The Kindness of Strangers (25 page)

The smoldering in Nate’s belly returned. “Who told you that?” he asked.

“She did.”

Nate’s scalp shrank.

“She wrote me a letter from jail yesterday. Actually, she’s written me letters every day, but they didn’t let me see them until yesterday.” The kid’s voice was calm, but the monitor surged again, the lines climbing like the jagged peak of a mountain. If Nate didn’t look at the monitor, he’d never know Jordan wasn’t talking about a boring, cookie-baking, soccer mom. “She says they can’t hold her because there’s no proof she did anything wrong.”

“No proof?!” Nate wished he could see what his own pulse was doing.

“She didn’t do anything.”

“Jordan, how can you say that? She—”

“You
liked
her.”

The statement, and the calm, cold way the kid said it, the way he overpronounced “liked,” yanked Nate’s feet out from under him and slammed him against the glass. He gasped for the breath that had been punched from his lungs. “No I didn’t.”

Jordan rolled his eyes, and the orange line began to level out.

Nate tried to shrug off the shiver that snuck up between his shoulder blades. He thought of Mrs. Kendrick’s hand on his chest, her vampire kisses that leeched him dry, how he’d daydreamed about dropping by her house. . . . He shoved those thoughts from his brain. Shit. They got replaced with images from the disks. “No I didn’t,” he said again. “I thought she was psychotic. I didn’t want anything to do with her.”

It shocked him that Jordan laughed. “Yeah, whatever,” the kid said with a smirk. “You’re so full of shit.”

“No,
you’re
full of shit if you think there’s no ‘proof’ she did anything wrong. What—just because we couldn’t identify her in any of the pictures?”

Nate winced as he realized what he’d just revealed to the kid, but Jordan didn’t seem to catch it. The kid looked confused, almost alarmed, as he asked, “She wasn’t . . . ?” Then the cardiac monitor yelped once, the number jumping to 121, as Jordan registered what Nate had admitted. He stared at Nate, then looked away, blinking. Shit. Now not only would Nate see the pictures every time he looked at the kid, but the kid would know it.

Nate’s face blazed. “I’m the one who found . . . the disks.”

Jordan looked down at his blankets and didn’t move or respond.

“Look,” Nate whispered. “I’m really sorry about what happened to you—”

“They’ll probably set the bail really high,” Jordan said in a cool, clear voice.

It took Nate a second to catch up to this jump in conversation. “She told you that?”

The kid shook his head, pulling his blanket up around his chest. “No, she just tells me that she can’t wait to see me when she gets out.” He said it with no emotion. Nate couldn’t tell if Jordan was being sarcastic or serious. “She says she’s sorry I’m in the hospital and she wants to come stay with me, even though we’ll have to be supervised. She knows it’ll all get worked out and the people who did this won’t be able to hurt me or any other kid again.”

Nate pressed his hands to his flaming cheeks, then briefly covered his ears, but that only amplified his pulse. He tried to think of something to say.

Someone stepped into the doorway and made both boys jump. Nate saw the brief slant in the orange lines. A black man, in jeans and a blue polo shirt, said, “Hey, guy,” in a rich, deep voice. “I heard you had yourself an adventure today.”

Jordan glowered at the man. “I have a visitor.” Damn, the kid was actually rude.

The man didn’t seem to mind. “That’s cool. I’ll just be across the hall until you’re done with your guest. Then we need to get down to business, all right?” The man smiled at Nate before he crossed to the nurses’ station.

Jordan groaned and scooted down low in his bed. “That’s the stupid social worker. He’s in here bugging me all the time. Him and this psychologist!” He spit out the word “psychologist” like it tasted bad.

“Sorry, man,” Nate said, even though he couldn’t think of a person who needed a shrink more. He stood and shoved his hands into his pockets. “I gotta go anyway. Um . . . I’ll come back sometime.” He paused. Why had he said that? “If you want.”

Jordan peeled back the tape on his hand and didn’t answer.

“Anything you need?”

Those orange lines vaulted again, and, still fiddling with the tape, Jordan whispered, “To get out of here.”

Chapter Twelve
Sarah

S
arah hauled the stone gargoyle out to the garden. Ma and Pop had sent it, as some kind of encouragement, she guessed, after she’d told her mother about Courtney and Jordan on the phone.

Sarah had finally broken down in tears telling her mother about the day in Courtney’s house with the police, the conversation with Ali, and the meeting at school. Her mother had stayed on the phone while Sarah wept. Once she’d started, it was hard to stop. “I don’t know what to do,” she’d sobbed. “I feel like I don’t know her. Every day I don’t go see her in jail makes it that much harder to
ever
go.”

When her mother tried to comfort her by saying, “Of course you’re grieving for the loss of your friend,” Sarah had irrationally argued that Courtney
wasn’t
her friend, because Sarah had never really known her.

And before the conversation ended, Sarah heard herself returning to the old, “And maybe she’ll be found not guilty. We don’t know. We weren’t there.”

“But what about the pills?” her mother asked. “You told me she gave Jordan antibiotics.”

Sarah moaned. “I hate this.” She felt schizophrenic. She was an idiot who’d been duped. But her friendship with Courtney—the friendship she’d genuinely believed in and been inspired by—didn’t dissolve, it wasn’t nullified by the horrible discovery, was it?

And Sarah had cried all over again when the FedEx man delivered the gargoyle today. Sarah look at the statue. It was about two feet high, heavy and gray, streaked with greenish black in the folds of its catlike, crouching legs and the details of its wings.

Ma’s note said it was for her garden. Sarah plunked it down. Weren’t gargoyles supposed to protect their keepers from bad spirits? So should it face toward the house or away from it? Sarah liked how threatening it looked, claws out, teeth bared, wings unfolded, as if ready to fly at an intruder. She wished its fierceness were contagious; she needed a little herself. She cocked her head and studied it. Somehow its animal quality, its huge eyes, or maybe the little tuft on its tail, made it appealing instead of just scary.

The wind rattled the garden gate, and Sarah whipped around to face it. She felt constantly on guard since Courtney’s bond had been set at half a million dollars. Detective Kramble had called Sarah yesterday to let her know. He said the provisions of the bail required that Courtney stay out of Oakhaven except when on official business to her lawyer’s office or for a court appearance. If out on bail, Courtney was to stay away from all children under eighteen and could not have contact with Jordan except under Children’s Services supervision. Kramble had given Sarah his cell number and told her to use it anytime. He’d also promised to let her know if Courtney left the jail. Rumor had it that Mark had taken all their money when he bolted. He was still a fugitive. Would Courtney try to contact Sarah if she got out? What would Sarah say to her? Maybe she should have visited Courtney.

Kramble had advised Sarah not to go to the jail. “I’ve been trying to work with this woman,” Kramble said. “She’s a queen of manipulation. She’s going to figure out what you want to see and then show that to you. Do yourself a favor and don’t go.”

“But she’s my—” Sarah had started to protest.

“She
wasn’t
your friend,” Kramble said. “You only thought she was. She
wanted
you to think she was.”

Sarah was still troubled by the fact that Courtney hadn’t ever called her. Courtney had asked Sarah to check on Jordan, after all. Didn’t she want to know if Sarah had seen him? Courtney was probably getting reports directly from the hospital, though. But still . . . Or was Sarah being presumptuous to think that she’d be high on Courtney’s list, with all her meetings with attorneys and police and Children’s Services.

Sarah shivered. She wore tattered overalls and one of Roy’s old flannels over a turtleneck. She dug her gloved fingers into the dark soil, the primal smell of earth filling her nostrils. She dropped pea seeds into the furrow she’d dug, then patted dirt over them. Pink blooms peeked from their buds on Nate’s dogwood, and Danny’s white apple blossoms had just opened. The forsythia bushes blazed yellow bright as neon. From the kitchen window, the weather had looked warm and inviting, as colorful as the basket of eggs that had adorned Lila’s concrete rabbit. But out here the wind blew raw and damp.

She tucked pea seeds into another row, imagining the dirt as a womb, the seeds the eggs. Libby Carlisle had had her baby yesterday. Without Courtney. A little girl.

That reminded her—Sarah stood and wandered past the old sandbox to Danny’s apple tree. She climbed onto the stone bench beside it and looked down at the four blue eggs in the robin’s nest. There they were, still perfect, still whole.

The phone rang inside the house, and her shoulders tightened. With three weddings in the works, she should answer—the high-maintenance mothers-of-the-brides called daily to fret over their menus, and nine times out of ten the phone calls ended with Sarah’s price climbing ever higher. She was still nervous over the timing of Debbie Nielson’s cancellation. Only one other person had canceled, a first-time customer who claimed to be canceling her event altogether, which Sarah wanted to believe. She hopped off the bench and flung her gloves aside. She bounded onto the porch and through the back door. The machine had already picked up, and her heart plummeted as she heard the voice: “This is Joyce at Wright Elementary School—”

She snatched up the phone. “Hello? Is Danny all right?”

“Oh—” The secretary seemed startled. “Well, yes, he’s all right. But there’s been an incident of some concern, and the principal and Danny’s teacher would like to speak to you.”

“An incident? Is he hurt?”

“He’s fine. Would it be possible for you to come to the school now? It’s important.”

“Of course. Where’s Danny?”

“He’s with the principal. He won’t be returning to class until we resolve this.”

Sarah hung up, grabbed her keys, and ran for the van. Oh, God. What incident? What could have happened? She sped the whole way, half expecting to get pulled over.

She parked in front of the school and ran up the sidewalk. For a split second, her reflection in the glass doors stopped her. She was in those awful overalls. The wind had pulled sections of her long black hair free from her braid, and they danced around her head. A smear of dirt smudged one cheek. She yanked open the door, breaking her reflection. Who the hell cared what she looked like? Where was Danny?

The secretary led her to the conference room, where the principal and Miss Holt looked up at her from their giant blue swivel chairs around a table. “Mrs. Laden, thank you for coming in.” Ms. Zimmerman, the principal, rose and extended a hand to Sarah.

“Oh, I’m all muddy,” Sarah said, showing her dirty hand. “I was gardening.” Ms. Zimmerman smiled graciously. “Where’s Danny?” Sarah asked.

“He’s in time-out at the moment,” Ms. Zimmerman said. “We wanted to talk to you alone first. Please, have a seat.”

Sarah did, her heart hammering.

Miss Holt, Danny’s teacher, cleared her throat. “Mrs. Laden, this morning, I caught Danny passing around a pornographic image of Jordan Kendrick.”

Sarah’s pulse stopped. “
What?
”

“He’s said unkind things and made jokes about what happened to Jordan before today,” Miss Holt went on. “I reprimanded him, but I didn’t do anything more than that. It’s not like Danny, and the counselors warned us that a lot of kids might not understand the reality of what happened to Jordan. But this morning, when I found the picture, I sent him down to the principal’s office. Not two seconds after he left my room, the fire alarm went off. From my door I saw him running at the end of the hall, away from the broken alarm.”

Sarah felt sick, both from what Danny had done and from the horror in the teacher’s eyes. “But you’ve found him since then,” she said. She wanted to know where he was. She wanted to get her hands on him.

“Yes,” Ms. Zimmerman said with a sigh. “While we evacuated the building, another teacher stopped Danny trying to leave school grounds and brought him to my office, where we sorted out what happened. Danny admitted, just a moment ago, to pulling the alarm.”

“I can’t believe this. I’m so, so sorry.”

Miss Holt nodded. “We just wondered if you were aware of any changes in him, if there was anything going on at home that might help us understand this a little better?”

Sarah shook her head. “No. I mean, we’ve been thrown by the Kendrick case.”

“We all were,” Ms. Zimmerman said.

“But . . .” Sarah felt that same ice water in her guts as when she’d first seen the photos. “He . . . he’d argued with Jordan. I think. They used to be friends.”

The women nodded.