Page 63 of The Ruling Class

With the president, it was the reverse—it was easy to connect him with Vivvie’s father. The man was his personal physician. But Judge Pierce? All my sleuthing could turn up was speculation about who the Nolan administration’s nominee for the Supreme Court might be. Pierce’s name was one of many—and it rarely even came up.

The only way this plan makes any sense—the only way it could even potentially be worth the risk—is if Pierce had reason to believe he’d get the nomination.That thought dogged me until I fell asleep at the keyboard.

The next morning, I printed out a copy of the picture and folded it in half, then in half again. I put it in my back pocket, then went downstairs. Ivy and Bodie were in the kitchen. Ivy had a cup of coffee in one hand and a small overnight bag in the other.

“Going somewhere?” I asked her.

“Arizona.” She downed the last of her coffee. “I hear it’s nice this time of year.”

Arizona.Judge Pierce was from Arizona. I wanted to ask what she would be doing there but knew she wouldn’t answer.

“I’m sorry to leave,” she said. “After yesterday—”

“It’s okay.”

“No,” Ivy told me. “It’s not. The way you heard about Vivvie’s dad was not okay. What Vivvie is going through right now is not okay. The fact that I’m asking you not to tell anyone about any of this isnot okay. I know that, Tess, and I’m sorry. I’m sorry about yesterday, I’m sorry I got you involved in any of this.”

“Technically,” I said, “I gotyouinvolved in this.”

“You Kendricks,” Bodie cut in. “You love your technicalities.”

Ivy ignored him. “Bodie will be here all weekend,” she told me. “And if you need anything, you can call Adam.”

Adam, whose father was in that picture.

I glanced at the bag in Ivy’s hand, then punched a button on my phone and pulled up the photo. “Before you go,” I said, “there’s something you should see.”

Ivy confiscated my phone. An hour later, Bodie handed me a new one. He’d inputted his number, Adam’s, and Ivy’s. I tried calling Vivvie, dialing the number from memory, but there was no answer.

Ivy hadn’t been happy to discover the real reason behind my trip to the headmaster’s office. She wouldn’t discuss the men in that picture—or what, if anything, she thought it meant that Vivvie’s dad and Judge Pierce had apparently been in the same place at the same time. She just flew off to Arizona, taking the evidence with her. I was left with an empty house, a “driver” who kept one eye on me at all times, and a printed copy of the photograph, folded into quarters in my back pocket.

Being grounded gave me lots of time to think.

Monday morning, when I dialed the number for Vivvie’s phone, I didn’t really expect her to answer. When she picked up, my voice fled. I couldn’t even force out the wordhello. Vivvie was on the verge of hanging up when I finally recovered.

“It’s me,” I said. Once I started talking, words poured out. “I’m so sorry, Vivvie. I—”

“Stop.” Vivvie spoke over me. “Just stop, Tess.”

I stopped, then waited for the first blow to fall.

“I’m not mad at you.”

I could picture her face fighting against those words. I wasn’t sure if she believed them or not.

“Are you …” I wasn’t sure how to finish that question. I certainly wasn’t going to ask if she was okay.

“We’re burying him this morning.” Vivvie let those words drop and said nothing in the silence that followed them.

“Do you want me to come?”

There was another long pause after my question.

“It’s supposed to just be me and my aunt,” Vivvie said. “And the honor guard. It’s a military funeral, but they want it quiet. Because suicides don’t look good.”

Suicides don’t look good.The brutality of that statement made my stomach lurch.

“I keep telling myself that I did the right thing.” I could hear Vivvie suck in a breath of air. “I keep telling myself that, Tess, and I almost believe it, but I need to know that this isn’t—” She cut off. “That it’s not just going to …” She couldn’t finish that sentence, either. “I need to know that my going to your sister matters, that it made a difference, that it wasn’t fornothing.”