Page 65 of Little Stolen Memories

“I don’t think so.”

“What are you doing here? Is there something I can do for you?”

“I’m Georgiana Germaine, and I’m a?—”

“I’ll stop you there. You’re investigating the murders of my old classmates. I’ve heard. Everyone in town has, I expect. Word gets out fast around here.”

So it would seem.

“If you know who I am, I’m guessing you also know why I’m here,” I said.

“I do not.”

Except he did—I could tell.

“Sure you do,” I said.

He stared at me for a moment and then said, “I haven’t talked to anyone about what happened back then in a long time. I don’t know how I can be of any help.”

I did.

“I heard an interesting story about you yesterday,” I said.

“Oh, yeah?”

“Back when your father taught here, he created a final test for his students, a test he never changed over the years.”

“What about it?”

“You knew about the test, knew your father always gave the same one year after year. You slipped a copy to Jackson, so he’d get a good grade. Except it backfired when your father figured out Jackson and a few of his friends had seen it beforehand.”

Ty cleared his throat once, then again.

He pointed at the door to the classroom and said, “Would you mind closing it, please? This isn’t a conversation I wish to have while faculty members are walking around in the hallway.”

I did as he asked, and then I joined him at his desk.

“I haven’t thought about what happened back then in … well, many years,” he said. “It’s not a memory a person wants to revisit.”

“Your father didn’t take it well when he found out some of his students had cheated.”

“He did not, and he blamed me for all of it. He stopped speaking to me.”

Before I’d driven over to the school, I’d taken a moment to read the notes in the case file about the interview Whitlock and Harvey had conducted at Ty’s home during the murder investigation, and I learned a few things I didn’t know.

“Your father died a week before you graduated from high school,” I said. “He overdosed on pain killers.”

“Yeah, he did.”

“Must have been hard on you, given the two of you weren’t speaking.”

“My father was recovering from a motor bike accident. He was in a lot of pain, and he was depressed. We didn’t realize how bad things were until after he died. I don’t … ahh … I don’t want to talk about him.”

“I imagine everything that happened back then was upsetting,” I said. “You trusted Jackson with the test. You asked him not to show it to anyone, and he broke your trust. If he hadn’t shown it to anyone else, there’s a good chance no one would have ever known what happened.”

“Why does any of this matter now? Why waste your time coming here to talk to me about it?”

My reasons were forthcoming.

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