“Then why is she being like this? Doesn’t she know how I feel?”
“Have you told her?” I asked, but he couldn’t hear past himself.
“I am suffering. I go to school, and it’s like I have a disease. No one talks to me there, either.”
“No one?”
“Well, except for people who think what I did was cool, but it wasn’t, Maggie, I know that now, my mind just wasn’t there when I did it. And okay, so the Feds are watching what I do, but that doesn’t mean someone’ll get in trouble for walking to fuckingclasswith me.”
“Language,” I warned in the voice of Grace. When he pouted, I asked, “You have friends. What about them?”
“Friends.” He rolled his eyes and, way too cynical for fifteen, said, “Oh yeah, friends. Well, we text sometimes, and they sound like they still like me, only they don’t want to be seen with me, and that’s okay, at least Mom’s right about that. She says it says something about them, and that if they can’t see past who I really am, the statement’s more about them than about me.”
“So she does talk to you.” That restored my faith, at least a bit.
“Not today. Why won’t she answer my texts?” He glanced at the door through which Edward had gone. “He’s not coming out with her so fast. Maybe he can’t find her. Maybe she’s refusing to come out. Maybe she’s not even in there. Maybe she’s gone into hiding.”
“She’s working, Chris. I know this for fact. She’s with a client.”
“But she takes breaks. That’s when she texts me back, only she’s not doing it now. What was so bad aboutPeople? It didn’t say anything new, but suddenly she’s gone apocalyptic on me.”
I had to smile. “Apocalyptic? I don’t think so.”
“Know what my problem is?” he asked and, before I could say the narcissism of being fifteen, answered. “Being fifteen. If I was eighteen, I’d run away, I mean, like, just disappear. I could do it now—there are a bazillionkids who run away from home every day. Only I don’t have the guts. I’m pathetic.”
Taking his shoulders, I gave a shake. “You are not pathetic, Chris. The fact that you say it—the fact that you’ve said all of what you just have, says something about the kind of adult you’ll grow to be.”
“But I’m serious, Maggie,” he warned. His brown eyes were suddenly large. “I am not kidding about this. I need to be in a different place where no one knows me.”
I was shaking my head before he’d finished. “Won’t help.”
“How do you know?”
“I know.”
“How? Your life is sweet. You don’t have psychologists trying to trip you up or government lawyers trying to lock you up or reporters trying to make you into a monster.”
His description so fit! “But I did,” I heard myself say.
He called my bluff. “When?”
I hadn’t thought this through, clearly hadn’t. Or maybe my subconscious had. Maybe my subconscious knew that the truth was out for Nina, possibly for Joyce, certainly for Jay, not to mention for other people who had seen the article on Edward, people who had seen us together at Town Meeting and wondered why I had come to Devon with no past.
Chris Emory, age fifteen and unlikely confessor, wouldn’t be wondering any of that. He was too into himself. If I told him the truth, it would be all on me. If I told him, he would tell his friends, who would tell their friends, who would tell their parents.
I wasn’t ready for that.
But if what I’d made of my life was a tapestry, the unraveling had already begun, and through no fault of my own. Maybe I needed to take control. Maybe I needed it now tobemy fault.
Taking responsibility is a step toward redemption—and, okay, my mother had been talking about a serial killer then, but what the hell.
“When?”Chris demanded.
“Five years ago,” I said flatly. “I caused a car crash in which two people died. It was a high-profile case—lots of press, lots of speculation. I didn’t go to prison, but I’ve been on probation. My probation officer monitors everything I do. So I know what you’re feeling, Chris. I had the psychologists and the government lawyers and the reporters crawling all over me, too.”
His jaw had gone slack. It was a minute before he closed his mouth.
“I didn’t know,” he said, finally sounding contrite. “Mom never said.”
