The Word of a Child (17 page)

"You'll be late," her mother called.

She shoved her binder and books into her pack. "I'm
going!"

"Tracy! Wear a coat, for heaven's sake!" Mom said,
when she saw Tracy heading for the door.

"I'm not cold." Tracy took satisfaction in
slamming the door behind her.

She walked the ten blocks to the middle school really fast,
goose bumps on her arms. Coats were a hassle; there wasn't really room in the
locker, and she always ended up losing them.

"Tracy!" Jen waved, her expression awed. Clumps of
kids turned to stare.

She sauntered. "Hey."

"Are you all right?" Her supposed friends clustered.
"We've been so worried! Everybody said…"

"Why haven't you called?" Summer asked. Like
she'd
bothered
to call.

"Did you know that Mr. Tanner has been fired?"
somebody else asked. "Or suspended, or something."

"I knew you'd be so glad," Jen finished.

"I heard," Tracy said with a shrug. "Listen,
I've got to go to my locker."

She escaped, but not for long.

"Tracy!" Rachel hugged her, and everybody else on
the staircase closed in on her, just the same as outside. "You're back.
Everybody has missed you
so
much."

Tracy
felt
weird, like she was having an out-of-body experience. She answered, sounding
cool, like nothing had happened, but it was as if the real her was floating
above looking down.

None of her friends really cared, she thought. She saw the avid
curiosity in their eyes, felt the whispers that started behind her when she
moved on.

Her first period teacher acted all concerned, but her eyes
had that same look. It was creepy.

Ms. Stavig was different. She smiled when she saw Tracy, strolled down the aisle between desks and briefly laid a hand on Tracy's shoulder
before circling the room again, still talking about the scene they were going
to read today. She gave Tracy a good part, one where she was mad, which helped.
She had a reason to yell. Afterward, she felt drained and a little more
peaceful.

But the weirdness rejoined her outside the door of Ms.
Stavig's classroom. She had Computers next, and it was all she could do to go
in the room. A stranger, a woman, looked puzzled at the sight of her.

"I've been absent," Tracy said.

"Oh. Of course." She started explaining what they
were doing, and Tracy was able to sink behind a computer monitor and pretend
she was practicing her keyboarding.

Had Mr. Tanner really been fired because of her? Would they
do that without any, well, proof? Tracy tapped at the keyboard, thinking
furiously. That policeman hadn't been back to talk to her for days. He had
sounded as if he wasn't happy with her story.

Her stomach knotted and she felt sick. Panic prickled on her
skin immediately. Maybe she was pregnant, even if they had given her something
they said would keep it from happening. Did it always work? What if she was the
one person it didn't work for?

She stared blindly at the computer monitor. If Mr. Tanner
was only suspended, he would be back. She couldn't come to class if he was
here! They wouldn't try to make her, would they? She absolutely could not face
him.

Tracy
heard
herself gasping for air and wondered distantly why nobody had noticed.

What if they really had fired him, and he didn't come back?
Would he be able to get a job somewhere else, like Mom did when she was fired?
Or was it different for a teacher? What if he could never get a job again, and
it was all because of what she'd told them?

Her shaking hands dropped from the keyboard and she balled
them in her lap.

"Tracy?" the substitute said kindly, stopping
beside her. "Are you having problems? I know you must be rusty…"

"I feel sick. I have to go to the bathroom." Tracy leaped to her feet and bolted.

In the bathroom she tried to throw up, but couldn't. It was
quiet in here. She crouched in front of the toilet and rested her forehead on
her crossed arms.

She should never have told Ms. Stavig. She shouldn't have
told anybody anything. She should have waited until the end of the month to
find out if she was pregnant, and then if she wasn't she could have pretended
it had never happened. She should never, never, never have started this.

Dropping to her knees, her tears wetting her arms, Tracy felt ten years older than she had a week ago.

How could she ever take back what she'd said, when she
couldn't tell the truth?

Eventually, feeling gray and weak and almost numb, Tracy washed her face without looking in the mirror at the person she hated, and went back
to class.

Chapter
8

«
^
»

W
hen Mariah laid the
gentle hand on Tracy's shoulder, she'd seen the tears spring
into the seventh-grader's eyes. The sight unsettled Mariah for the rest of the
day. Tracy hadn't cried when she told the story in the first place. Was the
investigation itself increasing her trauma? Or was something else going on?
Were kids being mean? Surely not the teachers! Or was poor Tracy simply feeling
… fragile?

After her last class, Mariah gathered the papers her
eighth-graders had written about
Farewell
to Manzanar
and stowed them in her tote.
She should be planning for tomorrow, when she would be starting new units in
two of her classes. Instead she glanced over her nearly bare desk, even though
she wasn't really looking for anything.

Lockers were still clanging in the hall, voices calling to
friends, feet thudding on the ancient floor. She wouldn't have noticed a
footfall, but out of the corner of her eye she saw someone fill the doorway.
With a sense of inevitability, Mariah looked up to see Detective Connor McLean
walk in and close the door behind him.

Her eyebrows rose at his assumption that she wanted, or at
least was willing, to be closeted with him.

"Yes?" she said, with a hint of tartness.

"I need help," he said bluntly, standing just
inside the door.

Her heart skittered, a peculiar sensation that left her
breathless.
Why him?
she begged, but got no answer. "In what way?"

He sighed and walked toward her, not a handsome man, but one
possessing a quality of powerful masculinity expressed without swaggers. She
couldn't imagine him picking a fight, even shouting. He didn't have to. His
control was so complete, it alone was intimidating. Banked fires, she thought,
burned hotter than those that leaped for the sky.

He said, "I'm hoping you'll talk to Tracy again."

"You mean, encourage her to talk to me," Mariah
said slowly. "And then tell you what she says."

"She's not going to open up to me."

Mariah clasped her hands on her desk. "Did it ever
occur to you that she's telling the truth?"

"Yeah, it occurred to me. Maybe she is." Those
brawny shoulders moved. "I just think there's something she
isn't
telling."

"Don't you have a female officer on your force who
could talk to her?"

He stopped in front of her desk, four square and
unavoidable. "She knows you. Trusts you."

Emotions tangled, Mariah said, "I don't want to betray
her."

"How can settling this be a betrayal?"

"I don't know!" She shot to her feet and walked to
the windows, partly to escape him. A packed yellow bus lumbered onto the
street, cars crowded the curb as parents picked up kids, walkers dawdled on the
lawn to flirt while others dodged traffic to hurry away from the hated school.

She felt him behind her, so close she was afraid to take a
deep breath.

"'The truth will set you free,'" he murmured.

What if she knew the truth about Simon and Lily Thalberg?
Would she be free of this burden of guilt whatever the answer? Or would the
knowledge of Simon's innocence increase the load a hundred-fold?

"All right," she said abruptly. "But I'll
tell her that it's not confidential, that you've asked me to talk to her."

To his credit, he didn't hesitate. "Thank you."

"I take it you're getting nowhere."

"The high school kid who came to the dance didn't rape
her."

Mariah swung around, stepping back at the same time so that
she bumped the windowsill. He hadn't been as close as she'd imagined, but still
she felt … crowded.

"What about the mother's boyfriends?"

He appeared relaxed but watchful. "There isn't one
right now."

"But there was a couple of weeks ago."

"If he raped Tracy, why didn't she accuse him?" he
asked patiently.

Mariah hugged herself. "I don't know."

He must be wondering why she was so perturbed. Lines
furrowed his brow. "Do you still think I'm out to railroad Tanner?"

Mariah heaved a sigh. "No. I think … you're fair."

He didn't move. "Was I fair to your husband?"

The tangle of emotions seemed to be tightening into a solid
knot. "I don't know. Maybe."

"Think," he said quietly, "about why you left
him."

"Because I couldn't be sure…" Her voice shook.
"For Zofie's sake…"

"I've investigated a lot of complaints like the one
against your husband." He sounded thoughtful, a man musing aloud about a subject
that had perplexed him. "Almost always, the wives back their husbands one
hundred percent. Did you know that? Even when the son of a bitch has had every
one of their daughters, night in and night out, the mothers deny that their
husbands are guilty."

Her fingers bit into her upper arms. "Why are you
telling me this?" Mariah whispered. "Don't you know how I already
despise myself for not supporting Simon?"

"Yeah," he said. "I've gathered that."

"'The truth will set you free,'" she quoted
bitterly. "But what if I never know the truth?"

"I think you already do." His voice was soft,
lethal. "Or at least, the truth that counts to you. Here's my question,
Mariah Stavig. Why
didn't
you trust your husband?"

She stared. Her mouth opened, but nothing came out.

Because you scared me. Because I always want everything in
words, everything laid out, nothing unspoken. Because I'm not a loyal wife.

How many times had she asked herself the same question? How
many times had she answered it, always in terms of herself, her own doubts and
inadequacies.

She had always begun with the immutable fact that Simon was
her husband. He deserved her support and faith. She had never turned the
question on its side and asked,
Did I
not trust him, not love him, even before I heard Detective McLean say those
terrible words?

Of course their marriage hadn't been perfect. Was any? But
to believe something so dreadful…

"You're saying … that I
knew…?"
She
trembled between shock and anger.

Connor shook his head. "I'm not saying anything. Only
you know why you had reason to doubt him."

Mariah glared at him. "Why did you really come up here
today?"

"To ask you…" He stopped. Swallowed. Rubbed the
back of his neck. "To see you."

The confirmation of what she had guessed rocked her.
"To see me?" Did she have to sound as if that was such an unlikely
possibility?

He gave a painful smile. "I didn't make a big enough
fool of myself the other day?"

"Fool?" She was beginning to feel stupid.