“What do you mean, ‘What’s wrong?’” I bite into my avocado sandwich. Boon has come to meet me at the beach during my lunch break before I go to another job. He’s worried after my call.
“Kit, you phoned and said you had to see me. I’m sorry I couldn’t come right away. But I’m here now. What in the hell is going on?”
I take another bite of my sandwich and chew slowly. From our log I can see across the water to where the Glass House is. I imagine Beulah Brown next door, training her binoculars toward me and Boon on our silvered log.
“I feel bad for Beulah,” I say. “Her son is a freak, too. Beulah spying on her neighbors is one thing. But Horton—he’s creepy. I don’t trust him.”
“You’re changing the subject now.”
I glance at him. He holds my gaze. I don’t smile. This is it. I’m going to cross this line. Our friendship will never be the same. Which is laughable that I even consider this—our friendship never was what I thought it was.
“You remember how we met, Boon? In that coffee shop?”
He frowns. He looks nervous. “Yes, why?”
“You were this random guy who asked if he could sit at my table. I said, sure, and I wondered at the time if I knew you from somewhere because you looked vaguely familiar. And then you said, ‘You’re Katarina, right?’ Do you remember that?”
“Kit, where is this go—”
“I must’ve looked like a deer in headlights,” I say. “Because at that instant I’d just realized where I’d seen you before. My school days. And I wanted nothing to do with people from my old school or hometown. And I was suddenly mentally mapping all my possible escape routes from the mall. That’s when you said, ‘You’re from Whistler, right? You were a couple of grades behind me.’ And you sipped your hot chocolate, watching me over the rim of your cup, and you got this huge blob of whipped cream on the tip of your nose, which made me smile in spite of myself. You remember all that?”
“Dammit, Kit, just spit it out. Where are you going with this?”
“You said I’d changed. That I looked amazing. You liked the new blonde hair. You were smart enough not to say you liked my new skinny figure. You told me your name was Boon-mee but that everyone calls you Boon. We walked to the bus together, and I said, given that we both lived in such a tiny town, you must’ve been aware of what happened to me.”
“It’s why I went over to your table, Kit. I’d seen you coming into the coffee shop a few times. I always felt bad for you because of what happened. A lot of us in town did. I believed your story. I always did. I one hundred percent believe your story about Jon Rittenberg and the ski team.”
I lower my sandwich and stare at him. My heart begins to pound.
He says, “And I told you that day that I was bullied at school, too. I told you I knew guys like Jon Rittenberg. They would single me out after school because I was gay and they could smell it even though I hadn’t come out yet, or even fully admitted it to myself. In a small town like that, with only one school, where the same class cohort goes all the way from kindergarten to grade twelve, always the same faces in that one class, year after year as you all go up a grade, you can’t escape. There’s nowhere to hide, nowhere to run. You get branded the target from kindergarten and stay the target your entire school career. Bullied. Humiliated. Disliked. You start to wear that label. You start to believe them. And when I saw you in that coffee shop, after all that time, I needed to tell you that I felt bad, that I believed in you. I-I guess I wanted to say sorry. I’m sorry for what happened to you.”
“But are you? Are you really sorry, Boon?”
He looks shocked.
I inhale deeply and turn my face up toward the weak sun. I close my eyes, just feeling the gentle rays on my skin. “You know how I told you the other day that I got new clients?”
“Yeah,” he says.
I turn to Boon. “He’s back in town. I got his house.”
“What?”
“My new client is Jon Rittenberg. I’m cleaning his house.”
Blood drains from his face.
“You know what else? I did a bit of snooping. Okay, a lot of snooping. And I found a recording. From that night.”
“What are you talking about?”
I hold his gaze for a long time. I see the moment it begins to dawn on him. His face goes slack and totally bloodless. He tries to swallow. His eyes water. “You mean . . . that night at the ski team lodge?”
“You know exactly what I mean.” My voice is soft, quiet. “Someone recorded the drugging and assault on a phone. They recorded who was there that night. Sound and everything. All those kids who said it never happened—they’re all there. On that recording. Daisy Rittenberg was also at the party. She saved it. She has kept it locked in a safe all these years, and now I have a copy on my phone.”
His mouth opens. No words come.
“I don’t know what I am to you, Boon—”
“You’re my friend, Kit. I’m your friend. Best friend.”
“I don’t know what truly drove you to seek me out in the coffee shop that day, or why you have tried so desperately to be my friend. Or why you work so hard to be so nice. So kind. Maybe I can guess. Shame. Guilt. Maybe you were afraid that if you were the only one who spoke up and told the police what you witnessed, you would be bullied to death and not survive the year you still had left at school. Maybe you were afraid those guys would tell the world and your parents you were gay. So you hid. You kept quiet. You kept your head down. You helped perpetuate evil. But all this time, you knew. You could have saved me. Maybe even saved my baby.”
“Kit, please. I can explain. I can—”
“All I know, Boon, is you owe me. You owe me big. Not just for staying silent, but for deceiving me all this time.”
I reach into my bag for my phone, and I make him watch the recording.
MAL
November 2, 2019. Saturday.
Mal reaches for her coffee and takes another sip. It’s 5:55 a.m., and she and her team are assembled in the incident room. She didn’t sleep last night and is running on pure adrenaline boosted by caffeine.
“Now that we’ve located the Norths and identified the Rittenbergs, we’re working on the assumption Kit Darling is our assault victim,” Mal says as she sets her coffee down. “We’ve sent personal items from Darling’s apartment to a private lab along with blood samples from the crime scene so a DNA comparison can be expedited. We should have preliminary results before nightfall today.”
Benoit says, “Vanessa and Haruto North so far appear to have no direct involvement, since they are out of the country, but it is their house, and Darling is their maid. What we do have is a direct link between the Rittenbergs, the crime scene at the Glass House, and Kit Darling. What we need is motive. Opportunity. Means. We need that rug. We need that Subaru Crosstrek. We need DNA from both Rittenbergs to definitively place them inside the house. And we need to search Rose Cottage and impound and search that Audi. Our goal is to find additional evidence that will secure us those warrants.”
“What about the mystery pregnant woman that Beulah Brown thought was Vanessa North? And the woman who visits the Pi Bistro with Daisy Rittenberg who Binty believes is Vanessa North?” asks Jack. “And the woman Daisy Rittenberg says invited them for dinner at the Glass House?”