“Do you have a second?” Will asks, and I follow him from the room to where we can speak in private. His face is inexpressive, his long hair pulled back into a tidy bun. He leans against a wall; he holds my gaze. “I spoke to Imogen this morning,” he tells me, “about your concerns,” and it’s his word choice that gets on my nerves.Your, as inmine. Notourconcerns. I hope he didn’t approach the conversation with Imogen that same way. Because then she’d hate me more than she already does.
“I asked her about the photograph you said you saw on her phone. I wanted to see it.”
He chooses his words carefully. That’s not lost on me.You said you saw.
“And?” I ask, sensing his hesitation. He drops his gaze. Imogen has done something, I think. “Did she show you the picture of Alice?” I ask, hoping that Will, too, saw the same thing I saw. The step stool standing vertical, far out of reach of Alice’s dangling feet. The half of the night I wasn’t kept awake thinking about Will and Morgan, I was thinking about this. How a woman could spring five feet from a stool and land with her head in a noose.
“I looked at her phone,” Will says. “I looked through all the pictures. Three thousand of them. There was nothing there like what you described, Sadie,” he says.
My blood pressure spikes. I feel hot all of a sudden and angry. “She deleted it,” I say rather matter-of-factly. Because of course she did. “It was there, Will. Did you check the recently deleted folder?” I ask him, and he tells me he did check the deleted folder. It wasn’t there either.
“Then she permanently deleted it,” I say. “Did you ask her about it, Will?”
“I did, Sadie. I asked her what happened to the photograph. She said there never was a photograph. She couldn’t believe you’d make something like this up. She was upset. She thinks you don’t like her.”
At first I say nothing. I can only stare, struck dumb by his statement. I search Will’s eyes.
Does he, too, think I made this up?
Tate calls to Will from the kitchen. He’s hungry for more French toast. Will goes to the kitchen. I follow along. “She’s lying, you know?” Otto, at the table, gives me a look as I say it.
Will dishes another slice of French toast onto Tate’s plate. He says nothing. His lack of a reply hits a raw nerve. Because if he doesn’t believe Imogen lied, then he’s suggesting I did.
“Look,” he says, “let me think on this a little while, figure out what to do. I’ll see if there is a way to recover deleted photos.”
Will hands me my pills and I swallow them with a swig of coffee. He’s dressed in a Henley and cargo pants because he teaches today, his workbag packed and waiting by the door for him to go. He’s reading a new book these days. It’s there, jutting out from his workbag on the floor. A hardcover with a dust jacket, the spine of which is orange.
I wonder if Erin’s photograph is inside this book, too.
Tate stares sideways at me from the table. Though I’ve tried to apologize, he’s still mad at me for what happened the other day with the doll and his game. I decide to pick up a new Lego kit for him today. Legos make everything better.
Otto and I go. He’s quieter than usual in the car. I see in his eyes that something is wrong. He knows more than he lets on, about the tension in Will’s and my marriage, about Imogen. Of course he does. He’s a fourteen-year-old boy. He isn’t stupid. “Is everything okay?” I ask. “Anything you want to talk about?”
His reply is short. “Nope,” he says, looking away.
I drive him to the dock and drop him off, searching the waterfront for Imogen. She isn’t here. The ferry comes and the ferry goes. When Otto is gone, I step from my car and go to the ticket window. I purchase a ticket for the next ferry to the mainland. I get back in my car and wait. When the ferry arrives, not thirty minutes later, I drive onto the vehicle deck and put the car in Park. I turn it off and leave my car there, walking up the steps to the upper deck of the ferry. I sit on a bench and stare at the ocean as we go. It’s only eight o’clock. I have nearly the whole day in front of me. Will, off to work, won’t know how I’ve spent my time.
As the ferry makes its way across the bay, a sense of relief washes over me. Our island shrinks in size and becomes just one of many islands off the coast of Maine. As the mainland draws near, a city swells before me, with buildings and people and noise. For now, I push my thoughts of Imogen aside.
The police are looking for a scapegoat only. Officer Berg is trying to pin this murder on me. In order to clear my own name, I need to find out who killed Morgan.
I use my commute time wisely, searching my phone for information on Jeffrey Baines’s ex, Courtney, who lives somewhere on the other side of the Atlantic. I don’t know this for a fact, but it’s easy enough to assume. She doesn’t live on the island with us. And I watched the other day, after the memorial service, as she and her red Jeep boarded the ferry and disappeared out to sea.
I type “Courtney Baines” into the web browser. Finding her is almost too easy because, I come to find out, she’s the superintendent of the local school district. Her name pops up nearly everywhere. It’s all very professional, nothing personal. Superintendent Baines approving salary increases for teachers and staff; Superintendent Baines expressing concern over a string of recent school violence.
I find an address of the administrative building and type it into my map app. It’s an eight-minute drive from the ferry terminal. I’ll arrive by 8:36 a.m.
The ferry steers into the terminal and docks. I jog down the steps, from the upper deck and to my car. I start the car and, when given the go-ahead, I pull from the ferry.
I head out onto the street and follow my directions toward the school district’s administrative building. The city is nothing compared to Chicago. The population is less than a hundred thousand; not one building surpasses fifteen stories tall. But it’s a city nonetheless.
Located in the heart of downtown, the administrative building shows its age. I drive into the lot, search for a place to park. I don’t know what I’m doing here. I don’t know what I’m going to say to Superintendent Baines when we meet.
I make a plan quickly as I weave through the parking lot. I’m a concerned parent. My child is being bullied. It’s not so hard to believe.
I step through the first row of cars. As I do, I spot Courtney Baines’s Jeep, the same red Jeep I watched pull from the Methodist church. I go to it, look around to be sure that I’m alone before reaching a hand up to tug on the car’s handle. It’s locked, of course. No one with any common sense would leave their car unlocked. I cup my hands around my eyes and peer inside, seeing nothing unusual.
I make my way into the administrative building. Once inside, a secretary greets me.
