Laura Lippman - To The Power Of Three

And you wouldn’t approve if you knew I didn’t erase that photo, the one with you in Mrs. Delacorte’s underwear, holding the gun. But I didn’t know what else to do. I had promised you I wouldn’t tell, and I saw what you could do to people who don’t take your side. You had cut off Kat and Josie because they had displeased you in some way, and they were your forever friends, whereas we had just been hanging out the past year. So I left the one photo in there, thinking someone might find it and call the police or tell your parents. It was so half-assed, so typically me. I should have told or not told. If I had been willing to risk losing your friendship, you might be alive. Jesus, Perri, what were you thinking?

But Perri’s thoughts were long gone, shut off to him, lost to everyone, forever.

Josie knew the carby now. Not by sound, not like her mother’s chugging Accord, but she knew it by sight, the generic Ford Taurus that the detectives drove. She had seen them leaving Kat’s funeral in this car, the older one staring her down from the passenger seat. And just as the detectives had been out of place in her hospital room, their car did not look right in a Glendale driveway. Too boxy, too plain.

Now the detectives were on her doorstep, ringing the bell, and she was balanced on her crutches three inches, four inches away-she really wasn’t good with distances, as she had told the detectives that very first day-wondering if they could tell she was on the other side of her door, holding her breath.

“Josie?” the older one said. “Josie, are you there? Is someone there?”

Marta had left to run an errand and then pick up her brothers at school, which meant she wouldn’t be home for an hour. Her parents were still at work. If Josie stood very still, if she didn’t breathe or make any noise, the detectives couldn’t know she was here. And even if they knew, they couldn’t force her to open the door. Could they?

“We have a search warrant, Josie.”

Search warrant? The shoes, the damn shoes. Well, she had taken care of that. They wouldn’t find the sandals here. It had broken her heart, but they were gone now, gone as the cell phones. She had taken care to get rid of them right after the funeral. Another piece of improvisation.

“Josie, just let us in. We won’t try to talk to you until your lawyer shows up. Unless you want to talk, of course. But we’re entitled to execute this search without your lawyer being here.”

It was getting hard balancing on one foot. She gave a little hop, and a crutch bumped against the door.

“Josie-we hear you.”

She opened the door but said nothing, absolutely nothing. Her parents and her lawyer had been adamant in their instructions: Do not talk to anyone without us present. She had been happy to follow their advice to the letter and had taken it even further, refusing to speak to her parents and her lawyer as well. She let the the police in, pretended to read the paper that they thrust at her, then tilted her head toward the stairs, knowing it was her room they wished to search. She hopped back to the sofa in the family room and continued watching Judge Joe Brown. Her parents would be home early for the graduation ceremonies. In less than an hour, her father would come through the door and take care of these detectives. Until then all she had to do was stay quiet.

Quiet was something at which she excelled, Josie was finding out, a skill that she had acquired from Kat without even realizing what she was learning. For while she had often envied Perri and her endless, inventive rush of words, there were advantages to keeping still, saying no more than strictly necessary. In gymnastics the ability to hold a pose, to defy momentum or at least manipulate it, had been as essential as the movements themselves. It didn’t matter how beautifully you tumbled and flipped if you couldn’t nail the landing. Perhaps Josie had more of a game-day mentality than anyone had ever known, herself included.

She just hoped the detectives finished before she had to start getting ready for the evening. Her dress was laid out on the bed, a yellow-and-green sundress. Oh, her sandals would have been perfect with that dress, not that she could wear anything with a heel just now, even kitten heels. She was going to have to wear her clashing pink Pumas.

Puma, she corrected herself. Just the one.

Dale Hartigan rememberedexactly one thing about his own graduation from Hereford High School: The speaker had predicted that the students wouldn’t be able to recall his name, much less what he said. The guy had pretty much nailed it. The only thing Dale remembered from graduation night was that Cathleen Selden, a rather plain girl who had gone through high school in flannel shirts and work boots, had shown up in a black-print halter dress. Cathleen Selden’s reinvention had fired Dale’s imagination, in ways large and small, reminding him that there really was a reason the ceremony was known as commencement. He might not be going to his college of choice, he might still be yoked to his brother, but College Park was big enough to allow a fresh start. After the ceremony he had tracked Cathleen through the looser, less organized gatherings that made up the Senior Ramble in his day, and while they never got further than sharing a Miller Lite on the hood of his car, it had been a most satisfying night.

Yet Dale was certain that every detail of his daughter’s graduation ceremony would have remained vivid. Not because she was first in her class- Glendale, following the cowardly example of other schools, had dropped valedictorian and salutatorian from its ceremony, denying Kat that recognition. Nor did he care that she was slated to recite that strange poem, “ Dover Beach.” His daughter could have been just one of the crowd, an ordinary student with no special role in the ceremonies, and every moment would have been etched in his memory as long as he lived. When it came to his own achievements, Dale felt vaguely shameful. But he had been able to glory in everything Kat did.

Of course, it hadn’t quite worked that way in Dale’s family, where his parents had been keen not to emphasize the differences between the brothers. Everything must be equal for twins, his father insisted. Dale remembered his parents’ consternation when they finally left the house on Frederick Road and moved into the old Meeker farm, whose odd-shaped rooms made it impossible to give their sons identical bedrooms. So, rather than let one boy have what was clearly a superior room-even by random drawing of straws or flipping a coin-they had made them continue to double up. Dale had not minded, not until the issue of college came up and his father said each boy would get the same amount of money, no more. So if Dale wanted to go to Stanford, which was offering no financial aid, it was up to him to pay the difference in tuition. And not just the college costs but the difference in expenses, including the travel back and forth to California. It was probably a bluff, but Dale hadn’t called it.

Wait-he did have another memory from his own graduation night: His father had arrived late. Dale had been third in his class, winning prizes for math and history, but his father had managed to miss that part of the ceremony. Yet he was there when the diplomas were awarded, clapping first for Dale Hartigan, then Glen. He knew that his father hadn’t meant to teach him to be ambivalent about his achievements, and yet Dale always felt a little desperate whenever he received any public recognition.

So Dale had tried to do things differently with Kat, and he hadn’t lacked opportunities to celebrate her. Number one in her class, a cheerleader yet, and popular too, the kind of girl who was elected prom queen not just because she was beautiful but because she was beloved. Early admission to Stanford. All that, and then the bonus of her lovely soprano voice, to which Kat seemed utterly indifferent. He remembered feeling a little startled when she said Perri had been given a solo while Kat was to recite.