“They can complain all they want,” Jamie said with some heat. If she could learn anything, anything, about her sister’s attacker, it would be worth it and more. “Who are you thinking of specifically? Your classmates?”
“And other people at the party. The Ryersons: Teddy, Serena, and their parents . . .”
“The Ryersons split up afterward,” said Jamie. “Remarried other people and moved out of state.”
“If there’s anything you can find out about what was going on with Emma at that time. With friends, or family, or relationships . . . ?”
Jamie thought about Icky Vicky and the others in the wine group. Emma’s classmates . . . did they know anything about the attack, even something they may have forgotten? “I’ll ask around. I could try to talk to Emma, too,” she said slowly. “Don’t know how much good that will do.”
“Let’s check in with each other in a few days.” Cooper got up from his seat.
Jamie looked at the time. She doubted the football game would be over yet. She longed to ask if she could go with him to pick up the girls, but she couldn’t leave Emma without letting her know . . . and with the homeless man coming into the thrift store today . . .
“You said you had a crush on Emma,” she said, almost surprised that she’d let that out.
“Oh. Yeah. Everybody did.”
I had a crush on you.
“Do you have to leave . . . just yet?” Damn. She hoped she hadn’t sounded as desperate as it felt like she had.
“I thought I’d check out some of the game.”
“Oh, okay.”
“But I don’t have to.” He looked at her, and she felt the full weight of his gaze.
“You have a partner at work?” she asked, casting about for anything to talk about.
“Eversgard. Howard . . . Howie. I had a different partner till about a year ago, when he moved to Eugene.”
“Are there any women in the department?”
“Dispatch. Front desk. Six officers, and Elena Verbena, who’s also a detective.” He lifted his chin, as if he’d just remembered something, and then said, “You know Gwen Winkelman. She was at River Glen when we were there.”
“Oh, yeah. She was in my class . . . a friend. I saw her earlier this week, as a matter of fact.”
“Then you know she’s a psychologist. She’s helped on a couple of cases. We had a child who was an eyewitness to a crime, but was too scared to talk to us. Gwen convinced her to trust us and we got the guy. He’d broken into a number of houses and stolen money, jewelry, small items.”
Jamie felt a tinge of regret all over again, for how callously she’d thought of Gwen when they were younger. “She’s not a child psychologist, though.”
“She just sort of made a connection. Hard to explain, really. A little woo-woo, as my sister says.”
Jamie gave an involuntary shiver and covered it up with, “Maybe Gwen could talk to Emma.”
“Maybe.”
Neither one of them put much serious hope into their words.
A moment later, Bartholomew started working his way down the stairs. Jamie looked up to see Emma standing at the top step. “Are you okay?” Jamie asked.
“Dummy needs to go out.”
“Oh.”
Emma followed the dog down the stairs as Jamie headed with him toward the back door. She looked back to see Emma staring hard at Cooper and Cooper gazing back at her. He was still in the kitchen, leaning against the counter, giving Emma lots of space.
Jamie would’ve liked to stay with them both. She was worried, a little, that Emma might do something untoward. But Bartholomew whined in his throat and she opened the door. The little dog jumped down the steps and into the yard. He circled around and found a spot on the side of the garage and away from the garden, much to Jamie’s relief, though knowing her mother, she might have been amused if the dog had chosen to use her resting place as his toilet.
She hurried back inside to find Emma waiting at the bottom of the stairs for the dog and Cooper looking for Jamie to return.
As Emma and Bartholomew headed back upstairs, she asked Cooper a bit anxiously, “Everything okay?”
“I think so. She told me she knew I didn’t do it. Then she buttoned my top button.”
Jamie saw that Cooper’s shirt was buttoned up to his throat. “She does that,” Jamie said. “She puts things in order, as she thinks they should be.”
“Do I look like a dork?”
She looked up into his blue eyes. She wanted to kiss him. She wanted it more than she’d wanted anything in a long time.
Instead, she quickly unbuttoned the top button and said, “Not anymore.”
When he left a few minutes later to pick up the girls, she exhaled. It felt like she’d been holding her breath for a millennium.
* * *
Harley shivered in her jacket. She and Marissa were standing on the track that encircled the football field, along with a lot of other classmates and students from the school. It was somewhat mind-boggling how many people she’d met over the past week. A lot of them were really nice to her, going out of their way to say hi, though she sensed she had drawn the attention of the senior girls, through no real fault of her own, in a way that made her pulse jump with low-grade fear.
Marissa looked over at the senior girls and said, “Dara Volker and her crowd. They think they own Tyler and all the guys.”
Marissa liked Greer Douglas and Tyler Stapleton and probably others. After last Friday’s mixer, she and Harley had vaulted into the senior class’s collective consciousness. Marissa had learned there was a party at Troy’s house after the game,
