She thought about getting a dog.
The day after she talked to Christian’s father at Feverview Dwellings, she wrote her official Swithin board resignation. After the board received it, several members called to ask what on earth had come over her. They all acted so meticulously neutral. They feigned puzzlement when Sylvie told them she wanted to do other things for a while. Travel. Volunteer. Go back to school. She played her part, politely not impugning any of them, not saying, I know you wanted me to do exactly this. You can’t fool me. Only Martha tipped her hand—Is this because of that boy’s death, Sylvie? We knew that would blow over. We knew you and your son weren’t involved. Was someone saying he was? Who would say something like that?
A week later, Sylvie was walking around her favorite gardening store, staring at the violets in their paper tubs, the fledgling trees held up by posts, the soft, massive bags of soil stacked in the corner. Someone tugged her arm. It was a Swithin teacher, though Sylvie couldn’t place her. “Angela Curtis,” the woman reminded her. “I teach art.”
Angela had been part of the committee that was supposed to meet with Scott. Supposed. “I guess you know he didn’t show up,” Angela said, shrugging. “It was a moot point by then, of course, since the medical examiner had turned in her report that day.”
“The autopsy came back?” Sylvie exclaimed. No one had told her.
Angela pressed her hand to her mouth, surprised that Sylvie didn’t know. She probably didn’t know Sylvie had resigned from the board, either. “You should probably talk to Michael Tayson about this.” She backpedaled and rushed away.
In the end Sylvie didn’t need to ask anyone about the autopsy; the results came out in the newspaper the following day, splashed across the front page of the local section. Another MRSA infection claims private school boy, fifteen. There was Christian’s school picture with his joker green hair. And the caption underneath: “Deadly Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus bacteria, or MRSA, infect more than 90,000 Americans each year.”
The bacteria could be carried by healthy people, said the article, living in their skin or in their noses. The coroner guessed that the bacteria had entered an open wound on Christian’s skin and traveled into the bloodstream, lodging in his lungs. There were sores on his stomach, the coroner said, which was most likely the entry point. This kind of infection was common in sports teams, especially when they shared equipment and mats that weren’t regularly washed. The article mentioned the health department and the Swithin school board. There was a quote from Geoff, vowing that the board hadn’t been aware of this tragic oversight and that the school was now doing everything possible to prevent further MRSA outbreaks. The school would be closed for two days while a commercial cleaning service came in and scoured the place from top to bottom.
Sylvie stared at the article for a long time. According to what both the story and Angela said, the autopsy results had been released the day of Scott’s meeting. That was the day of Geoff’s party, too. The day Tayson had cornered her and accused her and told her that she should make it go away. And yet, they’d kept it from her. They’d let her think what she wanted to think, for if she knew the truth, she would never have sought out Warren Givens. Perhaps Tayson had hoped that Sylvie was so terrified Mr. Givens was going to point fingers at Scott, she would blindly hand him a check. All the while, Mr. Givens, who was aware of the autopsy results full well by then, would assume that Sylvie, the chairman of the board, was compensating him for the MRSA infection Christian had contracted at Swithin, that the money was reparation for his loss. Maybe Tayson had thought Sylvie would just thrust a check at Mr. Givens, too mortified to get into details. Well, he was almost right—she practically had done that. She certainly hadn’t wanted to rehash the accusations, which meant Mr. Givens would have had no opportunity to explain where she had it wrong.
It had almost happened that way. Tayson had almost tricked both of them.
“You could sue,” Charles said to her when she explained what had happened. “They manipulated you. You could oust Tayson and get your job back.”