“I’m sorry.”
“You don’t have to be. It is what it is. I just… had to step up. For her.”
No matter what she claimed, her grief was as raw and as fresh as if they’d passed away yesterday. Something I could empathize with entirely—my own grief for my father remained an open, festering wound. No amount of sweet memories could ever ease the agony of lossormyguilt at being a failure.
In this, we were mates.
“A-After, she…”
“She, what?” I prodded when she fell silent.
“I think she internalized what happened because no one would have believed her anyway. She acted out. So she decided to own it. Declared it was love.”
The unfairness had me deepening my hold on her. “What did you do?”
“We took his car upstate.” Her throat bobbed. “The deepest part of the Hudson is in West Point, so we went to Beacon, which is the next town north, and drove his car into the river.”
Oddly impressed by their ingenuity, I snickered. “And the groomer was no more.”
Her throat bobbed. “I haven’t told anyone this before and I know Raisin hasn’t?—”
“Your secret’s safe with me.”
“You could use it against me.”
“I wouldneverdo that. And I’m more than willing to share a truth for a truth, Kitty.”
Her shoulders sagged with relief, but first she pleaded, “Don’t tell Neev. We said we confronted him after school one night and he ran away. She was mad at us for a long time. It took years for her to trust us again. I’m only bringing it up now because it’s… I don’t know. Could be related to this mess, maybe?”
“Is she okay?”
“She misses him.” The words were torn from her. “I could bring up his name today and she’d say nice shit about him. It’s why I cut her so much slack. He fucked her up so bad that she’s in denial. I don’t know what’s worse. For her to think she lost someone who loved her or for her to learn the truth of what a nasty little pedophile he was.”
“You were never brought in for questioning?”
“No. Never. We were smart.”
“Very smart. You got away with murder. If my arms weren’t full, I think that’d deserve a round of applause.”
Her laughter was swiftly becoming a source of solace to me. “Raisin’s clever. It was my idea, but she figured out the location of the cameras and helped us avoid them.”
“Always the quiet ones.”
“Always. I didn’t sleep for months afterward. Every time the doorbell chimed, I thought it was the cops. I assume he’s a missing person still.”
“And you think he has something to do with your reason for being here?”
“It sounds so dumb when you put it like that. He was our Spanish teacher. They speak Spanish.” Her cheeks gusted out. “I mean, I don’t know. It’s a weak link but?—”
“Was he Mexican?”
“No.”
“What was his name?”
“Jared Brückner.”
“Not Martinez.”
