***
The four of us huddled up at lunch: me, Trip, Sarah, and Tannis. The eyes of all of Buford High followed us, blazing into our backs as we sat at a table near the center aisle. I was afraid to talk or look around. We lasted less than five minutes before Sarah suggested, “Want to go to the quad?”
Even though it was forty degrees outside, we all did. The eyes followed us to the doorway, eager for scraps about our conspicuously absent friend. I still felt them as the four of us split down the halls toward our respective lockers for coats and hats and gloves.
Tannis was already at the picnic table when I went out. She was bundled into a blue down jacket and scarf, picking at her fingernails, her head bowed.
I climbed onto the bench across from her.
“She’s still down there, you know.” She didn’t have to tell me who she was talking about.
“With the police?”
Tannis nodded, flicking her eyes to me. “Does that mean they think she did it?”
“It could mean lots of stuff,” I said, trying to picture Nat with the cops, being questioned like I’d been, her dad dead. Natalie was tough, but not like that. Not hard. “Maybe she doesn’t have anywhere else to go. Maybe they just have her with, like, a foster family or something. Who else does Nat have?”
“I don’t know. No one?” She rubbed her forehead, admitting shakily, “I’m freaking out, Riley.”
“We all are.”
Trip and Sarah joined us then, Sarah’s cheeks red from the cold. They matched her coat, one she’d complained mildly was worn at the edges, last year’s style. She looked beautiful, and I thought of how it had felt to stand beside her at John Peters’s. Two nights ago that felt like two million.
“What do you think happened?” I asked when we were all at the table. No one else was outside today; the air was sharp with the brittle cold. Sarah shook her head, still looking spooked.
“Damned if I know, Ri,” Trip said. “Sounds like the police don’t either.”
“People think it might have been her,” I said.
He nodded. “I got that from the stuff the cops asked. I don’t believe it.”
“Really?”
“It’s just not Natalie.” Trip was adamant.
“Yeah, I know, Trip. But her dad—”
“Has been out of hand for as long as any of us can remember,” he said, cutting me off. “But we don’t know that he’s ever done anything to hurt anyone. Except himself. It’s all speculation and suspicion and rumor.” He shook his head. “If he was really abusive, don’t you think Natalie would have done something about it? In all these years, with all the people who’ve offered to step in? Why would she suddenly decide to shoot him?”
“Maybe she just snapped,” I said. “Maybe he came after her.”
“Then she’d have done whatever she’s been doing the last ten or fifteen years to deal with it,” Trip said angrily.
“So if it wasn’t her,” Tannis said, “who was it? And how could she have been there and not heard anything?”
“We don’t know that she didn’t,” Trip pointed out. I was about to tell him what Matty’s mom had said, but realized it was just more hearsay. “Maybe it was a disgruntled client,” Trip continued. “Or a girlfriend?”
“Ewww.” Tannis wrinkled her nose. “He had girlfriends?”
I thought of the woman passed out on the couch, and Sarah said, “Nat mentioned his ‘lady friends’ a couple times.”
“Ugh,” Tannis said. “Parents and dating? Awkward.”
“I’m not sure you’d call what they did dating,” Trip said.
“Ewww,” Tannis said again.
“The cops were asking about drugs and stuff,” I said, realizing that I’d actually been the one to bring it up.
“And?” Trip asked.
“Maybe they have a suspect.” One I gave them. Moose had looked like he wanted to strangle me when he’d walked out of his chat with them.
“If looks could kill, Randall Cleary would’ve been dead at the mountain,” Sarah said.
“Yeah,” I agreed. “But I don’t think Bill Winston hauled up to the trailer in the middle of the night and shot him.”
Sarah nodded.
“The cops were asking me who I thought might have done it,” I said. “‘Who would have wanted him dead?’ were their actual words.”
Trip snorted. “Everyone?” He said. “Except Nat.”
“Trip,” Sarah said, “you’re not supposed to speak ill of the dead.”
He rolled his eyes. “Sorry, grandma,” he said. “The fact is, there probably isn’t anyone in town you could come up with a longer list of suspects for.”
I nodded. “It sounds like the cops are keeping it wide open right now.”
“So they think Nat did it or don’t?” Trip asked.
“I don’t think they have a clue.”
“That’s not likely to change,” Sarah said. She was joking, but there was more than a kernel of truth there. Buford’s finest hadn’t had much to investigate since someone had stolen Larry Bushman’s lawn mower six months ago. And they’d only dug into that because Larry had called them about it every day. People up here tended to live and let live. It was the way we were all brought up. Why stick your nose into other people’s business unless it affected you? People gossiped plenty but rarely got involved, and the cops tended to look the other way unless their hand was forced. I don’t think it had ever been forced like it was being forced now.
“But, guys,” Tannis said, “what about those binoculars?”
We stared at her. “What about them?” Trip said.
“I mean, I know I’m freaking out, but what if . . .” Tannis took a ragged breath. “What if we saw the future?”
There it was. None of us said anything right away, but I’d be lying if I didn’t admit I’d wondered the same thing sometime between watching the red-and-blue police lights outside Natalie’s trailer and now.
I ignored the shiver down my spine. “That’s impossible.”
“I don’t know,” she said. “The stuff I saw was so real. Not like it’d be if I made it up. The strangest things came to me about walking with those kids. I mean, I felt like I loved them or something.” Tannis looked embarrassed. “I don’t even like kids. And my shoes hurt and it was blazing hot. And I was crampy—”