6
Lunch in town was predictably short. No sooner had Henry and I ordered when we noticed the middle-aged woman sitting at the bar, watching us.
“Got a problem?” I finally asked her like a six-year-old.
She shrugged. “Just wondering how he can sit there and enjoy a warm meal while Kennedy Russo’s body is still going cold. Not even in the ground yet.”
I press my lips flat, trying hard not to respond and failing. “You’re saying that he shouldn’t eat?”
“I’m saying he and his brothers should burn in hell for all the havoc they’ve wreaked.” She wrapped her hands around herself like she needed protection. “Pure evil.”
“Okay, well, thank you for that thorough report, ma’am,” I said, blood simmering as the waitress placed a cold Coke in front of me. I picked it up and raised it to the woman. “You have yourself a nice day.”
After that point, even the waitress started to look at us funny, apparently making the connection between the Abbott boy at my side and the recent murder. Suddenly unsure if we could trust the food, Henry paid for the Cokes, and we headed back to his house to make our own sandwiches.
“You were right,” Henry says now, carrying both plates to where I’m seated at the kitchen nook. He places a turkey sandwich and a bag of potato chips in front of me, then removes a vase filled with withered flowers his mother must’ve collected from the garden weeks ago, setting it by the sink.
“Wish I hadn’t been. You were brave to try anyway.”
“Brave? Or stupid?”
“There is never one without the other,” I say, trying to do a voice impersonation of a wizened, ancient sage before taking a bite of my sandwich.
“You should write a book of wise sayings,” Henry jokes, but I can tell by the way he’s pushing his chips around on the plate that his thoughts have already drifted elsewhere.
“What is it?” I put my sandwich down.
“How do we start?” he asks with a shrug. “This investigation, I mean. Should we talk to Kennedy’s friends ourselves?”
“First of all—and I mean this in the nicest way—you’re not talking to anyone. If we actually want these people to give us any information, you have to stay my silent, invisible partner.”
Henry nibbles on a chip. His glasses have slid halfway down his nose, and at some point in his anxiousness, he must’ve stuck his fingers in his hair, undoing that neatly combed style.
Even the collar of his polo shirt is upturned.
Though I’m supposed to be thinking about how to help him and his brothers, my mind veers to how good he looks in this disheveled state. “You’re right,” he mutters. “Again.”
“And it won’t be the last time,” I assure him with a smirk. “I think I want to start by talking to your brothers.”
Henry’s eyes widen in something like panic. “Why?”
I shrug, trying to calm him by keeping cool myself, though it’s a complete act.
If anything, Henry’s fear has me wondering what the hell his brothers are hiding.
“Because we’re here, and they’re here. And I think getting down their version of events—any part they’re willing to tell—will help form a complete picture when I interview everyone else. ”
Henry takes a breath, considering this. When he meets my eyes, I cut him off and say, “Told you it wouldn’t be the last time, didn’t I?”
He kicks me under the table the way he used to when we were kids. I laugh and toss a chip at him.
“Well, good luck,” he says. “I doubt they’ll say much. I’ll just…be in my room if you need me.”
Before he lifts our plates off the table, I notice that he hasn’t touched his chips.
Instead, he’s arranged them on the crumb-sprinkled plate to form the letter K.
***
I take the stairs, noting the thick layer of dust coating the railing and the cobwebs strewn between the balustrades.
The mansion has been in a slight state of disrepair since last year’s accident.
Mrs. Abbott used have a staff to help with the upkeep, but she fired them when she discovered someone was leaking photos of the family to the press.
I haven’t seen Mrs. Abbott around much lately—even less than I’ve seen her husband—and whenever I ask Henry, he says she’s on another retreat to get away from the stress.
I guess this new case isn’t exactly going to help her self-renewal journey.
The staircase landing features a large arched window overlooking the gardens, and sunlight streams in, highlighting millions of dust motes.
I reach the second floor and start down the long hall, passing portraits and wall sconces with unlit candles.
The large black-framed mirror that always gives me a jump scare is not only filthy but curiously cracked.
I try Adam’s room first, but he’s blasting heavy metal and apparently, doesn’t hear my knock.
You should never open someone’s door uninvited, and I know from experience that Adam can be somewhat volatile. So I text him. Can we talk?
I wait outside the door, watching the screen. But the message goes unread.
Tentatively, I reach for the doorknob, just to peek. But I hear a deep voice and wrench my hand back. “Hey there.”
I turn to find Bram behind me, leaning against the archway to the opposite wing. He takes a step forward, lifting his arms like he might embrace me. Instinctively, I back up.
He stops in his tracks, face falling.
“Sorry,” I say, my breath shallow, “you startled me.”
When he looks up again, his eyes are cold. “It’s all bullshit, Hayden, what these idiots are saying. I didn’t do anything to Kennedy. You know that.”
I quickly nod, like I do know that. Only I don’t, not really. Because I didn’t see Bram during the drill, or even afterward.
“A girl is dead,” he says. “Naturally, they’re all going to blame me. The guy whose girlfriend died last year.”
He has a point there. “That’s exactly what I tried to tell the cops,” I say.
Bram reaches up to rub the back of his neck. “Doubt it will do any good, but thanks. For vouching for me.”
At the gratitude in his voice, I feel a stab of guilt that I didn’t do more. That I didn’t force those detectives to listen to what I had to say.
“That’s what friends do.” I say it like that’s what we are, like it’s all we’ve ever been.
Like there isn’t always this tension between us, ever since the day I made that horrible mistake with him.
“But Bram, they have a video of one of you with Kennedy.” I don’t want to ask it aloud, but he’s gone silent. “You’re not the person in the video?”
“No,” he says sharply. “I’m not the person in the video.”
I put up my hands in a gesture of surrender, reminding him I’m not the bad guy here. We need to change the conversation.
“You want to watch a movie?” I ask, because when it’s only Bram and me hanging out, that’s what we do.
When I’m with Henry, we go for walks, maybe stopping by the library or hitting the diner, where whoever can finish an entire cup of stale coffee first wins a slice of pie, paid for by the loser.
If Henry and I watch a movie together, we’re talking over it the whole time, debating its merits, cracking jokes.
It’s not quiet like it is with Bram, where it’s enough to just be in each other’s presence.
As for Adam, I doubt he’s ever sat through an entire movie in his life.
Up until last year, he could never keep still.
When we hung out, it always consisted of passing a ball of some sort on the mansion’s lawn.
He’d talk about which girl he liked at the moment; I’d stealthily avoid having to reciprocate and talk about my crush.
Sometimes we’d pull pranks together, like when we taped Looking for a Prom Date ads with Jimmy Ciccone’s photo on them around school after he’d trashed Adam’s football performance in the school’s sports column.
I was there to tone down Adam’s more extreme ideas of retribution and keep him out of jail.
It’s heartbreaking seeing Adam as a quiet recluse now, because he’d always been loud and out there, whether for good or bad.
Bram is Adam’s opposite in many ways: He’d rather keep to the shadows than be in the spotlight and speaks only when he really has something to say. Now he simply nods, gesturing for me to lead the way to the home theater.
I do, with guilt creeping up again. The truth is, I’m not here to relax on the leather reclining seats with Bram and sit in contented silence.
I’m here to find out why he was the one who found Kennedy in those woods yesterday.
“Bram,” I say, taking a seat front and center, “you said you took a while getting back after the fire drill.”
“Yeah,” he says, picking up the remote.
“Except the cops say that you weren’t on the attendance sheet for the drill.”
His spine stiffens, but he continues navigating the screen browser. “That’s because I lied.”
I flinch, shock hitting me like a fist. Somehow, I hoped the teachers were wrong, that Bram would be able to prove they simply missed him and his brothers. It sounds stupid, now that I really think through it. “You lied to me?” I hate how my voice cracks, how hurt I sound.
“I’m sorry,” he says, dropping the remote on the seat nearest him and turning to me. “I wish I hadn’t. But it doesn’t mean I lied about everything else.”
It doesn’t? He must see the dilemma he’s handed me. I’m expected to trust him, to believe the words that come out of his mouth. But yesterday he lied about the fire drill.
What’s to say he didn’t lie about not being the person on the video surveillance footage? “Where were you, then?” I ask. The question sounds sharp, almost like righteous indignation. Maybe it’ll force the truth out of him. This is his chance to rectify things between us.
Bram rubs at his face, deep in thought. He rests his chin on his palm, the other arm crossed over his stomach. “You remember that Henry and I were together in the cafeteria when you left.”
I nod.
“Well, we went to find Adam. And when we did, he was in bad shape.”
“You mean the bumps on his head?”