It had been nearly a week since Maggie’s memorial, and things at school were slowly—so achingly slowly—getting back to normal. Sawyer’s suspension had been suspended itself, no one on the administrative board willing to mull over an incident with a dead girl and one who seemed barely alive.
Lunch hours were back to being loud and raucous even if the general murmuring in the halls was peppered with guesses about the autopsy, about what may have really transpired the night Maggie died. Sawyer felt like a zombie most days and slept like the dead most nights—a thick, dreamless sleep that settled over her in heavy waves, making her feel sluggish and tired the mornings after. She wasn’t taking the Trazadone regularly now. Regardless of how much she slept, she still found herself yawning, found herself resting her head on her arms, eyelids desperate for a few more minutes of sleep at any moment.
She still jumped each time the house settled, still felt her stomach do a roller coaster drop every time she spun the combination on her locker. She found herself backing away from crowds at school, bowing out of student events. It wasn’t difficult as word of what happened at Maggie’s memorial had gone viral and Sawyer had reached general social pariah status. She was even starting to avoid Chloe and Cooper, partly because she didn’t have the energy to try to be social or normal, partly because she thought—vaguely—that her distance was possibly the only thing that could protect her two friends.
Sawyer woke up on Thursday morning, still crushed under the weight of sleep, under the pressure of trying to chase every errant thought out of her mind. The newspaper was strewn casually across the kitchen table when she finally trudged downstairs, dressed in dark-washed jeans and a heavy gray hoodie, hair wound in a sloppy, top-of-the-head bun. Her face was freshly washed and free of makeup; the buttery pallor was obvious, as were the heavy purple half-moons underneath her eyes. The ensemble had become her signature look over the past few days. Tara was at the table already, cup of tea steaming, elbows resting in her hands. Sawyer stood in the doorway, worrying her bottom lip.
“Tara?”
Tara looked up slowly, her hair a mess of tangles and snags, her usually healthy-looking pink face a sallow yellow.
“I thought morning sickness was supposed to end in the first trimester.” She rested her forehead on the table. “And in the morning.”
Sawyer smiled, a small bit of guilty relief washing over her. “Well, it is morning—I’m sorry about the multiple trimester thing. How about I make you some dry toast?”
Tara chuckled mirthlessly. “Your father thinks we should name this baby dry toast.”
“I guess it is pretty much the Dodd family cure-all.” Sawyer paused, fingers kneading her palm. “Tara, about the nursery—”
Tara looked up at Sawyer and shook her head. “It’s okay, Sawyer.”
“No, it’s not.”
“You’re right, it isn’t, but I’m willing to look past it if you can assure you me that this is it.”
“It is,” Sawyer said, nodding emphatically.
“I know this has all been a bit rough for you.” She rubbed her palms over her basketball of a stomach. “And fast. But I really do want us all to be a family.”
“Me too,” Sawyer answered, surprised to find that she actually did. She reached for the paper and Tara stopped her, her fingers gentle on Sawyer’s forearm.
“The news isn’t good,” she said, blue eyes wide.
Sawyer reached for the newspaper anyway, her breath hitching in her throat when she saw the blaring headline, saw Maggie’s face smiling at her from the front page. “Teen Suicide Was Murder, Coroner Says.”
“I’m sorry, Sawyer. Your father said you two had been close.”
Sawyer heard Tara speaking to her, vaguely, but everything was muffled. Heat surged through her limbs, closing like hot fingers around her throat. Sawyer gripped the newspaper and willed her eyes to focus, to avoid the innocent smile on Maggie’s face, to read the newsprint underneath.
Seventeen-year-old Hawthorne High School student Maggie Gaines was found dead in her home late Tuesday night from an apparent suicide. The autopsy revealed post mortem ligature marks and fibers in the teen’s throat are consistent with death by asphyxiation.
Sawyer’s stomach went to liquid and scanned the paper, pulling sections apart. “Is this all there is? Don’t they say anything else?”
“What else would you want to know?”
“Well, do they have any suspects? Did anyone come forward or see anything?”
Was there a note?
Tara stood up and pulled a box of Chex from the pantry. “There hasn’t been any more information. I’ve been up since four, and the news report basically says the same thing. Cereal?”