Sloth

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.

She looked up at the sound of a knock on the door. Before she had a chance to come up with a cover story or consider hiding, the door swung open, and Beth was momentarily relieved to realize that it wasn’t a teacher who might demand an explanation for Beth’s presence. But her relief was short-lived, as a dour-looking woman with a squarish build, coffee-colored skin, and a pinched, vaguely familiar face stepped into the room-followed by a reluctant Harper Grace.

“I was told this room would be empty,” the woman said, her words clipped and precise. “You’ll have to go.”

The woman sat down on one of the desks and, without bothering to check that Beth would follow her command, focused her attention on Harper.

“I should get back to class,” Harper mumbled, still standing in the doorway. Beth had to push past her to get out of the room, a maneuver made more difficult by the fact that Harper didn’t edge out of the way, but instead just stood planted in the middle of the doorway.

“Come in, sit down,” the woman said, and though her voice was soft, it was far from kind. “You said you needed to talk to me-here I am.”

Harper glanced toward Beth for the first time, and Beth recoiled from the look in her eyes, a confusing mixture of Get out and, more disturbingly, Stay. Beth quickened her step. She shut the door behind her, just slowly enough to hear the woman’s final words.

“So, what did you remember about the accident?”

She just had to come to school today. She couldn’t be bothered to tend to the elderly or wipe the brows of the sick-and apparently, this was her punishment. Detective Wells was perched on the edge of one of the desks, while Harper had squeezed herself into a seat, feeling oddly constrained by the metal rod and flat, narrow desk that wrapped around and held her in place. When they called her out of class, she should have known what was coming, but she’d somehow fooled herself into thinking that Wells was a problem that, if ignored, would go away. Not forever, she’d promised herself, screening the latest of the calls, but just long enough that Harper could have a chance to figure out what she was going to do.

Apparently Detective Wells was working on her own timeline.

“I really don’t remember what happened,” Harper said uncomfortably. The detective’s gaze was making her skin crawl, but the alternative views weren’t much better. Whoever usually used this classroom had papered the walls with portraits of historical courage-Martin Luther King, Jr., FDR, Rosa Parks, Winston Churchill (she only recognized that one thanks to the oversize caption)-face after face staring down at her with solemn expectation. All she needed was a big painting of Honest Abe to remind her that some people “cannot tell a lie.” (Or was it George Washington who’d chopped down his cherry tree and then needlessly confessed? Harper could never remember, but she’d always thought that, in the same position, she would have gorged herself on cherries and then enjoyed a sound sleep in the log cabin without giving her sticky red ax a second thought.)

“You left me a message, Harper, saying that you’d remembered something” A ridge of wrinkles spread across the detective’s forehead. “I don’t know why you wouldn’t want to help us out, unless-”

“It’s just hard,” Harper said quickly. Shut up, she told FDR’s accusing stare. At least that’s true. “You know, talking about… what happened.” After struggling for weeks to maintain a mask of contentment, it was tough to make an abrupt shift to visible vulnerability. But Harper didn’t know how else to slow things down.

It worked.

“Just take your time,” Detective Wells suggested. She leaned forward. “Anything you remember might help us, even if it seems inconsequential.”

Harper took a breath and opened her mouth, then shut it again, stalling for time. You don’t know anything, Kane had said. She wanted to believe him. “I remembered… I thought I remembered that the car that hit us was… white.”

The detective whipped out a notebook and favored Harper with a wide smile. “That’s great-anything