Rain thought about the razor taped to the underside of her bureau drawer. But Lucy’s secrets weren’t that kind. Lucy’s secrets were the ones she kept for other people. Like whatever it was Jared wanted to ask her the day she went with him. Or what Gabi Russell told her in the girls’ room. Secrets she wouldn’t even tell Rain.
They’d just finished third-period geometry and only had study period before lunch. They always sat together in the library, sitting at the same table by the window overlooking the center courtyard. Rain hadn’t finished her take-home quiz for World Geography and was working on that when Lucy got up. “Be right back,” she whispered. “Got to go to the girls’ room.” Rain wouldn’t have thought anything about it, but as soon as Lucy left, Gabi Russell got up and followed her. Gabi was always trying to butt her way into whatever she and Lucy were doing, even though she was a grade ahead of them. Get your own friends, Rain always wanted to tell her. She returned her attention to the quiz, answered two more questions, waited for Lucy to return. She fiddled with her pen, flipped back in the text to find another answer, like it would ever matter in her entire life if she knew the leading crops of Ecuador. She shoved the quiz in her notebook and got permission to go to the bathroom. Mrs. Shepley was substituting for the regular school librarian, who would never have let them leave without grilling them first and then checking the clock every minute until they returned. She swung the door open, glanced around the empty room, and was about to leave when she heard someone crying. She followed the sound to the last cubicle. Gabi saw her first and clammed right up.
“Hi,” Lucy said, as if it were perfectly normal to hole up in a toilet stall with a sobbing girl.
Later, at lunch she had asked Lucy, “What was that all about?”
“What?”
“Gabi. What was she crying about?”
“Oh, some personal problem,” Lucy said.
“Like what?”
“I promised not to tell,” Lucy said.
“Not even your best friend?” Rain teased.
Lucy had changed the subject.
In Dr. Mallory’s office, Rain looked at the clock on the top of the bookcase. By now Duane and her parents must be on their way home. And even if the police didn’t believe him about Lucy’s Yoda, they couldn’t prove anything.
“Are you worried about Duane, Rain?”
The fear that had been stirring beneath her ribs since the day before when the police arrived at their door to speak to Duane came out in a rush. “I’m afraid they might think he had something to do with what happened to Lucy.”
“Do you?”
“No.” But she kept seeing Duane, standing in the kitchen, sucking down beer and saying too insistently, I didn’t hurt her, if that’s what you’re thinking. I would never do anything to hurt Lucy.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Although I had only been gone three days, our house had the staleness of a place shuttered and unoccupied.
I set my bag on the floor and walked from room to room, throwing open windows, letting in fresh air. It was not until after I’d showered, shaved, and changed and was back in the kitchen that I noticed the message light blinking on the phone. I pressed the message button and was so sure it was Sophie—who else would call? I hadn’t gotten a message from anyone else in months—that it took a moment to recognize Father Gervase’s voice. I erased it before hearing why the priest was phoning, knowing I wasn’t up to yet another directive from the bishop, if that was his purpose. The second message was Father Gervase again, and again I hit the erase button, but when I heard the next voice on the machine, my finger, poised above the pad, froze.
“Mr. Light? Will? This is Dan Gordon. Would you please return my call when you get this message? I can be reached at the station house.” He left the number.
Strength left my legs, and I sank into a chair. It could be anything. Anything. But I knew it wasn’t. My finger trembled as I punched in the number. Gordon picked up on the second ring.
“Thanks for getting back to me.”
“I was away for a few days.”
“Yes, if you’re going to be there for a bit, I’d like to stop by.”
“Now?”
“When it’s convenient.”
“What’s going on?”
“We have a new development around your daughter’s face.”
Lucy’s face? I pictured the last time I had seen her. In the funeral home, before they lowered the lid on her casket. “Lucy’s face?”
“Her case, Will. A new development in the case.”
A new development. After all this time. I swallowed against the sour taste of coffee that rose to my throat, coffee I’d had with Sophie at dawn before I left Maine. “I’ll be here,” I said. While I waited for him, I debated whether or not to call Sophie but decided to wait until I learned what Gordon had to say.
He looked older, more tired than the last time I’d seen him.
“You said you have a new development?”
“Yes. Of course, it could mean nothing.”
He wouldn’t have called or be sitting there if it were nothing.
“Father Gervase called us. He said he’d been trying to reach you, and when he couldn’t, he came to us.”
I remembered the messages on the machine from the priest that I had erased. “I just got home and haven’t had a chance to return his calls. What’s going on?”
“He told us he found something in the chapel that he gave to you, something you believe belongs to your daughter. A toy figure.”
Lucy’s Yoda. “Yes. Yes, he did. But he couldn’t remember when or how he found it.”
“Yes. Well, apparently sometime during the past couple of days, he remembered. I’d like to take a look at it. If you still have it.”
If I still had it? Of course I had it. It was Lucy’s. I climbed to her room, slowly, as if scaling a mountain. I opened the door and glanced at the shelf, half expecting to find an empty spot where I’d placed it, as if it had all been a dream, but there it was. I cupped it in my hand, took a minute to steady myself before I descended.
“And you are sure this is hers?” Gordon said when I handed it to him.
“Absolutely.” I pointed to the bottom of one of the little reptilian feet. “See here, those three Ls—that is a mark Lucy made to put on things. Like a brand. I know absolutely that this is hers.”
Gordon ran a finger over the looped letters. “Do you have any idea how it might have ended up in the chapel?”
“I didn’t even realize it was missing from her room.”
“So as far as you know your daughter didn’t give it to one of her friends.”
“No. No. Of course not. Why? Did someone say Lucy did?”
Gordon didn’t answer the question. “And neither you nor your wife gave it to anyone?”
“No. This isn’t making sense.”
Absently, Gordon ran his thumb over the inscribed Ls. “As it turns out, a boy from the high school admitted that he had it. He said he must have dropped it when he was in the chapel. He said Lucy gave it to him.”
That couldn’t be true. Why would Lucy give her Yoda to anyone? “Who?”
Gordon didn’t answer straightaway. “At this point, this person, this boy is only someone who knew your daughter and had this.”