I make Chase drive me straight home after court. It’s probably the quietest car ride any three teens have ever taken. I’m saving every word I have for Rita. I can’t believe she didn’t tell Raymond, or me, about her affair with Bob. What did she have to worry about, her reputation?
Chase pulls the car next to the curb in front of my house, and I see the light of the television glowing from the living room. “Want me to come in with you?” he offers.
“Yeah,” T.J. says. “I could come in with you.”
“No. Thanks. This is between Rita and me.”
When I walk in, I see Rita in her white slip, kicking back on the couch. Her feet, crossed at the ankles, are propped up on the coffee table. It’s four-thirty in the afternoon, but she’s got a beer in one hand and two empties on the table.
“Hey!” she calls, all cheery. “You ought to watch this. Dr. Phil’s about to let this loser have it right between the eyes.” Her speech is slurred already, making me wonder what she had before the beers.
I charge the TV, shut it off, and stand in front of the screen.
“Hey!” she whines. “I was watching that.” Under her makeup, Rita is a child, with pouty lips and fuzzy slippers.
“Why didn’t you tell me you were sleeping with Bob?”
“What?”
“Bob! You know, as in our boss, Bob?”
She frowns and sets down the beer. No coaster. I’ve told her to use coasters. Our table looks like a bad version of the solar system, with the planets out of whack. “How did you-?”
“He testified in court, Rita.”
“About us?” Her forehead wrinkles form a V as she tries to grasp this. “Why would Bob-?”
“Because things come out when you’re on the witness stand, Rita. The truth comes out. I don’t care what you do with your life. Not anymore. Not for a long time. But it made it look like you and Bob were lying to protect Jeremy-and all you ended up doing was making Jeremy look more guilty!”
“Hold on a minute.” She’s coming out of her drunken state. Angry Rita is hardening in front of me. “What’s one thing got to do with the other? And what’s any of it got to do with you?”
“Jeremy is my brother!” I shout. “I know he couldn’t have murdered Coach Johnson, and I’m trying to prove it, but you-!”
“Don’t tell me you haven’t given up on that yet.” She falls back onto the couch and turns on the TV with the remote.
I slam the TV off again. “Rita! Don’t you care what happens to Jeremy?”
She sits up straight. “Of course I care! He may be a legal adult, but he’s still my boy. I borne him. And I don’t want him to go to prison. I want him safe, in a mental home, where people can look after him and he won’t get into no more trouble. That’s what I want!”
I feel like throwing the TV at her. How can she be so cold?
Rita shoots me a look I’ve seen a million times. Lips pressed together and shifted sideways, her head tilted, eyes full of disgust. If I had just one picture of my mother in my head, this would be the expression on her face, a look that says, “I’m sick to death of you. You’re too stupid to talk to. Get out of my way.”
“We’re done here, Hopeless.” She takes a gulp of beer and drains the can. “Get me another one of these from the fridge.”
Here’s where I would give in, do what she says so that things wouldn’t get uglier, so that nobody would get hurt. Here’s where I always make peace by giving up, by giving in.
Only not this time. “Rita.” My voice is calm. I see her flinch at the sound of it, surprised maybe? “Why was Coach Johnson paying you off?”
Her body stiffens, and she scoots to the edge of the cushion. At last, I have her attention. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Really? You and Jay Jay? Are you saying he wasn’t writing you checks?”
She tucks her feet under her and smooths her slip over her flabby thighs. “I had him pay me Jeremy’s salary for working in the barn. So what? Jeremy wouldn’t know what to do with a check.”
“A check for a thousand dollars? Every month?”
“Where did you-?”
“Were you and Coach, ‘Jay Jay,’ having an affair, Rita?”
“Shut up!” Rita screams. “This is none of your business!”
“Was it your business? Was Coach paying you to keep quiet?”
“You little-!” The words squeeze through her teeth, greased by spit.
“Was he afraid his wife would find out? You were blackmailing him, weren’t you!”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about!” she screams.
I have never seen Rita so angry, and that’s saying something. But I’m not backing down. This is too important. “Is that why you’re so eager to send Jeremy away to a mental hospital?”
Quick as a flash, Rita picks up the remote and flings it at me. I dodge, but it catches my cheekbone before crashing into the TV. The remote breaks into pieces. Batteries fly. The screen looks chipped. She gasps. “Hope, are you all right? Are you hurt?”
“You’re pathetic, Rita!” I feel something trickling down my cheek. I touch it, and my finger comes away red. I don’t care. I can’t feel anything. My body’s shaking. “You’d send your own son away to keep your ugly little secrets from getting out! You’d help them convict Jeremy of murder just so you wouldn’t have to be tried for blackmail?”
Rita stands up, and I think she’s going to fly across the coffee table and tackle me. But I don’t move. I don’t care.
Instead, she shakes her finger at me. “I would send my own son away so he wouldn’t kill anybody ever again!”
“He didn’t kill anybody!”
Her eyes narrow, and I know I’m about to get the worst of this argument, the worst of everything. “Hope, he did it. I know without a doubt that your brother murdered Jay Jay.”
I want to yell again. I want her to throw something else at me. I don’t want this.
She continues, her voice calm, “I saw him washing that bat of his in the bathroom sink the morning of the murder.”
Her words take the rest of the fire out of me, out of both of us. I want to call her a liar, but I’m doused, drowning in her words.
Rita is quiet now. The whole house has turned silent. “I saw him, Hope. I came home that morning and tried to go back to sleep. I thought you and Jeremy must be in bed still. But I couldn’t sleep, so I got up and went to the bathroom. I opened the door, and there he was. He was trying to wash blood off his bat.”
“What did you do?”
“I looked at him. He stared back at me with his wide, panicked eyes, like he was begging me for something I couldn’t give him. I closed the door.”
“You-?”
“I know. I should have asked him right then and there what he done. But I figured he’d clubbed some animal-not a dog or a cat, but a squirrel or a gopher. And I didn’t want to deal with it.” She stares past me, at the blank TV screen. “I didn’t think he’d… he’d… used that bat on a… a person.”
I’ve been backing away from her, stumbling toward the door. Images of the crime scene flash through my head. They bring pain, as if they’re mounted on arrows. Coach, bloody, curled on the stable floor. Jeremy curled in the corner of his bedroom.
My back slams into the door. I reach behind me, frantically feeling for the doorknob. I have to get out of here.
Rita is shouting at me, but I can’t hear her. A buzzing in my head drowns her out.
I’m outside. I take off running. One foot, the other foot. I used to read a book to Jeremy when we were little. Dr. Seuss. One foot. Two feet. I can’t remember how it goes. Left foot? Right foot?
I keep running. I want the pain in my chest to hurt more. To explode.
My run ends in front of an old church that’s been turned into an antiques store. If it were still a church, could I pray? Would it help? A dozen signs are posted on the big front door: DON’T TOUCH