“Even social media? Games?”
She lifted a hand only enough for a noncommittal wave.
Computers were part of my life. I used them at the Spa for recordkeeping, and used my home laptop for research on new products, cyber-shopping, and keeping up with my mother. I used a tablet for reading, sometimes in the middle of the night, when I woke fighting to breathe and needed a diversion. My phone was linked with my other devices, and I had done the linking myself. I could troubleshoot any one of them. But hacking? I had no clue how that worked.
“Does he belong to a club at school?” I asked. “A programming club or something?”
“It’s a class.”
“A class, with lots of kids? Then maybe they’ve mixed him up with someone else? Maybe with another student? Who’s to say one ofthemdidn’t hack intohiscomputer.”
She looked at me then. “And go after our clients? Why would one of his friends do that? They have no connection to the Spa.”
“But they know you work there,” I said. “Maybe one of them has a crush on you. Chris emails you, right?”
“Texts. Kids don’t email.”
“He’s never done it?”
“Maybe once or twice.”
“So your email address is on his computer, and your email connects to the Spa. It’d be easy enough for his friends to get it. He must be onlinewith them every night.” I made it into a question, but wasn’t sure Grace knew the answer. Her work schedule was demanding. Between her loyal following and the fact that she was one of the few massage therapists willing to work evenings, she was heavily booked, which meant Chris was often alone. I had asked her about it once; she said she had taught him how to cook, how to text her, how to call 911.
She didn’t reply now, simply stared at the windshield. At the next standstill, I studied her. Jay had warned her against speaking, but I was remembering what my own lawyer had taught me prior to my first court hearing.Dress simply, Mackenzie. Modest clothes, low heels, light makeup. Court people are plain people, so you need to downplay style.Having been at work, where scrubs were required, Grace conformed in every regard but her hair. As beautiful as those curls were, they caught the eye, which wasn’t a good thing right now. Had I been in her shoes, I’d have put an elastic around them.
Grace did the opposite, finger-combing them fuller and forward to hide her face, and I totally understood. The closer we got to the police station, the more the congestion and the longer the standstills. Cars were pulling over and parking on both sides of the street. Likewise, media vans with satellite dishes. Some had the call letters of Vermont stations, but a few spoke of national brands—nationalbrands. It made no sense. But I saw the logos. Their presence made the situation even more alarming.
Hide, my instinct for self-preservation cried, and it was all I could do not to pull my own hair free of pins and use it as a shield.
But Grace couldn’t hide. Her son was on the other side of the press.“How can they be here so soon?”she cried.
I didn’t know. But if I had been uneasy before, I was beside myself now. There were three things I religiously avoided in life—law offices, police stations, and the press—and here they all were.
I gripped the steering wheel tightly, thinking only about dropping Grace off and getting the hell away. She might be hidden under all those curls, but I felt way too visible. Edward had known me. I was the one hehad nodded to, not Grace. If he had so easily seen through the makeup and bangs, the press would, too. Oh sure, I had nothing to run from. My case was over and done—well, done except for these last few months of probation. My fear was irrational. But that didn’t mean it wasn’t real.
The police station was a mile from where the three roads met in the center of Devon. It consisted of a low set of buildings strung along the southernmost blocks of South Main, and was built of square stones the color of unbleached linen, with wide stone steps leading to a black double door. The Town Hall was directly across the street, built of the same local stone but with ivory pillars, black shutters, and nine front steps to the police station’s three.
Desperate to be done with it, I drove through the parking lot and right up to the station’s entrance. As onrushers merged on the steps, their numbers seemed to swell. I heard Grace breathe,Oh God, though the thought might have been mine. Frantic, I checked in my rearview mirror and saw Jay rubbernecking for a place to park. Finally, he just pulled up beside me.
I rolled down my window and spoke before he could. Call me a coward, but there was nothing more I could do for Grace.
“I shouldn’t be here,” I told him straight off. “Grace is going to get in your car now. You’ll take her inside.” I turned to Grace. “Jay can help you. I’ll only be in the way.”
I don’t know what I’d have said had she argued. Mercifully, she simply swallowed, pulled up her fur-edged hood, opened the door and rushed around the front of my truck to Jay’s car. If the vultures saw her, they didn’t yet know who she was.
They had certainly known me once. The Massachusetts Attorney General made sure of it. My crime, while unintentional and tragic, was personal for her. Her father had been crippled several years earlier when his car was hit by a person who was texting, and while the state legislature subsequently made texting-while-driving illegal, the penalty was a fine so small as to be no deterrent at all. The AG was incensed—and she was right. I’m the first to say that. A slap on the wrist accomplishes nothing.So she continued to make noise, louder each time a new car came on the market that offered enhanced access to technology.
Then I showed up, lost in a densely wooded area and—stupid, stupid,stupid—taking my eyes from the road to look at my navigation screen and missing aSTOPsign just as a van sped through. That driver and my daughter were killed. It didn’t matter that he hit us or that forensics showed him going faster than the limit. I was the only survivor.
Seizing on the case, the AG strong-armed a bill through the state legislature banning interactive technology from functioning in a moving car. Granted, auto manufacturers sought injunctions and have since won years to implement changes, but the legal maneuvers took the case viral. The Massachusetts AG had called it the Mackenzie Cooper Law, and the name stuck. As if the horror of losing my only child wasn’t enough, I became the poster child for distracted driving.
And the press? Ate. It. Up. For weeks, the media was parked outside our door, crowding in every time I left home, intruding on our misery with telephoto lenses, even at our daughter’s funeral.
I deserved it. I deserved every bit of the punishment. Still, here, now, the memory threatened to close up my throat.
“Text me,” I managed to call, but to Grace or Jay? I was too desperate to escape to care which. Shifting gears, I paused only to make sure that none of those converging on the police station were anywhere near the front of my truck, before leaving the horror behind.
3
