I should’ve gone to see him the minute I found out I had a date with Libby Weller. Told him the big news. I should have gone straight to his house this morning to tell him all the details of how it had gone.
And now I could never change it. And I would have to live with it all my life.
Now I was about to find out how it felt to be Zoe Dinsmore.
I stepped into the living room and looked at Connor’s mom, and she looked back at me. She seemed concerned. Her lips were drawn into a tight line. But she was not crying. She didn’t look as though her whole world had come to an end.
“Is Connor okay?” I asked, wondering why it was so hard for me to manage my own breath all of a sudden.
“Why, yes,” she said. “He’s fine.”
I just stood a minute, letting all the awful thoughts rush out of me. When they had gone, I was left with just one new thought.
I have another chance and I’m not going to blow it this time.
My mom stepped into the room behind me and invited Mrs. Barnes to sit down. I sat on the couch, and Connor’s mom perched next to me, holding her purse tightly in her lap.
“I want to ask you a question,” Mrs. Barnes said. “And it’s very important that you give me an honest answer.”
So already I was in a minefield. Because you never want to be in a position to have to give truthful answers to your best friend’s mom. There are sacred trusts involved.
“What is it, ma’am? What do you need to know?”
She sighed. Leaned back ever so slightly. I could hear my mom in the kitchen putting a kettle of water on the stove. Probably so she could offer our guest a cup of tea.
“I think you probably know by now that Connor’s father has left our house.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said, staring carefully at the carpet.
“This morning he came by to get the rest of his things. But one of his belongings is missing. Do you know the belonging I’m referring to?”
“No, ma’am. I have no idea.”
“It’s the kind of belonging you wouldn’t want falling into the hands of young boys.”
I was beginning to get a deeply sinking feeling in my gut. I thought the “belonging” in question might have something to do with relations between married people, though I couldn’t imagine what kind of “belonging” that would be. I thought “belonging” was a strange word to use when you could just say “thing.”
I wasn’t answering. So she went on.
“I can definitely see how it would hold a fascination. But maybe you boys don’t know how terribly dangerous an item like that can be. One of you could be hurt playing with a thing like that. Or even killed. Or a total stranger, a passerby, could be wounded. And I just know you wouldn’t want to have something like that on your conscience.”
Speaking of fascinations, I had grown fascinated with a tiny spot on the Persian carpet, where one bit of nap seemed to have been forced in the wrong direction, altering the pattern. I couldn’t have looked at Mrs. Barnes if you’d paid me good money to do it.
“With all due respect, ma’am,” I said, “I haven’t got the slightest idea what you’re asking me about.”
“Then why won’t you look at me?”
Oddly, I felt a little flash of anger at her. Mrs. Barnes, of all people? Acting like she didn’t know why it was hard to look somebody in the eye?
“I think because you’re scaring me with this. Can’t you just tell me what this thing is that you think we took?”
A long silence. I could feel how much she didn’t want to say.
I looked up to see my mom leaning in the doorway. Listening to all that silence.
“Connor’s father . . . ,” Mrs. Barnes began, and it startled me, “. . . kept a firearm in the house. For the purpose of home protection. I’m sure you understand.”
I didn’t. I looked up at her. Just like she’d been wanting me to. I think I was blinking too much.
“A firearm?”
“A gun,” my mother said.
“Oh. A gun.” I’d known what a firearm was. It just took time to absorb.
“Did you and Connor take the gun, Lucas?” Mrs. Barnes asked.
“No, ma’am.”
“Do you have any idea where it is? Did you ever see Connor with it?”
“No, ma’am.”
“You better be telling the truth, Lucas,” my mother said. “Because this is a pretty serious situation.”
“I swear. I’ll swear on a stack of Bibles if you want me to. I swear on Grandma’s grave. I had no idea there was a gun in Connor’s house. I never saw it. I never heard about it. This is all news to me.”
I sat still a minute, feeling all four of their eyes burning into me. Then the feeling in the room seemed to lighten a tiny bit. As if they believed me, or some wild outcome like that.
“Hmm,” Mrs. Barnes said. “Well, all I know is, it didn’t walk away on its own.”
“Did you ask him about it?”
“Of course I did. He denied taking it.”
I was wondering if she went into his room and looked. But before I could wonder long, she answered my question. It felt as though she could read my mind.
“I spent an hour searching his room, but I never found it. But it has to be somewhere.”
I thought about Connor telling me his mother had insisted he go out and lie in the sun. It made more sense in light of this new information.
“I agree it has to be somewhere, ma’am, but I swear, if Connor took it, he kept it as much a secret from me as from you.”
It was a strange thing to say, I thought, as I listened to the echo of it. Because I’d accidentally let on that I did think it was possible Connor had taken it.
“Let me ask you another question, then, Lucas. Are you at all concerned
