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“I—I’m sorry. Hiswhat?”
The shocked words didn’t come from me, but from Jonathan, and dully, I realized he’d stepped to my side. I could see his dark hair from the corner of my eye, but the details hit my awareness and then disappeared, hitting me and then bouncing away. Mostly because my full attention was on Lily, her words echoing and bouncing in my brain like a song itself.
I’m his probation officer.
Assigned to him when he got out.
Got out of…
Probation officer.
Distantly, I noticed discomfort cross Lily’s features. “I should head out. Can you give Harry my best?”
“Of course,” Terry interjected, and he stepped beside Jonathan. His voice sounded normal. Like what she said didn’t surprise him in the least. “Have a nice evening.”
Lily looked at me for a beat longer before turning out of the doorway, leaving all four of us quiet behind her. Addy had turned off the music from tonight, leaving us in silence.
A beat passed and none of us spoke. We didn’t even move.
My body pivoted toward Terry as if on its own accord. “What did she mean,got out?”
Terry ran a hand along his jaw, skin scraping the stubble there. The action was jerky, almost nervous. Ultimately, he didn’t answer.
Logical thought seemed to shrink to the back of my brain. “Got out…” I whispered. “Ofprison?”
“No!” Terry rushed to say, and then came up short, like he didn’t want to continue. “It was juvie. Lily’s his juvenile probation officer.”
Juvie. A juvenile detention center. Probation. They were all words I knew easily from both Mom and Dad. A lawyer and a judge. But they made no sense in connection with Harry.
“Why?” I found myself asking, still feeling detached from the moment.
“I can’t tell you,” Terry said. “He should be the one.”
“Why?” I demanded again, but his answer wasn’t any different.
“You’ll have to ask him.”
I was making Terry so uncomfortable. In the back of my mind, I knew that. I knew he probably wished Harry would hurry, wished Lily hadn’t shown, wished someone else would say something. Maybe he wished I’d back off. But the longer I stared at Terry, the more I thought abouthim. Where he came from. Where he was this time last year…and why.
It was stupid, absolutely ridiculous, positively insane to even comprehend. But it was a thought that, once it’d taken root, I couldn’t weed it out. Not without him clearing the air. “What you went to prison for,” I said, and my voice came out quiet, muffled. “Harry wasn’t…involved in that, right?”
Terry flinched, firm expression dissolving into something like a mask of acute pain. He reached out, almost like he was going to touch my arm, but he dropped his hand at the last second. “You need to talk to him.”
The implication was easy to hear, to know, to see. There was no denial, just deflection. I knew what it meant.Yes.
All at once, everything stopped. The trampling of thoughts, the buzzing in my ears. Terry and I looked at each other, neither of us saying anything. Addy and Jonathan were somewhere in the room, and I wondered, distantly, if they were as horrified as I felt.
Because I felt absolutely horrified.
“Stella.” Addy’s voice filtered through my thoughts, cutting through my dazed attention.
I turned to her, watching as she wrung her hands, lips parted in shock. “Did you know?”
“What? No! I mean, I’d seen that woman with him at Crushed Beanz before, but I had no idea who she was.” Addy turned to Jonathan. “Did you?”
“Of course not,” he answered immediately, taking a step toward me. “I had no idea.”
The room whirled around then, like someone took the scene and jerked it sharply to the side. It took me a second to realize that it was because I turned on my heel, and without another word, I escaped out into the hallway.
