Little Pretty Things (29 page)

“It wasn’t him,” I said. “He said they never—you know.”

“And you believed him?” she said.

“You didn’t see his face.”

“This was ten years ago. He’s had a lot of time to prepare that reaction.” Courtney’s feet jittered in place some more. “It all hinges on where she was that morning.”

“You’re not a reporter for the school newspaper anymore,” I said. “What’s the point of any of this?”

“This isn’t a story, Juliet. It’s motive,” she said.

“You think a miscarriage she had ten years ago holds the key to her murder,” I said. I had left out one thing, the one thing that would shut down this runaway train—the awful green sweater. I knew who’d gotten Maddy pregnant, and he’d died long before she had.

Courtney turned her attention to me. “Miscarriage,” she said. “Probably not the key. But I think her abortion might be.”

For a moment, I couldn’t find my next breath. The park around me disappeared, and I was in a stuffy hotel room, willing a girl quickly becoming a former friend to stand up and get it together for the sake of both our futures. And then past that, past that to sitting in a cold car watching the side of a long, ominous brick wall, waiting for the single, unmarked door in it to open. So I could forget this place, and get back to my normal life.

Not a pregnancy test. The other one, she’d said. But later—she might have had to come back for more tests, later, and she’d left me home. Or she could have been lying.

Things had been happening to Maddy that I didn’t understand, would never understand.

I went to the bench and sat down heavily.

Courtney was watching me. “Your poker face needs work. OK, let’s try again. Start from the beginning. Tell me about Maddy. I have the feeling a few mileposts may have changed.”

The walk back to my neighborhood was slow and silent. I’d told Courtney everything, even the part about not graduating. Then the green sweater, watching her face grow ashen. I knew what I was saying this time, no question.

Courtney opened her mouth to speak, but said nothing.

“I know,” I said.

“I can’t imagine—”

“I know.” Our feet scuffed at the sidewalk. “But now you see why all that stuff in the past doesn’t matter.”

“It all matters,” Courtney said. “Everything she ever did, everyone she ever knew. It’s all relevant because murder victims usually know their killers.”

“You know what?” I stopped, forcing her to look at me. “I think you have a bias. You want it to be someone here. How else will you get that promotion or a chance to go to the big city?”

She sniffed at me. “That’s fair. I probably do have a bias. I had one about you for a pretty long time.” She narrowed her eyes over my shoulder. “Are all those cars at your house?”

I turned. At first I thought Courtney’s coworkers had come back for another tour through our underwear drawers, that Courtney had pulled me away from home so they could get my mother alone. I wasn’t sure what I was seeing until the cars began to snap into focus, one by one. In the driveway and along the front of our house sat Fitz’s truck, Gretchen’s junker, another car, a newer model I didn’t recognize, and another car I almost did. A parking lot, but in front of my house. “Oh, no.”

I took off running.

At first I heard Courtney behind me, forgetting her rhythm and new stride, then huffing and gasping. Then she was gone, and everything was a blur. I was full tilt winning this race, no trophies ahead of me, no prizes, no ribbons. Only the hard, cold fact of all these people in my house. What had happened in the short time I’d been gone? My mom—

My old dorm room flashed through my memory. That’s where I’d taken the call. That’s where it had all ended. If something happened to my mom now, I would never forget this run, this taste of bile in the back of my throat. I would never forgive Courtney, or Maddy, or anyone.

Up the steps to the door, I fumbled the handle, rattling the door in its frame and stumbling into the room. I took an awkward step, rolling my left ankle and landing on the floor at the feet of my dad’s old chair and Fitz’s cross-trainers.

He leapt up, and so did my mother, Gretchen, Shelly, Vincent, all of them in one room suddenly lunging for me and making surprised and then concerned noises that might have been words if any one of them were speaking above the others. I was so relieved to see my mother that I felt tears spring to my eyes. Fitz pulled me up and helped me hop to the chair while the others gathered around and my mother’s voice finally won out. Of all people.

“Juliet, what in the world?”

“I thought—” I wasn’t sure what I’d thought. I’d been away for an hour and come home to find my empty, silent home overrun. I looked around at them. I still didn’t know what I thought. “What’s going on?”

“It was your idea,” Shelly said, returning to the spot she’d left on the couch. Gretchen perched on the arm of my chair, and leaned in to pat at me maternally. I got an eyeful of her bosom, and so did Vincent. He turned and retreated to the other side of the room.

Courtney opened the door. Her shoe managed to find a corner of the floor mat there, and she tripped into the room, too. Everyone turned to look. She waved them away and leaned on her knees, coughing into the floor.

“Were you being chased?” Vincent said. He went to the window and peered out.

“My idea,” I said. “My idea was to—really? You’re planning Maddy’s funeral? Here?”

“Your mom was generous enough to invite us,” Fitz said.

“We thought it would be quiet here,” Shelly said. She had a pad of paper in front of her, the top page filled with notes. “We’ve made a lot of progress, but we still have a lot to get done. Is there any more coffee, Mrs. Townsend?” She got up and led the way. Gretchen jumped up with her empty mug and followed along. Vincent hesitated, then hurried after them.

Courtney’s coughs were gaining strength. “Mom,” I called. “Can you bring some water for Officer Howard?”

“And an ice pack for Juliet’s ankle, I think, Joan,” Fitz added. He knelt in front of me and took my leg gently up on his knee. My ankle was tender and growing fat.

“Is it—going OK?” I said.

“Looks like you’ve got a sprain,” Fitz said. “Oh, you mean the—yes, I suppose. As well as you can expect. Some people have more ideas about things than they should, given their tenuous relationship with Maddy.”

“Shelly’s good at getting things done,” I said.

Fitz smiled at me. “Your mom is, too.”

Gretchen came into the room with a glass of water. She took in the scene of my ankle, hissing through her teeth. “Seen that before, haven’tcha, Coach?”

She would have known what to call him, if she’d ever come to a single one of Maddy’s meets. Fitz and I glanced at each other.

Courtney gulped at her water, keeping an eye on Gretchen as she returned to the kitchen, brushing past my mother, who brought out a plastic bag filled with ice and wrapped in a dish towel. “Ouch, Juliet, and just when you’d taken up running again.” She handed the pack off to Fitz. He pulled a cushion off the back of the couch and transferred my foot to it. The pack, even through the cloth, was harsh on my hot skin.

“I’ll get you some juice,” she said, turning back to the kitchen.

Fitz rearranged the pillow, higher, and the ice.

“Do you have medical training?” Courtney said.

Fitz didn’t look up. “First aid, a bit. It helps out on the track to have someone who’s ready with the bandages.”

“You seem pretty—familiar.” She glanced at Fitz’s hand on my leg. “With the protocol, I mean.”

“Juliet’s an old pro at rolling an ankle. She’ll be back in no time.”

“What about Coach Trenton?”

Fitz stood up. “What about him?”

“Does he have the same first-aid training?”

“Sure. But Mike’s better suited to motivating the girls,” Fitz said. “I’m just the hired hand. The fetch-and-carry.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Fitz,” I said. “You’re the heart of the team.”

Fitz ducked his head. “Sweet of you to say, Jules, but Mike—well, maybe he was always the brains, then.” He looked down at my ankle and reached to shift the pack again, but stopped. From the kitchen came the sound of the laugh Gretchen reserved for the Mid-Night. Her coffee either had a bit of the Irish, or she’d taken a new shine to the man who would now never be her stepson-in-law. Probably because she still thought of herself as next of kin, with the windfall of Maddy’s estate coming. “I guess I’d take heart over brains, if it came down to it.”

Courtney had spotted a photo of me from my track days across the room and made a beeline for it. “So you don’t make your decisions together? I guess I thought you’d been a team for a long time.”

I reached out and patted Fitz’s arm. He gave me a distracted squeeze back. “More than thirty years.”

“Remind me. Where did you coach before you came to Midway?”

“Small town up north, Minnesota. A high school.”

“A couple of seasons. I remember now. And before that?”

Fitz gave me an uneasy glance. “A college in Washington state.”

“Also a couple of seasons,” Courtney said. She picked the frame off the table. “And before that—another school. A girls’ school. You’ve been at Midway High a long time. It seems to have worked out for you better than the other places you’ve taught. Can I say ‘taught,’ or is ‘coached’ more accurate?”

Fitz drew himself tall. “We always have teaching appointments—we’ve both taught physical education, personal training, health, sex ed—”

Courtney turned on her heel. “What’s that?”

A light blush gained on Fitz’s neck. “Any health topic, really.”

“Could have sworn you said—”

“Sometimes we teach human sexuality courses,” Fitz said. “Not at Midway, but . . . we have.”

“Is it uncomfortable teaching, uh, what are we calling it? Human sexuality. Is it uncomfortable teaching human sexuality to young women?”

I couldn’t see how it could be more uncomfortable than this conversation. “Courtney, lighten up,” I said, at the same time Fitz answered.

“Yes,” he said.

Courtney shrugged, set down her glass. She got out her phone and thumbed through messages. “Sorry. The job. You should know that Juliet coached me today. Taught me a few things.”

A few things about running as well as a few things about Maddy. I couldn’t look at Fitz. He’d be heartbroken when he found out about Maddy’s pregnancy. He might even be angry that an appointment at some shady, blank building had been what kept us from running the race of all our lives.

And then it occurred to me.

He already knew.

I’d been a kid at the time, but Fitz was a grown-up, someone who’d taught human physiology. Maybe he and Coach had known the whole time what Maddy was going through. The panic over tampons and maxi pads. The resignation that neither of us would race.

“You knew,” I said. “Didn’t you?”

Fitz looked between Courtney and me, his features traveling the distance from confusion to stricken. “Knew what?”

“You knew Maddy was—that she was—” I lowered my voice. “What was happening that morning at state. You would have recognized it, even if I didn’t.”

He eyed Courtney.

“Oh, I know all about it,” she said, waving her phone and then returning to it. “Don’t worry about me.”

Fitz paced toward the door, paused to look outside so that I wondered if he would simply leave. He grated his palms against one another and stalked back. “I wasn’t sure at first,” he said. “Mike said—but I knew that boyfriend was no good for her.”

Courtney waved her phone again, at me.

“The boyfriend claims they never . . . slept together.” I struggled to believe I was using these words, having this conversation. This was still Fitz. Fitz was almost a parent to me, to Maddy. He may have taught sex ed at some snowbound private school for girls, but I’d certainly never had this conversation with him. The closest we’d ever come to talking about sex was the night Maddy was killed, and he and Coach had suggested Maddy’s dad had molested her.

I’d been hiding that fact for so long, I’d forgotten the source. I blinked at him, not wanting to repeat Coach’s accusation to him. I didn’t want to say the words, not again.

“We trust what the boyfriend says?” Fitz said, turning to Courtney. “Of course they slept together—you should have seen how possessive he was, how he hung around all the time. It was all Mike could do to get her to run. Who else could it have been—”

A shutter came down on Fitz’s face. He remembered the conversation now:
sexualized
, but not by an age-appropriate boyfriend. By her own father.

In the kitchen, Gretchen’s laugh was a bray. He turned toward it, and then away. “Tell your mother,” he said, backing toward the door. “That I—whatever they want. Whatever they decide is fine by me.”

Courtney stood up and followed behind, but the screen door smacked closed in her face. “What was that?” she said to me.

“That was Fitz remembering he’d left the iron on.” I sat back to await my juice. We hadn’t had juice in the house in a long time.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

I received juice. And a Danish. And fresh strawberries, cut into bite-size chunks. Courtney declined to stay and helped herself to the door instead, thumbing at her phone and distracted in her farewell. The other guests left shortly afterward with a few
tut-tut
s over my ankle from Gretchen. Vincent hesitated near the door, then finally let himself out. I held the plate on my elevated leg as my mother stood over me, fussing with the ice pack. This was more doting than I’d seen since my childhood, more fresh food than had been stocked in our house in weeks.