Britt spoke, finally, in a monotone. “I know they interviewed him, but I don’t have any of the interview transcripts. Not that it matters now.”
Jamila let out a dramatic sigh from where she’d sprawled on the floor. She said, “Britt, I said what I said but you don’t have to pitch a tantrum.”
The other three grimaced but didn’t seem confused; whatever had happened, they’d been party to.
“I’d love to know why we’re doing Greek theater tonight,” I said.
A long silence that Lola finally filled: “Jamila made a joke,” they said, “about Harriet Beecher Stowe.”
It took me a second. “The author?”
“Like, that Britt was doing some white savior thing.”
“I was seriously just messing!” Jamila said. “Knock yourself out. Do what you want.”
Britt said, “That’s obviously not how you feel. And honestly, Jamila, I was mad, but I hear you and you’re right. This is not my story to tell.”
“Which is not what I said.”
I was in over my head, but I managed to ask Jamila if she wanted to voice her feelings.
She said, “My feelings are, I was kidding because I knew she’d freak out.”
I told Jamila that if she wanted to talk to me later in private, she was welcome to. I couldn’t tell if she was upset or not; I only understood half the dynamics in the room. My instinct in these situations is to sit back and listen and learn—but they were looking at me like I was supposed to solve it all. This was fragile, and these were fragile kids. And I felt derailed: I’d spilled this idea about you, and it had just vanished into a fog of adolescent angst and white guilt.
I said, “These are really important conversations to have, and maybe we could even weave them into the podcast. But we’re halfway through the class. Britt, I don’t know that it’s practical for you to change projects.”
Also: I found that I was as upset now at the thought of Britt stopping the podcast as I’d once been at her starting it. I needed her to keep prying. I couldn’t do it myself, what needed to be done; I needed to stand behind her.
“I know,” Britt said, and I worried we were about to have actual tears.
So I said, “Alder, can you pour me more coffee? Who wants more coffee? And you can tell us your theories.”
“Wait!” Lola said. “You were telling us your theory. You think the music guy did it?”
I hesitated. This was where things fell apart for me. I didn’t trust anything about you anymore, I believed you were involved, but I just couldn’t picture you bashing her head in. Why couldn’t I?
Because I knew you as a good teacher and an attentive father? Because you liked opera? Because you blushed so easily, and that made you seem sensitive? Because I’d fallen into the most obvious trap, finding it easier to imagine darker-complected Omar acting in anger?
I’d had time, of course, to get used to the idea of Omar as killer. I’d pictured him that way for the past twenty-three years, his mug shot and conviction overriding the fact that I knew him to be a sensitive person. Omar taught me how to tape my own ankle, the spring I twisted it. Omar taught the rowers alternate-nostril breathing for meditation. Omar was allergic to the dye in yellow Skittles, and rather than throw them away he’d leave a little bowl of just the yellow ones on his desk, for anyone to take.
My head was a mess. My throat felt raw, and I wondered if I’d made myself sick in the cold.
I said, “My point is, there were five hundred students on campus. There were dozens of faculty. And Britt is right that Omar’s the only one they really looked at.”
“Plus whatever staff, right?” Alder said. “Grounds crew and dining hall?”
Britt shook her head. She said, quietly, “No one who didn’t live on campus was still here. Except Omar and one security guy. The Crown Street exit had video, and the access road was closed for the night—so they knew every car coming or going. And then, I mean, I guess when the fire truck came for the smoke alarm, there were firefighters around. That seems like a stretch, though.”
Alder asked, “What time did Omar leave campus?”
“11:18,” Britt said. “Which lines up perfectly with her time of death, so that wasn’t good for him. He was speeding.”
“It was on Dateline,” Alyssa said.
I’d forgotten that. Something in me sank, settled. I said, “Right. And his only alibi is that he was alone in the same building where she died, at the time she died. Which is not an alibi. That’s the opposite of an alibi.”
41
Now they all wanted to watch Dateline—which sounded like a better way to fill the time than sitting around watching Britt sulk—and so Alyssa set up her laptop and we found it streaming.
We skipped the intro and started a few minutes in. Here were Myron and Caroline Keith at their kitchen table, glass cabinets full of tasteful dinnerware behind them.
Alder said, “Wait, go back, we missed Camelot!”
He was vetoed.
Myron Keith said, “She was our tomboy.” There was Thalia, no front teeth, kneeling in a soccer uniform. “But before we knew it, she was a young woman.”
“She wasn’t happy at home, sophomore year,” her mother said. Caroline was lovely, thin, hair a silver pixie cut. “She’d had a bad breakup, and she’d fallen out with friends. We thought boarding school would be a good change. And the school assured us they kept the kids close, watched over them.” Here, a crack in her voice.
The camera cut to Thalia’s younger sister, then in her early twenties. I remembered Vanessa as a confident eleven-year-old, speaking in a fake French accent as she helped the Keiths pack up Thalia’s side of the room at the end of junior year. And I remembered her, somber but fidgety, sitting beside her parents in New Chapel the next spring for Thalia’s memorial. On-screen she looked tired, her foundation applied too thickly by the makeup crew.
“She was happy there,” Vanessa said. “At least she seemed happy.”
Thalia’s older half brother, a soap-star-handsome guy I’d never met, nodded gravely. He talked about visiting her on campus, being so impressed with the place.
And here came the stock footage of Granby: Founders’ Day, students with backpacks crossing Middle Bridge, a boys’ eight rowing down the Connecticut. Full stands at a football game, fans singing You can’t beat the Granby Dragons! Your offense is awful and your defense is laggin’!
“Oh,” I said at the next shot. “That’s Mr. Hoffnung! That’s Ms. Hoffbart’s dad!” He scribbled on the chalkboard as students took notes.
Dr. Calahan appeared in her office, prematurely white hair tucked impeccably behind her ears. “Thalia was an excellent student and athlete, well-liked, social,” she said, careful warmth suffusing her voice. “She embodied the spirit of Granby.”
After her interview, the part we’d come for: Lester Holt somberly laying out the timeline of March 3, 1995. “By nine p.m., Camelot was over.”
“Questionable!” Alder interjected.
They showed curtain call—Thalia bowing on the arm of Max Krammen’s Merlin. “Students headed back across the crisp snow to their dormitories, where their books awaited them.”
“Wrong,” I said. “It was slush and mud.”
A shot down the hallway of Singer-Baird, all the doors closed. “By the eleven p.m. curfew, however, Thalia Keith was elsewhere.” No mention of Jenny Osaka, the microwave incident, the reasons Miss Vogel overlooked Thalia’s absence.
“The next day was Saturday,” Lester Holt continued, “a day with no scheduled activities. Even at the rigorous Granby School, students are free to enjoy their weekends. But come Saturday afternoon, Thalia Keith . . . was nowhere to be found.”
“I hate the way he says ‘Granby,’?” Jamila said. I agreed. It was somehow both mocking and precious. “These shows, they make everything sound like someone going alone into a haunted house.”