“Clara doesn’t have a cell phone,” I say.
Ashby’s brows flick up. “You’re telling me a high school girl doesn’t have a mobile phone?”
Officer Liu snorts. But when I look at Liu, she doesn’t say anything, just shakes her head and holds up both hands, a derisive smile settling on her lips.
“We prefer to focus on ourwork,” I say.
“I’m sure,” Ashby says, leaning forward like she wants to come across as reassuring. “Felicity, is Clara Kennedy the type of person who would run off like this? Did she give you any reason to believe she didn’t want to come back to school?”
I shake my head.
“Has she been acting strangely lately?”
Another no.
Liu taps short nails against her ceramic coffee mug. “I have to ask the question: Did Clara have any enemies? Anyone who might want to hurt her?”
The back of my throat has gone bone-dry. I lick my lips and swallow, but it doesn’t help.
“No. Of course not. Everyone loved Clara.”
Loves.I should have used the present tense. The way Liu and Ashby exchange glances suggests I’m not so lucky that they haven’t noticed.
“You were here last year, weren’t you?” Liu says. “When that girl died?”
“Alex Haywood.” I can’t help myself. Alex wasn’tthat girl.
“Alex Haywood,” Liu repeats. “A strange case. I looked it up. A girl falls from a cliff…drowns in the Dalloway lake…then disappears. Never found.”
I feel as if my brain has been clipped free from my body, floating far overhead. I barely feel human at all.
“Yes.”
“You were there. You saw her fall.”
My throat has gone tight; I want to clear it, but I don’t dare make any noise that could seem like discomfort. Or like remorse.
“I was there,” I say. “Alex was my best friend. She fell. It was an accident.”
“An accident.”
“She was drunk.”
“Yes. So you told the police.”
Ashby’s lapel has a tiny mustard stain on it, small enough that I hadn’t noticed at first. Now I want nothing more than to rub at it with a wet dishcloth and wipe it away. I stare until the mark goes blurry.
“Here,” Ashby says, relenting and passing me her handkerchief; I squeeze my eyes shut and dab away the tears. I retain enough presence of mind to be faintly disgusted with myself: these tears are what will buy my safety. No matter what I say, neither Ashby nor Liu will suspect I killed anyone. When they look at me they see my mother’s money and white skin. They don’t see a murderer.
But that’s exactly what I am.
“I don’t know what happened to her,” I whisper. “Maybe she…She could have tried to crawl away for help….Into the woods. And then…”
And then the wooden handle of the shovel was against my palms, splinters catching under skin. I’d stolen the shovel from the janitor’s shed. I couldn’t dig six feet deep—only three, but it was enough.
Her body had looked pale and broken on the dirt when I dragged her out of the lake, less than human, waterlogged and cold. I had been relieved to cover it up—first with soil and then with stones.
I remember thinking it was a sign, that she had died as Cordelia Darling died. That I’d buried her as Margery Lemont had been buried—in the crawl space under Godwin House, built into its stone foundations, where she belonged. I had thought maybe this would be enough to sate Margery’s appetite.
