Page 25 of What Have You Done?

‘What do you mean?’

‘If it becomes known – you know how powerful parents are these days.’ There’s a short silence at this. Then he adds, ‘Look, the police will probably question you, realize you had nothing to do with her death, and leave it be—’

‘Of course I had nothing to do with it!’

‘Of course not.’ Kelly pauses. ‘So with any luck, none of this might ever become known publicly.’

At least he knows where he stands. ‘Thanks for letting me know,’ Brad says. Just before he disconnects, he says, ‘Keep me in the loop about this.’

‘Of course.’

Brad lights another cigarette, brooding out the window, more anxious than before. His cell phone rings again, and he glances at it. It’s Ellen. He doesn’t want to talk to her. He doesn’t know what to tell her, so he doesn’t answer. She doesn’t know anything about this.

Not yet, anyway.

Ellen looks at her phone in dismay. It’s not like Brad to ignore her calls. Maybe he’s in the shower. Maybe he’ll call her back and ask her to come over tonight after all. It feels odd to be at home on a Friday night, when she’s engaged to be married in a matter of weeks. But she can put the time to good use. There’s so much to do when planning a wedding, although she feels a bit guilty to be preparing for such a happy event when one of her fiancé’s students has been murdered.

She thinks again about the body of that young girl left in their field. She can’t stop thinking about it. It’s sickening. And frightening.

Her thoughts turn once again to Brad. She can understand that he feels he needs some time alone, but she thinks it would be better if he could share his feelings more openly with her.

Ellen feels a twinge of unease. She loves Brad – head over heels – but there always seems to be something unknowable about him, as if he’s keeping part of himself locked away from her. Maybe that’s part of the attraction. She ascribes this to his upbringing, to his being the youngest child in an unhappy, dysfunctional family. He’s not used to feeling safe, to sharing his feelings, and having those feelings validated. He’s had to protect himself in order to survive as a healthy human being.

She thinks about their future, how different it will be when they start a family of their own. They’ve bought a modest little bungalow on the outskirts of town, with the help of her parents. The sale will close on December first. It will be a home filled with love and acceptance, honesty and kindness.

Ellen wanders into the dining room. The large, formal table is littered with wedding paraphernalia. They always eat in the kitchen, so she’s turned the dining-room table into her workspace. She starts working on the place cards for her wedding supper; she still has a lot of them to do.

Brenda Brewer finally climbs the stairs to bed. She’s told her ex-husband to make himself up a bed in the spare room. She’s suggested he might as well leave in the morning, and he agreed. ‘I have to get back to Jill and the boys,’ he said unnecessarily, and she walked out of the room.

Now she crawls beneath the covers and turns off the lamp beside her bed. The room is plunged into darkness. She longs for the oblivion of sleep, but even though she’s taken a sleeping pill, for a long while it eludes her. Because sometime last night, someone murdered her daughter. The horror of it.

As she finally begins to drift off to sleep, she thinks she senses her daughter’s presence near her, close and comforting. She knows it’s just her mind, on the edge of sleep, playing tricks on her, but she clings to it nonetheless.

CHAPTER TWENTY

GRAHAM KELLY SITS in his living room alone in the dark, tense, sipping a whiskey. He’s been a mess all day. He’s been swinging like a pendulum between his shock and grief about what’s happened to Diana and his anxiety about the position he’s in – his uncertainty about what he should do.

His wife has gone to bed, and his three kids have scattered to their various bedrooms to spend far too much time on social media and computer games that are doing them no good at all. He no longer enquires. He has lost control over them, and now all he can do, it seems, is hang on for the ride and hope it all turns out okay in the end. Parenting has been something of a nightmare for him and his wife. They have not been easy kids, but he loves them fiercely anyway. They have caused him personal heartbreak and professional embarrassment as a principal. It has certainly made him more empathetic to parents going through difficulties with their kids. He’s done his best. He’s come to believe that children are born with certain traits and temperaments and the most well-intentioned parenting in the world can’t fundamentally change that. You do what you can. He doesn’t judge.

But this.

He must go to the police station tomorrow morning and talk to them. Because Paula is right. And he’s a little afraid that if he doesn’t tell the police, Paula will.

They’re going to want to question Brad. But it will probably be all right, he tells himself, gripping his whiskey glass tightly. Brad didn’t kill her. Brad will have an alibi – he’ll have been with his fiancée, no doubt – they’re such lovebirds. Brad won’t have to worry about any serious questioning on that point, at least. But Kelly, like the coward he is, hadn’t wanted to bring up the matter of an alibi on the phone.

He knows he has always been someone who avoids bad news, skirts conflict. He’s never been one to face things head-on – not in his work, or in his personal life either. It was a bit of a surprise, even to him, how he ever made it to the level of principal. But then he realized that it’s all about working within the system. No one at the board level wants a maverick for a school principal. It’s all about not rocking the boat, really.

He hopes this matter of Diana’s complaint doesn’t come out publicly, because he doesn’t want to be under scrutiny for the way he handled it. He should have reported it, even if he found it unbelievable. It’s not always easy to do the right thing, or to know what that is.

It’s late when Joe Prior hears the familiar knock on his apartment door. He wonders what took him so long. Joe gets up from his chair where he’s been watching the news on TV and opens it.

It’s Roddy, whom he met on the job at the construction site earlier in the year. Roddy is a bit of a drifter too. He’s half Canadian and spent part of his early life in New Brunswick. He’s lean, as if he’s underfed, but Joe knows how strong he is – he’s seen him lift things at work. He’s usually pretty amiable but can sometimes be a mean drunk. He lives by himself in a small trailer on the outskirts of town. Joe never goes there because he can’t stand trailers. Too many miserable memories of growing up. He’ll never set foot in another trailer again if he can help it.

‘Hey, Roddy, come in,’ Joe says. He mutes the TV.

Roddy enters the room and slumps down on the tattered black-leather couch and puts his feet up on the worn coffee table. Joe goes automatically into the tiny kitchen and comes back out with a cold can of beer, which he tosses to Roddy, who catches it expertly. Joe reaches into the fridge again and pulls out another cold one for himself. Roddy is glancing around the shoddy apartment, taking in the dirty clothes in the laundry basket by the front door, the books on the shelves.

‘So, did the police call you?’ Joe asks.

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