Good Girls Lie(76)

Ford wants to read the journal, at length, but it’s been taken into evidence, and she doubts she’ll be given another crack at it. She wants to talk to Ash again when she isn’t under the influence of Becca, the sheriff, and whatever she’d been forced into drinking the night before.

But Ash is nowhere to be found. She’s most likely with one of the counselors. Ford makes a mental note to send for her before dinner.

Down in her office, Melanie is at her desk, nose red and eyes swollen. “Anything new?” she asks.

“No. The girls are understandably rocked. Has the sheriff been in touch?”

“He left a message half an hour ago. He’ll be along presently.”

“All right. I’m going to check my email, have some coffee. Regroup before he gets here.”

She plops down in her desk chair with a fresh cup of coffee. Sunlight spills in through her picture window, a shaft of light runs across the rug. It feels obscene that today is so gloriously sunny. It should be raining, the skies weeping the loss of a child; that’s only fitting.

She opens her computer and clicks on her email. She receives a ridiculous amount, considering. She scans the headlines. Most are from parents, a few reporters asking for comment. She’s had a lid on the situation and plans to keep it that way, so long as Camille’s parents don’t act first and start flinging the story to the press.

An invite from Asolo for her annual Virginia Woolf supper party Saturday evening—well, normalcy is best in these situations. She sends back a note: Good idea. I’ll be there.

An email pops in while she’s working. She doesn’t recognize the sender, but it’s come to her school address, so she deems it safe and clicks it open.

A photo is embedded in the email. Grainy. Black-and-white, clearly a shot taken at night.

It takes her a moment to realize she is looking at Camille Shannon.

And Rumi.

Locked in an embrace.

More photos fill the screen, loading one by one, telling the story of an interlude. A series of interludes.

A fight. A hug. A kiss. A farewell wave.

Ford shuts her eyes against what she already fears. The father of Camille’s baby must have been Rumi.

More photos are loading. Her heart begins to pound.

This is her front door. Rumi is stepping in, and there’s a flash of white she knows is her thigh.

The glint of glass.

A smile.

The door closing behind him.

Had he come from Camille’s arms straight to Ford’s bed?

She remembers the night perfectly. He’d shown up in silence, taken her against the wall. She’d assumed it was lust, but now she wonders if it was simply frustration that his younger paramour had turned him away.

Someone has seen them. She doesn’t know what she’s more frightened about, that her illicit affair will be revealed, or the much darker thought—Rumi knew Camille.

Rumi was having an affair with Camille.

It isn’t a leap for her mind to ask, Did Camille kill herself because Rumi rejected her for Ford?

Worse is the next thought, even darker, more disturbing.

Did Rumi kill Camille to shut her up?

Every conceivable curse word she knows runs through her mind, followed by a single, edifying thought.

Who sent this?

Ford is not a computer genius but she isn’t a Luddite, either. The email address is gibberish, but she clicks “More Information” in the header and a series of commands spill onto the page. This, though, is unintelligible. Letters and numbers that make no sense.

There is someone on campus who can decipher it for her. Can she trust him to keep his mouth shut?

She prints out the header, wonders what to do with the photos. Should she delete the email entirely? She can’t let it sit in her school mailbox; Melanie could stumble upon it. But if she deletes it, is she hampering the investigation? And if she deletes it, what’s to say it won’t simply be resent? Or sent outside the school. To the parents. To the board. To the press.

Now she’s in a real quandary. She’s complicit regardless of the next steps she takes.

The crisis management lawyers she talked with this morning had been very clear. There are three ways to respond to a crisis. Yes, I did it, who cares? Yes, I did it, and I’m sorry. No, I didn’t do it, prove it.

Prove it won’t work—there’s photographic evidence, which means the originals are out there. There’s no way to pretend she didn’t receive the email—somewhere, a server has registered she’s opened it. There’s no way to say who cares, either. Everyone will care.

Her mother’s voice launches at full speed from the back of her mind. How stupid could you be, having sex with a child?

He’s not a child. He’s twenty. He’s a man. He can vote. He can fight. He can pull a trigger.

Yes, Ford, but how long has this been going on?

That answer, if given honestly, is what will get her thrown out on her ear. Or perhaps put in jail.

Maybe there’s a fourth crisis management response. Run like hell. But this isn’t an option for her. Not really.

Her choices are quite limited.

Expose herself.

Expose Rumi.

Or wait for the anonymous emailer to expose everything.

A wild, terrible idea—if I’m not here, I can’t be hurt.

She gives herself a mental shake. Don’t be a fool, Ford. You’ve made a mistake. That’s all. Life will go on.