He shook his head. “Guess again.”
“So not in the mood for games, Kane. And you know exactly why.”
“This isn’t a game, Grace-you’re the one who hasn’t figured that out yet. You’ll see where we’re going soon enough.”
She crossed her arms and turned toward the window. “Fine.”
“Fine.”
They drove in silence for several minutes. The radio might at least have lightened things up or offered them something neutral to argue about, but Kane made no move to switch it on and Harper wasn’t about to do anything that might signify her willing participation in this ridiculous adventure.
They swung into a small parking lot and Kane turned off the car. “We’re here.”
“And where is… oh.” They had pulled up in front of a large, boxy building, its face a windowless wall of institutional gray. A single door, also gray, stood square in the middle, and over it hung a neon blue-and-white sign that would have been enough to scare away most visitors if the decor hadn’t already done the job: POLICE.
“What the hell is this, Kane?” Harper’s eyes flicked toward her bag, half expecting her phone to ring as if Detective Wells, who’d already left four or five messages for her over the course of the day, could somehow sense that she was nearby. Maybe she wouldn’t bother to call- Harper turned back to the window, gaze fixed on the solid-looking door, wondering if it would swing open. Who would they send out to escort her inside, where she belonged? “Why would you bring me here?”
Kane shrugged, but this time there was nothing aw-shucks about it. “You’re the one who said you wanted to talk to the cops. I thought I’d help you out. You want to confess your sins? You want to ruin your life? Go ahead.”
“This isn’t how it works,” she retorted, struggling against encroaching panic. “This isn’t-what do you want me to do, just march in there and say, ‘Hey, just FYI, I was the one driving the car’?”
“You don’t think they’d be interested to hear it?”
“This is what you want me to do?” Harper asked, her hand gripping the door handle.
“Isn’t it what you want to do?” Kane sneered.
“It’s the right thing…”
“Absolutely. So go ahead.”
“I’m just not…”
“No time like the present, Grace.” Kane opened his own door-and at the sound of the latch releasing and the outside air rushing in, Harper almost gasped. “I’ll go with you, if you want. Should be quite a show.”
She couldn’t say anything; she didn’t move.
“What are you waiting for? They’re right inside, just-”
“Stop!” she shouted, slapping her hand over her eyes so he wouldn’t see the tears. “Why are you doing this?”
He slammed the door. “Why are you doing this?” he shouted, and it was the first time she could remember ever hearing him raise his voice. “What the hell are you trying to do to yourself?”
“What do you care?” she mumbled, still hiding her face.
“This is real, Harper. Look out there.” When she didn’t move, he grabbed her hands roughly and pulled them away from her eyes, jerking her head toward the police station. “Look. This isn’t Law & Order. This is your life.”
“It was her life, too,” Harper said, almost too softly to hear.
“You don’t know what happened,” Kane said in an almost bored voice, as if he’d gotten tired of ticking off the items on the list. He’d stopped shouting and had released his grip on Harper’s wrists, and was now staring straight ahead, his hands loosely resting on the wheel. “You don’t remember anything about the accident-” She tried to interrupt, but he talked over her. “Except a few things you think you remember but could just be part of some Vicodin-induced nightmare.”
“Percodan,” she corrected him.
“Whatever. Okay, so you were driving. So what? There were drugs in your system-you don’t know how they got there. You were going somewhere-you don’t know where. Kaia’s fingerprints were found all over that perv’s apartment after he turned up with his head beat in-you don’t know why. Another car forced you off the road- you don’t know who. You don’t know anything except that if you tell them you were behind that wheel, they’ll crucify you.”
“I know it’s my fault,” she said stubbornly.
”You don’t know anything” he repeated loudly, over-enunciating each syllable.
And I can’t stand it, she admitted, but only to herself.
“I’m not saying we can’t figure it out,” he suggested, turning toward her and slinging his arm across the back of her seat. “Do some investigating, poke around-you and me against the world, like the good old days?”
“So this isn’t Law & Order, but now you want me to go all Veronica Mars on you?” Harper asked wryly.
“That’s kind of a chick show.” Kane smirked. “I was thinking more CSI. Or Scooby-Doo… you’d look pretty smoking in that purple dress, and I don’t know”-he peered at himself in the rearview mirror-”think I could pull off an ascot?”
“This isn’t funny,” she said dully.
“I’m serious, Grace-if you want to know what happened, we can figure it out. They can’t,” he added, pointing toward the station. “They won’t need to, because they’ll have you. But we can fix things, and get them back to normal.”
“Take me home,” she told him, not wanting to think any more about the accident, or any of it.
He ignored her. “Start with the drugs-that’s the key. Are you sure you didn’t take anything?”
She remembered Kaia handing her two white pills: Xanax. She remembered popping them into her mouth and stepping onstage, and her world falling apart. But that couldn’t be right.
“Take me home,” she insisted, louder.
“Promise me you won’t go to the cops,” he retorted.
“I still don’t get why you care.”
”You don’t have to,” he said, looking away. “Just promise.”
She had already promised herself that she would do the right thing; tonight was supposed to have been about figuring out what that was. Kane was the last person to go to for that kind of help. On the other hand, she thought, torn between horror and bemusement, who else have I got?
“I’ll do whatever I decide to do, Kane. Take me home.”
Kane banged a fist against the steering wheel, then visibly steadied himself, taking two deep breaths before turning to her with a serene smile. “Fine, Grace. Do what you need to do. It’s your funeral.”
But that was just the problem-maybe it should have been. But it wasn’t.
Chapter 7
The newspaper staff was at the hospital, reading picture books to sick children.
The cast of the school musical was performing excerpts from Oklahoma! at the Grace Retirement Village.
The French club was distributing meals-with a side of croissants, but no wine-to invalids and shut-ins.
Community Service Day was a success, and any senior with a conscience or a guilt complex was devoting the morning to helping others. The only seniors left in class were the ones too lazy to make the effort and too dim to realize that even cleaning bedpans or trimming nose hairs would be preferable to spending the morning in school.
And then there was Beth.
She’d organized the event, worked with the hospital administrators and the town hall community liaison, shined with pride at adding a socially responsible activity to the spirit week agenda, and planned to lead the charge with a quick visit to the Grace animal shelter and a stop at the hospital children’s wing, culminating in a triumphant hour of reading to the blind. But instead, she was hiding in an empty classroom, folded over her desk with her head buried in her arms, like she was playing Heads Up, 7 Up all by herself. She’d told her history teacher that she had a headache, but instead of going to the nurse’s office, she’d slipped in here and was wiling away her time by listening to her breathing and wondering if Berkeley admitted felons.