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“Hey,” Delta said to her.
“The reverend isn’t here. He’s left the church. The new minister is a woman,” Bailey said. She was pale, wearing a plain, midi-length black dress, her ponytail limp. But there was a determination in her set jaw that spoke of a stiff spine.
Delta peered through the doors to the pews, which were filling up with her classmates and other students from the school. There were parents there, too, but by far this was an event for the kids.
“They’re moving away,” Bailey went on. “Leaving West Knoll. It’s too much to bear.”
“They shouldn’t have blamed you,” Delta said.
“They didn’t like what I had to say. It hurt them too much.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t think Carmen’s death was an accident. I pushed for an autopsy. They thought it was blasphemous.”
“Bailey, you were there. Carmen drowned.”
“Did she? Something happened. She was with the guys, following Tanner around . . .” She made a sharp movement with her hand, indicating they didn’t need to go further down that road. Carmen’s obsession with Tanner was well known. “They’d gone and had something. I didn’t think Carmen imbibed, but maybe . . . She said she saw something. She didn’t want to tell me, but she almost did, and then we were interrupted, and she never said what it was.”
“Okay, but—”
“It was something about Tanner and some of the other kids. But she was focused on Tanner. What he did mattered to her, and he did something that really bothered her. Maybe he realized she saw and he spiked her drink and she couldn’t swim as well as she could have and she drowned.”
“Tanner wouldn’t spike her drink!” Delta defended, affronted.
“Something happened!”
“Well, he wouldn’t do that. You’re way off. He never even paid attention to Carmen. Never looked at her. Why would he spike her drink? She didn’t . . . she wasn’t his type.”
It was cruel to say and made Delta sound like she thought she was so much better than Carmen, but it was also the truth. Bailey was talking crazy, which maybe she was . . . crazy with grief.
“Somebody did something to her,” she insisted stubbornly.
“You’re blaming Tanner for going under the rope. They were all stupid. Stupid! Tanner too. It was just this terrible tragedy, and I can’t believe Carmen’s gone. I just want to . . . scream.” Tears sprang to her eyes at this admission. She felt terrible. She looked down at her feet. The black flat on one foot, the other in a now thinner bandage and a black sneaker. She’d really messed up her foot and had finally gone to the doctor, who’d undone the bandages and added a line of stitches that she hoped would not leave marks as they marched across her sole and curved around her ankle.
“I know that you love Tanner,” Bailey said. “But he’s a shit, Delta.”
Delta fought back an instant denial. “I guess you’re entitled to your opinion.”
“I guess I am.”
At that, Bailey entered the church ahead of her, and Delta, after a moment, slowly followed. But now she didn’t want to sit by Bailey. She wanted to be magnanimous and give Bailey a pass, but she was getting pissed and hurt and worried, which was better than the despair that had filled her for weeks.
The Five Firsts were officially dead. Carmen was gone, and Bailey was making wild accusations about Tanner.
Delta saw that Tanner had squeezed into a pew between McCrae and Justin Penske. Brad Sumpter was next to Penske, and then the do-gooders, Trent and Rhonda. There was no room for Delta next to him, but then he’d been distant since the barbeque, and she didn’t know where she stood. A couple rows behind the guys were Amanda and Zora. Zora spied Delta and indicated there was just enough room for her between them and the rest of the kids, a group of underclassmen Delta recognized but didn’t know well, crushed together on the bench.
Delta squeezed past the underclassmen, murmuring apologies as the service started. A middle-aged woman with graying hair and a wide girth took her place at the podium. She introduced herself as Pastor Stevens and gave them a soft smile of greeting before launching into a healing prayer. When it was over, she said that, though she hadn’t known Carmen Proffitt personally, she’d heard only good things about her. As she went on in that vein, Delta glanced around, wondering, like everyone else, what had happened to the reverend. He’d given a brief eulogy for his daughter right after her death, the words clearly wrenched from his soul.
Zora leaned toward her. “I heard the reverend took his family to Colorado, which is where they’re from. The mom was good friends with Bailey’s, but that’s over, too.”
“Shhh,” Amanda said loudly, shooting them a dark glance.
Pastor Stevens next invited the kids from their class to come up and talk about Carmen, tell a story, a remembrance, anything they wanted. This was a far cry from the fire and brimstone that was Reverend Proffitt’s brand of delivery. Delta didn’t expect anyone to go up to the dais, and she was shocked and riveted when the first person to head up the steps was Tanner.
Chapter 7
Tanner looked out at the sea of faces, knowing he had a lot of ground to make up since, in his father’s words, the “head-up-your-ass stunt you pulled at that barbeque!”
