Vivvie thinks her father murdered the chief justice of the Supreme Court. There was no amount of processing that could make something like that sink in.
“I know it sounds crazy,” Vivvie told me haltingly. “Believe me, I know. And it’s not like I have the world’s most stellar track record for teenage sanity—freshman year, dark time, there may have been some Prozac involved. But this . . .” She bit her bottom lip. “I would give anything for this to all be in my head.”
I could barely keep up with the words as they tumbled out of her mouth.
“I asked him about it,” Vivvie continued. She thought her father was a murderer, and she’d asked him about it? “He grabbed me. And he shook me, and he told me that if I really believed what I was saying, then maybe I needed professional help.”
He’d threatened her. Told her she was crazy. But what he hadn’t done was taken her to see a doctor. He’d let her stay home from school. Alone.
Those weren’t the actions of a concerned father.
“I heard him, Tess. Whenever he has to give a speech, he practices. In front of the mirror. Every word, every pause, every emotion.”
I thought of the press release. Major Bharani hadn’t been reading a script. He’d looked straight at the camera. He’d been authoritative, calm.
“I heard him practicing.” Vivvie forced herself to breathe, forced her voice to stay low. “The shower was running. I wasn’t supposed to be there. I’d left for school, but I circled back to ask him something—I don’t even remember what. I was getting ready to call out, and that was when I heard him.” She held my gaze, her brown eyes steady. “Practicing.”
Practicing what? I was afraid that if I said those words out loud—if I said anything—she might stop talking.
“ ‘It is with great sadness,’ ” Vivvie whispered, “ ‘that I inform you that Chief Justice Theodore Marquette died on the table a little over an hour ago.’ ”
I recognized the beginning of the statement Dr. Bharani had issued at the press conference.
“He practiced his statement,” I said, not quite seeing where she was going.
“Tess, he practiced it that morning.” Vivvie’s voice caught in her throat. “Justice Marquette died that afternoon.”
I processed what Vivvie was saying. Her father had prepared a speech announcing the justice’s death from unforeseen complications with surgery before the surgery had ever taken place.
“That’s not all.” Vivvie started walking again. I strode to catch up with her. Midday, the neighborhood was nearly empty. On the opposite sidewalk, there was a woman walking a dog. Vivvie kept her voice low enough that I had to struggle to hear her.
“I stayed home sick the next day. I’d convinced myself that I’d misheard, or misunderstood, but then I heard my dad talking on the phone, which was weird, because his phone was on the kitchen counter. He wasn’t on the landline, either.”
Vivvie was babbling now, and I had to fight to find the meaning in her words.
“I think it might have been a disposable. Why would my dad have a disposable cell phone?”
My mouth felt dry. “Who was he talking to?”
“I couldn’t make out most of what he was saying.” Vivvie’s voice was very small. “All I heard . . .” She swallowed. “He was reading a number.”
“Like a phone number?”
Vivvie shook her head. “Like an account number.”
The president’s doctor knew that Justice Marquette was going to die. He had a speech prepared. And the day after the justice’s death, that doctor was on a disposable cell phone giving an account number to whoever was on the other end.
“We have to tell someone,” I told Vivvie. “The police, my sister, I don’t even know, but—”
“We can’t, Tess.” Vivvie reached out to grab my arm. “I can’t. I know it looks bad.” That was an understatement. “But, Tess, he’s my dad.”
Vivvie had to have known, when she’d told me this, that I couldn’t just turn around and pretend that nothing had happened.
“You said you were a miracle worker,” Vivvie whispered, weaving her fingers together and holding them clasped in front of her body. “I want a miracle.”
I couldn’t go back and change what she’d heard. I couldn’t wave a magic wand and alter the facts. “What do you want me to do, Vivvie?”
She was quiet for several seconds. “I want proof,” she said finally. “Not just suspicions, not just something I overheard. I want to be wrong. But if I’m not . . .”
She didn’t want it to be her word against his. She didn’t want to be the one to tear her family apart at the seams.
“Proof?” I repeated. “What kind of proof?”
Vivvie toyed with the bottom of her shirt. “If I can get you the phone,” she said, “can you figure out who he was talking to?”
That was so far outside my skillset I didn’t even know where I would start. “I can try.”
Vivvie blew out a long breath, then nodded. “Okay,” she whispered. Then she turned and started walking back toward her house.