I hadn’t meant to be.
Sakina said, “It’s turning into a class reunion up in here. You ever think the three of us would be drinking together? You ask me in 1995 who I’m having drinks with from Granby in 2022, and what are the chances my answer is Bodie Kane and Mike Stiles? And, Mike, look at Bodie! Didn’t she turn out hot? Who could have predicted?”
Mike looked mortified, but I couldn’t tell if it was because he was a married man being asked to appraise a woman’s looks, or because he was offended on my teenage behalf. He reached for his beer like it would save him, and raised it. “To the present,” he said.
8
In late 2020, just as we got the news that Omar’s hearing would be further delayed, I got a call from Fran and assumed it was related. She had mostly forgiven my meddling once the blood was discovered. Or rather, she was still upset, on behalf of Granby, but more at the world than at me personally.
But she wasn’t calling about the case; she was calling to tell me Carlotta had stage 3C breast cancer. “Inoperable is apparently not the same as untreatable, though,” Fran said.
I understood that Carlotta only had energy for one Granby phone call, but it still stung that she would call Fran and not me. I swallowed my selfish hurt and said, “Which breast?”
“What?”
“Which breast?”
“God, I don’t know. Probably both at this point. Does it matter?”
It did, it mattered to me, because I could still feel Peewee Walcott’s fingers digging into my right breast. Which meant he’d grabbed Carlotta’s left breast. And although it made no sense at all, I knew he had damaged her, had planted something in her that would, twenty-five years later, mutate her cells, turn her body against itself. It was impossible, but it was true.
Her kids were eleven and eight and six. The treatments were going to be brutal, an aggressive poisoning of every cell in her body.
It worked, somewhat. Her hair even grew back afterward. But now, a year later, she was sick again. The cancer had metastasized, and Fran had set up a second crowdfunding page. The kids were now thirteen and nine and seven.
There had been a shift, a few years back: For a long time, when any classmates from high school or college passed away, it was a sudden accident, something fast that left no space for suffering, just for the shock of the survivors. But then a college friend had died a year back from leukemia, and then another from a brain tumor, and another from drawn-out COVID complications and a weak heart. And here was Carlotta, her skin waxen in photos, her life stretched thin like the last impossible pull of Silly Putty before it finally turns to air. I knew that in thirty years, there’d be a steady stream of regular obituaries describing lives well lived. But this middle phase, these deaths of people in their early forties, felt the cruelest. Maybe because there were always kids involved, ones far too young to leave behind.
Carlotta wasn’t going to make it. I’d known it for weeks now, I’d felt it as a dull ache, but then Sakina confirmed it as we walked back to the inn that night. And Sakina knew what she was talking about.
I’d been right: I’d found out eventually from Carlotta herself, it was her left breast. Well, now it was everywhere, in her bones and liver and lungs. But it had started in her left breast.
9
Early the next morning, before they were due in court, I met for practice testimony with two of the assistant defense counsel in the “Blue Ballroom” of the Calvin Inn—a room that resembled a ballroom only in size. Its blueness came from an elaborate paisley carpet that must have camouflaged a few decades of stains. They’d pushed banquet tables together, and we sat on padded white-and-gold chairs with high backs, ones clearly meant for weddings.
We’d originally thought I might testify that afternoon, but the state was taking far more time than anticipated to cross-examine each witness, and now it was likely I’d go late tomorrow. More time to second-guess every word I planned to say. Britt would take the stand today, I knew from Alder’s texts, and speak to the discovery of the blood evidence. I’d told Alder he could let me know who was testifying, as long as he didn’t report what they said. He was also allowed to tell how the judge seemed (Looks like a serious dude who’s secretly a fun grandpa, Alder wrote, unhelpfully. Wish I could read his mindddd) and how Omar was doing (Hard to tell. He’s not supposed to react . . .), but I’d get to see both those things for myself soon.
“Amy wanted me to remind you about sequestration,” the younger attorney, Hector, said. I cringed, assuming I was in trouble, but he handed me a sheet from a pile, one with the judge’s orders typed out in bullet points. It wasn’t personal. “It’s a small town,” he said, “so it’ll be hard, but just don’t do anything that would look bad, okay?” Hector was right out of law school, with a trace of what I’d learned was a Colombian accent, and pained, intelligent eyes. He came across as nervous in person as he had on Zoom, every sentence quavering out like he was onstage and hated public speaking.
The older one, Liz, looked like Lisa Kudrow. Liz, who would be playing Amy for the session, launched right in. Hector recorded everything on his phone for Amy to review later. Easy questions first: my name, my job, the dates I attended Granby, the dates I roomed with Thalia. Then some tougher ones about my time on campus in 2018, my role in the podcast, my role in the discovery of the blood.
Then: “Defense Exhibit 58 is this Granby planner for the 1993 to 1994 school year. Do you recognize this planner?” In this instance it was only a thin stack of colored Xeroxes, but I nodded, then remembered to say “yes.” I explained the color-coding system; it was good for me to practice aloud.
We went through the ’94–’95 planner next, me offering my interpretation. Which was still, I knew, just an interpretation.
Liz asked, “Do you have knowledge of anyone Thalia Keith had sexual relations with, aside from her boyfriend, Robbie Serenho?”
“I had, and still have, strong reason to believe that she was romantically, if not sexually, involved with the school’s music director, Dennis Bloch.” (Had I practiced that wording many times? Yes, I had.)
“What reasons do you have for that belief?”
I started with the Bethesda Fountain incident, the most specific, the most blatant. Then I detailed the time she’d spent alone with you in your classroom, the times she’d lingered after rehearsals. I talked about her yearbook entry. I was grateful that it was 2022, glad that any reasonable judge would understand how inappropriate this kind of contact was. Or at least the judge in my head understood it.
When I said these words in court, when I named you, it would be the first time I’d said as much in public. It would be the first time the public heard these details, the bread crumbs that had led me to you. I wondered if it would be a matter of hours or minutes or seconds before your name was all over the internet.
“Did you speculate with other students about this relationship?” Liz asked.
“There were at least three friends I specifically spoke about it with, at that time.”
“Did they state that they shared your suspicions?”
“They did,” I said.
That was the easy part. The difficult part was when Liz turned into a cross-examining prosecutor. In that role, in a harsher voice, she asked, “Did Thalia ever tell you what her system of dots and Xs meant?”
“Only the red dots. But the rest—”
“So you have no direct knowledge of what any of these colors or symbols means.”
“No.”
“These Xs could, for instance, indicate homework assignments, as far as you know.”
“Yes.” It didn’t feel worth it to quibble, to protest that I was sure, pretty sure, kind of maybe sure.
“Ms. Kane, did Thalia Keith ever tell you she was romantically or sexually involved with Dennis Bloch?”