Domestic Secrets

by Rosalind Noonan

  She was totally stressed—a hot mess. Usually, she didn’t let things get to her, but she was just sick about this. It wasn’t her fault. She’d been driven to it. It wasn’t as if she had any choice. She had to fend for her daughter, even if that meant finding Remy a date and making sure she looked fabulous.

  But her strategy was flawed; she knew that. It had made her a little sick inside when she’d strong-armed Jared into asking Remy to prom. He had not been happy about it, but he got it. He could see why Remy had to go with a date, and he agreed that it would throw people off the trail, divert the eyes of the watchers: all those neighbors and parents and teachers who drank a little too much, neglected their children whenever possible, fooled around with someone they met at happy hour, and then had the nerve to point out the problems in other people’s lives.

  Those sanctimonious moms and lecherous dads. If they got wind of the way Ariel satisfied her most basic needs, she was going to be ruined in this town. Her business, her livelihood . . . and Maisy and Trevor. People around here were going to make their lives miserable.

  So no one could find out. That was why the plan was so important. She kept emphasizing that, and for once he seemed to believe her. She hung up the dress in the laundry room and sighed. Remy was going to look sensational in that. Okay. Deep breath. Remy and her date were going to kick ass at the prom, and Tootsie and Cooper and Angela Harrell and any other bitches out there would burn. Burn and eat their words.

  Upstairs she had just started the shower running when she saw that her cell phone had exploded with messages.

  What the hell?

  Three from Rachel, and a bunch from the high school . . . and the police. She scanned them for information, but after one robo-message saying the school was on lockdown, all the other voice mail messages just asked her to call. Her knees were trembling, and she huddled over the bathroom counter, holding on for support as she shot a few text messages to Remy. When there was no immediate answer, she called the school.

  “This is Ariel Alexander. I’m returning Mr. Enrico’s call?”

  There was a pause as the secretary on the line, Janice something or other, sucked in a breath. “Ms. Alexander! There’s been an incident. I think it was the vice principal who called you? But he’s not here in his office right now. He’s over with the police.”

  “What’s going on there?”

  “We were in lockdown?” Janice made every statement a question. “But the police called it off? Mr. Enrico said that Remy was hurt? I think he wanted you to come down here?”

  Her heart began to thud in her chest. “Wh-what happened to her?”

  “I don’t have any information? But if you can’t come down, I’ll take your number and have Mr. Enrico call you back?”

  “Never mind. I’ll come over.” Ariel hung up, hoping that moron Janice had her details jumbled. Giving up on her shower, she slipped on a pair of jeans and called Rachel, who picked up immediately. “Do you know what’s happening at the school?”

  “A lockdown. Mike just ran out of here to see what was going on.”

  “The vice principal called me. Sounds like Remy got hurt. I’m going over there.”

  “I’ll pick you up,” Rachel said quickly. “I’m at the shop. Hold tight.”

  Quickly, Ariel mopped perspiration from her face and blended in foundation and blush. No time for the eyes; she would have to wear sunglasses.

  By the time she came down the stairs, Rachel’s car was in the driveway.

  “Are you worried?” Rachel asked as Ariel got into the car.

  “I just want to know why they called me,” Ariel said, clinging to the notion that this was all a mistake. “That moron Janice, who works in the office, was a total dead end when I called.”

  “I’m sure everything is going to be just fine,” Rachel said as the Subaru zipped down the road. “I can feel it in my bones, and my bones don’t lie.”

  “Thank God for your bones,” Ariel said, grateful to have Rachel there. She could not imagine driving in this cold state of dread. She checked the screen of her phone; still no answer from Remy.

  From a quarter of a mile away, the high school was a throbbing cluster of chaos, with flashing lights, police cars, and emergency vehicles strewn over sidewalks and lawns, and cars of eager parents jamming the entrance to the parking lot.

  “Crap.” Rachel eased as close as she could and then swung the car into a spot in front of a hydrant on the main road. “It’ll be faster to hoof it from here.”

  They started out walking briskly, but the flashing lights and line of gathering parents prodded Ariel to run. Two cops tried to step into her path, telling her to stop, but she skirted around them. She had to get inside. “The school told me to come,” she said breathlessly. “My daughter was hurt.”

  The officers backed away, letting Rachel through the human barricade, too. They blew through the doors into the office, where rattled employees huddled behind the counter with a handful of cops from different jurisdictions. Ariel recognized the principal, Glenda Balducci, a buxom woman with shoulder-length brown curls, whom she’d met through her dealings with Gleetime. Actually, it was Dr. Balducci now. From their hushed tones, Ariel sensed that they’d been shaken up, but if the lockdown had been called off so soon, it couldn’t have been that bad.

  “I’m Ariel Alexander. I was told my daughter was hurt.”

  “Right.” Dr. Balducci pressed one palm to her chest in an odd gesture of earnestness as she skirted around the counter. “It’s good that you came.”

  “Where’s Remy? Is she okay?”

  “She’s over in the music wing. I’ll take you there. Right this way.” Dr. Balducci took long strides for a woman in platform sandals.

  Dazed, Ariel let herself be escorted down the hall, past a bank of lockers and the stairs to the glass-walled library where the lower windows had been glazed for security after the lessons of the Columbine shootings. The thought of that violent rampage made her throat ache, and her peripheral vision went dark. “What happened to her?”

  “They say she was attacked. A student with a knife.” The principal paused, as if giving Ariel a chance to absorb it.

  “I can’t believe it,” Rachel said from the dark tunnel beside Ariel. “Everyone loves Remy.”

  “She’s a good kid,” the principal agreed. “She seems to be friends with all the students.”

  “Not everyone.” Ariel’s lips hardened. “It was Cooper Dover, wasn’t it? That little bastard.”

  “I don’t have much information on the attack.” Dr. Balducci seemed apologetic. “James was handling the incident. James Enrico, our vice principal. I was coordinating the lockdown.”

  “Cooper is the only one with a grudge against Remy. Everyone knows that. He . . . he dropped her on the stage and his mother’s a raving lunatic.” She was babbling—Ariel knew that—but it was her way of working through panic, a tactic she’d learned as a child when her home seemed to implode on a regular basis. Sweat pooled behind her sunglasses, and she lifted them and took a swipe at her eyes. “It was definitely Cooper.”

  “The police will have more information on that.” The squeak in the principal’s voice revealed that she was nervous, too. Probably afraid of a lawsuit. “They have the alleged attacker in custody.”

  Alleged. It infuriated Ariel that any attacker would get the benefit of the doubt.

  “Do you know if it was Cooper Dover?” Rachel asked.

  The principal shrugged. “I just know that a male student turned himself in soon after the attack. The police searched the school and determined that he acted alone. We ended the lockdown, but held the students in their first-period classes.”

  The methodical approach of Madame Principal was beginning to piss Ariel off. “Would you just help me find my daughter so we can get the hell out of here?”

  “Of course.”

  When they rounded the back of the auditorium, Ariel was in familiar territory. Dr. Balducci paused to ask two cops about Ja
mes Enrico, and they pointed the women toward the staircase leading down to the rehearsal rooms for choir, orchestra, and band. Ariel knew her way around these parts. “Remy’s probably downstairs,” she said, her stress easing. “She and her friends hang out in the choir room. They usually meet there before school.”

  Cops lingered at the top of the stairs, their radios squawking. Their eyes fixed on the passing women, and one officer moved to stop them until the principal flashed her ID at him. Ariel followed the principal down the stairs, then paused at the sight of the yellow tape barring the second landing.

  “James. There you are.” Dr. Balducci was introducing Ariel to an administrative type draped in a gray suit. Olive-skinned and jittery, he clung to the wall a few steps up from the yellow tape.

  Ariel vaguely recognized a very pissy James Enrico, who was telling the principal that they shouldn’t be here. Their voices slipped through Ariel’s consciousness like a handful of sand as she spotted the pool of blood on the landing.

  So much blood.

  “Jesus! What the hell happened here?” Ariel asked. Her annoyance with this wild-goose chase had begun to sizzle into a panic. A throat-squeezing, heart-racing wave that compelled her forward into the blood-splattered stairwell.

  She stepped down, one stair, and then another, her eyes fixed on the deep dark pool. That couldn’t be blood. So dark and sticky and . . . so much. The red splatter on the adjacent concrete wall was another story. It resembled photographs she had seen from true-crime shows on television. Surreal. Her heart was pounding, her pulse thrumming in her ears as she gaped at the catastrophic scene. All that blood couldn’t be real. It had to be some prank. Typical teens.

  But the smell was unmistakable . . . the earthy, dank odor of blood. Her daughter’s blood. No, no, no. No one walked away from a bloodbath like this. Someone else had been hurt. Or maybe it was the attacker’s blood. Remy was a strong girl; she could hold her own....

  Ariel’s racing heart seemed to swell in her chest, constricting her breathing, her balance, her rational thought. Dizziness swirled around her as she struggled to breathe. She swayed, reaching toward the steel handrail to steady herself.

  “That’s it. Don’t come any closer.” An overweight cop held up his hands, but he seemed to speak from a distant place, beyond the bell jar that confined her. “I can’t have you folks tramping through my crime scene.”

  His words brought attention to the bright light fixed on the scene beyond the dome of her control, casting ghoulish shadows. The crime scene tape was doubled from wall to bannister at Ariel’s waist. Little plastic markers with numbers on them were placed in seemingly random spots.

  Just like on television. Except here, in the real world, the earthy smells of blood and sweat hung in the humid air. And she was caught, suspended in a real-world panic, with racing heart, damp palms, and trembling knees.

  She felt a hand on her shoulder. “Come on, honey,” Rachel said. “Let’s get out of here.”

  Ariel turned away from the ghastly landing, closing her eyes against the image branded in her mind. Oh my God. Oh My GOD! “Where’s my daughter?” She had to push the words through her constricting throat. “Where is she?”

  Some male voice muttered to get her away from here as Ariel collapsed against her friend, her knees giving way. Darkness closed in from the edges, accentuating the throbbing tattoo of her heartbeat pounding in her chest. She felt herself being dragged up the stairs, nearly carried from the stairwell, delivered into the school corridor.

  “Take a breath,” Rachel said gently as Ariel’s feet touched ground once again. “A deep breath.”

  Ariel braced herself and stood upright as her heels grazed the carpet of the hallway. The air was better here. As soon as she drank it in the horror sharpened again, regaining focus, and her breath came out in a painful moan. “Where’s my girl?” Ariel demanded. “Tell me, damn it!”

  “The paramedics transported her to the hospital.” The vice principal was addressing her, at last. His eyes seemed thoughtful. Or haunted.

  “Is she all right?”

  “I am not a doctor,” Enrico said, “but I can tell you they were taking excellent care of her.”

  “Then why are we traipsing around here?” Ariel shook off the cop, who was holding on to her on one side. “Jesus, you’re wasting my time.”

  “I’m sorry. You should have been told.” Enrico’s voice was polite, but he glared at the principal with thinly tethered anger.

  Ariel would sue them all when this was over. For now, she felt the tug of urgency to get to her kid. “I need to get to the hospital. Now.”

  “I’ll drive you. Come on.” Rachel darted down the hall, then paused and turned back. “Wait. Jared’s going to freak.”

  Jared. Ariel didn’t have time to worry about him now.

  But Rachel, mother of the year, turned to Dr. Balducci. “Are you going to release the students early? My son’s a student here. Jared Whalen.”

  “We’ll let them go as soon as the buses get here.” The principal’s strained, tight voice revealed her tension. “We’re looking at a ten o’clock dismissal.”

  “He’ll be fine,” Ariel told her friend. This was no time to mollycoddle Jared. “He’ll find his way home. Let’s go.”

  “Wait one moment.” The vice principal held up his hands. “I’m sorry, did you say Jared Whalen?” Sweat beaded the man’s forehead, and his mouth was a line of distress.

  “Right. He’s a senior here,” Rachel explained. “A member of Gleetime?”

  Enough with the small talk. Ariel grabbed Rachel’s arm, backing away. “We gotta go.”

  “I apologize. I didn’t know. . . .” Enrico pressed the back of his hand to his brow as he turned and stared at Rachel. “There’s no easy way to say this. Your son, he’s talking to police right now. Jared Whalen, he was the one who attacked Remy.”

  Chapter 22

  Rachel’s spine stiffened with indignation as she glared at the vice principal. “You’ve got that wrong. Really. Jared wouldn’t hurt Remy.” She turned to Ariel for confirmation, but her friend’s face was a pale mask, her mouth drooping open. Probably in shock. “Jared and Remy grew up together. Like brother and sister. Good friends. In fact . . .”

  They were dating. She stopped short of revealing the secret. What would it matter to the school staff? They were not in control of any of this.

  “He turned himself in,” Enrico said succinctly. “The police are questioning him now.”

  “This is ludicrous.” Rachel’s outrage hardened to fury as the knot in her throat swelled. First the lockdown, then Remy’s attack and all that blood, and now Jared was getting dragged into the nightmare? Tears stung her eyes and a glaring panic threatened to overwhelm her, but she took a breath and tamped the fear down.

  “Where?” She flung her arms wide. “Where’s my son?”

  “Downstairs.” He nodded toward the arts wing. “We must use the other stairway. I will take you there.”

  “But . . .” She turned to Ariel. “You need to get to the hospital.”

  Ariel waved her off. “Go.” Her glassy eyes held the same bewilderment that plagued Rachel. “I’ll find a ride.”

  She couldn’t believe it. This had to be a terrible mistake. Maybe they had gotten the name wrong or Jared had come along to save Remy from the assailant . . . something like that. But she withheld conversation and followed the vice principal down the corridor, determined to sort things out quickly so that she could get to the hospital. Ariel needed her support, and Remy, God bless her. Rachel had been praying under her breath since they’d stepped into that gruesome stairwell. She called on the blessed Mother Mary and St. Jude, patron saint of impossible causes, to intercede and watch over Remy.

  Following Enrico to the opposite end of the music wing, Rachel imagined Remy back here in a few days, laughing with her friends and hurrying off to a class. Please God, that would be the best possible outcome.

  The second staircase was vacant
, clear of cops, its landing spotless but for two smudges of old chewing gum. Rachel tackled the stairs with fervor, ignoring the panicky pulse that roared in her head, driving her forward, down the hall past the band room. A handful of kids were scattered there, talking with cops. Chatting? They were talking quietly, almost normally.

  As if anything would ever be normal again.

  The officers stared curiously at Rachel and the vice principal, but did not try to stop them. Enrico tapped on the door, then opened it.

  As soon as Rachel stepped beyond the frosted glass of the teachers’ office, she saw her son slumped forward in a corner chair. One cop sat with his body angled toward Jared, while another stood back, leaning against a wall. One craned his neck around and asked, “What is it?”

  The pulse thrumming in Rachel’s ears blocked out the conversation of the men around her as she rushed into the office. She squatted with one hand on the desk, close enough to see the blood on Jared’s hands. Dried and sticky, it clung to his cuticles, rimmed his fingernails. His favorite shirt, the plaid button-down that he usually wore over a T-shirt, was drenched so that the white background was now brown. “Jared. What happened?”

  He lifted his head slowly, her son, her baby. Tears pooled in his eyes and ran down his cheeks, streaking through the blood that stained his chin, neck, and shirt. From up close she could see that he was covered in it, and the magnitude of what had happened in that stairwell hit her all over again.

  Gaping at her silent son, she stumbled through a prayer for Remy, half silent words, half inarticulate wishes for a positive outcome. Healing. Survival. Peace.

  “Jared,” she breathed. “Talk to me. Did you try to save Remy? What happened?” Although he refused to meet her gaze, there was no mistaking his misery, his horror. Tears pooled in his eyes and slid down his cheeks. When tears fell to his hand, the blood on his knuckle became liquid and she suddenly wondered at its source.