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CHAPTER SIX

I sat frozen in the car and staring at my phone. I was still in the driveway since I’d hung up with the girl ten minutes ago, but I couldn’t bring myself to go in the house. Not yet.

If what she said was true—that she and her friend were the only two freshmen there—then all I had to do was go inside and ask Hunter about it. On the one hand, I was grateful to have a way forward. If I knew who she was, I could easily find her parents by using the Buckley family directory and tell them what was happening. As relieved as that made me, I was equally troubled that Hunter was there. Could he or one of his friends be involved in any way?

Except I’d asked him about the video, and he said he hadn’t seen anything. Could he have been there and not been involved? Those parties were pretty big. Was it possible he had no idea it happened? Actually had not seen the video? I wanted that to be the case, but it seemed highly unlikely. My thoughts spun. I was so torn.

But that wasn’t even the thing that bothered me the most.

I couldn’t get past her mention of the college visit her crush was supposed to go on—a detail I also knew something about. This was the trip planned for all the junior and senior athletes to check out Stout’s athletic department. Hunter was supposed to go on the same visit. It was the reason he’d planned to stay overnight at his best friend Shai’s house after the party. But that’s not what happened: he called me in the middle of the night and asked me to come pick him up. He’d gotten into my car reeking of alcohol with an angry red scar on his cheek. The same night she got assaulted.

Hunter couldn’t really have had anything to do with that girl’s assault, could he? It had to be a coincidence. It had to be. That’s what I kept telling myself as I finally forced myself to get out of the car and go into the house.

“I’m in the kitchen, Mom,” Hunter yelled when he heard me come in.

My stomach rolled.

The sound of his familiar voice, calling out so sweetly like he’d done hundreds of times, sent a chill through my body. A sense of impending doom filled the air. I took tentative steps through the living room and into the kitchen. I wanted to know the truth as much as I wanted to stay in denial. Whatever happened next, I knew I could never go back.

Hunter’s back was to me at the stove. He turned around and flashed me a quick smile. “I was starving, so I started dinner. It’s just pasta, but don’t worry, I’ve got broccoli on, too,” he said, pointing to the steamer on the counter.

“Thanks,” I said. My voice didn’t sound like me, but he acted like he didn’t notice and turned around to finish cooking. I stared at his back as he stirred the noodles in the pot. It felt like just yesterday he was a little kid, sitting in a high chair—and now, here he was, taking care of himself, almost an adult.

The scene from the night of the party played out again while I watched him cook.

I’d fallen asleep in front of the TV when his text woke me up at almost two a.m. My brain immediately flipped through awful scenarios—car accidents, hospitals, sudden sickness—and I sat straight up in bed, immediately texting him back. I breathed a sigh of relief when he said he was okay and just wanted me to come pick him up. He couldn’t fall asleep at Shai’s house and wanted to spend the night in his own bed.

I was already up and moving through the house before I’d finished reading his text, slipping on my shoes and searching for my car keys. I was surprised when he wrote that he was actually not at Shai’s but at the water tower. They’d gone to a party after the football game, and Shai’s parents were supposed to pick them up afterward. What was he doing out by the water tower? It wasn’t anywhere near Shai’s house. The old Clark County water tower still stood outside the elementary school on Seventh Street, right next to the cornfields. It’d been there since I was a kid, a historic landmark. Kids climbed up it all the time—it was incredibly dangerous, but it was a rite of passage in his childhood same as it had been in mine.

I was in the car and headed to him in less than a minute. I didn’t like the idea of him at the water tower all by himself in the middle of the night. It didn’t matter that he was over six feet tall and seventeen—he was still my baby.

I didn’t see him when I first pulled up, but it wasn’t long before he appeared out of the shadows and slid into the passenger seat. I immediately smelled alcohol on him.

“You stink,” I said. It wasn’t just the alcohol… he reeked of sweat, like he did when I picked him up after cross-country practice.

He grunted without looking up from his phone. His hair was greasy and hanging in his eyes. Then I saw the huge scratch on his neck. Right on his jawline.

“Jesus, what happened to your neck?” I asked, reaching over to brush his hair off his face so I could see it better. But he smacked my hand away.

“Nothing. Don’t touch it. Leave me alone.” He glared at me. Was that a mark on his cheek, too?

“Hunter, what’s going on? What happened tonight?” He’d never been in any sort of trouble before. He wasn’t that kind of kid. But none of this felt right.

“Nothing, Mom. Everything’s fine. I went for a walk and ended up here. That’s all.” He hunched over in the passenger seat, typing fast on his phone. “I told you, I just changed my mind about sleeping over. I want to sleep in my own bed.”

“Everything’s obviously not fine. You call me in the middle of the night to pick you up at the water tower, and you get in my car smelling like alcohol, looking all ragged with a big scratch on your neck? Come on, Hunter. I’m not stupid.” The car was starting to warm up, but my words still came out in white puffs.

I wasn’t a blind-eye, bury-your-head-in-the-sand kind of parent. I was a tell-me-like-it-is type so we can figure out the problem together, and losing my sister had made me even more hypervigilant. Kids got into all kinds of trouble growing up, especially the older they got. My goal as a parent was to be his first call if he needed help or if he was in trouble. I’d gotten something right, because I was here, but I wanted to know what was going on. Clearly, this was more than feeling like sleeping in his own bed.

“I already told you—nothing. I just wanna go home. Can you leave me alone?”

“No, Hunter. I can’t. Obviously, something happened tonight.” I reached for his phone like I was going to take it away, since it was the only leverage I had left with him. He pulled it protectively against his chest, understanding the implied threat.

“Fine,” he huffed, finally looking up. “Me and Shai got into a fight. Happy now?” He scowled at me. There was no mistaking the angry red mark on his cheek.

“Like, an actual physical fight?” They’d never been in a fight, and they’d been best friends since Shai moved to town in second grade. He was taller than Hunter and weighed twenty pounds more, but my nickname for him was Gentle Giant. He was so mellow and never got riled. He was the calm to Hunter’s storm.

“Yes, Mom,” he said with the classic teenage sigh like I might be the most annoying person in the world with all my questions, but I didn’t care. I wasn’t letting something like this go.

“What did you get in a fight about?” Hunter had never been in a physical altercation with anyone. He had a temper, but he wasn’t a fighter. Something must’ve set him off. I waited a few more beats, but he ignored me. “What was the fight about?” I repeated myself.

“Nothing, okay? Just stupid shit. Don’t worry about it. I just wanna go home, and go to bed.” He pulled his AirPods out of his pocket and popped them in his ears. His face closed; completely impassive.

I dropped it then. Not because I didn’t want to know more, but because I knew pushing him would’ve gotten us nowhere. It was late, and we were both tired. Talking to him when he was in that kind of a foul mood was pointless.

I brought it up one more time at breakfast the next morning. I gave him an earful about making responsible choices when he was drinking, like I’d been doing ever since he started this past summer. He was seventeen, and I wasn’t na?ve enough to think he wasn’t going to experiment with alcohol. I secretly hoped he chose alcohol over all the other terrifying substances kids could get their hands on these days. We reviewed the rules—never drinking when he had to drive, the importance of pacing yourself and stopping before you’re too drunk, calling me if he got in trouble—and then I asked him about the fight again. He didn’t want to talk about it in the morning any more than he’d wanted to talk the night before, but I didn’t let him wriggle his way out of it that time.

“Is that why you and Shai fought? Were you drunk?” I asked, refusing to let it go.

“It was just a dumb fight over a girl, Mom, okay? Just let it be. We’re fine. You’re making it into a way bigger deal than it needs to be.”

I wanted to ask which girl, but talking about girls was sure to shut him down completely. We could talk about almost anything, but for some reason, he didn’t like telling me about any of his girlfriends or the things that happened with them. Elaine, my friend from the call center, assured me her boys were the same way when they were his age, and they shared all that stuff with her husband instead. I hoped Hunter was talking to one of his coaches or his friends’ dads about it. Being left out of that part of his life still hurt, though. He didn’t even tell me when he got his first girlfriend. I found out on Instagram, when she posted a picture of the two of them together and I saw him tagged.

“I just can’t believe you and Shai actually fought. Did he hit you?” The mark on his cheek had grown into a bruise in the morning, and the scratch on his neck was still red and inflamed.

“It wasn’t like we boxed each other. He just kinda smacked me.” He scarfed down his bowl of cereal like he hadn’t eaten in days, then poured himself a second. The boy could eat.

“And did you hit him back?” Hunter had only hit someone once, and it was in kindergarten. Since childhood, he’d never done anything violent or showed the slightest sign of aggression, I was sure of it. I’d been watching for signs since he was born. And I breathed a sigh of relief as each year passed and they weren’t there. I refused to believe this was the first sign after all that time. There had to be another explanation.

“No, I didn’t hit him,” he said, like it was a stupid question.

We left it alone after that, and I’d barely thought about it since. Hunter and Shai carried on like nothing had happened, so I figured whatever it was, they’d worked it out by themselves.

But all of this came flooding back now, as I watched Hunter prepare our dinner. I shoved my feelings down and eased my way into the conversation.

“Hey, Hunter, do you know if Jett’s dad was there at the last party he had?” I asked.

“Jett’s party?” he asked without turning around. “He hasn’t had one since the Worthington game.”

“I know,” I said. “That’s the one I’m asking about.”

He shrugged, turning around and bringing a plate of bread over to the table. “I don’t know. That was, like, weeks ago. And his dad just hides in his office, anyway.”

That’s why I always warned Hunter about making good choices, especially while he was at Jett’s. It was the boys’ favorite hangout spot because his house was the biggest and the least supervised. His dad was a single parent like me, but that’s where our similarities stopped. He was an e-trader who practically worked around the clock. He spent most of his time tucked away upstairs in his office, oblivious to anything happening in the rest of the house.

I grabbed a piece of bread even though the thought of food made me nauseous. I tried to act nonchalant. “Wasn’t that the night I picked you up from the water tower? When you were supposed to spend the night at Shai’s?”

He froze, just for a second, but long enough for me to notice. Then he quickly shrugged again, dismissing it. “Maybe. I mean, it could’ve been. I told you, I don’t remember.”

He hurried over to the sink. He drained the pasta like I’d taught him all those years ago. My being a single mom meant he knew how to do all kinds of things around the house—cooking, cleaning, laundry. It’d started when he was young—not out of any old-school you’ll-carry-your-weight-around-the-house attitude, but out of pure necessity. By now, he was more comfortable in our kitchen than I was, and he was on his way to becoming a better cook, too.

Was it a coincidence that he and Shai got into a fight the same night the girl was assaulted? I desperately wanted it to be, but what were the chances? There were too many coincidences stacked upon each other.

“But wasn’t that party the same night you got in the fight with Shai?” I asked as he sprinkled Parmesan on the noodles.

“I don’t know. I haven’t even thought about the fight with Shai since it happened. It was so stupid.” He carried the dishes to the table and set a plate in front of me. “What do you want to drink?”

He dismissed it that quickly, but something wasn’t right. I felt it, the way it curled my guts, and a mother’s instinct is never wrong.