Burn Our Bodies Down(64)

Eli’s watching them too, his mouth pulled tight. “That doesn’t look good,” he says.

They pass us, making for the front of the room. I spot Mrs. Miller’s hand on the back of Tess’s neck, firm and guiding as they head toward the gathered police officers. Her eyes land on Eli, and I’m startled by how cold she looks. No wave, no friendly smile to her daughter’s best friend.

“Great,” he mutters. “She probably got caught doing some ridiculous shit and blamed it on me. Like always.”

It’s possible, but I remember yesterday, the tension lingering in her shoulders. “I don’t know,” I say. “I think it’s more than that.”

“I guess we’ll see.”

An officer in uniform comes in, taking off his hat and scanning the room. It’s Connors. I meet his eyes for a minute by accident and jerk around to face Eli, who wrinkles his nose at me.

“Don’t be weird,” he says. “Okay. I’m getting more cheese.”

“Wait,” I say, because if I’m alone, Connors will come over and try to wring information out of me, information I don’t have. But it’s too late. Eli’s heading for the buffet and Connors is close enough that I can’t reasonably pretend not to have noticed his friendly wave.

“Nice party,” he says, slotting into the space Eli vacated. I glance down at his left hand, where his wedding ring glints. I wonder what his spouse is like, wonder which of the people milling around they could be. If Connors talks about the body, about Vera, when he goes home at night. How real is this to other people? Or is it only happening to me?

“Sure,” I say. I wish I had something to drink, or something to do with my hands. As it is, I fuss with the ends of my curled hair and keep watching Tess. She’s at her parents’ table now, sitting between them, staring ahead. Not a twitch in her muscles, barely a blink. Whatever happened, it’s beaten her down.

“Didn’t see you around town yesterday,” Connors says. “You okay at Fairhaven?”

I tear my eyes away from Tess and look at him. “Go ahead,” I say. I can hear Gram, can feel her shaping the fall of my voice. “Just ask. You want to know if I’ve changed my mind. If I have anything to tell you about my grandmother.”

Connors looks taken aback. “No,” he says. “I want to know if you’re okay. It was a lot, at the station. And you’re a kid out there with Vera. That’s not exactly the place I’d pick to process shit, you know?”

I don’t answer at first; I can’t. He called me a kid. I haven’t thought of myself as one in I don’t know how long. Seventeen, but I raised myself. Although I wonder sometimes if I didn’t grow up at all. If all I did was survive.

“I’m fine,” I say. And then, because the lure of it is too strong, because Connors has seen exactly what I have: “I just keep thinking about the way the girl looked. Her eyes. The burn on her leg.”

“So do I.” A woman passes in front of us, carrying a bowl of ice cream she’s served herself from the dessert table, topped with dark, oozing chocolate sauce. “Really puts you off some things,” he says, laughing a little even though it isn’t funny at all.

“They don’t know what caused it?”

He hesitates. He’s probably not supposed to discuss this with me, or with anyone. But I’m talking where I wasn’t before, and I can see the gears turning in his head—maybe this is how he gets me pointed at Gram. The police haven’t been back to Fairhaven since my first morning there, but after my break-in at the station, I know it’s only a matter of time, and he’ll want more ammunition for when they do.

“Yeah.” He steps back, away from the rest of the party, and lowers his voice. I go with him. “The coroner’s looking at some irregularities that could explain it. Some stuff in her blood that has no business being there. But I don’t know, Margot.”

What he wants to say next is implied: your grandmother does.

I ignore it. “Stuff in her blood?”

Connors waves a hand and then reaches out to snag a glass of water from a passing server—I recognize her as one of Tess’s friends from the town green, dressed in a wrinkled catering uniform. He waits until she’s gone to continue. “A chemical. We just got the results back on it—it’s some farming thing, for planting sterile hybrids. Ridicine. You heard of it?”

I shake my head. Should it be familiar?

“It was banned in…” Connors scratches at his jaw thoughtfully. “God, I want to say forty years ago? Exposure killed a couple people out in Kansas. Made a whole big mess in the papers. So what it’s doing here in that girl’s bloodstream we have no idea.”

A chemical. I saw the report, hanging from the drawer in the morgue. I let my eyes drift, turn my focus to that memory, but I can’t make it take shape. And now Connors says it’s been banned since long before she would’ve been born.

“But she was my age,” I say. “That girl. Right?”

“Seems like it.” Connors takes a sip from his glass, his expression grim. “That’s what I’m saying.”

We don’t get any further. Across the room, Tess bursts to her feet. It jostles the Miller table with a clatter, sends a lemonade pitcher tumbling and a glass smashing against the floor, but she doesn’t seem to notice.