“Not a history of violence,” Will insists. “Otto never hurt anyone, remember?”
“But how do you know he wouldn’t have, if he hadn’t been caught first? If that student hadn’t turned him in, how do you know he wouldn’t have hurt his classmates, Will?”
“We can’t know what he would have done. But I’d like to believe our son isn’t a killer,” Will says. “Wouldn’t you?”
Will is right. Otto never hurt any of those kids back at his old high school. But the intent was there. The motive. A weapon. He very intentionally took a knife to school. There’s no telling what he might have done if his plan hadn’t been thwarted in time. “How can you be so sure?”
“Because I want to believe only the best about our son. Because I won’t let myself think Otto could take another life,” he says, and I’m overcome with the strangest combination of fear and guilt that I don’t know which prevails. Am I more scared that Otto has murdered a woman? Or do I feel more guilty for allowing myself to think this?
This is my son I’m speaking of. Is my son capable of murder?
“Don’t you know that, Sadie? Do you really believe Otto could do this?” he asks, and it’s my silence that gets the best of him. My unknowingness. My silent admission that, yes, I do think maybe Otto could have done this.
Will breathes out loudly, feathers ruffled. His words are clipped. “What Otto did, Sadie,” Will says, words razor-sharp, “is a far cry from murder. He’s fourteen, for God’s sake. He’s a kid. He acted in self-defense. He stood up for himself the only way he knew how. You’re being irrational, Sadie.”
“But what if I’m not?” I ask.
Will’s response is immediate. “But you are,” he says. “What Otto did was stand up for himself when no one else would.”
He stops there but I know he wants to say more. He wants to tell me that Otto took matters into his own hands because of me. Because even though Otto told me about the harassment, I didn’t intervene. Because I wasn’t listening. There was a hotline at the school. A bullying hotline. I could have called and left an anonymous complaint. I could have called a teacher or the school principal and made a not-so-anonymous complaint. But instead I did nothing; I ignored him, even if unintentionally.
Will has yet to call me out on this. And yet I see it there in the unspoken words. Silently, he’s castigating me. He thinks it’s my fault Otto took that knife to school because I didn’t offer a more reasonable alternative, a more appropriate alternative for our fourteen-year-old son.
Otto isn’t a murderer. He would never have hurt those kids, I don’t think.
He’s a troubled boy, a scared boy.
There’s a difference.
“I’m scared, Will,” I admit, and he says, voice softening, “I know you are, Sadie. We both are.”
“I have to turn the washcloth in to the police,” I tell him, voice cracking, on the verge of tears, and only then does Will relent. Because of the tone of my voice. He knows as well as I that I’ve become discomposed. “It isn’t right for us to keep it.”
“All right, then,” he says. “As soon as I get to campus I’ll cancel my classes. Give me an hour, Sadie, and then I’ll be home. Don’t do anything with the washcloth until then,” he pleads, before his voice takes on a different tone, a softer tone, and he says, “We’ll go see Officer Berg together. Just wait until I get home and we’ll speak to Officer Berg together.”
I end the call and move into the living room to wait. I drop down onto the marigold sofa. I stretch my legs before me, thinking that if I close my eyes, I will sleep. The weight of worry and fatigue come bearing down on me, and suddenly I’m tired. My eyes sink shut.
Before I can fall asleep, they bolt open again.
The sound of the front door startles me. It shifts in its casing, getting jostled around.
It’s only the wind blowing against it, agitating the door, I tell myself.
But then comes the sound of a key jiggling in the lock.
It’s only been a few minutes since Will and I hung up the phone. No more than ten or fifteen. He would have scarcely reached the mainland by now, much less waited for passengers to disembark and then board the boat. He wouldn’t have had time to make the twenty-minute commute back across the bay, or drive home from the ferry dock.
It’s not Will.
Someone else is here.
I inch myself away from the door, searching for a place to hide. But before I’ve gone a step or two, the door presses violently open. It ricochets off the rubber stopper on the other side.
There, standing in the foyer, is Otto. His backpack is slung across a shoulder. His hair is covered with snow. It’s white with it. His cheeks are rosy and red from the cold outside. The tip of his nose is also red. Everything else is pallid.
Otto slams the door shut.
“Otto,” I breathe out midstride, pressing my hand to my chest. “What are you doing here?” I ask, and he says, “I’m sick.” He does look peaked to me, yes. But I’m not certain he looks sick.
