His face twitches. “Few years ago. I’ve been keeping an eye on him since then.”
“Has he gotten into any trouble since he came home?”
“No,” he admits.
“And he won’t, either.”
Unless I ask him to.
Heath scans my face. “You sure about that?”
“Yes, I am.”
“I’m not, Minnow.” He closes his eyes, summons a deep breath. Holds it.
Four teen girls sprint past, long hair swishing down their suntanned backs. They charge the water, shrieking.
We’re still dancing around the obvious, but it’s there under the surface. Heavy. Loud.
“I remember…” I begin, faltering for a moment. “I remember the day they told us Trav wouldn’t be coming back to school,” I finally continue. “Nobody knew why.” I pause. “But I did.”
“Police sealed the file,” he says quietly.
“Lucky for him.”
“And you.”
I feel Heath fix his eyes on me, and I wait for him to speak. Wait for him to ask about Amy. He hesitates, the question caught behind his teeth. I take a breath, shallow and tight, as his words come slower than I expected. Careful. “Can I ask you something?”
Everything feels louder, the crash of the waves, the cries of the seagulls, my heartbeat.
“Do you know why Trav…” He pauses, staring at him like he wants to blow his lifeguard whistle. “Why he hurt Amy like that?”
“No.”
He looks at me, eyebrows lowering like he doesn’t believe me but wants to. He might think he needs the truth, but I’m not sure he’s ready to carry it. So I lie again. “I don’t know why. I wasn’t there, Heath.”
A jogger rushes past, steady and focused, headphones on. We watch until his footsteps are swallowed by the tide. I wait, silently hopeful that my brother has nothing else to say.
But he does.
“That journalist.” He clears his throat. “The one that was asking around here last week…”
“What about him?”
“You know him?”
I shrug. “Mighta run into him in Melbourne. Why?”
There it is again. The squaring of his shoulders, the stillness, the tightening of his jaw. “Miss McKenzie…remember her? Your fifth-grade teacher, yours and Trav’s?”
I remember her. I see her paused at the blackboard as the cop comes charging in. The cop’s voice was flat, gruff. We couldn’t hear what he said, but I knew.
There’s been an accident. One of your students.
She scans the empty seat, the one between Trav and me. It was where Amy Anderson sat, happily sandwiched between us for most of the year. Until she wasn’t happy at all. A week before the stabbing, she’d asked to be moved to the front row. As far away from us as she could get. Today that seat was empty, too.
Amy. Is she okay?
