Page 94 of Good Girls Lie

“I know you’re not, so you don’t have to pretend for me. Camille was your very good friend.”

“We don’t know why she did it,” Piper says, curling herself back onto the sofa. “I mean, she was pissed off about the whole thing with Ash using a fake name, but when Becca said it wasn’t an Honor Code violation—”

“Camille took Ash to Honor Court?” This is news.

“Only a conference with Becca. She shot it down.”

“I need to ask you something important. Do either of you know who Camille was seeing? Who might have been the father of the baby?”

A quick glance between them tells Ford all she needs to know. They do, and they’re going to lie to her.

“May I remind you, ladies, that we have an Honor Code here.”

The threat lands. “We don’t know. That’s the thing, we were just trying to figure it out. She didn’t tell us.”

“Camille didn’t strike me as the type of girl who would keep something of this magnitude to herself.”

“Her sister might know,” Piper said. “Emily took her to the clinic outside of Charlottesville for the pills. But Camille didn’t tell us who got her pregnant. On my honor, Dean.”

“All right. If you two need anything, don’t hesitate. I will reach out to Emily and see if she has any information to share. Take good care, girls.”

She doesn’t know if she believes them. Who are they protecting, and why?

Ford stops by Ash’s room but it’s empty. It has been straightened, the beds made, the clothes hung. Ford will have to clear out Camille’s things, have them sent to Deirdre. Have the bunk bed removed. Ash gets a single for the rest of the year.

If only Camille had left a note. Something definitive. All they have to go on is the reactions of the people around her, teachers and students alike, all of whom say they didn’t think Camille was anything but her normal, bubbly self, and the diary in which she spoke of death. She didn’t say she wished for her own, though.

Ford knows full well that many suicides are shocks to the closest friends and family. That people who seem happy are sometimes the ones in the most danger of succumbing.

Ford wants to read the journal, at length, but it’s been taken into evidence, and she doubts she’ll be given another crack at it. She wants to talk to Ash again when she isn’t under the influence of Becca, the sheriff, and whatever she’d been forced into drinking the night before.

But Ash is nowhere to be found. She’s most likely with one of the counselors. Ford makes a mental note to send for her before dinner.

Down in her office, Melanie is at her desk, nose red and eyes swollen. “Anything new?” she asks.

“No. The girls are understandably rocked. Has the sheriff been in touch?”

“He left a message half an hour ago. He’ll be along presently.”

“All right. I’m going to check my email, have some coffee. Regroup before he gets here.”

She plops down in her desk chair with a fresh cup of coffee. Sunlight spills in through her picture window, a shaft of light runs across the rug. It feels obscene that today is so gloriously sunny. It should be raining, the skies weeping the loss of a child; that’s only fitting.

She opens her computer and clicks on her email. She receives a ridiculous amount, considering. She scans the headlines. Most are from parents, a few reporters asking for comment. She’s had a lid on the situation and plans to keep it that way, so long as Camille’s parents don’t act first and start flinging the story to the press.

An invite from Asolo for her annual Virginia Woolf supper party Saturday evening—well, normalcy is best in these situations. She sends back a note:Good idea. I’ll be there.

An email pops in while she’s working. She doesn’t recognize the sender, but it’s come to her school address, so she deems it safe and clicks it open.

A photo is embedded in the email. Grainy. Black-and-white, clearly a shot taken at night.

It takes her a moment to realize she is looking at Camille Shannon.

And Rumi.

Locked in an embrace.

More photos fill the screen, loading one by one, telling the story of an interlude. A series of interludes.