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Momentum is momentum, and once the decision is made, I can’t stop myself. After all, as she would tell you, these are the kinds of risks you take when you love a person. When you want the best for them. When you really see them for who they are, not what they want you to see.
When the room is tidy, the only thing left to do is to tackle the bigger mess. “Sit down,” I say again. I motion toward the chair I had been sitting in. “There’s something I need to tell you.”
“It’s about Amelia,” she says. “Isn’t it?”
Ann knows things. She always knows.
“Yes,” I admit. “It is.”
She doesn’t sit. She picks up her manuscript and shuffles it. Then she glares at me. With her eyes. With everything she is. She knows that what I am going to tell her is going to change everything. Eventually, she sighs. She goes to the office window and stares out over Penny Lane. “She’s sleeping with her math tutor, isn’t she?”
“He tutors her?”
“Yes,” she tells me. “After school.”
I hadn’t realized.
“I saw them together,” I confess. “I thought you should know.”
She says, “I’m going to kill that bastard.”
I say, “Let’s be rational.”
“That is rational. Men like that, Sadie, they never stop.”
“So…what? You’re going to kill him?”
“Did you ever expect any other outcome?”
“No.” Not really. “How?”
I wait for her to answer. Instead, she scrolls through her phone. I don’t think the answer can be found there, but maybe I am wrong. “I haven’t decided yet…”
“What if you didn’t?” I say. “What if there were a better way? What if you went to the police?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she snaps. “What good would that do?”
“They’ll put him in jail.”
“So?”
“So, he’ll be punished for what he did.”
“Sometimes,” Ann tells me, “punishment isn’t enough.”
I WAS afraid Ann might do something risky. Something riskier than all of the other things put together. I’d never seen her that upset, or that angry, to tell the truth.
This is why I confronted Ethan at work that afternoon. I knew he wouldn’t expect it, not there, and I knew the ball was in my court.
Of course, he denied anything inappropriate was going on. But it was clear in the snow-white color of his face and the stunned look in his eye that he was lying. I told him her parents knew. I told him I was going to the police the following morning if he didn’t go directly there himself and confess to engaging in a sexual relationship with a minor.
He looked at me. I could tell he was trying to gauge whether or not I was serious, and I could tell he’d made his decision when he ran his fingers through his hair and swore she said she was eighteen.
Sixteen, I said. She’s sixteen.
I’m sorry, he said.
I know, I said. But not half as sorry as you’re going to be.
