family. She has a mom. We should be there to support them.”

  Her dad cleared his throat. “It’s a bit tricky right now… .”

  “What do you mean tricky?”

  Her mom took this one. “Ronni was hurt in our house. She was drinking and taking drugs. In our house.”

  “That’s all the more reason we should be there for her!”

  Her parents glanced at each other again. Suddenly, they seemed to have become some sort of team. “Why don’t you sit down?” her dad said.

  “No. I’m going to the hospital.”

  “Sit!” her mom barked. “You’re in no position to be insolent.” Hannah rolled her eyes but lowered herself onto a barstool like an obedient puppy. Her mom continued. “We have a lot to talk about … starting with your actions last night. You’re old enough to know that behaviors have consequences. We’d like to discuss those consequences with you.”

  Hannah shot her mother a look of pure, teenaged hatred. “Can you drop the perfect-mom act for, like, five seconds? My best friend is hurt.”

  Her mom’s only response was a wounded look. Hannah had been surly and snappish before—what teenager hadn’t? But she’d never gone for the jugular, never dared attack her mom’s soft underbelly. Hannah glanced at her dad. She thought she saw a glimmer of something on his face: admiration. He quickly swept it away.

  Kim’s voice was raw. “Lisa is very upset about Ronni. She’s angry. At us.”

  “The police will be coming by the house this afternoon,” her dad added. “They’re doing an investigation. To make sure we’re not at fault.”

  “Of course you’re not at fault. Why would you be at fault?”

  Her mom explained. “Adults can be held responsible for underage drinking in their home.”

  Oh my god. “But we sneaked the booze in. You didn’t know.”

  “Hopefully, the police will agree with you.” Her mom sounded smug, like she was enjoying sharing this news. You won’t be so snotty when your parents are in jail and you and your brother are in some dirty foster home.

  Hannah took a deep breath and stood up. “I understand that I’m going to be grounded. For a long time. Forever. But you have to let me go to the hospital.”

  “It’s not a good idea,” her dad said. “Lisa’s on the warpath.”

  “I can handle Lisa,” Hannah assured him, concealing her doubts. Ronni’s mom was always nice, in her own flaky, hippy-dippy sort of way. But Hannah knew Lisa had a dark past. She remembered snippets of overheard conversations when she and Ronni were little: drugs, an accident, abusive boyfriends… . And Lisa really loved Ronni. Kim really loved Hannah, too, she didn’t doubt that, but there was something fierce about Lisa’s love for her daughter. Maybe because Ronni was all she had.

  “She doesn’t want us there,” her mom said.

  “She doesn’t want you guys there,” Hannah retorted. “Besides, this is about Ronni, not Lisa. Ronni will want me there. I know it.”

  Another shared look between her parents, then her dad caved. “I’ll drive her.”

  “Fine,” her mom said. “Aidan will be home soon. I’ll stay and explain what happened.”

  Jeff grabbed his keys off the counter. “We should be back before the police arrive.”

  THE WARD WAS quiet. Hannah could hear the hum of fluorescent lights and her Adidas shoes squeaking on the waxed floor like nervous chipmunks. The nurse at the counter directed Hannah to Ronni’s room: 506, right across the hall. She hesitated for just a moment before pushing the door open.

  She hovered in the entryway and took in the view. Ronni lay in the hospital bed, her normally lustrous dark hair flat and matted, her skin pale and waxy. Her right eye was covered by a thick piece of white gauze, its edges yellowed with some sort of antiseptic. The other eye stared blankly ahead, awake but unseeing. God. She looked so broken. Hannah was about to step into the room when Lisa appeared, obscuring her view. “Uh-uh,” she said, hustling Hannah back into the hall before Ronni even knew she was there.

  “Go home, Hannah.” Lisa’s voice was commanding over the buzzing lights.

  “I just want to see her,” Hannah said, perilously close to tears. “To let her know that I’m here for her.”

  “You should have been there for her last night.”

  “I tried!”

  “Obviously not hard enough.”

  Lisa’s words were a slap in the face, a punch in the gut. Hannah’s chin quivered and tears pooled in her eyes. “I didn’t want them to— I couldn’t… .” But she didn’t know what to say, didn’t know how to say it. She was going to fall apart in front of Lisa. Shit …

  Ronni’s mom looked at her and the hard set of her jaw softened slightly. For the first time, Hannah noticed how rough Lisa looked. She was the young mom, the pretty mom. Ronni’s accident had taken a toll. When she spoke, Lisa’s voice was gentler. “This is a time for family,” she said. “Ronni will call you when she gets home.”

  But she doesn’t have a family! Hannah wanted to say. She only has you and your boyfriend! She needs her friends! But Hannah couldn’t spe
ak. She turned on her squeaky heel and fled.

  She held her tears in check through the hall and down the elevator until she stumbled into the coffee shop located in the lobby. As soon as she saw her dad sitting at a back table with a paper cup of coffee and one of those free newspapers, she lost the battle. Tears cascaded down her cheeks, her chest heaved with sobs.

  Her dad stood. “What happened?”

  “Lisa wouldn’t let m-me see her,” she stammered. “She’s really mad.” She launched herself into his arms, just like when she was little and she’d fallen off the swing or crashed her bike.

  Her dad let her cry on his jacket, stroking her hair and softly shushing her. “Don’t worry, sweetie. This will all blow over.” Hannah felt a little better. She pulled away and nodded: it would blow over; it would all be fine. But just as she allowed herself to feel comforted, her dad checked his watch. “We’d better get home. The police will be coming by soon.”

  jeff

  THE NEXT DAY

  “You don’t have to be nervous,” Jeff said, his eyes on the road. “The cops just want to know what happened. They’re not trying to get you into any trouble.”

  “They’re trying to get you and mom into trouble,” Hannah muttered from the passenger seat.

  Jeff let his breath out through his lips. “They just want to know if we were responsible for what happened. And we obviously weren’t.” He glanced over at his daughter. She stared straight ahead, not meeting his gaze. He suddenly felt awkward, compelled to fill the silence. “Just tell them that you each sneaked in a small amount of alcohol, and cumulatively, it had a bad effect on Ronni.”

  “What about the champagne you gave us?”

  “I wouldn’t mention it.”

  “What about the other girls? What if one of them mentions it?”

  “They won’t.” He sounded more confident than he felt. He sounded so confident that Hannah swiveled in her seat to face him.

  “What did you say to my friends?” Her voice was angry, her pretty face dark and accusing when he looked over at her.

  “Nothing … I just said that it wasn’t worth talking about. It’s not like one bottle of sparkling wine between five of you caused Ronni’s accident.”

  Hannah turned away and stared out the side window. “So you want me to lie to the police… .”

  She was upset and scared and she was taking it out on him. It was perfectly normal for a girl her age. He kept his voice calm. “It’s safest just to say that you can’t remember who brought what.”

  “Except you. We remember that you gave us nothing.”

  She was crossing the line into bitchy. “Tell them what you want then. Lay this all on me,” he growled. “Your mom will have a fit. I’ll get charged and fined and maybe even go to jail. All because I wanted to do something nice for my daughter.”

  Hannah didn’t respond, but he heard her sniffling. Finally, she mumbled through her tears, “I won’t say anything.”

  His heart twisted in his chest. He’d been too harsh. He was tense and on edge. If only he hadn’t bought that fucking champagne. This morning, before his run—just a half hour to help him cope with the stress—he’d gone downstairs to examine the carnage. It was then that he saw it, that piece of clear glass wrapped in pink foil, lying in the detritus like a bullet cartridge. He’d picked it up and gingerly placed it in the pocket of his hoodie. On his run, he’d deposited it in a park trash can about three miles from the house. He felt like a criminal, but better safe than sorry. But where was the rest of the bottle? Where were the other bottles?

  He glanced over at Hannah, her forehead still pressed against the passenger window. “It’s all going to be fine,” he said, patting her leg. “But the police will want to know where you got the drugs.”

  Hannah looked over at him and spoke in a flat voice. “I can’t remember who brought what.”

  THE OFFICERS ARRIVED shortly after Jeff and Hannah. Surprisingly, they weren’t the same ones who had interviewed them at the hospital. These two were both male: a slightly chubby white guy in a uniform and an athletic African American in a sport coat. Jeff tried not to read too much into their dress, but didn’t detectives usually wear street clothes? There was no way they’d elevated this incident, was there? The officers introduced themselves as Inspectors Bahar and Davis. Inspectors. But wouldn’t their differing outfits indicate a difference in rank? He’d have to look up police dress code after they left.

  It had tortured Kim not to clean up the blood, glass, and vomit in the basement, but she had dutifully complied. Jeff and his spouse hovered near the door as the policemen surveyed “the scene.” The men wandered through the rooms, bending over to peer at the shards of glass on the floor, examining the blood, the puke, but touching nothing. No one took notes, which Jeff found encouraging. Eventually, Davis, the fit cop in street clothes, addressed them. “We need to speak to you and your daughter.”

  They all sat at one end of the massive, reclaimed-wood dining table, Jeff, Kim, and Hannah facing the two inspectors. Jeff didn’t know where Aidan was. Kim had obviously sent him out somewhere to spare him the trauma of his family’s interrogation. The policemen covered most of the same ground that their colleagues had the night of the incident. They were thorough but sounded slightly bored: a good sign. As before, Kim was laying it on thick.

  “We clearly set the ground rules. No drinking, drugs, porn, or boys.” She shot Hannah a look. “We assumed the girls would follow the rules. Hannah’s never been in trouble before. She’s an excellent student… . She plays the piano.” Kim seemed to think that anyone who played the piano was beyond reproach. Had she never heard of Jerry Lee Lewis?

  Inspector Bahar, in the uniform, turned to Hannah. “How much alcohol was at your party?”

  “I don’t know. Some vodka. And whiskey. Some champagne.”

  “Can we see the empty bottles?”

  Hannah answered, “We got rid of them.”

  Thank God … But when? And how?

  Inspector Davis read Jeff’s mind. “How did you get rid of them? And when?”

  All eyes were on Hannah now. She looked small and terrified. She stared at her fingers, picking at her chipped nail polish. It was black. Since when did she start wearing black nail polish? He’d have to ask Kim about it. “I put the vodka in a stainless-steel water bottle. It’s back in the cupboard, I guess. We put the other bottles in the recycling bin in the alley. Before Ronni fell.”

  The inspector addressed Kim. “When does your recycling get picked up?”

  “Wednesdays.”

  “So the bottles should still be there?”

  “Why do you need the bottles?” Jeff asked. He was going for a casual tone, but his voice sounded tense and high-pitched in his own ears.

  “To verify quantities. If we found six empty vodka bottles, we’d suspect your daughter was lying.”

  Bahar stood up. “I’ll go.”

  Kim jumped up, too. “I’ll show you where it is.”

  The others sat quietly as Kim led the uniformed officer out the back door. Inspector Davis turned to Hannah. “Your mom seems pretty strict.”

  It was Jeff who answered, “She is.”

  The inspector allowed himself a smirk before addressing Hannah again. “Is there anything you’d like to tell me while she’s not here?”

  Hannah shrugged. “No.”

  “Or without your dad here?”

  Jeff half stood. “I can go… .” He felt so eager to please this policeman, so eager to prove that he had nothing to hide. It was bordering on pathetic. And probably making him look guilty.

  “No,” Hannah said, eyes fixed on her nail polish.

  “Where did you buy the drugs?”

  “I didn’t buy them. Someone had them. I don’t even know who… . Ronni took some, I guess. I didn’t see.”

  Davis leaned back in his chair, his eyes fixed on Hannah. “So you’ve told us everything?” Hannah nodded. Davis continued, “Because if we find out later that yo
u’ve kept something from us—”

  “I’ve told you everything!” Hannah blurted. She looked the officer in the eye. “Ronni wanted to get wasted. She had more than the rest of us. She was stupid. We were all stupid. None of us will ever do it again.”

  Inspector Davis held Hannah’s gaze but said nothing. It was probably a police tactic designed to pressure suspects into divulging more information. Any second now, Hannah would throw up her hands and say: “Okay, okay, my dad bought us champagne, too! That’s what really tipped Ronni over the edge!”

  “I’m glad to hear that,” Davis said, but he didn’t look glad. He looked disapproving. And suspicious. But that could have been through the lens of Jeff’s guilty conscience.

  Kim and Inspector Bahar returned. The inspector spoke. “There are no bottles out there.”

  Jeff responded quickly. “There are quite a few vagrants in the area. You put something worth a couple of cents in the alley and it’s gone in a flash.”

  “It’s true,” Kim said. “The Terrace and Annex house a lot of low-income people. They’ve even come into the backyard when we’ve left a few beer cans outside.”

  The inspectors shared an unreadable look and Jeff realized how he and Kim sounded. Snobby. Elitist. He hoped these cops weren’t part of the anti-gentrification contingent that resented the influx of tech professionals into formerly working-class neighborhoods. Thankfully, Davis clapped his hands on his knees. “I think we’re done here.” He stood, signaling the end of the interrogation.

  Kim and Jeff trailed them to the door. Hannah scurried upstairs—to text her friends or maybe cry some more. Davis handed Kim a business card. “If you think of anything else that might be relevant …”

  “Of course.”

  “Thanks for your cooperation,” Bahar said, reaching for the door handle.

  Jeff had to say something. He couldn’t let them walk out without knowing where he and Kim stood. “So what happens now?” The officers paused. Jeff felt Kim’s disapproving glare on him, but he plowed ahead. “Are we in any sort of trouble here? Do we need to get a lawyer?”