The Secret Between Us (29 page)

Her mother sighed, seeming resigned. “The outcome won’t change if we wait, and the longer we do, the harder it will be.” She stroked Grace’s hair. “I’m sorry, sweetie. I didn’t realize the effect my lie would have on you.”

“I won’t try to shoplift again,” Grace promised. “That was really dumb of me. Like, I didn’t even want the shoes.”

“You did. Just not enough to steal them.” Deborah tucked a long curl behind Grace’s ear. “I try to protect you, but there are limits. That’s one of the things I’ve learned from this. I can say you did nothing wrong driving that night. The state investigators can say the same thing. But what happened is part of you now. You need to own it.”

Chapter 23

Deborah was having second thoughts of her own by the time they left the house Monday morning. The drive into town was too short and every face at the police station too familiar. She was feeling totally awkward. When John closed the door to his office, there was some relief, but it lasted only until the chief lowered himself to the chair behind his desk and sat frowning at the papers there.

Deborah cleared her throat. “I need to correct something on the crash report I filed,” she began.

But John had his own confession. Without looking up, he said, “A funny thing happened last week. I drove Ellen home from school, only she’d forgotten to have me stop at the market on the way, for salad or whatever for dinner. We agreed she’d go back there herself, so I got out of the car. She walked around and got in my side and leaned forward to adjust the seat.” He raised troubled eyes to Deborah. “Seeing her do that, I remembered the night of the accident when I asked you for your registration. You slid in behind the wheel, but you had to adjust the seat.”

Yes, Deborah would have done that. Grace’s legs were still shorter than hers.

Grace was one step ahead. “You
knew
?” she asked John in a half whisper.

“No. I didn’t question it at the time. Your mother had to reach across to the glove box. It would have been natural for her to want more room for that.” He shifted a paper or two around on his desk. “Then things started going wrong for you, Grace—school, track—and I knew it could be guilt. I also knew it could be nothin’ more than a reaction to the accident. But when the D.A. started talking cover-up, I had to take a close look at my part of the investigation.”

Deborah held her breath. She guessed that Grace was doing the same, because Greg was the one who had to ask, “What did you find?”

“Holes,” John said. “Actually, only one. But it was gaping.” He turned to Deborah. “I never asked if you were driving. I assumed you were. We all knew you. We knew you were a good driver. We just assumed…” His voice trailed off.

Deborah finished the thought. “You assumed I’d tell you if Grace had been the one at the wheel.”

“No. It wasn’t your job to tell. It was my job to ask, and I didn’t do that. Yes, I assumed. Would I have assumed if it had been someone else? Someone I didn’t know? Probably not. So maybe the widow was right. Maybe I did give you a free ride because I know you so well.”

Impatiently, Greg said, “But isn’t that what it’s
supposed
to be like when you live in a small town? You know everyone. You trust everyone.”

“I abused that trust,” Deborah broke in, but turned at the bold sound of Grace’s voice.

“I was drinking,” she said, staring at John.

John recoiled. “Were you. That I didn’t know.”

“Neither did my mom, so don’t get mad at her. The accident was all my fault. I had two cans of beer.”

He was a minute taking it in. “I thought you were studying.”

Grace was silent. Deborah knew she didn’t want to implicate her friends.

“Were you debilitated?” he asked.

“You mean, like drunk? No. But if I hadn’t had anything, I might have seen Mr. McKenna.”

“Grace,” Deborah begged, because they had been through this so many times, “
I
didn’t see him and I had
nothing
to drink.”

“Don’t condone it, Deborah,” Greg warned.

“I’m not condoning it,” she reasoned. “I’d never condone it. She’s underage. She shouldn’t have been drinking, period. But that isn’t what caused the accident.”

John was looking at Grace. “When your mother came to pick you up, did it occur to you not to drive?”

“No. I felt fine. But if I’d been drinking, my judgment about how I felt would have been warped. Wouldn’t it?”

“You tell me.”

She said an unhappy, “Yes.”

“And you couldn’t tell your mom you’d been drinking, not even after Mr. McKenna died?”

“
Especially
not then. I mean, she already knew I was the one driving, so I’d gotten us in enough trouble. Adding the thing about the beer would have made it worse. She would have been
really
upset.”

“When did you finally tell her?”

Grace shrank into herself. “Thursday. In the alley by the bakery, after I tried to swipe those Pradas. That was the first time she knew.”

John thought about that, then turned to Deborah. “The night of the accident, when Grace got in the car to drive, did you see anything different about her?”

“Absolutely not,” Deborah said. “She seemed in control. I was amazed at how calm she was driving in that storm. In hindsight, maybe the beer gave her false confidence. But I couldn’t fault the way she drove. Nor did the state police,” she reminded him.

John leaned back, brows knitted. From the outer offices came muted sounds of business—the scrape of a chair, an indistinct voice, the ring of a phone. Here, all was silent.

Deborah felt suspended. In his unprepossessing way, John Colby wielded huge power.

Finally, he looked up. Clearing his throat, he focused on Grace. “What are your thoughts here?”

Grace seemed unprepared for the question. She was a minute searching, then said, “I’m scared.”

“About what?”

“Knowing Mr. McKenna’s dead. Living with it for the rest of my life. It doesn’t matter what anyone says about my driving, I’ll always wonder.”

“You weren’t drinking alone.”

“I was the one who hit a man.”

“But your friends were drinking, too.”

“And, see, that terrifies me. Now you know, and they’ll hate me for that.”

“Sounds like it’s already pretty bad for you at school.”

Grace nodded.

“What’ll make it end?”

Her eyes welled. “I don’t know.”

John grew quiet. After a minute, he asked, “Do you feel like you need punishment? Is that what the shoplifting was about?”

Grace hung her head. “I guess. It’s like I’ve done all these bad things and gotten away with them, and maybe there are some kids who can do that and still sleep at night. But I can’t.” She looked up. “I lie awake thinking about it. I keep wondering who knows.”

“So you’re here today because you can’t live with the fear of being caught?”

“No. It’s not that.” She seemed to struggle. “Well, maybe a little. It’s that what I did was wrong. It doesn’t make me feel good about myself. It doesn’t make me feel like I can
be
someone someday.”

Proud despite the circumstances, Deborah wanted to reach for Grace’s hand, but resisted. Grace needed to do this on her own.

John sat staring at his desk while their lives hung in the balance, the only sounds muted ones from the outer office. Finally, he looked from Deborah to Greg. “This is one of those times when I wish we still had stocks.” He glanced at Grace. “Know what those are?”

Pale, she nodded. “Like in
The Scarlet Letter.
”

“We could set you up on Main Street for a morning and be done with it. Very simple. Very effective. Nowadays, things are more complex.” Again, he looked at Deborah and Greg. “Too complex for an instant opinion. I think I need to talk with the D.A.”

Deborah was thinking that they couldn’t wait, that they
did
need an instant opinion, and that involving the D.A. would only prolong the agony—when there was a knock at the door. It opened only enough for John to see someone and rise. “Be right back,” he said on his way out, closing the door after him.

Deborah did take Grace’s hand then. It was icy. She rubbed it between both of hers.

“What’ll he
do
?” the girl asked.

Deborah looked at Greg, who shrugged with his hands.

“Going to the D.A. will be bad, won’t it?” Grace asked.

Greg came forward and touched her shoulder. “It may not be. It could be as simple as John thinking of the civil suit. If the D.A. is part of any decision now, charges of a cover-up become null and void.”

The problem, Deborah knew, was that if the D.A. was involved, a joint decision might be tougher, precisely to avoid the smell of a cover-up. Greg knew this. She could see it in the look he gave her.

In the ensuing silence, there were more muted voices from without. This time, above that, Deborah heard the ticking of the large clock on John’s wall. The seconds seemed endless. She was about to scream, when the door finally opened.

John closed it and stood for a minute. He was holding some papers and seemed startled. “Well,” he finally said. “That’s something.” He rubbed his neck, then looked at them. “It seems Cal did write a note.”

Deborah glanced quickly at Grace, then back to John. “A suicide note?”

Nodding, he handed her a sheet of typing paper, loosely folded in thirds. He stood nearby, arms folded over the swell of his middle. One hand still held the envelope.

Deborah unfolded the paper and, heart pounding, read what was inside. As suicide notes went, it was neither eloquent nor enlightening, in many ways as cryptic as the man himself.
By the time you get this, I’ll be gone. I’m sorry. I just can’t do it anymore. For every good minute there are five bad ones. I’m tired.
It was written in the same precise script that Deborah had seen on Grace’s history papers.

Feeling a swell of emotion—overwhelming relief, pervasive sadness, amazement at the timing—she handed the note to Grace, who read it with Greg over her shoulder.

“How did you get this?” Deborah asked John.

“Tom McKenna just brought it. He got it this morning, forwarded from a P.O. box in Seattle.” He passed her the envelope.

“It’s addressed to Tom.”

“Yes. Postmarked the morning after the accident. Cal must have put it in the mail slot shortly before he went running in the rain.”

“But Tom lives here,” Deborah pointed out. “Why would Cal have mailed this to Seattle, rather than directly to Tom?”

“I asked Tom that. He says it’s how Cal’s mind would work. He knew Tom’d get it, since he’d be the one collecting his effects.”

Greg took the letter from Grace. He straightened and reread it while a wide-eyed Grace asked Deborah, “What does this mean?”

Deborah deferred to John.

“It means,” he said gently, “that you can’t blame yourself for what happened. Calvin McKenna deliberately ran in front of your car.”

“
Knowing
it was us?” Grace asked in alarm.

“I doubt it. He just needed a car, and yours was the one that came by.”

“But people are hit by cars all the time, and they don’t die. How did he know he would?”

“He was on Coumadin,” Deborah said. “He figured he would just bleed to death.”

“That’s
horrible,
” the girl cried.

“Suicide is.”

John took the note from Greg. “Let me bring this back out. We have to make a copy. Tom wants to take the original back to show Cal’s widow.”

“Tom’s still here?” Deborah asked.

John nodded and left. Deborah followed. She spotted Tom standing by the front door of the station. A lone figure, his back was ramrod straight, his eyes dark and filled with pain.

“I’m so sorry,” she whispered when she was close enough not to be heard by the others. She wanted to touch him but didn’t dare.

His voice was low and tight, his mouth barely moved. “What in the hell possessed him to do that?”

It struck Deborah that he was furious. “Mail it to Seattle?”

“Throw himself in front of a
car.
Didn’t he know that whoever was driving that car would suffer? You could have gone into a tree and died, too. And yeah, why did he send the note to Seattle? If he’d sent it straight to me, we’d have known this ten days ago. He was a selfish bastard.”

“He was in pain.”

“So he sends me that note that explains nothing at all, and now I have to tell his wife?” He took a short, angry breath. “Y’know, maybe he’d have found meaning in life if he’d been able to get over self-pity long enough to see the
good
stuff that he had.”

Deborah did touch his arm then. She couldn’t not do it, perhaps the same way she couldn’t not have driven to see him Saturday. “He’s gone, Tom. The best we can do is to hope that he’s in a better place.”

Focusing on her, Tom softened. “You didn’t deserve what he did.”

“It wasn’t personal. My car just happened to be there.”

“And you can forgive his using you?”

“I can. You will, too.” When he looked doubtful, she gave his arm a tiny shake. “You will, Tom. First, you have to grieve.”

“Here you go,” John said, coming up from behind and handing Tom the envelope with the letter refolded inside.

Deborah took her hand from Tom’s arm. John gave no indication of having seen it, simply turned and headed back to his office.

“Gotta go,” Deborah whispered. “Can we talk later?”

Tom stuck his hands in his pockets. “Are you sure you want to after this?”

She scolded him with a look. “You could have burned the letter.”

“No. I couldn’t have done that. Not to you.”

She felt the words deeply, along with a dire need to tell him all he didn’t know about the accident, but this wasn’t the time or place. “When’ll you be home?” she asked softly.

“One or two, I guess.”