“Damn it! Damn, damn, damn!” Jake turned around to see Detective Zwerling, standing alone under the canopy among the crowd of families. The TV klieglights reflected off the cigarette smoke that wreathed him, reducing him to a blurry silhouette.
Jake didn’t see Slater in the crowd, but he couldn’t wait any longer. His plan was blown, and he needed damage control. Detective Zwerling would be wondering what he was doing. Pam’s car was parked nearby, and he walked to it casually, while he scrolled to the text function on his phone and texted Pam:
I’m at ur car. Take Ryan out back door. Cops out front. Talk to no one! BE CAREFUL!
Chapter Forty-four
“Ryan, how are you doing?” Jake asked, as soon as Sabrina had gotten out of the car and closed the door behind her. Pam reversed slowly out of the driveway, stalling until Sabrina got inside her house safely, but Jake was really worried about Ryan. The ride had been mostly silent, with Pam keeping her eyes on the road, Sabrina texting with her friends, and Ryan looking out the window, plugged into his white earbuds.
Ryan didn’t answer, so Jake twisted around in his seat to see if he was texting. He still wasn’t, oddly. He had pulled his hoodie on and seemed almost immobile, except for the jostling of the car as it bobbled over the Belgian blocks that marked the end of Sabrina’s driveway. His iPhone sat ignored in his lap, and his face remained turned to the window, though there was nothing he hadn’t seen before, only older stone Tudor homes that lined Baird Road, in the exclusive Chase Run neighborhood that served as the model for their development.
“Ryan? You okay?” Jake asked again.
“Let it go,” Pam snapped, then her lips resealed shut.
“I want to know how he’s doing.” Jake kept his tone soft.
“How the hell do you think he’s doing? Does he have to spell it out?”
“Fine,” Jake said after a moment, then faced front in the passenger seat. He didn’t want to bug Ryan, and Pam had been looking daggers at him from the moment she met him at her car. He didn’t have to ask why. The memorial service must have been awful for them both. He hadn’t had a chance to explain why he’d texted her because the kids had been there. He’d have to fill her in when they were alone, assuming she wasn’t leaving him.
Just my luck.
Jake tried to shoo his father’s voice from his head, but he wasn’t succeeding. He turned his face to the window in the silent car, idly watching the beautiful homes passing darkly. Warm, golden light shone from within, through iron lattice on arched windows, illuminating spacious family rooms behind tall leafy oak trees. It was a clear night and the moon was almost full, a jagged hole shot through a black sky, glimmering on the SUVs below.
Pam seemed to accelerate, driving faster than usual through the winding streets, and Jake reached instinctively for the hanger strap, as if it could tether him to the world he knew and loved. He could lose his wife tonight, and his son was too upset to talk to him. His family was slipping through his very fingers and the only thing in his hand was a fake plastic strap.
He couldn’t remember when he had felt this low, and the answer was never. Not even when he’d lost his job, because he still had Pam and Ryan. All he had lost then was money, but he still had a family and that was everything, at the end of the day. It struck him then that he really wasn’t like his father, after all. Because his father had always had his family, but no money, and thought that was nothing. But Jake knew better. He had seen it from both sides, and he knew what he was losing. Everything.
Jake flashed on Detective Zwerling and felt a new bolt of fear. He would need to get ahold of Hubbard and get some advice right away. He didn’t know what to expect from the police or how to react, and he couldn’t afford to slip up and arouse suspicion that would up the ante on an investigation. He would have to explain to Pam about the BMW and his suspicions about Slater, as well as how he had blown it when he had a chance to catch the driver.
Jake, Pam, and Ryan made it home, got out of the car, walked to the house and unlocked the door, still without saying a word to each other. They piled into the entrance hall, a tense and sorrowful threesome, tossing jackets and purses onto the chair beside the console table. Only Moose was his usual happy self, trotting from the kitchen to greet them, smiling with his tongue lolling out of his mouth and wagging his feathery tail.
“Ryan, you all right?” Jake tried again, but Ryan lumbered past him to the stairwell, his head still covered by the hoodie and his ears plugged with the earbuds.
Pam interjected, “Jake, please, let me talk to him—”
“Honey, I can talk to my own son. You can’t be my proxy, remember?” Jake hurried up the stairway after Ryan. Moose joined the chase, delighted at the new game, his toenails clicking on the hardwood stairs.
“I don’t want to talk.” Ryan kept walking upstairs. “I want to be alone.”
Pam hurried up after Jake. “Jake, stop, you’re going about it all wrong.”
Jake ignored her. “Ryan, unplug those things from your ears. Please, let’s—”
“No.” Ryan kept going, and Jake caught up with him, placing a hand on his shoulder as they both reached the landing.
“Ryan, I know you feel bad—”
“Dad, stop, you don’t know.” Ryan whirled around, yanking the earbuds from his ears. “I’m not blaming you and I’m not mad at you, that’s why I don’t want to talk right now. But I can promise you one thing for sure—that you do not know how I feel, either of you.”
Jake’s heart broke at the anguish on Ryan’s face, but there was a new tone in his voice, stronger.
Pam reached the top of the stairs, her fair skin flushed with emotion. “Ryan, please, just listen—”
“No, Mom. I was the one who killed her, not Dad and not you.” Ryan stabbed his finger into his chest with conviction. “I was the one everybody was hating on tonight, the one who took her from her friends, from Janine Mae and the rest of the team. And from her computer teacher and her mom, and her dad, and they both loved her so much they were in this big custody fight over her—”
Pam moaned. “Ryan, I know, but I’m worried about you—”
“Mom, it’s not about me. It’s about her. You want me to be happy, but can Kathleen? Can she? She’s not going to prom or the meet against Methacton. She won’t be going to college. She won’t even see the gym bags she wanted so bad. It’s not about me, in the end. I’m alive. She’s not. She’s dead, and I killed her.”
“But not on purpose—” Pam started to say, but Ryan cut her off with a hand chop.
“What difference does that make, Mom? Did you see her picture on the stage? And the one in the program? I killed that girl. So I want to feel horrible, I deserve to feel horrible. That’s fair, right? Me feeling horrible forever, because she’s dead forever.” Ryan paused, dry-eyed, seeming to gather strength from his own words. He backed toward the door of his bedroom, and Moose trotted beside him, his tail still wagging merrily. “You always tell me to take responsibility for my actions, and I am. I’m trying to. I can’t do it in public without Dad going to jail, but I can do it privately. So don’t freak out because I’m not happy. I’m not supposed to be happy. I’m supposed to feel exactly how I feel. It’s the least I can do. For her.”
Jake felt frightened. He had never seen Ryan this way, determined to self-destruct.
Pam sagged against the banister, stricken. “But Ryan, Caleb’s mom said that you were saying something about dying, that sometimes you felt so bad that you wanted to die.”
Jake turned to Ryan, horrified. “Is that true? Did you say that?”
“Of course.” Ryan almost smiled. “Of course. Honestly, I wish I were dead, not her. I wish I could give up my life for hers, right now. Maybe I can. Maybe I will. Nobody gets away with murder. Nobody.”
Pam gasped. “Ryan, no. It wasn’t murder—”
Ryan snorted. “How is it different, Mom? I’m not talking about some stupid legal definition. She’s dead, and I killed her. I deserve to die. I wish I were dead.”