“Gwen, how do you know all this?” Katie asked.
“You don’t own six restaurants and ten parking lots in a town as small as this without having friends at the district attorney’s office.”
“Well,” Katie said, “for the Belfours’ sake, I hope this leads to something.”
“But here’s the kicker,” Gwen said, the speaker crackling as her voice rose. “He said the car was purple.”
Katie looked at Eric, who turned around slowly, eyes on the phone.
Hailey? he mouthed.
“No way,” Katie said, looking at him and then looking at the phone. “No, Gwen.”
“I’m sure there’s other purple cars,” Gwen said, her voice breathier now, like she was right there in the room with them. Her excitement palpable. “We shouldn’t jump to any conclusions.”
They couldn’t find anything on the Internet except the news article from the day before.
“It doesn’t make any sense,” Katie said. “Five days later he suddenly remembers this?”
“Gwen said he called the next day,” Eric reminded her. His eyes were on the screen, the photo of a spotlit Ash Road, the crimped guardrail, the dark earth massy below.
“The police called Hailey in for more questions,” Katie said. “And Helen. I dropped her off at the police station. She’s not staying with the Belfours anymore.”
“Well,” he said, “I guess we know why.”
“You don’t believe this, do you?” Katie said. “Because some guy says he saw a purple car near Ash Road that night, it has to be Hailey? And so she must have run over her own boyfriend?”
The words themselves seemed to startle them both.
He looked at her. “No,” he said softly. “I don’t believe it.”
She told him about the missed calls on Devon’s phones and tried again to explain about Hailey after the funeral. Hailey through the sliding glass door.
She tried to tell him, but it all felt cryptic, the whisper of a story rather than a story.
“She kept pounding on the door,” Katie said. “She told me she knew what was happening.”
“Knew what was happening?” Eric asked, leaning forward.
“I don’t know.”
“Katie, I think we need to keep out of all this,” Eric said. “This is something Teddy has to deal with. It’s not our business. Our business is Devon.”
Our business is Devon. She knew what he meant, but it reminded her of something one of Devon’s teachers once said to her: You may be in the Devon Knox business, but I’m in the education business.
“She’s under so much pressure right now,” he said, his face strained and weary.
She thought, as she had many times, of how it must feel for Devon, everyone’s hopes pinned to her, the gym’s reputation waiting for her burnishing. The Gazette calling her the town’s “brightest star.” How heavy it must feel, all the time.
But there was something in Eric’s eyes, a jittery urgency. “Molly told me she was struggling with her Yurchenko again. A few months ago, she was nearing the Amanar, now she can’t even get her second twist. Amelise said she looked disoriented in the air. Devon told her she just got lost up there.”
The words scissored through her. That’s how necks get broken, Teddy always said. She couldn’t help but think of Devon’s first accident, the thump of the mower.
“Maybe she shouldn’t be practicing at all,” Katie said. “Not until things settle down.”
“She needs practice. It’s what grounds her,” he said. “It’s just that gym. Right now, it’s not the safe place it used to be.”
“Okay, but if the gym isn’t a good place, maybe we should just—”
“We need to keep her out of all this,” Eric interrupted.
“Yes,” she said, tightly. “That’s what I’m trying to do.”
He looked at her. “I know you are.”
Arm darting, he reached for her hand, but she pulled it back without knowing why.
“I’m sorry,” she said, returning her hand to his. “You surprised me.”
Chapter Nine
“Mom.”
The nicotine-graded voice of a fifty-year-old, pack-a-day woman.
“Mom. Mom!”
Two forty-five, the clock read.
Stumbling down the hall, her feet catching on a humidifier cord, a stray tennis shoe.
Drew’s room was unbearably hot, his glass of water untouched, film around its rim.
“Honey,” she said, “what is it? What do you need?”
“Devon jumped off the roof.”
“What? What?”
Sitting straight up in bed, he looked at her, face red as a candy fireball.
“She had wings. White wings, like a gypsy moth.”
“Oh, honey, you’re dreaming again.”
She looked inside his throat, scarlet and pulsing, webbed white. It did look like beef, she thought, with thick striations.
“She jumped off the roof and into the car. Then she drove away.”
“Oh, honey.”
“And you,” he said, pupils widening, boring right through her. “You had scales over your eyes, like a snake.”
“Lie back down,” she said, “try to rest. You and Devon, your crazy dreams.”