Page 27

Friday

Rowan

I’m finishing up my shower when I hear Natalie wail. Before I can even process the sound, I’m slapping at the faucet and grabbing my towel. I trip over the bath mat and career out the door.

“Natalie?”

She crouches on her bed, curled around her laptop, tears streaming down her face.

“What’s happened?”

Face crumpling, she shows me her computer screen. Area Man Arrested in Connection with Mansion Murder . Bile creeps up my throat as I squint at the page to find his name.

She scrolls down, and Harrison’s mug shot appears.

Oh God.

Perching on the bed, I skim the article, trying to take in facts with a muddled brain. Harrison was arrested “on a warrant for a probation violation,” but they’re “questioning him in connection with the murder of Tim Kovak.”

If he’s innocent, I feel sick. If he did it, I’ll feel sicker.

“I’m not going,” my daughter sobs.

“What?”

“My last exam. Call me in sick.”

“Let me get dressed,” I say, trying to wrap my head around Harrison’s arrest.

Numbly, I move through the rituals of the day, pulling on socks and trying to figure out what you’re supposed to do when your daughter’s father is arrested. There’s no playbook for this.

I walk downstairs—out of earshot—and call the biology teacher. “Mr. Blinkman, I know the timing is terrible,” I say, my voice shaking. “But we’re having a family emergency. I need to keep Natalie at home today.”

One of the blessings of sending your child to an outrageously priced prep school is having the teacher’s phone number handy. The downside is the curious tone in his voice.

“I’m so sorry to hear that,” he says. “I hope everything is going to be okay?”

“I sure hope so. Can she email you this weekend about a retake?”

“Of course she can. Please remind her that the honor code forbids her to talk to her friends about how the test went.”

“Absolutely. I’ll make sure of it.”

After hanging up, I towel off my hair and try to think. Could Harrison really have done this? Two days ago, I’d told Natalie that her father might be a dangerous man. But I didn’t want to be right. I feel no relief that he’s been arrested.

After another deep breath, I get off the couch and climb the stairs again. At the top, Natalie’s closed bedroom door feels like the Berlin wall.

I rap lightly with a knuckle. “Natalie? The bio teacher is giving you an extension.”

“Who cares .” The door suddenly flies open. “Did you do this? Did you tell the cops you think he’s guilty?”

“No.” But I’m quailing inside. “The detectives knew he was in town before I did.”

She squints at me with bloodshot eyes. “Did you tell them there’s no way he did this? Because there’s just no way!”

I’m not sure which one of us she’s trying to convince.

“He’ll get a lawyer,” I say quietly. “And if he didn’t do it, they won’t find him guilty.”

“ God , Mom. That’s so na?ve.” Fresh tears stream down her cheeks. “He needs a good lawyer.”

“Sweetheart, this is not your problem to solve.”

“That’s bullshit ,” she rages. “You’re all, He’s not a good person . But do you know who wasn’t a good person? Tim fricking Kovak! Did you know that?”

My blood stops circulating. “What are you talking about?”

Natalie spins and hurls herself onto her unmade bed. “Your stupid boyfriend looked through your phone! I saw him.”

A chill climbs up my spine. “ When , Natalie? When did you see this?”

She rolls over and pins me with a glare. “One Saturday morning. I came home from Tessa’s and found him scrolling through your phone in the living room. You were in the shower.”

I feel sick. “You never told me.”

“ Right .” The word is dripping with disgust. “Like I wanted to be in the middle of that problem. I just turned around and left. But Mom —that’s what an abuser does.”

Natalie is red-faced and sneering, and there’s snot running out of her nose. But she has never been more beautiful to me, raging about the injustices done to me by my not-quite boyfriend.

“I’m sorry,” I say quietly. “You shouldn’t have to try to protect me like that.”

“He was acting strange, Mom. He just put the phone down so casually. Like he wasn’t doing anything wrong.”

“Thank you for telling me. I’m sorry you felt like you couldn’t before.”

She flops back on the bed. “They think Dad killed Tim, but Tim was obviously doing some shady shit. And now Dad is in jail. I need to see my phone. What if he tried to message me?”

“I’ll get it. You can check.” It’s a relief to turn away and fetch it from my drawer, where I’d stashed it yesterday. Maybe it will provide her a small comfort.

It only takes her a moment to unlock the screen and check her notifications.

“He called me! There’s a voicemail.”

A moment later I hear my ex’s voice.

“Natty, hi.”

Natty . I feel an unwelcome tug behind my breastbone.

“This isn’t a call I ever wanted to make. But if you were thinking about worrying about me, please don’t. I didn’t do... whatever they think I did. That means I’m going to land on my feet eventually. But it might take a while. Your mother doesn’t want to hear from me right now, and I get it. But please let her know that I still have important things to say to her. And please know that I love you very much. Always have.”

The message ends with an abrupt click .

My eyes get hot, and I dig my fingernails into my palms.

Natalie cries, and when I sit down and grab her into a hug, she lets me.

“I’m sorry, baby. It’ll turn out okay.”

“Really?” she sobs. “That’s what you’re going with? If you were sitting in jail, you’d want me to just shake it off? What if it was me in jail ? ”

The idea makes me feel cold despite Natalie’s octopus grip on my cotton sweater.

“Mama, we have to do something. What if Tim got himself killed by some psycho, and they pin it on Dad?”

“I’m not sure what we can do to help right now,” I say quietly.

She straightens, eyes lifting. “You could go to the jail and make sure he has a lawyer.”

Oh baby . “I’m sure he does.”

“You can still check. If you don’t, I will. I’ll go there myself. The jail is biking distance.”

“Natalie...”

“What?” She shrugs. “You may not care what happens to him. But that doesn’t mean I can’t.”

Shit . “Look, there’s someone I could call who might know why he was arrested, and how it all works.”

Her eyes burn with hope. “Will you? Today?”

“On my walk to work,” I say, regretting it already. “I’ll make the call.”

“Awesome. Go!” She waves me toward the stairs. “If you hear something, you’ll call me?”

I stand and pretend not to notice her hands are clutching the phone she’s not supposed to have. “I’ll text you later. It might take her some time to get the answers, though, okay?”

“Okay.” She gives me a miserable little smile.

I’m out the door ten minutes later, my phone in one hand and the sticky note with Jules’s number in the other. I don’t want to owe this woman a favor, but I promised Natalie, so I make the call.

She picks up immediately. “Hello?”

“Hi,” I say tightly. “This is Rowan Gallagher. Did you see...”

“Yes. They arrested your ex-boyfriend, right?”

That shuts me up for a second. “How do you know he’s my ex?”

“Found his name on an old lease when I ran a background check on you.”

I stop walking. “On me? Was I on Tim’s list of names, too?”

“No,” she says curtly. “But you’re a person of interest in a murder investigation, and I needed all the facts. Didn’t take you for the kind of girl who liked bad boys, either. Harrison’s file was a fun read.”

I have to take a deep breath. “My ex and I don’t really speak. But even given his history, it’s a stretch to think that he’d kill Tim. It doesn’t really make sense.”

“Maybe it does, maybe it doesn’t. Why are you calling me?”

“Because my daughter is losing her mind, and I thought you might know something. What do they have on him, and what does it mean?”

I can almost hear her wheels turning. Should she help me or not? “They picked him up on a probation violation. That’s what they call a parole violation in Maine.”

“Yeah, I can read the newspaper, too. But what does that mean ?”

“It means they can hold him over the weekend while they’re waiting for a probation hearing. And it also means they don’t have enough to charge him with murder. The actual violation is probably something stupid—like he drank a beer, or missed a date with his probation officer.”

“And then what happens?”

“A judge will hold a hearing—Monday or Tuesday—to decide if the breech is serious enough to send him back to prison. Jails are crowded and expensive, so the state will have to convince the judge that it’s too risky to leave him on the streets. Could go either way, depending on how skilled his lawyer is. The prosecutor is probably hoping to find better grounds for a murder charge—and lock him up for good—before the judge decides.”

Natalie will be inconsolable.

“Find me Tim’s page in that ledger,” she says. “Unless your ex has a thing for killing journalists, I think there’s something else going on. Tim started digging into the Magdalene Home, and then died in front of it? That’s what keeps me up at night.”

“I’ll think about it,” I say tightly. “Thank you for the information.”

“Feel free to repay in kind,” she says before I end the call.

Refocusing on my surroundings, I realize I’ve made it all the way to the mansion. From where I’m standing, it’s only a few paces to the spot where Tim died.

I make myself look over at the parking lot—to that place where his blood seeped into the earth.

Who pulled the trigger, Tim? I silently ask.

The only answer is the distant screech of a seagull.

The mansion rises above me in all its hulking glory, and it takes all my strength to go inside.