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“From now on, let’s just set some ground rules, okay? No one talks to Simon unless Alistair is present.”
“Yes. Sure.”
“Everything’s going to be okay, Jamie. We just need to be smart about how we deal with this, so things don’t get out of control.”
I hadn’t planned on confiding my worries to Rory. I wasn’t in the habit of turning to him when I ran into trouble, but the words just came out.
“What if she’s doing this on purpose?” I said. “To punish him for the breakup.”
“Didn’t you tell me that she dumped him?”
“That doesn’t mean she doesn’t resent him for being okay with things ending. People can be... complicated, when relationships end.”
Rory thought about it for a moment, then he shook his head. “I don’t understand that. But whatever is happening here, we have to stay focused. Our job, as parents, is to protect our son.”
He was standing and I was still sitting. He reached out and caressed the back of my head. I flinched. I didn’t mean to, but Rory didn’t usually touch me, outside of bed. He noticed and started to take his hand away, but I caught it and held on.
“You’re right,” I said. “We need to stick together.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Leanne
After the detective left on Monday afternoon, Andy and I had an argument.
“I don’t want to tell Grace,” he said. “I think it’s too soon.”
I stood up and went to the kitchen. My body felt weak and shaky, like I was coming down with a cold. I went to the fridge and stared inside and saw nothing. It took much more effort than it should have to focus. I found some of the expensive sausages we buy for the inn’s cooked breakfast and took out the frying pan. I would fry the sausages and microwave some potatoes. That would have to do. Rufus lay in his bed in the corner of the kitchen near the radiator. He whined as he watched me but didn’t get up.
“Don’t you think?” Andy said. He’d followed me from the living room and was leaning in the doorway. “We don’t know what’s going on with Nina. We don’t have any answers for Grace. If we tell her, she’s going to be scared, and there’s nothing she can do.”
I sprayed oil into the pan, dropped the sausages in, put the paper wrapping in the trash, and washed my hands.
“You said he was a good kid,” I said.
“What’s that?”
“You said that Simon is a good kid. I don’t know how you can say that.” I shook the frying pan to make the sausages roll. The handle was loose. I’d been meaning to tighten the screw that attached it for ages. I went to the pantry to look for potatoes. There weren’t many left, and the few that were there were small and aging. I gathered them anyway.
“Lee, we’ve known Simon since he was a boy. You can’t really think... you can’t really think...”
“You say we’ve known him, but we don’t know him at all. We’ve seen him at the school, at sports days and graduations.”
“He’s been here to the house a bunch of times.”
I threw the potatoes in the sink and turned on the tap. “Sure. And how much time have we actually spent with him? He says hello, and he disappears with Nina. He’s had dinner here a handful of times over the last five years. He’s watched a movie with us, what, twice?” I started scrubbing, hard. The weak feeling left me, replaced by a simmering rage. “He’s rich and he’s entitled.” I dropped the potatoes on the draining board, took out my sharp knife, and started piercing them roughly.
“Lee,” Andy said.
I ignored him.
“Leanne.” He came to me and put his arms around me from behind. He took my hands in his and made me put the knife down, then he turned me around to face him. “You gotta slow down. I know this is tough, but we don’t know that Nina’s in trouble. I know you’re pissed right now, but we do know Simon.”
“I never liked him. He was always too smooth. Too pleased with himself.”
“They broke up. They had a fight. She was probably upset. Maybe she didn’t want to come home. You know what Nina’s like when she’s hurting. She don’t go to anyone for help. She curls up in a corner, licks her wounds, and when she feels better she comes out like a fighter.” Andy rested his chin on the top of my head. “Remember middle school? We heard nothing about that from her. Julie’s mother told us, weeks after it all started.”
They’d been in the seventh grade. Nina and her friend Julie had been targeted by some mean girls. One of them wanted to copy Julie’s math test, and when Julie said no, that kicked everything off. The girls had their lunches stolen and thrown in the trash, dirt smeared on their backpacks, nasty notes written about them and passed around class. Nina could have dropped Julie and those girls would have left her alone, but that was never going to happen. The whole thing came to a head on the playground, when one of those girls—a twelve-year-old girl—called Julie a slut, and Nina pushed her over. Then of course the principal found out and we were called in and we didn’t have any of the background because Nina hadn’t said a word. We had to hear it all from Julie’s mom.
