22
PERRI’S DINNER WITH Mike had not gone well. She was distracted by Maggie’s news that Liv Danger had somehow accessed her computer, and Mike was trying to be more than a friend, more than a boss. She could see it in his smile, his tender solicitude, an unsettling hope in his gaze. At the car she was afraid he would try and kiss her and she couldn’t handle that right now. But he only walked her to her car, thanked her for a nice time at dinner, and told her he’d see her tomorrow.
Her phone vibrated. She’d set her mobile Faceplace app to alert her if there was a posting from Liv Danger. She pulled out the phone.
The new posting read, LOOK IN DAVID’S ROOM FOR THE ANSWER YOU SEEK.
She felt faint. Was this person already coming into her house to use the computer or to plant evidence in David’s room? Or while she had been out at dinner with Mike?
Maybe Liv Danger was in her home right now.
She drove straight home. The lights she’d left on downstairs and upstairs were aglow. She parked and walked across to a neighbor’s house. She told her neighbor, John, that she was worried someone had gotten into the house. He agreed to walk in with her and search the rooms to make sure they were empty. The house was fine; no intruders. She thanked him and he left. In the backyard she found the spare key. She pocketed it.
Look in David’s room.
Fine, Liv Danger, I will.
Perri started with David’s desk. She found a handful of flash drives, a couple with tiny labels of symbols: books for homework, a treble clef for music. She remembered he was always losing these when he used them for backup for his schoolwork. She slid an unlabeled one into the port but it was blank. So were the others. She tried the music one. It was locked with a password. She always kept her passwords on sticky notes in her desk drawer, but there were no notes in the drawer. She tried the school one. There were folders for math, English, entrepreneurship, physics. She opened each folder, feeling a bit foolish. Nothing suspicious jumped out at her. It was all assignments and notes he felt important enough to back up onto this drive. He had been writing a paper on John Milton; had notes for calculus, along with links to study guides (math was his least favorite subject); in government he’d been working on a paper about James Madison; in entrepreneurship he had what looked like a first-draft business proposal for a video-game company, with a placeholder for the company name of D+J DESIGN.
She went through the other drawers. A stack of sketchbooks. He was such a good artist, and she felt a pang in her chest again as she thought of the hours she and Cal had pushed him in sports and academics, instead of art. This was something he’d loved. She looked through the sketches. He’d drawn Jane a few times: frowning, angry, shrugging with indifference. Not posed, remembered. A picture of his father, staring out the living room window on the east side of their second house on Lake Austin; she recognized the curtains. David nearly drowned there, on the lake, as a child, and she hated going to the house and rarely did, but David and Cal loved it, so she let it be their retreat for father-son fishing and boating. She studied the picture of Cal; the next one was of him on the pier at the lake house, smiling and waving, a wonderful rendition. A drawing of herself, caught with laughter, happier than she’d looked, well, in forever. She had to close the sketchbooks. No more.
She put them aside. Below them lay a few loose papers and notes. One, titled “Pro and Con,” said, “Be direct. Tell her how you feel. Tell her it will be OK. Not telling her is worse. Life will go on. She needs to know the truth.” All these were on the pro side. Nothing on the con.
Was this something he’d written about Jane? If she had loved him and he hadn’t felt the same about her. It had been the reason supposed by Kamala and others that she might attempt the murder/suicide.
Had he followed this list and died?
The other drawers were empty.
She searched the shelves. A long row of video games: everything from gentle games like Animal Crossing and Pokémon to shoot-ups like Call of Duty to fantasy epics like Assassin’s Creed. Below them, a few books. She ran her finger along the spines, leaning close to take them out to see if anything was hidden behind them. The Ranger’s Apprentice series, The Hunger Games trilogy, all the Harry Potters, The Maze Runner books, A Wrinkle in Time. She remembered that had been Jane’s favorite book—she’d broken the spine of multiple copies and her devotion to the book was a running joke among their circle of friends, Laurel called it “Wrinkles Come in Time”—but she couldn’t remember ever buying the book for David, especially in a hardcover edition. He liked action stories, and A Wrinkle in Time, which she had read and loved as a teacher, was a bit more philosophical. She opened it.
Jane’s name, carefully written in pencil on the inside cover. This was Jane’s book, why was it on David’s shelf? Had she loaned it to him and never gotten it back? She didn’t want anything of Jane’s in the house. She set the book down on his desk, slamming it, thinking she’d take it downstairs in a few minutes. She didn’t want to see Laurel but she could return the book. Or just throw it away.
Or maybe it had been left here. For her to find. A taunt, that Jane or Laurel had been in her house. Accessing her computer, leaving something in his room. The thought made her ill.
She picked it up and thumbed through it. It opened to page ninety, where a deep fragment of blank paper was lodged in the spine. Maybe a bookmark? She pulled the paper free and held up the torn edge to look at it. It was like the paper had been violently wedged into the book and then torn. The torn edge wasn’t a straight line, it was jagged at one end, slightly, like the outline of a mountain. A stray thread of ink at the bottom.
She put the book, and the slip of paper still inside it, back on the shelf.
She searched the closets. Clothes: She remembered buying each item for him. She spent a few moments looking at the shirts, leaning into the fabric. They didn’t smell of David—the soap he used, the regrettable body sprays, his shampoo—only now of dust. The top shelf in the closet held forgotten trophies and ribbons from youth sports, a deflated football, and a stack of board games, worn with use. She pulled down the trophy box. She hadn’t touched this after he died. Her heart swelled in sorrow as she looked down at the wrinkled ribbons and the dusty athletic figures on the trophies, frozen in timeless runs and jumps. The hours he’d spent. The joy he’d had in sports.