“Maybe she had a date?”
“She always tells me if she’s not coming home,” the kid said.
White T-shirt. Jeans. Shoeless. Hair still wet from a shower.
“But then she hasn’t had that kind of date for a long time,” he added.
Not for lack of effort with the chief of police.
“I’m sure there’s nothing to worry about,” Molly said. “If you still haven’t heard from her later, and you’re still concerned, we can look into it.”
“Thanks,” he said.
“See,” Molly said. “The police aren’t so bad when you get to know them.”
He cocked his head to the side, narrowing his eyes.
“Wait,” he said. “Why are you here, then?”
“We need to talk about you and Jack,” Molly said.
Sixty-Nine
I’m going to be late for tennis practice,” Kevin said. “Coach needed to have it early today — he’s got somewhere to be.”
Big, good-looking high school boy. But one Molly wanted to crowd a little now. Trying to make something happen. Force the issue the way she had with Ainsley.
“I’ll write you a note for the coach,” Molly said. “Notes from cops are even better than ones from moms.”
“First Chief Stone comes to my house,” Kevin More said. “Now you. I thought my mom talked to you guys about that.”
“She did,” Molly said. “But even though a lot of people in this town work for her, we’re not two of them.”
“So now it’s your turn to hassle me?”
They were in the living room by now. The kid had wanted to just shut the door. But he didn’t, and had reluctantly let Molly into the room. He stretched his legs out in front of him. They just seemed to keep going.
“Or maybe just trying to get you to open up,” Molly said.
“About what?”
“You and Jack,” she said. “I told you already.”
“We were friends,” Kevin said.
“I’m starting to think you might have been more than that,” Molly said, trying to make it sound like more of an observation than an accusation.
“Who told you that!”
He seemed to know immediately that the words had come out hot, and loud. Or defensive.
He tried to take a beat.
“I mean, who said that about us?”
“No one did,” Molly said. “But I’m a cop, Kevin, remember? Sometimes we piece random things together, whether they’re actual facts or not.”
“Good luck with that,” Kevin said. “Did you really come to my house to talk shit about Jack and me being some kind of couple? Seriously?”
“Seriously.”
“We weren’t.”
“No shame if you were.”
“No,” he said.
The kid put his head down, and shook it slowly from side to side. Almost sadly. “No... no... no.”
He wasn’t looking at her.
His breathing seemed to be the only discernible sound in the living room. The whole house.
“What was really in the note, Kevin?” Molly said.
“I already told Chief Stone.”
“Tell me.”
“Before he went off to college, before we all went off to college, I just wanted him to know what a good friend he’d been to me, even though I wasn’t a sports star the way he was.”
“You write letters like that to any of your other classmates?”
“I’m going to, for sure.”
“But why was it so important for you to get this one back?”
“It had been for Jack to see, nobody else.”
He looked up now, perhaps tired of staring at the rug.
“Did the coach not want you around the team because he knew about you and Jack?”
“He didn’t know because there wasn’t anything to know,” Kevin said. “And he didn’t give me that as a reason when he basically cut me. But he at least suspected.”
“You told Chief Stone that you didn’t talk to Jack the night he died,” Molly said.
“No,” he said.
“No texts, no calls, no contact of any kind?”
“I wish I had!” he said. “Maybe things could have been different. But no!”
The kid leaned back, stared at the ceiling for a moment.
“Why are you doing this?” he said when he was looking at Molly again.
Molly told him then what she’d told Ainsley. What she’d been thinking. About secrets. High school secrets. And how the biggest she could think of, for a golden-boy Prince Charming jock like Jack Carlisle, was that he was using performance-enhancing drugs, which would have lost him his scholarship. But he wasn’t. Or he’d gotten somebody pregnant. Which he hadn’t. Or that he’d committed some kind of crime and covered it up.
Or that he had come to the realization, at the age of eighteen, that he was gay.
“Even though that should have been nobody’s business but his own,” Molly said in a gentle mom voice. Like Kevin was one of her kids.
Telling herself that in this moment, maybe he was.
“Even though it’s nothing anybody should ever be ashamed of,” Molly said. “Especially if you really love somebody.”
“I want you to please leave now,” Kevin More said. “And please leave me alone.”
“It’s true, isn’t it?” Molly said in a voice almost she couldn’t hear.
Kevin More looked at the ceiling again, for a long time. Then back at Molly.
It came out of him, just like that.
As if he couldn’t keep it inside any longer, whether he was basically talking to a stranger — and a cop — or not.
“Yes,” he said, his voice as soft as Molly’s had been.
“It’s true,” he continued.
And began to cry.
“Are you happy now?” he asked. “Did you ever get anybody to come out to you before, Mrs. Crane?”
“None of this makes me happy,” Molly said. “Not from the day we found Jack down on the rocks and it felt like this town got tipped over on its side.”
Then she said, “Does your mom know?”
“I finally told her,” he said.
“When?” Molly said.
“The day before Jack died,” Kevin More said.
Seventy
Crow was waiting in Jesse’s office. Jesse got there late today — he had stopped at the gym, to punish himself a little with weights. The urge to do that came and went. The guy who trained him sometimes, Gary, said you had to worry about muscle tone as you got older. Every time he said that Jesse suddenly would feel himself calcifying.
“I let myself in,” Crow said.
Jesse wondered, not for the first time, just how many of the black Western shirts Crow owned, how many pairs of black jeans. He couldn’t possibly have another pair of boots that worn in. As always, he looked like an Old West hero and Old West outlaw, all at the same time. Cowboy and Indian, from when you were still allowed to say that.
“I can see that,” Jesse said.
“Made coffee.”
“You think we’re getting too domestic and people are starting to talk?”
“Fuck ’em,” Crow said. “Molly and Suit not here yet?”
“I texted Molly and she said she was with Suit, as a matter of fact. Said she had something.”
“So do I,” Crow said.
Jesse walked over and fixed himself a cup of coffee, tasted it. Strong as his own. He brought his mug back to his desk. “Isn’t this pretty early for you to be awake?”
“We never close,” Crow said and then got to it, telling Jesse what he’d seen at Roarke’s place.
He told it at his own pace, beginning with when he’d decided to drive into Boston, why he’d decided to go to Boston, following Roarke and the boys all the way to Brighton. He told how he finally decided to come back, because by two in the morning it was clear that Hillary More was staying. And that he’d learned enough for one night.