Page 19 of What Have You Done?

‘I don’t want to talk to anyone. Leave me alone,’ he says from behind the door.

His voice sounds different, full of tears. ‘I’m not leaving,’ Riley says, her own voice catching on a sob. She waits until he opens the door. Cameron looks utterly miserable. He’s been crying a lot, Riley thinks. His handsome face is red and swollen. And his expression – he looks completely desolate, as if his life is over.

The first thing Riley does is hug him. Then Cameron closes the door, and they sit on his bed.

‘I can’t believe she’s gone,’ Cameron says finally.

‘I know,’ Riley says bleakly. They sit in silence. Then she reaches out and grasps his hand, squeezes it. She lets the silence grow. Finally she says, ‘Cameron, what happened with the police?’

He looks at her warily. ‘What do you mean?’

‘They questioned you … you’re not a suspect, are you?’ Riley asks, as if she’s worried he might be.

‘Of course not. They know I loved her.’

‘Good,’ Riley says, nodding sadly. ‘What did you tell them?’

‘I told them the truth. I picked her up in my dad’s truck, we drove around, parked, made out. I dropped her back home about eleven and went home. I don’t know what happened to her after that.’ But he’s not looking at her now.

Riley isn’t sure she believes him. Why won’t he look at her? ‘You guys didn’t argue or anything?’ she asks tentatively.

He glances at her defensively and then looks away again. ‘No, of course not. What would we have to argue about?’

Riley gathers herself and says, ‘I know Diana didn’t want to go to the same college as you next year. She told me.’

‘Oh,’ he says, glancing at her again. ‘What else did she tell you?’

‘Nothing. Just that,’ Riley says. She doesn’t tell him that she knows Diana was thinking of breaking up with him.

‘We didn’t argue about it,’ Cameron says. ‘She was happy when I left her at her door last night. That’s the last I saw of her.’

Riley stares at him, waiting for more. He still won’t meet her eyes.

Shelby Farrell watches Riley leave and turns to her husband. ‘That girl is pretty ballsy,’ she says tensely.

Edward rests his hand on her shoulder. ‘Maybe it was good for him. He needs his friends right now.’

Shelby looks up at him. She’s not so sure. She doesn’t know what they talked about, what Cameron might have told Riley. She knows kids talk to one another more than they talk to their parents. What if he told her something he shouldn’t, and the police get it out of her? Shelby can’t carry this on her shoulders alone any longer; she’s been doing that all day, and now, as darkness falls, she decides she can’t do it any more. She must tell her husband. She pulls him down the stairs to the finished basement where they can’t be overheard.

‘There’s something I have to tell you,’ she says.

‘What?’ He immediately looks concerned.

She says in a low voice, ‘Cameron is lying about what time he came home last night.’

His eyes widen. ‘What are you talking about?’

She tells him how she woke up and Cameron wasn’t there. How she waited for him to come home, which he did, at 1:11 a.m.

‘He lied to the police! Why would he lie about that?’ she asks her husband in a hushed voice.

He looks stunned, as if he can’t absorb it. She helps him. ‘Do you think he lied because his curfew is eleven thirty? He probably left her there like he said, only he lied about the time? Remember we grounded him once because he came in past curfew, and he was furious.’

‘Yes, but – he wouldn’t lie to the police just because of his curfew, would he?’ Edward asks doubtfully. He looks alarmed now.

She is not getting the reassurance she was hoping for. It looks like Edward doesn’t buy the explanation she’s been grasping at. She finds she can’t breathe for a minute, because she’s afraid she doesn’t believe it either.

‘We have to ask him,’ Edward says.

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