Laura Lippman - To The Power Of Three

Until right now, when he kind of hated her for these very qualities. How could she be so collected, so efficient? Maybe Susannah had never really cared for Kat. Maybe she was secretly glad Kat was dead. Now she would want a baby, and Dale had been very clear on that score-no more children. He was done.

“We expect a lot of people,” she was telling Stan Jasper in her lovely low voice, a voice that Dale had never heard raised except in joy or excitement. “Kat was a very popular girl, and…the nature of what happened makes this something of a public event. Yet we still want the service to be intimate, to reflect her.”

“I’d recommend a private service,” Jasper said, “followed by a more, ah, inclusive burial service. Or even a memorial service at the school, which would allow her little friends to grieve, without putting too much of a burden on you.”

Oh, he was such a shit. Susannah had loved Kat, too. There had been tensions, of course. It wasn’t easy for Kat to have a de facto stepmother who was only fourteen years older, even if Susannah was far more mature than Chloe would ever be. But Susannah’s cool competence, so comforting in other aspects of their life together, was also present in her relationship with Kat, and that had worried Dale a little. She admired Kat, complimented her, had even been instrumental in helping Kat get into Stanford, but she was unusually insistent, in Dale’s opinion, about not wanting to replace Chloe in Kat’s heart. One could argue that Susannah was being sensitive and responsible in not pressing for too intimate a connection to Kat. Yet Susannah’s reserve had always bothered Dale.

Then he remembered Susannah yesterday afternoon, crying wholeheartedly upon hearing the news, holding him as tightly as anyone had ever held him-outside Chloe, who used to grab on to Dale so hard when she was angry or sad that it had frightened him a little. Susannah felt this as deeply as she could-but she could never feel what he did. The irony of Kat’s death, if such a thing could ever be termed ironic in any aspect, was that the only person on earth who understood what Dale was going through was a person who was determined to hate him. That was Chloe’s religion, the Gospel According to Hating Dale. What did it matter if an Episcopal priest or Chloe’s Buddhist-monk friend officiated at the service? The only person who could please Chloe was someone who got up and reminded the mourners that everything was Dale Hartigan’s fault, forever and ever, amen.

“You haven’t been in an Episcopal church since we got married,” Chloe complained. “And that was only for your parents.” So hypocrite, okay. But why a cunt? Wait-now he got it. She had been going for his soft spot, mocking his masculinity. A real man would be able to take care of his daughter, Chloe was saying. Never mind that she was the custodial parent, that if anyone could have seen this storm gathering on the horizon, it should have been Chloe, who was part of Kat’s life on a daily basis. She knew about this strange feud with Perri, as it turned out, but had written it off as a rite of passage. “All girls fight,” she had said. No, this, too, had to be Dale’s fault somehow.

She hadn’t thrown The Prayer of Jabez at him because of the Episcopalian minister. That was a lie, the only thing he could think of to explain the red mark on his forehead to Susannah. Chloe had tossed the book at him because Dale had agreed that Kat’s death was all his fault-but not for reasons that Chloe wanted to hear.

“If I hadn’t let you pack my bags and put me out that first time,” he had told her. “If I hadn’t made the mistake of telling the truth, in hopes of making a truly fresh start with you. If I hadn’t accepted your edict that our marriage was over, if I had parked myself on our front porch and refused to move until you heard me out-”

“You stupid cunt,” she had said. “You think everything is about you.”

And the book had landed before Dale could finish his thought, which was simply, If I hadn’t left, I would have been here to protect her.

Josie was alonewith her mother when the two strange men appeared in her hospital room. She could not have told you who they were, but she quickly understood who they were not . Not doctors, because they wore suits and ties and hovered in the doorway waiting to be invited in, while the hospital staff always sailed right in. Not from school. Not friends’ fathers, because she didn’t recognize them, and one looked a little too young to be anyone’s dad. Not her parents’ friends, because-But she had no words for this knowledge, just an awareness that these were not men from her parents’ jobs. Something about their suits, their ties, even their hair, told her they were not part of her family’s world.

“Mrs. Patel?” the older one asked. Josie, who had endured a lifetime of such puzzled looks, knew he was trying to connect the blond woman in the chair to the dark girl in the bed. He also didn’t say their name quite right. It was more “Pattle” than “ Pa -tel” in this stranger’s mouth. If her father were here, there would be no confusion. But Josie’s father was in the parking lot, arguing with his insurance company on his cell phone. Josie was to be discharged today, but with television trucks cruising the cul-de-sac in front of their house, her parents felt it would be easier to safeguard her privacy at the hospital. Her father had assured Josie it was just a matter of getting the right person on the phone, but there were apparently many, many wrong people en route to that right one, bored men and women in windowless cubicles in distant states who did not understand the magnitude of what had happened at Glendale, or Josie’s singular role in it.

“Mrs. Patel?” The older man had to repeat himself, for Josie’s mother was just looking at him over her magazine, fatigue making her punchy. She had gone home last night to take care of Matt and Tim, but she told Josie she hadn’t slept.

“Yes?”

“I’m Sergeant Harold Lenhardt from Baltimore County Police, and this is my partner, Detective Kevin Infante. We’d like to ask your daughter, Josephine, some questions if she’s up to it.”

“Josie,” said Josie, shocked to hear the old-fashioned name that her family had never used. Then she wished she had not responded so quickly and forcefully. She should have pretended to be tired, or spacey from the painkillers. Then these men would have to go away. Why did she have to talk to police? Wasn’t it obvious what had happened?

“I suppose-” her mother began.

“It’s important,” the older man said, the one who had identified himself as a sergeant. “It’s best to talk to witnesses when their memories are freshest. Every day that goes by, things will be harder to recall. Especially in a trauma like this, where a healthy brain will be working to suppress memories.”

“Josie’s brain is very healthy,” her mother said, clearly not hearing all the words.

“Of course she is. It’s just, from our point of view, it’s never too early to start preparing for a trial.”

“There’s going to be a trial?” Josie asked.

“Maybe,” Lenhardt said. “If…well, for now, we have to assume that someone will be charged. That could change.”

Because Perri might die, Josie realized. The very concept still stunned her, despite seeing Perri’s face. Perri dead was even more shocking than Kat dead.

“Even if there’s not a criminal trial,” put in the younger cop, Infante, “there could be civil ones. Lawsuits against the gun manufacturer, for example. Or the school.”

“Oh, Jesus,” Josie’s mom said. “We would never be a party to such things.”