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Tiera nodded. “We appreciate that you tried to help her.”
It took Auggie a moment to separate those words out from this moment, to remember that Tiera wasn’t talking about the investigation, about whatever Auggie and Theo had accidentally unleashed on their family. She was talking about a college admissions essay. She was talking about something that seemed from another lifetime.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” Auggie said. “I see my fair share of people Shaniyah’s age, people who are driven, people who want to do smart, creative work. Shaniyah really stood out—she was so passionate about what she did.”
“Thank you for saying that,” Tiera said.
An Amazon van hummed down the street and stopped, and a driver got out and slammed the door. He was talking too loudly on a Bluetooth headset. “No way, man, no way, not while Colby owes me twenty bucks.”
“If that’s all,” Tiera began.
“Could we come in?” Theo asked. “We need to talk to you. And to Mr. Johnson, actually, if he’s home.”
“He’s always home,” Tiera said, but she pushed the door open wider, and Auggie followed Theo into the house.
Inside, the house wasn’t what Auggie expected. Oh, it was standard enough—the walls that neutral grayish brown that had been so popular for a time, the white-upholstered sofa and loveseat that looked nice but not too expensive. But what struck Auggie was the casual disorder: a pile of laundry on the sofa, waiting to be folded; jelly jar glasses on the coffee table, one with a gold bracelet hung over the lip; empty cardboard boxes piled in the corner, the kind that suggested the Amazon van had visited this house a time or two. It wasn’t dirty, exactly. But it was a kind of chaos that suggested nobody picked up around here—at least, not unless they were forced to.
“Could you take your shoes off, please?” Tiera said, pointing to a pile of footwear near the door. “We don’t wear shoes in the house.”
But you leave dead daisies in their vase, Auggie thought as he heeled off his sneakers.
“Could we speak to Mr. Johnson too?” Theo asked.
Some emotion tightened Tiera’s expression—a species of anger, although it was gone too quickly for Auggie to decide what had been behind the anger. She moved to the stairs and called, “Cleve? Dr. Stratford is here to talk to us.” Silence echoed back to them. “Cleve?” Then, to Theo and Auggie: “He’s not feeling well.”
“We really need to talk to him,” Theo said. “We’ll try to keep it brief.”
That same emotion flickered on her face again. “I’ll be right back.”
In stockinged feet, they sat on the loveseat. Tiera’s steps moved through the house, and then came the sound of a door opening. Tiera said something too low for Auggie to make out, but the intensity behind the words carried clearly enough—the low-vibration argument of a couple that can’t tear into each other the way they really want to. The final words, though, cracked through the house: “Because I said so! Get off your ass and get down there!”
A moment later, the steps moved toward them, and Tiera descended the stairs. She was smoothing the front of her shirt, not looking at them as she said, “Now’s not really a good time, Dr. Stratford. We appreciate you coming, and we appreciate what you did for Shaniyah. Maybe we could do this another day.”
Auggie thought about how she had said,Thank you for saying that, andWe appreciate that you tried, andHe’s always home.
“Shaniyah didn’t talk much about her life here,” Auggie said. “In Wahredua, I mean. Was she happy here?”
For a moment, Tiera didn’t seem to know what to say. “She was a teenager; you know how they are.”
Auggie did know. He’d been one himself, as a matter of fact—and a part of him could hear Theo adding,And not too long ago, which made him want to smile. “She never said why she moved here. She was from Kansas, right?”
“She moved here, Mr. Lopez, because she couldn’t stop getting in trouble. She got in trouble here too, it turned out.”
Auggie tried to keep his face expressionless, but he could see Theo’s shock.
“Are you talking about…what happened to her?” Theo asked.
“I’m talking about all of it,” Tiera snapped. It was like something giving way, the words rushing out of her. “Not coming home. Lying. Partying. Boys. She had to be little miss, like she was the adult and the rest of us were children, like we were bothering her. When she wasn’t fooling around, everything was about her. Her college. Her videos. I’ve never seen such a selfish, self-absorbed child.” She stopped, her eyes suddenly liquid, and said, “I guess that’s what you wanted to hear, right? Everybody wants to hear me be a bitch because I’m just such a bitch.”
“Mrs. Johnson—” Theo said.
“Well, I might be a bitch, but I did the best I could.”
“Nobody’s saying you didn’t,” Auggie said. “I didn’t mean anything; I was only asking—”
“You saw her, what? Once a week? And she smiled, and she was polite; she always knew how to get people to do what she wanted. I’m sorry she’s dead. I am. She was a troubled girl, and she made my life harder than it needed to be, and she never once showed me a drop of gratitude. I’m not saying I wanted anything bad to happen to her, because I didn’t. But if you came here to watch me cry and hear me tell you how much we miss her, you can go home now.”
“Tiera!” Auggie hadn’t met Cleve Johnson before, but he assumed that’s who the man coming down the stairs was. He was huge, all of it muscle, and he wore a black, satiny durag. His beard had a surprising amount of gray. His face, though, was what held Auggie’s attention: a grayish cast made Cleve look half dead. “What are you talking about?”
