Authors: Shelley Bates
Kyle Edgar came into the kitchen in sweat-drenched soccer togs, muddy to the knees and, from the look in his eye as he zeroed
in on the cake, starving hungry.
“Hey, you.” Janice kissed one damp temple as he swiped the last piece of cake without bothering with a plate.
“Hey, Mom.” He did a double take as he realized there was more to this room than his mom and food. “Oh. Mrs. Hale. Hi.” He
looked from one woman to the other, and Laurie could practically see his neurons rearranging themselves into defensive position
with this new information.
Moms have been talking. What do they know?
Laurie took a sip of tea while she arranged the words in a way that might encourage him to be straight with her. “I was just
asking your mom about what you might have seen that night at the bridge, now that we know Anna was there, too. Maybe you can
help me out with some details, okay?” She glanced at his long legs and filthy clothes. “Or maybe you’d rather take a shower
first?”
“Uh—”
“It’s okay, Kyle,” Janice said. “Mrs. Hale and I need to help each other through this the way you and Anna are probably standing
by each other. We need to get all the details out in the open so we can move on to happier things, like inviting Anna over
once in a while. After your grounding is finished.”
The wariness faded from his eyes and mouth. Under the mud and the adolescent angles of his face was the potential of a fine-looking
young man who would hopefully learn from this experience and maybe even make the kind of date Laurie would approve of once
Anna turned fifteen.
“I’ll be back in ten,” he said, and they heard the thump of his feet on the stairs as he took them two at a time.
“He’s a nice kid,” Laurie commented. “You’ve done a good job with him.”
“Clearly not, if he thinks it’s okay to lie to get what he wants.” Janice put her mug down and sighed. “Other than bars on
the windows, I’m having a hard time coming up with a punishment I can actually enforce.”
“Look at it this way. If Anna’s out of commission—and once Colin takes that trellis down, she will be—he’s got no reason to
sneak out.”
Janice brightened. “True. Now if we can just get them to grow a spine so they can talk to each other at school, they won’t
feel so oppressed.”
With a snort, Laurie said, “Don’t hold your breath. I’ve discovered that Anna’s just not the kind to walk up to the A-list
girls and tell them to back away from her boyfriend.”
Janice would have replied, but Kyle jogged back into the kitchen. Laurie wondered if he’d actually gotten wet—but he must
have, because he was clean and changed. “Any more of that cake?”
“Afraid not. I ate your second piece,” Laurie said without much remorse.
“That’s okay.” He snagged an apple out of the bowl on the counter and inhaled it in a couple of bites.
“So, about Anna,” Janice said over the crunching.
Laurie spoke up. “From what we can gather, there was a commotion on the bridge and somebody pushed Randi over the rail, whether
accidentally or on purpose, we don’t know. All we know is that you and Anna were under the trees talking, and when she heard
the splash, Anna ran under the bridge. But she says she doesn’t remember anything after that. We’re hoping you can fill us
in.”
Kyle shrugged and reached for another apple. “I don’t know. I didn’t go under there.”
So much for protecting the girl you wanted to date from possible danger. “Why not?”
He bit into the second apple and chewed, thinking. “Mrs. Hale, if you’d have been there, you’d have seen a bunch of girls
screaming and crying up on that bridge, having a mass breakdown. Anna’s got a brain, and compared to her, these girls were
totally losing it. If anybody needed someone with a level head, it was them, not her.”
Laurie said nothing.
So you let my daughter go into the dark under that bridge by herself, where for all you knew there was a homeless serial killer
living in a cardboard box, to try to see if Randi was still alive? You chose instead to help a bunch of girls who were perfectly
safe?
Never mind. Focus.
“Then what? Who was the one who did the pushing?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t see it, and I couldn’t get any of them to make any sense. At least I got them off the bridge, and
when a couple of the guys from the team showed up at the Stop-N-Go, I asked them to make sure they got home.”
Janice glanced at Laurie. “The entire ninth grade, apparently, is out on the streets at night. Maybe it’s not just you and
I who are clueless.”
“Not everybody,” Kyle said a little defensively. “Just a few of us. The point is, the guys took the girls home, and then I
went back down to see if I could find Anna.”
“And did you?” his mother asked.
“Yeah. She was standing there in that mud where the grass breaks and goes into the water.”
“Standing in the mud?” Laurie repeated incredulously. “In November?”
“I think she was in shock. She was just standing there, looking at the water, like she thought Randi was going to swim up
to her.”
“She never surfaced?” his mother asked.
“Not while we were there. So I kind of shook her arm and she came out of it and I walked her home. Then I rode back here.”
“That’s it?” Janice asked. He nodded. “And you didn’t see who pushed Randi over? This is really important, Kyle.”
“I didn’t, Mom, honest. Up until we heard the splash, Anna and I were talking and not paying attention.”
“That can’t be right,” Laurie said. “This thing about her standing in the water. I’d have noticed muddy socks in the laundry,
or damp shoes the next day.”
Here was a way out, and Laurie latched on to it fiercely. She could not bear to live like this—examining every sentence that
came out of Anna’s mouth, looking, as Janice had said yesterday, for corroborating evidence before she accepted even the simplest
words as truth.
If it wasn’t Anna telling these lies, then she was going to make sure everyone knew about it. How long could her relationship
with Anna survive otherwise? Once trust was lost, it would be a long, hard road back, like reeling in a boat that had already
left the dock. It might take years—teenage years that would be difficult enough if their relationship was loving and steady.
Laurie couldn’t face those years if they were going to become a steadily widening chasm of rejection and distrust and guilt.
She knew perfectly well what waited on the other side: Anna going off on her own to find people who accepted her. Maybe she’d
attach herself to another family. Or worse, to friends who would lead her away from God and into drugs, alcohol, and unwanted
pregnancy.
Oh, Lord.
Deep inside, her heart cried like a child to heaven.
Please don’t let that happen. Please help me find a way to get through this.
“I surprise myself with the things I don’t notice.” Janice’s lips twisted wryly. “She could have rinsed her socks out, or
stashed the shoes in the closet until they dried.”
“But Anna says she ran
away
from the bridge, not under it.”
“She went under it,” Kyle said. “The river path goes under there and keeps going on the other side.”
“But Kyle, no one but you has said anything about her standing in the water. And there’s no proof she did.”
“What are you saying, Laurie?” Janice’s eyes had narrowed slightly. “Are you saying Kyle isn’t telling the truth?”
Laurie pushed at her plate, then picked it up and carried it to the sink. Both Janice and Kyle stayed at the table, watching
her. She needed to walk circumspectly here. Both these people could do Anna a lot of damage if they chose.
And wasn’t that a horrible way to think about a woman in her own Bible study group, whom she’d prayed with countless times?
“No, of course not,” she said carefully. “I’m just a little uncertain about what it means if Kyle is the only one saying this.”
“I was the only one there,” he pointed out. “The others had already left.”
“But Anna says she didn’t go under the bridge, and I choose to believe her.”
Kyle shrugged. “That’s up to you. I just know what I saw. And it’s no big deal. There wasn’t anything under there anyway.”
“Then why bring it up, Kyle?” Laurie wanted to know. “Why tell anyone about it? Did you tell Deputy Tremore?”
“I said she ran under the bridge. I didn’t say anything about her standing in the water.”
“Good. Because without another witness, it’s your word against hers. And I know whose word I want to believe.”
“Laurie, you’re sounding a little combative. I’m not sure I like you using that tone with my son.” Janice’s voice was very
quiet.
Laurie felt as though her breath was backing up in her lungs, as though she couldn’t breathe deeply enough to get more oxygen.
Was this what a panic attack felt like?
“I feel combative,” she said.
Breathe in. Out. Calm down.
“I feel angry and scared, and I don’t know who to believe.”
“You can believe Kyle.”
“No, I can’t.”
“I’m telling you how it was, Mrs. Hale.”
“Are you?” Laurie looked him in the eye. “Or are you just saying whatever will take the pressure off you? You’re the mayor’s
son, right? Whatever you do reflects on your dad, so it’s natural you’d want to protect him. Even at someone else’s expense.”
“Laurie, I think you’ve said enough.” Janice’s voice had lost its calmness and taken on an edge. “Kyle, please go do your
homework.”
“No kidding,” Kyle said under his breath and left, keeping to the far side of the room as though he expected Laurie to lunge
at him if he got too close.
Janice’s face was white as she stood, gripping the back of the chair. “That was uncalled for. I think you owe Kyle and me
an apology.”
Fear kept Laurie’s spine straight. “Maybe. But I’m going to wait on that until I find out who’s telling the truth.”
“In which case, I think you should leave now.”
“Fine.” Laurie grabbed her handbag and walked to the front door, where Janice handed her her coat. But when Laurie tried to
take it, she hung on.
“I’m sorry you feel you can’t believe my son, Laurie. But you have to believe me when I say I’m having a difficult time with
this, too. The word of one kid against another.” She released the coat, and Laurie shrugged it on without a reply. “I don’t
want it standing between us at Bible study.”
Laurie opened the door and looked over her shoulder at the woman she’d almost begun to like. “That would be up to you,” she
said and closed the door behind her.
Less than a mile down the road, Laurie pulled the van over to the grassy shoulder and bent over, her forehead against the
top of the wheel. She gripped it with both hands as though it were a life preserver while a wave of fear and pain and uncertainty
washed through her body.
She’d told herself she couldn’t, and yet she’d gone and alienated Janice anyway. But how could she have said anything else?
Her only priority was Anna. It just didn’t seem possible that nobody knew who had pushed Randi over. And when you’d dispensed
with the impossible, all that was left was the improbable . . . or the not so improbable, which was that someone was lying.
The evidence pointed both ways. Maybe she’d been unjust to Kyle. But she was already feeling so guilty and frightened about
Anna that she had no emotion left over for him.
When her cell phone twittered, it took two rings just to gulp the pain out of her throat, and another to see that it was Nick.
Maybe he had something concrete to tell her. “Hi.” The word came out in a raspy whisper, and she tried again. “Hi, Nick.”
“You don’t sound so good.”
“I’m not feeling so good.” She didn’t explain. “What’s up?”
“Not much. Gil just called. It’s my day off, so he’s been grilling teenagers all day.”
Hope expanded in her chest, and she found she could take a breath. “And?”
“I can’t tell you the details, but suffice to say that we’re back at square one.”
She slumped in the driver’s seat. “Nobody knows who pushed Randi over? Nick, that’s impossible. All those girls on that bridge
have to know.”
“You know it and I know it, but getting someone to say it is a whole different ball of worms.”
“Wax.”
“I dunno. It feels pretty wormy to me. Everybody wriggling out of the way as fast as they can. Everybody telling a different
story, pointing fingers here and there. Nobody’s story matches up where it should. I swear, if there’s a collective unconscious,
maybe there’s a collective amnesia, too.”
She didn’t want to hear about the fingers pointing at one another. “Or a collective lie.”
“We’re going to have to bring a couple of them down to the station and lean on them. Maybe that will shake a fact or two loose.
But that’s not why I called.”
“It’s not?” Laurie couldn’t imagine any other reason for Nick to be talking with her right now. “What’s going on?”
“I was calling about Thanksgiving.”
She hadn’t given a single thought to it, and it was six days away. “Nick, please don’t tell me they’ve scheduled you to work
on Thursday. I was really counting on all of us being a family. Anna needs to see you as her cousin again, not as a cop.”
“No, no, it’s not that. I have enough seniority now so that the rookies have to work major holidays. Gil and I are working
this in tandem so neither of us gets too burned out.”
She exhaled. “That’s good. You’ve missed enough Christmases and Fourth of July weekends.”
“I was wondering if I could bring a guest.”
A guest? A woman? At any other time she would have been keenly interested, but now it just seemed as though a guest who wasn’t
family, who couldn’t understand their troubles, was an intrusion she couldn’t face.
But neither could she turn this person away. Hospitality was a gift extended from one Christian to another—or in this case,
from one Christian to whoever came to the door. “Of course you can. We’re putting another leaf in the table anyway. Mind me
asking who it is?”
“Tanya.”
Tanya? She only knew one Tanya. And it couldn’t be that one. “Who?”