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“Noah,” Ray whispered from behind me, “come on.”
“But,Mom—”
“No, baby, let's go.”
She came to stand beside me, laying her hand gently against my back. I didn't look at her. Couldn't move my eyes from the spot I stared at.
But still, she said, “I'm going to the library, and I'm taking Noah with me.”
I nodded.
“If you need me, I will leave work, okay? Just call, and I'll be here.”
I nodded again.
She pressed her lips to my back and whispered, “I'm so sorry.”
Then, she bid the detectives farewell and left the house with her son trailing reluctantly behind her.
When the door closed behind them and I knew we were alone, I asked, “How?”
“We believe it was an overdose,” Detective Sam replied, his voice rough. “I'm sorry, Soldier.”
I ignored his sympathies, tamped down my emotions, and spun from the sink to cross my arms over my chest. “Where did you find her?”
He hesitated. His eyes fell to the pad of paper, and his throat moved with his slow, hard swallow. “That's not—”
“Where?”
Detective Miller straightened his back and eyed me with curiosity as he answered, “Just outside the high school.”
I lifted my chin slowly, standing tall,as a whole newsense of awareness and terrorsteamrolledover where I stood. Detective Sam met my glare with the same understanding, one Detective Miller seemed oblivious to. Memories of a night that still haunted my nightmares rushed back. That patch of cold dirt on the side of the road, just in front of the high school I’d dropped out of. Billy’s lifeless body. The tears on my face, drying fast in the cold night air, and Levi’s grin as an officer drove me away.
I would bet anything that my mother’s body had been found on that very same patch of dirt.
I would bet anything that she had been put there.
“It wasn’t an accident,” I stated bluntly.
Detective Sam shook his head, following my train of thought. “No. I don’t believe it was.”
Detective Miller cocked his head, eyeing me coolly, and I bet he thought he was real hot shit with that badge hanging from his belt.
“Youwannacome with us down to the station?” he asked, tipping his head back as he spoke.
“Am I a suspect?”
He pursed his lips, studying me through suspicious eyes, then asked, “Should you be?”
“What do you think?” I challenged, not caring for a second that this man was in a higher position of authority than I, a convicted felon, ever would be.
Detective Miller’s glare was as cold and steely as that badge. But a moment later, he shook his head. “I think you’re a little kid in a big man’s body, who just found out his mom was murdered, and youwannahelp us figure out who might be responsible.”
That was all it took for me to push away from the counter and grab my phone from the table before following the two detectives out the door and to their car.
***
Stepping into a room they usually used for interrogation, Sam—who had insisted I call them both by their first names—brought a paper cup of the shittiest coffee I had ever had in my life. It wasn’t unlike the coffee he’d given me a lifetime ago, but somehow, this time, it tasted worse.
