“Nothing,” she replied. “Everything. Jon, my sister died four years ago today. I miss her all the time, but it’s always worse on the anniversary.”
“You never told me you had a sister,” Jon said.
“We talk fifteen minutes a day,” Sarah said with a sniffle. “And most of that time we’re arguing.”
Jon wanted to laugh. Instead he held Sarah a little closer. “Do you feel like talking about her?” he asked.
Sarah rubbed the tears off her cheeks with her fists. “Her name was Abby,” she said. “She was sixteen. I’m older now than she was.”
Jon nodded. “Time stood still,” he said. “But not for us.”
“We lived in Connecticut,” she said. “On the Long Island Sound. We had a sailboat. It was beautiful, Jon. We spent so much time on it. Abby was a wonderful sailor.”
“She went sailing that night?” Jon asked.
“With some of her friends,” Sarah said. “They thought it would be great to see the meteor strike from the boat. One of her friends washed ashore a couple of days later. Do you remember how horrible things were then, how crazy? We kept hoping Abby was okay but couldn’t make it home. We hoped that for a week, maybe more. Even after we knew better, we kept hoping. When Mom was dying, she told me she still was waiting for Abby to find her way home.”
“I’m so sorry,” Jon said.
Sarah began crying again. Jon knew there was nothing he could say that would make things better. Instead he held on to her so tightly he could no longer tell if it was his heart or hers that was broken.
Luke looked around the locker room, then edged closer to Jon. “We did the right thing, didn’t we?” he whispered.
Jon stared at him.
“The other night,” Luke said, so softly Jon could hardly hear him. “Tyler would have killed that guy. They all would have. We had to give them something to distract them. The grubber school doesn’t matter, does it?”
Now that he was sober, Jon knew what they’d done was very wrong. But it would have been a lot worse to kill a man.
“We did the right thing,” he whispered back.
Luke looked around again. “I hate this sometimes,” he said.
“I know,” Jon said.
“What do you know, Evans?” Tyler asked, walking toward them.
Jon forced himself to grin. “I know how lucky I am,” he said.
“Damn straight,” Tyler said. “Luckiest slip around.”
Chapter 4
Carrie came out of the hearing room and smiled wanly at Jon and Val. “Come, Gabe,” she said. “Let’s go home now.”
Gabe had been playing with Jon and was unwilling to stop. “Sorry, cowboy,” Jon said, handing him over to his nanny. “I’ll see you later.”
“No!” Gabe screamed.
A woman had come out of the hearing room and was gesturing for Jon to enter. Gabe grabbed Jon’s leg and continued screaming.
“He never does this,” Carrie said apologetically to the woman.
Grubs do lie, Jon thought. Gabe constantly had tantrums.
Val helped pull Gabe off, and Carrie picked him up. They carried him out while Jon followed the woman into the hearing room.
He didn’t know what to expect, but he felt better seeing Tyler’s father sitting behind a table, with a man on one side and a woman on the other.
The woman who’d escorted Jon picked up a Bible. “Put your right hand on the Bible,” she said. “Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?”
Jon nodded. “I do.”
“Do you swear that you will never repeat or report anything that is said in this room, so help you God?”
“I do.”
Mr. Hughes smiled at him. “Sit down, Jon,” he said, turning to the people seated next to him. “Jon Evans is a friend of my son. Because of that, I’ll turn the questioning over to Mr. Delman and Mrs. Haverford. Remember, Jon, you’ve sworn to tell the truth. If you aren’t certain about the answer to any question, don’t guess. Say you don’t know.”
“Thank you, sir,” Jon said.
“For the record, what is your name?” Mr. Delman asked.
“Jon Evans,” Jon said. “Jonathan Mark Evans.”
“And where do you live?”
“In Sexton,” Jon replied. “Twenty-seven Pierce Drive.”
“How old are you, Jon?” Mrs. Haverford asked.
“I’m seventeen.”
“What is your relationship to Mrs. Lisa Evans?” Mr. Delman asked.
“She’s my stepmother.”
“And how long have you known her?” Mr. Delman continued.
Jon thought about it. He was nine when Dad married Lisa, and he’d met her a couple of times before then. “Nine years,” he said.
“And your father is dead?”
“Yes sir.”
“How did you come to live in Sexton?” Mr. Delman asked.
“We had passes,” Jon said.
“How did you come to have those passes?”
“A friend of ours gave them to us,” Jon said.
“Do you know how he came to have those passes?” Mr. Delman asked.
Jon hesitated. “I was told he was given the passes by someone he knew. His friend’s father. But I don’t know that for a fact.”
Mr. Delman nodded. “So you and Mrs. Evans and Mrs. Evans’s son, Gabriel, moved into Sexton,” he said.
“That’s right,” Jon said. “Gabe’s my half brother.”
“When did your father die?” Mrs. Haverford asked.
“Two years ago,” Jon said. “Right before we got here.”
“So for the past two years you’ve lived with Mrs. Evans and Gabriel,” Mr. Delman said. “Does anyone else live with you?”
“No,” Jon said. “Well, our housekeeper and Gabe’s nanny.”
“And their names are?”
“Val and Carrie,” Jon replied. “I’m sorry. I don’t remember their last names.”
Mr. Hughes smiled at him. “Relax, Jon,” he said. “You’re doing fine.”
Jon smiled back at him. “Thank you, sir,” he said. “This is kind of nerve-racking.”
“How would you describe your relationship with Mrs. Evans?” Mrs. Haverford asked.
“Good,” Jon said. “Good. Very good.”
“Does she ever hit you?” Mrs. Haverford asked.
Jon laughed. “No. Absolutely not.”
“Does she ever hit or spank Gabe?”
“No ma’am,” Jon said.
“Do the domestics ever hit or spank Gabe?”
“I don’t know,” Jon said. “I’m at school and then there’s afterschool and I’m on the Sexton soccer team. So I’m not home very much. But I’ve never seen Carrie or Val hit Gabe. I know he loves both of them.”
“Does Mrs. Evans go out in the evenings?” Mrs. Haverford asked. “Is she romantically involved with anyone?”
“No ma’am,” Jon said. “She took my dad’s death pretty hard. And she doesn’t have much spare time. There’s her work, and Gabe and me.”
“Does she ever speak about her job?” Mr. Delman asked.
“Well, I know what she does,” Jon said. “But she doesn’t go into details.”
“Does Mrs. Evans go to church on Sundays?” Mrs. Haverford asked.
“Yes ma’am,” Jon said. “She takes Gabe with her. I go with them when I can, but if I have a soccer game I go to the seven a.m. service instead.”
“Just a couple more questions,” Mr. Hughes said. “Then we’ll be through.”
“Thank you, sir,” Jon said. He hoped no one could see how much he was sweating.