My roommate is poleaxed yet again, and I am so satisfied by her reaction that I have a sudden insight into why people gossip.
“You’re kidding me,” she says. “Fuck, this just keeps getting better.”
“The pregnancy really gives Nick a motive, right?” I say this like I am Columbo and I’ve investigated a hundred murders. “Maybe he killed her to cover it all up.”
“But he’d already been fired. What does the murder get him except prison time?”
“What if she was blackmailing him, though? And he couldn’t go to his father for another payout for a girl? The Stanhopes have lost their money, and Greta never was a second-best kind of girl. Maybe she hit on him for major cash.”
Strots’s brows bolt up into her forehead, and it’s a minute before she snaps back into focus. “Well, the Hollises have plenty of cash, for sure, and they’re going to be wicked pissed at him. My grandmother knows the family from Newport, and they’re part of the Old Guard, as she calls it. Those kinds of people? They’re totally old-fashioned, all into propriety and shit. A son who’s messing around with fifteen-year-olds? And got caught, twice? It’s a goddamn stain on the name.”
We both go quiet, and I’m glad my roommate has finally stepped into my realm of overthinking, not because it’s a good habit that will help her in her own life, but because it’s nice to not be alone.
Unsurprisingly, she snaps free of the spin fast. “None of this is our fucking problem. They’re the adults. It’s their job to figure it all out, not ours.”
That’s the thing about kids our age, I think to myself. We’re all for being the big, loud noise until the repercussions get real—and then we just want to hand over situations like this to the grown-ups. It’s like when we broke a toy back when we were five. Here, fix this.
Except there isn’t anything that will bring Greta back. And really… is that so bad an outcome?
“For what it’s worth,” Strots says as she finishes the Coke down to the last drop, “don’t worry about anybody else getting aggressive around here. I’ll make sure you don’t get hurt. I’m not afraid of anyone.”
As a wellspring of gratitude blooms in my chest, I fidget and twitch. I don’t want Strots to know just how affected I am by her heroic nature, but the truth is, I am about to fly away as a result of the lifting, soaring warmth behind my sternum.
I am never going to get used to the way Strots comes to my rescue.
Making some lame excuse about needing a shower before bed, I go over to my closet, gather my toiletries, and leave.
For the first time since the cops showed up on campus, I feel like I don’t have to look over my shoulder as I walk along the hall. I am safe because Strots makes it so.
And I love her for this.
chapter THIRTY-THREE
The following day, the local paper prints on its front page what “Jerry” had told the librarian not to speak of. I find this out at lunch as I sit alone at my table. A number of the girls have brought the Greensboro Gazette in with them, and they pass the first section around, table to table, everybody whispering the p-word like if they say it out loud they’re going to spontaneously miss their period and start gestating.
I read the article for myself when one of them puts the headliner down to empty her tray and then gets distracted by a friend running up to her and demanding to know if she’s heard the news. She becomes so busy establishing herself as a primary source that she leaves the actual news-breaking article on top of the covered bin.
I snag the soft folds. Reading quickly, I look for the name Nick Hollis and do not find it.
“Can I have that back.”
The girl who forgot her copy is standing over me, utterly indignant. Like there are only a certain number of reads before the ink is consumed by our retinas and the thing is rendered blank.
“Sorry.” I hand the paper back. “But you left it.”
She walks off. I don’t recognize her so she’s probably a Wycliffe upperclassman. They all look the same to me.
I glance across the crowded cafeteria. Strots isn’t around. She hasn’t been sitting with Keisha, obviously, but there’s a second field hockey table that has, predictably, welcomed her with open arms. She’s not there now, though, and I wonder if my roommate’s gone back down to the station, because she left our room early this morning without her books.
I go through the motions of my afternoon classes, distracted by the effort of trying to discipline myself against the suspect-based Wheel of Fortune game my brain is determined to play. According to my spinning thoughts, there are potential murderers everywhere. They are anybody who ever spoke with Greta. Took a class with her. Ate with her.
When I return to my dorm, there are police cars parked in front of Tellmer again, and I wonder who they’re taking away in handcuffs.
Pulling open the front door, I hear girls on the phone in the phone room, but it’s regular traffic and conversation, three of the receivers open, the girls talking about care packages and test grades with their parents. I remind myself I better call my mother back, just to reassure her I’m alive.
And then I’m at the base of the stairs.
I look down to Ms. Crenshaw’s closed door, and think about her shrine. Has she dismantled it yet? It’s hard to imagine those talismans mean the same thing to her now.
Hustling up the stairs, I arrive on the second floor in time to see the other plainclothes detective, the one who is not Bruno, leave Nick Hollis’s apartment. Through the closing door, I catch a glimpse of our residential advisor. He’s sitting on his sofa, his head in his hands. But hey, at least he’s not being arrested for murder.
The detective doesn’t even look at me as he brushes up against my book bag to get at the stairs. It’s clear his mind is elsewhere, his middle-aged features grim.
Heading for my room, I wonder what Nick Hollis’s father is saying about all this, especially given the newest, sad twist that’s come out. I decide that the lawyer who was hired to fight the firing must be a good one because Nick is still on campus. This cannot last, however. St. Ambrose will really have to remove him now, and going by his obvious devastation, I don’t think he’ll protest the pink slip anymore.
I think of the moment I saw our residential advisor on that very first day when he’d been talking to those plumbers. Then I remember him apologizing to me for getting my name wrong. And I recall the empathy in his face when he suggested that I shouldn’t feel bad for dropping the ball in the Mountain Day game.
I also think of the many times my eyes clung to him, approving of so much about how he looked and who I ascribed him to be.
It is nearly impossible to square up both his kindness and my fantasy with the situation he now finds himself in, disgraced, unemployed, and surely soon to be divorced. I think of a brand-new sedan easing off the lot at a car dealership, freshly bought and paid for, an owner’s joy. But then there is the accident that crumples the front and shears off the rear, everything trashed. It’s a good metaphor, although the consequences of Nick’s actions are the result of choices freely made. What happened between him and Greta was wrong—and now it has become deadly and very complicated.