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“Come on, Mom.”
“What did you guys talk about?”
“Arnie says I shouldn’t repeat anything we discussed outside the room. He said it’s important. Sorry.”
“No, of course.” I drove on. After a moment I realized that I was biting my thumbnail, and I forced myself to put my hand back onto the steering wheel and keep it there.
“Are you going to give your phone to the police?”
Simon’s fingers were pinching at the crease in his pants. Pinch, release. Pinch, release. “Not right away. Not voluntarily. But Arnie says they’ll get it eventually.” He fell silent, and so did I. His head was turned away from me, and it took me a few minutes to realize that he was crying.
“Simon?”
“I’m fine. I’m really fine. It’s just a lot, you know?”
My heart twisted. My fear ratcheted up another notch. We drove in silence for a long time. I kept thinking about Andrew Fraser saying that Simon had hit Nina. I thought about the fact that Simon was the last person to see Nina alive. About the look on Rory’s face when I’d asked him what was really going on. About Simon trying to hide whatever was on his phone. I could keep trying to pretend that all of this meant nothing. I could try.
I reached out my right hand and took Simon’s in mine.
“Baby,” I said. “You know that Nina’s parents came to the house last night. Andrew said that you had hit Nina, that you’d hurt her. Before she disappeared.” Simon didn’t look at me. “I wanted you to know. I don’t want to keep anything from you.”
The silence went on too long. Then Simon said, “He doesn’t know anything.”
“Okay.”
He pulled away from me. “And my relationship with Nina was private. It was nobody else’s business.”
“Yes.” He still wasn’t looking at me. The side of his face that I could see was reddening.
“Everyone’s acting like she was the perfect angel, just because she’s missing. Just because she was a woman, that didn’t make her perfect. She fucked up, like, a lot.”
“I know that.” Was. Was a woman. The words rolled around in my head. They didn’t mean anything, except that really we were all beginning to accept that Nina wasn’t coming home. Too much time had passed for that.
Eventually, I said, “Nina’s father said you met Grace in the woods.”
“Jesus.” Simon shook his head. “She begged me to come. Her parents won’t talk to her about anything. They’re treating her like a kid, and it’s making her more scared. She didn’t want to talk to her friends because they’re all into all the online stuff and she doesn’t trust them. So she asked me to meet her to talk. And now, what, they’re trying to make that into something?”
“She said... I think she told them that you tried to kiss her.”
Simon turned and looked at me as if I’d just slapped him. “She’s fifteen, Mom.”
“I know. I know.” The shock on his face was genuine, and I felt terrible that I’d allowed doubt to creep into my head. I reached out and squeezed his hand again. I wanted him to know that I wasn’t accusing him of anything. That I was on his side.
He shook my hand off and went back to looking out the window.
“Simon. Simon. Please talk to me. Please, baby.”
He kept his face turned away from me. He brushed stray tears away angrily with the back of his hand, and took a deep breath, but the tears kept coming.
“Tell me what happened. Please tell me what happened.”
“I told you everything already. I guess you don’t believe me. I guess you think I’m some kind of murderer, right? You say you’re on my side, but you’re so much worse than everyone else. You’re my mother.”
“I’m on your side, Simon. I’m always on your side.” I reached for his hand again, but he pulled it away.
“So you think I murdered Nina and you’re on my side? That’s fucked up, Mom. That’s what that is.”
I drove on in silence. I couldn’t go home. If I took him home he’d disappear into his bedroom and lock the door and I wouldn’t be able to reach him. I took the turn for Stowe. There was no good reason to do it, except that instinct told me that answers lay there.
