The Pact (27 page)

“Okay,” Michael said after a moment. “Shoot.”

“Did you know that your daughter was suicidal?”

Michael sighed. “Wow. Don't start off soft, do you?” He shook his head. “That's a catch-22, you know. If I tell you that she was suicidal, I'm admitting to something I don't really want to. The thing is, I don't know if I can't believe it because of what it is-you know, suicide with a capital S-or because I'm still in denial.” He bit his lower lip. “But if I tell you that Emily wasn't suicidal, then how do I explain the fact that she's dead?”

Selena waited patiently, fully aware that he hadn't really answered-and that he hadn't blamed Chris. Michael exhaled slowly. “I didn't know she was suicidal,” he said finally. “But I'm not sure if that's because I didn't know what I was supposed to be looking for, or because she wasn't suicidal at all.”

“Did she come freely to you to discuss problems?”

“She could have,” Michael said, leaving Selena to think that she didn't.

“Who else,” she pressed, “would Emily have turned to for support?”

“Melanie, I suppose, more than me.” He smiled ruefully. “It's a girl thing, I guess. Sometimes when she was angry she'd lock herself in a room and paint three or four canvases until she got it all out of her system.” He hesitated, then shook his head.

“What?” Selena urged.

“I was going to say: And of course she'd talk to Chris. But then I decided I shouldn't.”

“It's no secret that your daughter and Chris were involved,” Selena pointed out.

“Involved,” Michael said, turning the word over on his tongue. “You could say that.”

“What would you say?”

He smiled. “They were flip sides of the same coin. There were actually times when the kids were growing up that I forgot Chris wasn't my own son.”

“Sounds like they spent a lot of time together.”

“Inseparable, I think you'd call it.”

“Pretty intense for a high school romance,” Selena observed.

“It wasn't a high school romance,” Michael said. “At least, nobody saw it like that. Nobody would have been surprised to find them getting married after college.”

“You think that's what Emily wanted?”

“Yeah. And Chris. Hell, to be honest, all four of us parents.”

Selena wrote down: Together out of love? Or to live up to their parents' expectations? “It would be very helpful to the defense if you'd grant me access to Emily's bedroom.” A total longshot, but inside, she knew, would be a multitude of clues that might help the defense-photos tucked into a mirror, love notes stored in a jewelry box, pads still imprinted with the curl of Chris's practiced name.

“I couldn't,” Michael said. “Even if I-well, my wife wouldn't understand.” He ran a finger around the rim of the coffee cup. “Melanie, you know, she's seized on this.. . trial. I look at her sometimes, and I wish it was that easy for me, too. I wish I could forget that, oh, six months ago we all were joking about where we'd hold the wedding. I've tried, you know, because of Emily, but I can't seem to throw the past away.”

Selena held her tongue, the time-honored interrogator's trick for getting a subject to keep talking.

“See, I identified Emily's body at the hospital. But the morning before that I had seen Emily at breakfast, running outside when Chris honked in his car to take her to school. I watched him kiss her as she got into the car. And I can't hold the two things together in my head.” Selena studied his face. “Do you think Chris Harte killed your daughter?” “I can't answer that,” Michael said, staring at the table. “If I do, I wouldn't be putting my daughter first. And nobody loved Emily more than me.” He lifted his eyes. “Except, maybe, for Chris.” Selena inclined her head. “Will you speak to me again, Dr. Gold?” Michael smiled, feeling a weight burst free. “I'd like that,” he said.

FOR A MOMENT Melanie STOOD at the doorway of her daughter's bedroom, staring at the thick layer of paint on the six-panel door, which could not completely obliterate the deeply carved warning KEEP OUT.

Emily had been, oh, maybe nine, when she'd scraped the message into the wood with an X-Acto knife, earning her a grounding for defacing the door and another one for taking a dangerous tool from her father's desk drawer. And if Melanie recalled correctly, she'd made Emily paint the door again by herself. But even if the words had been erased, the idea behind it hadn't, and from that day on neither Michael nor Melanie entered the bedroom without knocking first.

Feeling only slightly stupid, Melanie raised her fist to the door and pounded twice, then turned the knob. As far as she knew, Michael had not been coming in here, either. The last people through had been the police, searching for God knew what. Melanie didn't think they'd taken anything, at any rate. The pictures of Chris were still tacked around the dresser mirror, the arms of his swim team sweatshirt still wrapped around the pillow on the bed-Em had said it smelled of him. The book Emily had been reading for English class was cracked open, face down, on the nightstand. A pile of clothing that Melanie had washed and given to Em to put away remained on the edge of the bureau. Sighing, Melanie took the first items of clothing and began to put them back in their respective drawers. Then she stood in the center of the room, turning around, trying to decide what she should do next.

She was not ready to take down all the evidence that Emily had lived here, slept here, breathed here only weeks before. But there were some things in this room that she could no longer stand seeing. Melanie began by plucking the photos of Chris from the edge of the mirror. He loves me, he loves me not, she thought. She collected the pictures into a pile and put them on the bed, then unwrapped Chris's sweatshirt from the pillow and rolled it into a ball. She peeled the tape carefully from a caricature of Emily and Chris that had been stuck to the closet door and added it to the cache on the bed. Then, satisfied, she looked around for something in which to put it all. If Melanie hadn't been reaching for one of the empty shoeboxes in the back of Emily's closet, she never would have noticed that there was a hole in the plaster. But she was down on her hands and knees, groping, when she felt her hand go through the wall.

Thinking of rats and bugs and bats, she was relieved when the only object her fingers closed around was solid and immobile. She withdrew a cloth-bound book which fell open to reveal the familiar, neat loops of Emily's handwriting.

“I didn't know she still kept one,” Melanie murmured. When Em had been younger, she'd had a diary, but it had been years since Melanie had seen her writing in it. Flipping to the last page and then back to the first, she realized that this journal was recent. It went back almost a year and a half. And as far forward as the day before Emily's death.

Feeling decidedly uncomfortable, Melanie began to read. Many of the entries were mundane, but certain sentences leaped out at her:

Sometimes it's like I'm kissing my brother, hut how do 1 tell him that? 1 have to look at Chris's face to figure out what I'm supposed to be feeling, and then I spend the rest of the night wondering why I don't. I had that dream again, the one that makes me feel dirty.

What dream? Melanie skipped back a few pages, and then forward. And before she could find another reference to that dream, she found herself reading about the night her daughter had lost her virginity.

Emily had made love for the first time at the same spot where she was murdered. Melanie read the whole book through, losing track of time. Her hands relaxed, and the journal fluttered to the last page; to the entry made the day Emily had died.

If 1 tell him, he will marry me. It's that simple.

She was talking about the baby. It was clear, even without the specific word on the page. As of the time she'd written this, on November 7, Emily hadn't told Chris she was pregnant. Just as she hadn't told her parents.

Barrie Delaney's whole case against Chris was based on this baby, on the premise that he planned to kill Emily to get rid of it. But how could he get rid of a child he knew nothing about?

Melanie closed the journal, feeling ill. Her mind still trembled with revenge, so full with justice that she did not even notice that in her journal, Emily had not said good-bye.

She gathered the photos of Chris that she'd pulled from the mirror and knotted them in the belly of his sweatshirt. Then she walked downstairs, the book tucked beneath her arm, the sweatshirt clutched in her hand. She went to the formal living room, the one nobody really lived in, which held the house's only fireplace.

They'd used it maybe four times in their whole history of owning the house. With a wood stove in the kitchen, the fireplace seemed extraneous, especially in a room filled with uncomfortable Queen Anne furniture bequeathed from some forgotten relative. Melanie knelt down and scattered the photos across the iron grate, then bunched the sweatshirt on top of it. She retrieved a pack of matches from the kitchen and lit the fire, watching the flames lick at the pictures of Chris before burrowing into the weave of the sweatshirt and erupting in a high blue peak. Then she threw the journal onto the grate, her arms crossed tightly as the binding began to curl and the pages became ash.

“Melanie?”

Coming home from work, Michael's footsteps circuited the house, finally stopping at the small, unused living room. He stared at the fireplace, still smoldering, and then at his wife. “What are you doing?”

Melanie shrugged. “I was cold,” she said.

September 1997

In his right hand, Coach Krull held a banana. In his left hand was a condom.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said dispassionately, “take your marks.” There was a general wave of ripping as the class, grouped in twos, opened their own individual Trojans. Emily had to use her teeth to get the wrapper open. From the next desk over, a boy watched her bite at foil. “Ouch,” he winced.

Heather Burns, a friend of Emily's and her partner for this ridiculous Health Education class, giggled. “He's right,” she whispered. “You're not supposed to use your teeth.” Emily blushed furiously, thanking God for the millionth time that Heather, and not Chris, was her partner. It was bad enough doing this, but doing it with him would be that much more embarrassing. Health Education was mandatory for seniors, although most of them had been rolling their own condoms down actual penises for several years by the time they entered the class. The fact that high school coaches-like Coach Krull of the swim team-served as teachers made it even less palatable. To a letter, all the coaches were fat and male, pushing fifty. Whatever wisdom they could offer to teens regarding sex could only be taken with a grain of salt. In fact the only saving grace of the class was seeing Coach Krull stammer over the word menstruation.

The coach lifted a whistle to his lips and blew, and there was a flurry of caressing hands as thirty condoms were rolled down thirty bananas. Furrowing her brow, trying very hard not to think of Chris, Emily stroked her hand down the yellow skin of the banana and worked out the wrinkles on the condom.

“Hey! My banana broke!” a boy shouted.

Someone else snickered. “That happen to you a lot, McMurray?”

Emily snapped the condom into place at the base of the banana. “Done,” she sighed. Heather leaped to her feet. “We won!” she shrieked.

Everyone else's eyes turned to them. Coach Krull ambled down the aisle and stopped in front of their desks. “Let's see, now. We've got a nice space at the top, like we ought to. And the condom isn't bunched up on one side ... and it fits snugly at the bottom. Ladies,” he said, “my congratulations.”

“Well,” said McMurray, eating his banana, “now we know why Heather Burns.” The class snickered at his joke. “Keep wishing, Joey,” Heather said, tossing her hair. Coach Krull presented Emily and Heather with SKOR candy bars. Emily wondered if that was supposed to be a joke.

“In real life,” Coach Krull said, “putting on a condom isn't a race.” He grinned, adding, “Although it probably feels like one.” He picked up a banana peel from the floor and looped it into the trash can.

“If used correctly-correctly-we know it's the best way barring abstinence to prevent an STD or AIDS,” he said, “but seventy-five-percent effectiveness isn't a great form of birth control. At least not for those twenty-five women out of a hundred who wind up pregnant. So if that's your method of choice, consider a backup plan,”

As Coach Krull talked, Heather unwrapped her candy bar and took a bite. Emily caught her friend's eye and smiled faintly. “Ouch,” she mouthed.

WITH HER HEART POUNDING, Emily locked the door to the bathroom and drew the cardboard box out from beneath her shirt. She rubbed at the spots on her stomach where the sharp edges had dug in and then set the box on the sink counter and stared at it.

Remove test stick from kit. Make sure you read all directions before beginning test. With trembling hands Emily extracted the foil packet. The test kit was a long, narrow piece of plastic with a squared-off swab at the end and two small windows cut out higher up. Hold swab end of stick in urine stream for ten seconds.

Who could pee for ten seconds?

Place test stick in holder and wait for three minutes. You will know the test is working when you see the blue “control” tine appear in the first window. If you see a blue line appear in the second window, no matter how faint, you are pregnant. If there is no blue line in the second window, you are not pregnant.

Emily wiggled down her jeans and sat on the toilet, positioning the stick between her legs. She closed her eyes and tried to go slowly, but counted only to four before her bladder ran dry. Then she took the stick, beads of urine still beaded on the plastic, and set it in the provided plastic spoon rest. Three minutes was a very long time.

She watched the control line appear in the first window, and thought, We were always careful. Then she heard Coach Krull's voice: Seventy-five-percent effectiveness isn't a great form of birth control, at least not for those twenty-five women out of a hundred who wind up pregnant. The second line came thin as a hairline fracture, and carried just as much pain. Emily doubled over, her hand unconsciously curled over her stomach, as she stared up at the packaging of the only test she'd ever wanted to fail.