“Fantastic,” I say heavily, collapsing into a chair. I pick up a stray quarter and spin it into a silvery blur across the kitchen table. “I pitched great, but nobody cares.”
“Now, now.” She sits across from me with her toast and offers me a slice, but I push it back toward her. “Give it time. Do you remember what I told you in the hospital?” I shake my head. “Things’ll get worse before they get better. Well, they surely did get worse, and now there’s nowhere to go but up.” She takes a bite and I keep spinning the quarter until she swallows. “You should bring that boy of yours by sometime for dinner, Cooper. It’s about time we met him.”
I try to picture my father making conversation with Kris over chicken casserole. “Pop would hate that.”
“Well, he’ll have to get used to it, won’t he?”
Before I can answer her, my phone buzzes with a text from a number I don’t recognize. It’s Bronwyn. I got your number from Addy. Can I call you?
Sure.
My phone rings within seconds. “Hi, Cooper. You’ve heard about Nate?”
“Yeah.” I’m not sure what else to say, but Bronwyn doesn’t give me a chance.
“I’m trying to set up a meeting with Nate’s mom and Eli Kleinfelter from Until Proven. I’m hoping he’ll take Nate’s case. I was wondering, did you get a chance to ask Luis’s brother about that red Camaro from the parking lot accident?”
“Luis called him last week about it. He was gonna look into it, but I haven’t heard back yet.”
“Would you mind checking in with him?” Bronwyn asks.
I hesitate. Even though I haven’t processed everything yet, there’s this little ball of relief growing inside me. Because yesterday I was the police’s number one guy. And today I’m not. I’d be lying if I said it didn’t feel good.
But this is Nate. Who’s not a friend, exactly. Or at all, I guess. But he’s not nothing.
“Yeah, okay,” I tell Bronwyn.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Bronwyn
Sunday, November 4, 10:00 a.m.
We’re quite the crew at the Until Proven offices Sunday morning: me, Mrs. Macauley, and my mom. Who was willing to let me go, but not unsupervised.
The small, sparsely furnished space is overflowing, with each desk holding at least two people. Everyone’s either talking urgently on the phone or pounding away on a computer. Sometimes both. “Busy for a Sunday,” I comment as Eli leads us into a tiny room crammed with a small table and chairs.
Eli’s hair seems to have grown three inches since he was on Mikhail Powers Investigates, all of it upward. He runs a hand through the mad scientist curls and sends them even higher. “Is it Sunday already?”
There aren’t enough chairs, so I sit on the floor. “Sorry,” Eli says. “We can make this quick. First off, Mrs. Macauley, I’m sorry about your son’s arrest. I understand he’s been remanded to a juvenile detention center instead of an adult facility, which is good news. As I told Bronwyn, there’s not much I can do given my current workload. But if you’re willing to share whatever information you have, I’ll do what I can to provide suggestions and maybe a referral.”
Mrs. Macauley looks exhausted, but like she’s made an effort to dress up a little in navy pants and a lumpy gray cardigan. My own mother is her usual effortless chic in leggings, tall boots, a cashmere sweater-coat, and a subtly patterned infinity scarf. The two of them couldn’t be more different, and Mrs. Macauley tugs at the frayed hem of her sweater as though she knows it.
“Well. Here’s what I’ve been told,” she says. “The school received a call that Nate had drugs in his locker—”
“From whom?” Eli asks, scribbling on a yellow notepad.
“They wouldn’t say. I think it was anonymous. But they went ahead and removed his lock Friday after school to check. They didn’t find any drugs. But they did find a bag with Simon’s water bottle and EpiPen. And all the EpiPens from the nurse’s office that went missing the day he died.” I run my fingers along the rough fiber of the rug, thinking of all the times Addy’s been questioned about those pens. Cooper, too. They’ve been hanging over our heads for weeks. There’s no way, even if Nate were actually guilty of something, that he’d be dumb enough to leave them sitting in his locker.
“Ah.” Eli’s voice comes out like a sigh, but his head stays bent over his legal pad.
“So the police got involved, and they got a warrant to search the house Saturday morning,” Mrs. Macauley continues. “And they found a computer in Nate’s closet with this … journal, I guess they’re calling it. All those Tumblr posts that have been popping up everywhere since Simon died.”
I raise my eyes and catch my mother staring at me, a kind of disturbed pity crawling across her face. I hold her gaze and shake my head. I don’t believe any of it.
“Ah,” Eli says again. This time he does look up, but his face remains calm and neutral. “Any fingerprints?”
“No,” Mrs. Macauley says, and I exhale quietly.
“What does Nate say about all this?” Eli asks.
“That he has no idea how any of these things got into his locker or the house,” Mrs. Macauley says.
“Okay,” Eli says. “And Nate’s locker hadn’t been searched before this?”
“I don’t know,” Mrs. Macauley admits, and Eli looks at me.
“It was,” I recall. “Nate says he was searched the first day they questioned us. His locker and his house. The police came with dogs and everything, looking for drugs. They didn’t find any,” I add hastily, with a sideways glance at my mother before I turn back to Eli. “But nobody found Simon’s things or a computer then.”
“Is your house typically locked?” Eli asks Mrs. Macauley.
“It’s never locked,” she replies. “I don’t think the door even has a lock anymore.”
“Huh,” Eli mutters, scribbling on his pad again.
“There’s something else,” Mrs. Macauley says, and her voice wavers. “The district attorney wants Nate moved to a regular prison. They’re saying he’s too dangerous to be in a juvenile center.”
A chasm cracks open in my chest as Eli sits bolt upright. It’s the first time he’s dropped his impartial lawyer mask and shown some emotion, and the horror on his face terrifies me. “Oh no. No, no, no. That would be a fucking disaster. Excuse my language. What’s his lawyer doing to stop that?”
“We haven’t met him yet.” Mrs. Macauley sounds near tears. “Someone’s been appointed, but they haven’t been in touch.”
Eli drops his pen with a frustrated grunt. “Possession of Simon’s things isn’t great. Not great at all. People have been convicted on less. But the way they got this evidence … I don’t like it. Anonymous tips, things that weren’t there before conveniently showing up now. In places that aren’t hard to access. Combination locks are easy to pick. And if the DA’s talking about sending Nate to federal prison at age seventeen … any lawyer worth a damn should be blocking the hell out of that.” He rubs a hand across his face and scowls at me. “Damn it, Bronwyn. This is your fault.”
Everything Eli’s been saying has been making me more and more sick, except this. Now I’m just confused. “What did I do?” I protest.
“You brought this case to my attention and now I have to take it. And I do not have time. But whatever. That’s assuming you’re open to a change in counsel, Mrs. Macauley?”
Oh, thank God. The relief surging through me makes me limp and almost dizzy. Mrs. Macauley nods vigorously, and Eli sighs.
“I can help,” I say eagerly. “We’ve been looking into—” I’m about to tell Eli about the red Camaro, but he holds his hand out with a forbidding expression.
“Stop right there, Bronwyn. If I’m going to represent Nate, I can’t speak with other represented people in this case. It could get me disbarred and put you at risk of implication. In fact, I need you and your mother to leave so I can work out some details with Mrs. Macauley.”
“But …” I look helplessly at my mother, who’s nodding and getting to her feet, securing her handbag over her shoulder with an air of finality.