Curious about what Officer Miller is going to say to her, I follow my mother to the end of the hall and stop there to eavesdrop on their conversation. She walks up to the front door but doesn’t offer to let him come in. I come by my distrust of cops naturally, it seems.
“What can I do for you, officer?” she asks him, and even though the words sound like she’s trying to be nice, anyone who knows my mother can hear her irritation that she has to speak to him at all come through loud and clear.
Through the screen door, he says, “Ma’am, we’re investigating a death in the woods last night. We were wondering if your son could give us any information regarding it. We’ve been told he and some of his friends were there around the time the death occurred.”
My mother looks back in my direction and then turns back to face the cop. “My son was home with me all last night. I’m afraid he won’t be able to help you. Sorry.”
And with that, she closes the door and marches over to where I’m hiding. Pointing her figure at my face, she says, “You better not have done anything stupid. If you and your friends were around when it happened, then you and your friends need to get your stories straight. Got it?”
I nod but say nothing. Rich and Mike know nothing about what happened last night, but they’ll be good if they find outabout everything. They’re not going to rat me out. We know what it’s like with the police around here. They only protect and serve the side of town where the big houses are. Down here in The Patch, they think we’re all fucking criminals at birth. So we keep our mouths shut whenever they come around asking their questions.
Since they won’t protect us, we protect our own.
The memory of the cop’s visit to my house fades, and once again I’m alone in my bed, safe and sound.
For now.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Jamie
I’ve never felt more exposedin my life. I’ve sat in my car parked in this exact same spot hundreds of times before, but today, I feel like all eyes are on me. I’m probably just being paranoid. This thing with Connor has me sure every person I encounter is judging me.
That’s crazy, though. What is that thing people always say? Dance like no one is looking because they’re not? Is that it? I can’t remember, but I’m sure that axiom is more right than wrong. People have their own things going on. Why would they care to focus on me?
Anyway, I’m sure this whole thing is about to die down. It’s been nearly four days, after all. Yesterday was likely the climax of the insanity. From now on, things will calm down.
Even as I think that, I know better. The police are going to find out that was Connor’s gun that killed Bryan. Once they realize that, it’s only a matter of time before they arrest him.
A slight drizzle begins to fall as I sit outside the gym waiting for the girls, so thankfully, I have a justification for not walkingover to stand with the other mothers today. I can see them from where I’m parked, though, and each one of them has looked over at me more than once. Every time I waved, and not once did anyone wave back. Instead, they turned up their noses and ignored me.
To think that I considered these people my friends. Guess I was wrong on that call. Friends stand by you in times of trouble. After all the hours I’ve spent with these women, someone I know for barely a week turns out to be a truer friend than any of these people.
Some might think me stupid for believing these women were my friends. I guess it was foolish. All we have in common are our daughters and their love of gymnastics. Still, I thought we would always be civil to one another. How many times have I taken care packages to their homes when I heard they were sick? How many times have I welcomed them and their daughters to my home? More than I want to count and look what being nice got me.
Being practically shunned for some rumor about my husband that hasn’t even been shown to be true.
I can handle it. It hurts, but I’ll survive. It’s my daughters who don’t understand why other children are saying cruel things about their father and why their parents aren’t kind to them like they used to be.
The rain hitting my windshield becomes heavier, and the mothers all run for cover to avoid getting wet. It’s not much, but I’ll take that tiny bit of satisfaction from seeing them scurry into the building so their perfectly coiffed hair doesn’t get ruined. I see Jasmine Rey didn’t make it in time, so that lovely three hundred dollar hairdo she loves to brag about looks like a wet rat on top of her head.
A song I haven’t heard in nearly fifteen years comes on, so I turn it up and close my eyes. Memories of my freshmanyear in college come back to me, and I can’t stop myself from remembering the night I met Connor.
It was a warm spring night, and my sorority sisters and I were celebrating passing all our finals. I was going to be spending the summer in town to take a social psychology class I needed for my minor. My parents had agreed to pay to let me stay at school for summer courses if and only if I earned a B in every one of my spring semester classes. I was sure I’d aced all my finals, but the only one I absolutely needed to pass with at least an eighty was my statistics class. Never terribly good with numbers, that single course had threatened every plan I had made, but I crammed for that test for over a week, ignoring everything but classes to study day and night.
My mind quickly switches to my friends in the sorority and where they all are now. We all swore we’d keep in touch and never forget one another, but those promises fell by the wayside when real life got in the way. Marriages to our spouses, births of our children, careers, and a million other things conspired to make us strangers.
I thought I’d be best friends with those girls forever. How long has it been since I spoke to anyone from college? I’ve been out of school for over a decade, and I can’t remember the last time I talked with any of my sorority sisters.
Sad about that, I try to enjoy the song since it was popular back when Connor and I first got together. He didn’t attend the same college as I did, but that night he was in the neighborhood near the sorority house for a party at one of the fraternities. He got bored and wandered out into the street, and a car nearly ran him over. Drunk with his reaction time slowed, he could have been killed by that driver, but he somehow stumbled out of the way, falling to the ground next to my friends and me on the sidewalk.
It's not a wonderful story of how we met. It’s certainly no meet cute. He was drunk, and I had enjoyed a few beers before leaving the house myself, but those were different times. I’ll never forget the first thing he said to me.
“Any chance you’ve got a smoke?” he said with a devil-may-care smile as he looked up at me from where he lay on the sidewalk. “I figure since I just cheated death that I should at least do something to celebrate.”
I told him no since I didn’t smoke, and when my friends urged me to keep walking since we were late to the frat party already, I stayed with him. I told myself I was worried he might mistakenly walk into the street again and get hurt, but the truth was Connor had a way about him that charmed me.
Maybe it was a type of meet cute after all.
