I Swear (9 page)

“Where’s your brother?” Macie’s voice was clipped and her jaw was clenched.

“Yeah, Jillian,” said Josh with a smirk. “Macie needs some eye candy. She’s bored with Brad’s ugly mug.”

Brad laughed and punched him in the shoulder. “Shut up, asshole.”

Josh got a subpoena the same time that Krista and I did. We were on our way to lunch off campus today.

“We have to strategize about this,” Macie said from her perch on the arm of the couch, next to Brad. She had her legs crossed and her dangling foot was shaking up and down a million times a second like it does when she’s figuring things out.

“Calm down, babe.” Brad rested his hand gently on Macie’s back.

Our parents were downstairs discussing the subpoenas. Katherine’s dad had an associate named Patrick who was going to handle the case for all of us. Mr. Merrick just wanted it kept off the Action News at eleven. Beth’s mom wanted it kept off the prayer chain at her church Bible study.

Brad was trying to keep us all off the ceiling. I felt relieved somehow that he was in the room, even though he’d put his hand on Macie’s back and not mine. He made me feel settled on the inside, but somehow he made Macie more riled up.

“Don’t tell me to calm down, Brad.” She shrugged his hand off her back, stood up, and paced over to the window. Brad didn’t follow her with his gaze, just looked directly at me and let out a long, slow sigh.

I pursed my lips into almost a smile that said, “We’ll get through this.”

Then I noticed Katherine staring at Brad staring at me, and I couldn’t make out the look that crossed her face, but whatever it was, I didn’t feel calm anymore.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Macie standing by the windowsill where I kept my snow globe collection. She was staring out onto the driveway and down the street. I could see Jake several blocks away, running toward the house, and I knew Macie saw him, too. She slowly dropped her eyes to the snow globes, and I saw her brush her long, perfect nails over
the one from Vegas. My Granny and Gramps had brought it back for me when they went on their annual blackjack trip last Christmas. Macie rolled it slowly back and forth in her hands while Beth started to tear up. Krista heard her sniff and rolled her eyes.

“What?” Beth said too loudly. “What, Krista? I’m the one who has to go first.

“Oh, brother,” Krista groaned. “What are you so freaked out about?”

“I’m freaked out because I was on a balance beam when this dude in a suit walked in and handed me a subpoena.”

“Yeah, and I got mine in the parking lot, and Katherine got hers at a salon,” Krista ticked off in her bored voice. “It’s been a long week and it’s only Monday. Get over yourself.”

Beth started crying, and Katherine sighed. “Oh, for heaven’s sake. Daddy’s friend is gonna take good care of you, sweetheart,” she said, and reached across to pat Beth’s leg.

“Hope you’re right,” said Brad absently, and something in Katherine snapped.

“Hope is not a strategy, Brad.” Her nostrils flared as her eyes shot daggers into his. “These are the best lawyers in the Northwest. You can rest assured that their preparations for the depositions will be founded on facts.”

“But what am I going to say when they ask me about stuff and Leslie and the Facebook messages?” Beth was in hysterics now; her face was red from crying.

“You’re just going to tell them the truth,” said Katherine.

“That we were so mean to Leslie that she killed herself?” Beth choked out.

“What?” Krista scoffed. “Would you stop acting like she was the victim here? We’re not the ones to blame; it’s her parents who missed the boat here.”

“Still,” I said, “it’s good to be prepared. I mean, who knows what they’ve been able to dig up on Facebook and stuff.”

“They can’t do that, can they?” Josh asked. “I mean, they can’t just call Facebook and get our profiles or anything, right?”

“Yes, Josh,” said Katherine sternly. “They can subpoena everything, including, but not limited to, the kitchen sink, and they don’t have to tell you about it until you’re in the room at the deposition.”

“That’s total crap,” Josh said.

“Well, it’s the truth,” said Katherine.

“Oh my God—,” cried Beth. “What are we going to do?”

“Everybody calm down,” Brad said, louder this time.

“Would you stop saying that?” Krista yelled back. “Jesus.”

“Why don’t you stop talking?” Brad said to Krista. “You don’t know what’s going to happen until you get into the room, Beth, so there’s no sense in crying about it now.”

Beth glared at Brad, her face flushed, the tears on her cheeks unable to quell the fire in her eyes. “Excuse me for being the only one who has any feelings about this,” she yelled at Brad. “Maybe it doesn’t make a difference to anyone else,
but I’ve got one shot at college and I doubt the athletic department at UCLA looks too kindly on wrongful death charges or depos—”

“
Shut up!
” roared Macie, and I glanced back at her just in time to see the Vegas snow globe leave her hand and sail across the couches before it slammed into the door to the media room and shattered in a spray of water and plastic shards.

Katherine and Krista jumped about four feet off the couches, Brad leaped to his feet, and Josh pressed himself up against the wall next to the window Macie was standing in front of. Finally, there was silence in the room. Beth didn’t even dare to sniff.

“Good.” Macie smiled. “Now that I have your attention, I’m going to give you all the strategy you need.”

She walked slowly to the middle of the two couches and stared at Beth.

“Beth, honey, do you know what time it is?”

Beth frowned, then looked down at her phone.

“Four thirty,” she said.

“Wrong answer,” Macie said, flinging a finger toward the ceiling. “The first thing you learn about spinning is to control the conversation. Control the information.”

Without looking back over her shoulder, she pointed at Josh. “Josh! Do you know what time it is?”

We all turned to look at him.

A slow smirk crept across his face. “Yes,” he answered. We waited for him to tell her the time.

He didn’t. Instead, he folded his arms with a self-satisfied grin.

“Excellent,” said Macie with a smile at Beth. “Someone has been watching their
Law and Order
.” She knelt down on the floor in front of Beth, taking Beth’s face in both hands.

“Beth, honey, when you walk into that room with that lawyer friend of Katherine’s dad, you’re going to answer questions as vaguely as possible. You’re going to answer exactly what they ask, not what they want to know.”

She stood up and walked toward the door. “That goes for everyone. If they ask you if you sent this Facebook message, you don’t remember, you can’t say for sure, it was a long time ago, it was an inside joke, everyone knew it wasn’t serious.”

She looked at each one of us in turn. “Got it?”

The silence was thick. “We aren’t the bad guys here,” Macie said. “We are the scapegoats. Leslie’s parents want someone to blame. We’re going to make sure they don’t have to look any farther than the bathroom mirror.”

“Macie?” We heard Mr. Merrick in the hallway, then he was at the door.

“Yes, Senator?” Macie said with her on-camera charm.

Her dad poked his head into the media room. “Hey, guys.” He grinned. “Everything okay up here? Thought I heard something fall off a shelf.”

I jumped up and started picking up the pieces of snow globe. “Oh, we had a little snow globe accident.” I laughed.

“Well, thank God.” Mr. Merrick chuckled. “Woke me up. Bored outta my mind down there.”

There was something about his smile that wasn’t right.

“You kids are gonna be fine,” he said. “Katherine, your dad’s partner is a genius. You’ve all got nothing to worry about. You’ll be ready to go.”

“We were discussing a little strategy of our own.” Macie smiled. “Meet you at the car in five?”

“Sure thing,” he said. He raised two fingers to make a
V
, then flashed us his trademark campaign smile and walked back down the hallway.

“Give them nothing,” Macie said softly. “Meeting adjourned.”

Katherine was out the door before anyone else, followed by Beth, then Krista. Josh pecked me on the cheek. “Thanks for hosting, Jills. Tell your brother I said hi.”

Brad grabbed his hand like he was shaking it, making sure his arm was between them when they hugged, in that weird way straight guys hug. “Good to see you, bro,” he said. “Let’s hang soon.”

When Josh was gone, Brad headed into the bathroom off my bedroom. “Gotta pee,” he said.

“Thanks for the information.” Macie sighed.

When he closed the door, she turned to look at me.

“What’s up?” she asked.

“I’m worried,” I said.

“Why?” she asked.

“Jake has a subpoena too.”

“Of course he does,” she said. “He was the last person to talk to her alive.”

“But it’s not only that,” I explained. “I think he’s going to tell them everything. I mean, he was the closest thing Leslie had to a friend. What do we do if he brings it up in his deposition?”

Macie smiled at me blankly. “Brings what up?”

The bathroom door opened. I could hear Brad walking back into the room behind me.

“You know . . . ,” I began.

“Hey, babe.” Brad spun Macie to him, wrapping his arms around her waist and pulled her up toward him for a sweet, soft kiss. “Call me later?”

She nodded and he held her. He looked over her shoulder and winked at me without smiling.

This was the group hug we’d all shared since ninth grade. We’d been saying good-bye like this for three years now.

Macie got his arms.

I got his eyes.

I wished I knew for sure who had his heart.

14. KATHERINE

Once a week after school I drove over to Daddy’s office, and usually he handed me a stack of documents to file and we talked about a case. He knew I had my eye on Harvard Law, and we’d been doing this since I was in seventh grade.

On Wednesday morning I asked Daddy if I could stop by today instead of on Thursday. Macie wanted to see Beth’s deposition as soon as possible.

“Sho’, princess,” he said. “You really wanna come back for more after the grillin’ Patrick gave y’all yesterday during witness prep?”

“Oh, yes, sir.” I smiled and winked. “You fixin’ to lose me to Harvard next fall. My hourly rate will be too high to ever work for you again.”

He laughed, and I was relieved.
One more day of laughing,
I thought.
Just one.
Somewhere down inside me I knew that once
the depositions started, he wouldn’t be laughing anymore.

Witness preparation had been a joke. We’d all been there together, so claiming we had no idea what was going on worked on some level. None of us was going to crack in front of everybody else. Macie was really good as far as denying everything Patrick threw at her, but she was clearly annoyed around the edges—little things, her foot started bouncing. She still had that news camera smile, but you could tell she was ruffled. She was used to standing up when she was selling something. Sitting down made her fidgety.

Jillian was a wide-eyed sweetheart, but her face answered every question before she even opened her mouth, and Krista looked shifty, period. Poor Beth was a mess. She started crying on the third question, and Daddy and I had to walk her around in the parking lot to calm her down.

In a strange way I was the best witness we had. I used Aunt Liza’s poker face. I smiled at the beginning, was serious in the middle, and said thank you at the end.

“Ladies, that’s the way it’s done,” said Patrick when he turned off the camera. “Nice work, Katherine.”

When I got to Daddy’s office at about four thirty, I asked him if he’d seen the footage of Beth’s deposition yet. He grabbed the video camera from Patrick’s office and plugged it into my laptop so I could watch, instead of simply handing it over to Macie. Then he headed down the hall to a last-minute meeting with a client over a disputed permitting process.

The video loaded and popped open in QuickTime. The shot was on Beth—looking down at her hands, biting her lip. I clicked play.

Beth sat next to Patrick and faced Kellan Dirkson and Lauren Wolinsky, who I remembered meeting at Leslie’s memorial. Kellan’s kind, blue eyes matched his smile as he handed Beth and Patrick bottles of water, then turned to Lauren and asked, “Shall we get started?”

She nodded and looked to Patrick, who swept his brown bangs off his forehead and flipped open a legal pad, then looked at Beth.

“Ready?” he asked.

She looked up at him, then over at Kellan and Lauren, and gave a short nod.

She was terrified, and watching the scene unfold, I had a sinking feeling in my stomach.

This was over before it even began.

Lauren started by having Beth raise her hand and solemnly swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. And somehow Beth did this pleasantly, with a smile, direct eye contact—the whole thing, like Patrick had coached us.

Then she turned to Kellan and he asked her to state her name for the record.

“Beth Patterson,” she said.

He had her identify Leslie in a picture. She pointed. He smiled.

“Thank you, Miss Patterson. When did you first meet Leslie Gatlin?”

“The summer before freshman year,” she said.

“Were you friends with Leslie?”

“Back when I first met her?” Beth asked, looking confused. She glanced over at Patrick.

“Were you friends with her at all?” asked Kellan.

Beth paused. Kellan smiled kindly at her, and I saw her warm up to him like she was scootin’ up to a hot fire on a cold night.

“Yes . . . ,” she said cautiously. “Back when we first met. We were . . . friends.”

“Were you aware of the rumor that was started about Leslie during the first few weeks of her freshman year?” Kellan’s smile was gone. He was all business.

Beth frowned and looked at Patrick. He nodded toward Kellan, indicating that she should answer the question.

“I don’t know what rumor you’re talking about,” she said. Slowly her cheeks were flushing.