Straightened

by Alana Terry

  Nick paused long enough to meet Kennedy’s eyes.

  “What was your question? Oh, right. What does it mean to be gay. In Noah’s case, it means feeling so ashamed of who you are that you beg God every day to change you. You go to sleep just hoping and praying you’ll wake up and find yourself attracted to girls. It means sneaking Playboys into the bathroom, hoping it’ll do something for you, only it doesn’t. It means finally getting the nerve to tell your dad about what’s going on and have him kick you out of the house because you’re an abomination. That’s what being gay means. In fact, it has very little to do with who’s sleeping with who.”

  Kennedy thought she understood, but that only led to even more complicated questions. She wasn’t sure where to start. She knew there were Christians who argued that gay relationships could be just as godly and righteous as a marriage between a husband and wife, but she had always seen them as some sort of “other,” entities she read about in her dad’s pro-family publications who were trying to undermine traditional marriage across the entire United States. Where did Nick stand? He worked for Pastor Carl, who had no problem teaching from the pulpit that homosexuality was a sin. Kennedy had just assumed that’s what every Christian believed, at least every mainstream evangelical.

  Was she wrong?

  Nick scooped up a big bite of egg that had fallen out of his burrito. “So, back when I was in high school ...”

  Kennedy didn’t know if he was changing the subject or continuing on with the original conversation. She didn’t have the chance to find out. Nick’s phone rang, that same one-line chorus she had heard in the car on his uncle’s album.

  “Hey, Pastor Carl.”

  His face turned serious. Worried.

  “No, we dropped him off nearly an hour ago ... Yeah, Kennedy’s still with me ... Are you serious? You’ve got to be joking.”

  Nick stared at the phone, and Kennedy felt the base of her abdominal wall plummet toward the ground.

  “Yeah, we’ll be there as soon as we can. Ok, bye.”

  He turned off his phone and took a deep breath.

  “The Abernathys’ home burned down. They say Noah’s missing and his dad’s dead.”

  CHAPTER 8

  Kennedy and Nick didn’t talk or listen to any music as they raced back to the Lindgrens’. Kennedy was certain she had dreamed up this whole night. She was probably still so jetlagged she was in Carl and Sandy’s guest room coming up with some elaborately bizarre daydream. Or maybe she hadn’t even arrived in Massachusetts yet. Maybe she was dozing off on the plane from Seattle, sitting next to the cute French businessman who would ask her a dozen questions about China when she woke up.

  The bus jolted and hopped with every minor bump in the road. Kennedy was afraid she’d get carsick. She clung to the door handle as if she could ground herself that way. That’s what she needed. Some kind of grounding stability.

  Nick parked the bus lopsided along the curb since there were two police cars taking up the Lindgrens’ driveway. He raced out without saying anything, and Kennedy sprinted behind him. She didn’t know what she expected to see when she burst after him through the front door. A dozen police officers, maybe a few members of the press, men and women in suits holding notebooks and pens. Instead, there were two men in uniform sitting around the Lindgrens’ dining room table, with a plate of cookies and muffins on the Lazy Susan in front of them.

  Kennedy froze in the hall beside Nick, and the two officers looked up. She recognized them both.

  “Just in time.” Carl stood up and pointed at the man with reddish stubble spreading out across his chin. “I think you both already know Dominic, chaplain for the BPD.”

  He nodded and offered Kennedy the slightest trace of a smile.

  “And this is Detective Drisklay.”

  Kennedy’s lungs constricted once at the sight of the middle-aged man sipping coffee from a stained disposable cup.

  “Miss Stern.” He gave a courtly nod that felt almost mocking in nature.

  “What’s going on?” Nick asked. “Does anyone know how Noah’s doing? Have you been able to find him yet?”

  “That’s what we were hoping you could tell us,” said Drisklay in his characteristic monotone.

  “Well ...” Nick pulled out his phone and glanced at the time. “It was a little over an hour ago when I dropped him off at his mom and dad’s. Right after eleven.”

  “Did you go in the house? Did you see either of his parents?”

  Kennedy’s mind wandered slightly until she decided that if Detective Drisklay and her chem professor Adell ever created a love child, he would be a modern-day version of Hercule Poirot. She tried imagining his famous mustaches on a face like Drisklay’s. If this weren’t such a tense situation, she might have allowed herself a giggle.

  “We didn’t see anybody,” Nick answered. “We just drove up and dropped him off at the point where the driveway turns around.”

  “Did either of you watch to see if he actually went in the house?” Drisklay fired off questions without showing any interest in Nick’s answers.

  Kennedy’s stomach tightened. Were they in trouble?

  “No.”

  “What about before you dropped him off? Did he act unusual in any way? Say anything that might give us a clue where he could be now?”

  Sandy pulled out two chairs. As soon as Kennedy and Nick sat down, she passed them the cookies and muffins even though no one at the table was eating.

  “We need to know where Noah might be.” Drisklay took a noisy gulp of coffee.

  Kennedy looked at Nick as if studying his face might jog her memory. It didn’t help.

  “He didn’t really say anything in the car, at least nothing I remember. He was pretty quiet.”

  “Mrs. Lindgren, you said you saw him a few minutes before he left here?”

  “That’s right.” Sandy was out of her bathrobe now and dressed in the same clothes she had worn that day. “Nick said that Noah was ready to go home, so I assumed that he must have patched things up with his dad. I was glad for the news. It’s not right for a family to be torn apart by a ...”

  “Would you say that he was particularly sullen or quiet when you saw him?” Drisklay interrupted.

  Sandy frowned. “I’m sorry, Detective, but come to think of it, I was only half awake. We’ve just adopted our little boy from South Korea. Only been three weeks since we brought him home, and I’ll be pickled if I’ve ever gotten a full night of sleep since he ...”

  “So he didn’t act any differently tonight when you saw him?” Drisklay’s voice was even more drone-like the normal. Kennedy wondered if that was the way he showed frustration. Sandy twirled a long strand of hair around her finger. “No, he didn’t act any different at all tonight. Kicked and screamed like usual until his father ...”

  “He’s asking about Noah, woman.” Carl’s voice still held its usually good-natured tone, but there was no sign of patience or humor in his expression. “He wants to know if you noticed anything different about Noah before he left.”

  Sandy frowned and stared at some of her split ends. “No. That boy’s always pretty quiet, far as I remember. I recall one time we’d been invited over for dinner at the Abernathys’, and he refused to ...”

  “And you two?” Drisklay snapped, except his volume never rose. “Was the kid acting unusual in your opinion?”

  Kennedy didn’t know Noah well enough so she let Nick answer the question.

  “Well, I did think it was a little strange he changed his mind about going home. We’d been texting for a while about how mad he was at his dad and how hurt he was. His dad kicked him out of the house. You probably heard all the details of that.”

  For the first time since the beginning of this impromptu interrogation, Kennedy turned her attention toward Dominic. The chaplain hadn’t said a single word, but he leaned forward with his hands folded on the table in front of him and seemed twice as engaged as the detective.

  Drisklay scowled. �
��So nobody can say that this kid acted any different than normal, and nobody has any clue where he went, is that it?”

  Everyone stared at the other faces around the table, and Kennedy got the same sinking feeling she had as a third-grader when her teacher yelled at the entire class.

  “I’ll try calling him.” Nick pulled out his phone. “We have a pretty good relationship. I guess if he has to hear about his dad from anybody, it may as well be me.”

  Drisklay set down his cup, splashing a few drops of black coffee onto Sandy’s lacy table runner. “I’m not sure you’re getting the full picture, here. We don’t need to find the kid to tell him his dad’s dead. We need to find the kid because as of right now, he’s our primary suspect.”

  CHAPTER 9

  Kennedy was certain she had heard wrong. Noah was just a boy. A boy from a good family. He wouldn’t have done something like burn his house down. Sure, he’d been angry at his dad, but still ... Noah Abernathy, a murderer?

  The police had to have the wrong information.

  “He just got in a fight with his dad.” Kennedy heard the tremor in her own voice. Her face flushed with every pair of eyes staring at her, but she had to convince them they were wrong. “They were upset at each other. That shouldn’t mean he’s a suspect.”

  Dominic pursed his lips together. “How well do you know Noah Abernathy?”

  Kennedy ignored her burning cheeks and tried to remember if she ever had a single conversation with him. So maybe she couldn’t tell the chaplain about his life goals and ambitions. But still ... a murderer?

  “What about the senator?” she tried. “You can’t be as outspoken as he is without making people angry at you. What if he said something ... What if there was some bill ...?” She didn’t pay attention to politics unless her dad was railing on about some controversy or other. She didn’t have a clue what she was talking about.

  “This is clearly a sensitive topic,” Dominic began, “not just because it involves a teenager that you all want to protect, but because of the nature of Noah’s fight with his dad.”

  So this was how it would go. Now that his father had died, Noah would be dragged out of the closet and paraded through the streets for everyone in the Boston area to gawk at. If she thought the press made a field day out of her kidnapping with Noah’s little sister last fall, it would be nothing compared to this oncoming media frenzy.

  No wonder Noah was hiding.

  Or was he? Maybe he didn’t even know about his dad yet. Maybe he went out with some friends and had no idea what storm had rolled in on him and his family, a storm that was determined to strip him of all privacy and dignity.

  “So Noah’s dad got mad when he found out his son is gay.” Nick was up out of his chair now and pacing around the dining room table. “That night his dad dies in a fire. It still doesn’t mean the two events are connected.”

  “That’s why we’re here.” Dominic spoke with the patience of a preschool VBS school teacher. “Well, that’s why the detective is here. We need to get to the bottom of this, and we need to do it ASAP before the media blows it all out of the water. So if there’s anything else you can think of that you haven’t mentioned yet ...”

  “He was texting someone.” Everyone turned to stare at Kennedy again. “I came out here a few minutes before Nick came. Noah was in the kitchen when he got a text.”

  “Did he say anything?” Drisklay asked. “Did you see his reaction?”

  “Yeah.” Kennedy could visualize the exact way the light from Noah’s screen had cast that the eerie green glow all around him. “He was out here in the dark. His phone beeped, and when he read it ...”

  Drisklay leaned toward her. So did Carl and Sandy. Nick stopped his pacing.

  Kennedy licked her lips. Maybe she shouldn’t have mentioned the text.

  Dominic held her gaze from across the table. “What happened when he saw the message?”

  Kennedy let out her air. Felt her lungs deflate. Her dad always told her that honesty wasn’t just the best policy. It was the only policy. Try telling that to Noah Abernathy right about now.

  Everyone was waiting for her response. There was no way to take back what she’d already said. Nothing to do but proceed forward and hope for the best. Hope she wasn’t getting Noah into even more trouble.

  “He looked at the message and said something like, ‘I’m gonna kill him.’”

  Nick and the Lindgrens stared at her. Drisklay actually wrote something down in that tiny pad of paper he always carried around. Dominic gazed at his folded hands on the table. Kennedy didn’t meet anyone’s eyes. Had she just condemned an innocent boy?

  It was possible the text wasn’t about his dad. Why would Noah ask to go home if he was still mad at his father? Besides, being mad and saying you’re going to kill someone is a lot different than actually committing murder. What had he been doing out in the kitchen in the dark anyway? She couldn’t remember. Her body was still wide awake, but her brain was exhausted, covered by a thick, heavy mental mist as powerful as Prospero’s magic in The Tempest.

  Drisklay scraped his chair against the floor as he stood from the table. “Thank you folks for your time. I’ll be sure to keep in touch, and you have my number if you think of anything else.” He leveled his gaze. “Of course, you’ll call if you see or hear from the kid.” It wasn’t a question.

  Nobody said anything as he passed down the hall and let himself out.

  “Well then,” Sandy said, “what happens next?”

  All eyes turned to Dominic, who still sat serenely at his place. Kennedy wondered how the chaplain stayed so stately and composed. Didn’t he know what was going on? Didn’t he care that an innocent boy had been accused of starting the fire that killed his own father?

  Carl let out his breath. “I guess we should all try to get some sleep.”

  Sandy sighed. “I supposed that’s all we can do right about now.”

  “Not to step on any toes, ma’am,” Dominic interjected, “but I think there’s one more thing that we can do first. The most important thing of all.”

  “That’s exactly right.” Carl grabbed Sandy’s hand on one side and Kennedy’s on the other. Nick sat back down, and everyone around the table joined hands.

  “Now then.” Carl’s booming voice reverberated through the house, a harmonious sound that wrapped Kennedy’s soul up in peace. “Let’s pray.”

  CHAPTER 10

  Carl and Sandy went back to bed as soon as Dominic left. It was past midnight, but as much as Kennedy’s brain wanted to sleep, there was no way she could force her body to comply. The Lindgrens had offered Nick the attic loft since Noah wasn’t using it. He didn’t go up immediately, but lingered awkwardly in the hallway after everyone else parted ways.

  “You’re not going to get any sleep, are you?” He gave Kennedy a sympathetic half-smile.

  “It’s all right. The best thing I could do is force myself to stay awake until tomorrow night.”

  “I’m still kind of buzzed from those energy drinks. Have you seen the Lindgrens’ game closet? They have just about everything. Do you play Scrabble?”

  Kennedy loved board games. Over the summer, she and her dad had played a round of Scrabble or a game of chess at least once a day. “That sounds really fun, but my brain’s turned to mush.”

  Nick was already rummaging through a large closet in the living room. “Well, what if we find something that involves absolutely no thought whatsoever?” He pulled out a colorful box. “Candyland?”

  Kennedy laughed. “Sure. Why not?” It beat sitting alone in her room worrying about Noah.

  Her mind still hadn’t fully registered that Wayne Abernathy was dead. This felt more like a live drama, where everything was staged, no matter how realistic it felt at the time. Suspension of disbelief. That was the literary word for it. It’s what allowed theatergoers to look past the audience members in front of them. What allowed sci-fi fans to ignore clear-cut rules of physics in order to enjoy a far-fetched
story. It was the same thing now, only in reverse. Wayne Abernathy couldn’t really be dead. She had seen him just a few hours ago. She wondered if his death had made the news yet and was glad for Nick — strange company as he was — and his preschool board game to keep her preoccupied.

  As it turned out, if the goal was distracting herself, Kennedy should have picked a game that required more skill than simple color recognition. She lost herself several times in her musings until Nick had to remind her to take her turn on more than one occasion. Neither of them talked about Noah. Neither of them mentioned the dead senator, but Kennedy could tell Nick was about as distracted as she was. When he won the game, neither bothered to suggest a rematch.

  “I think Sandy’s got some chamomile tea in her cupboards.” Nick went to the kitchen and filled the kettle with water. “Care to share a cup with me?”

  Kennedy couldn’t pinpoint what was so strange about a single bachelor with dreadlocks taking chamomile tea as his nighttime beverage of choice, but she declined. “I think I’ll just head to my room and read some.” Who would have thought a game of Candyland could be so draining?