Chapter Twenty-Eight. Grace
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
GRACE
“Isn’t this your ring, Grace?” Curtis Callaway holds out Stan’s class ring. “We found it in his shirt pocket.”
I stare down at the chipped Revlon Shell Pink on my toes instead of looking at the sheriff. It’s rude, I know, but I can’t bear to look at him.
At the sheet-cloaked body by his feet.
Stanley is under there.
Stanley’s dead, waterlogged body.
It feels impossible that he won’t jump up any minute now and proclaim he was just funning us. He loves a prank. (Loved.)
“I…” I clear my throat. “I gave it back.”
“You broke up with him?” Callaway doesn’t sound surprised. He already knew. “When?”
“Yesterday afternoon.”
Cooper is standing next to me. He means to be a comfort, but I can’t forget the way he said, What did you do, Grace? Does he blame me? Because I broke up with Stanley and he went on a bender and fell in the pool, and now he’s dead?
(Stan is dead.)
“Was the breakup your idea or his?” Callaway persists.
“I don’t know.” I run a hand over my messy blond braid. “We were both pretty mad. He said some things…”
You can have her. She’s used goods anyhow.
I guess he can’t run his mouth now.
Should I be relieved? I don’t feel anything.
I glance at Rose. She’s always so proper.
Maybe she can tell me the right way to feel.
But she looks out of place in her cheery pink strawberry-print dress, her lips painted Fatal Apple Red.
Only her eyes are right: wide and worried.
She and her aunt hurried over after they saw the sheriff barreling down the drive, followed by Mr. G. and his next-door neighbor, Mr. Hollis.
(The coroner is here. For Stanley. The coroner.)
Stan’s dad looks broken, his eyes glassy, his face slumped and gray.
The men stand in a cluster across the pool from us. Around the sheet-covered body.
(Stanley’s body.)
This is really happening. Stanley is dead.
I wait to feel something besides this flat, empty nothingness.
I push up the sleeve of my pink cotton robe and scratch my arm.
Ma was crying and trying to comfort Magnolia and make coffee all at the same time earlier, while I stood in the middle of the kitchen, staring, turning Coop’s words (He’s dead.
Stan’s dead.) over and over in my mind, until Cooper said the sheriff was here.
Then there was no time to dress, so I threw the robe on over my blue pajamas.
I wore this when I spoke to Stanley last night.
(The last time I spoke to him. The last time I’ll ever speak to him.)
Magnolia sits behind me on one of the lounge chairs, wrapped in her satin robe. She’s been weeping since we came outside and saw the sheet-covered body. (Stanley’s body.) It’s all I can do not to slap her. She barely knew him, why does she get to cry like that?
“Hush, now.” Ma is rubbing Magnolia’s back. “All this crying isn’t good for the baby.”
“You two had been going together for a few years, right?” Sheriff Callaway is jotting things down in a notebook. “What happened?”
I hesitate, looking at Stan’s dad. Mr. G. is lanky where Stan is (was) bullish; bookish and bespectacled where Stan is (was) athletic; soft-spoken where Stan is (was, Grace! was because Stan is dead) loud. I can’t tell Mr. G. how vulgarly his son acted.
“It is all right, Grace.” Mr. Grotowski emigrated from Poland as a kid, at the end of the last century, and his English still has a faint accent.
“Stanley told me that you had an argument. He said you were angry that he had been flirting with the other girls. I told him he should apologize, but you know my son, he did not like to apologize.” He gives me a rueful little smile.
“He said that your new friend did not like him, and that you should apologize, for taking her side against him. His pride, it was hurt.”
“Is that what happened, Grace?” The sheriff’s keen brown eyes meet mine. “Lottie Pritchard was making eyes at Stan in front of the whole town. And Stan didn’t seem to mind. That must’ve made you pretty mad.”
“It did. We had had a … a falling out.” Is that what you call it when you almost stab your boyfriend? I wonder if the sheriff has heard about that. “But after that workman died, when Stan heard … He was worried about me. He came over and we made up.”
“So what happened yesterday afternoon?” Callaway presses.
I don’t want to share the sordid details in front of my dad and Stan’s dad and that crying simpleton behind me and God and everybody. But I guess I don’t have a choice.
“He didn’t like Rose. He said she was—” I glance at her, remembering his hateful words. “Stuck-up. Bossy. She invited Cooper and me to supper at the hotel last night. It was silly, really, but Stan wanted me to have dinner with him instead. Things got—well, they got pretty heated.”
You can have her. She’s used goods anyhow.
“He thought you were choosing your new friend over him,” the sheriff says.
“I wasn’t.” It’s embarrassing, remembering how I let Stan speak to me. How he shoved me to the ground. How I lay there in the dust and gravel. I flush, irritated. “What does any of this matter now?”
“Gracie.” Cooper bumps his shoulder against mine. “The sheriff ’s just doing his job.”
“I’m trying to ascertain your state of mind last night, and Stanley’s state of mind,” Callaway explains. His voice is soft. Kind. “I know this must be difficult, Grace. I’m sorry. I need you to be patient with me a little bit longer.”
“Surely you do not think that my son drowned himself over a lover’s quarrel?” Mr. Grotowski says.
Drowned himself? I stare at Mr. G. in horror. No. This was an accident!
“No. I don’t think he went into the water on purpose.” Callaway strokes his stubbled blond jaw. “If you broke up yesterday afternoon, why did Stan come around last night? It must have been pretty late.”
“Yes.” I hesitate. “He had been drinking. He wanted to make up.”
“But you were still mad,” the sheriff guesses, nodding sympathetically. “Can’t blame you for that. You were tired of him bossing you around, telling you who you could be friends with, when the second your back was turned, he was flirting with other girls.”
“Yes,” I huff, vindicated, but also a little uneasy. Where is this headed?
“You were mad, but you went out to meet him anyway?”
I know what he’s thinking. His daughter, Carolyn, would never make such a poor decision.
“Yes. I didn’t want him to wake anybody else, so I went out to see what he wanted.”
“And what did he want?” Callaway asks.
I hesitate again, horribly aware that my father and Mr. G. are both listening.
“Did he get fresh?” Callaway is businesslike.
“Curtis!” Ma scolds, tearing herself away from Magnolia.
“Yes. When he was drinking, he could be…” I try to adopt the sheriff’s practical tone.
“He wanted to go swimming. In his birthday suit. I told him no. He said—” I grimace.
“He said he forgave me. He tried to kiss me. I told him no. It was over between us. He didn’t believe me, so I gave the ring back. ”
“Okay, let me see if I have this right … Stan wanted to kiss and make up. Maybe more than kiss. One last time, that sort of thing.” Callaway rubs his sunburnt, freckled neck, looking a little embarrassed. Ma tsks. “Sorry, Martha. But they’d been going together a long time.”
“Grace has been raised better,” Dad barks. “She doesn’t have the morals of an alley cat.”
Who is he taking a swipe at? Mrs. Langford, even now? Rosie told me that her aunt’s having a love affair with the construction foreman.
“I made it very clear that nothing romantic was going to happen,” I say.
“I believe you, Grace. But how? You couldn’t scream or you’d wake the whole house, and we all know how strict your dad is. Did you have to get physical? Slap Stan? Push him away? Is that how he fell in the pool?”
No. I threatened to punch Stanley in the nose, but I never touched him.
“No.” I fold my arms across my chest. “I gave the ring back. Then I went inside.”
My voice is tight. I’m still the one being held to account, not Stan.
Callaway shakes his head. “I don’t think it would have been that simple.
Stan had been drinking. He wanted to kiss you.
You said no, and he didn’t like that. He wasn’t used to hearing no from girls.
Maybe he tried to grab you. Maybe you pushed him, maybe you slapped him—maybe you even scratched him across the face.
That’s when he staggered and fell into the pool, and you ran inside.
Probably thought he’d climb out and be spitting mad when he did.
But he didn’t. He hit his head, and he drowned. ”
Magnolia lets out a loud sob.
I whirl around. “If you don’t shut up, I’m going to drown you!”
“Grace!” Ma scolds. “Maggie, honey, hush.”
“Grace,” Cooper says, in his mother-hen voice, at the same time as Rose says it warningly.
My display of temper isn’t helping my case.
But I don’t understand what’s happening, what story Curtis Callaway is trying to tell. I take a deep breath.
“That isn’t what happened. Stan was sitting on that lounge chair when I went inside.” I point at the one Magnolia is slumped in. She claps a hand over her mouth. “I thought he’d sleep it off and then drive home.”
The truth is, I never slapped Stan, even when he was a real pig. I never fought back. I froze.
“It seems to me that Grace is grieving a very sudden and shocking loss, and pressing her for details right now is unkind. Unless you have evidence that this is something more than a terrible accident?” Mrs. Langford says. I throw her a grateful look.
Callaway nods at the coroner. Mr. Hollis kneels and pulls the sheet back from Stan’s face.
I don’t want to look, but I do.
There are four lurid scratches across Stanley’s pale cheek. I can see them clear across the pool.
Someone raked her fingernails across his face, hard.
“I’m trying to understand how he got those scratches across his face, that’s all. You still want to tell me things didn’t get physical, Grace?” The sheriff is a little less patient now. He thinks I’m lying, afraid of getting in trouble with Dad, maybe.