When we first arrived at the police station in Rossingville and before the questioning began, Detective Rountree allowed me to call Amanda on one of their landlines. They’d removed my personal effects, including my phone, so I sat at an empty desk and resorted to using a beat-up and out-of-date phone book, the cover so battered it fell to the floor, to find my in-laws’ number. I didn’t know it by heart. I hadn’t dialed it that way in . . . ever.
When Amanda came on the line, I told her what I could tell her in the few minutes I was allotted, straining to hear her voice over the din of the police station. Ringing phones and chattering conversations, a siren wailing outside. More than anything I made sure she and Henry were safe, and I told her Aaron was in custody, unable to come near or harm anyone else.
Our conversation paused for a moment. In the background on her end of the line, I heard Henry making a series of noises, including his habitual banging of the spoon against the high chair tray. And I heard Karen’s voice talking back to him, telling him how grown-up he was. Those sounds pierced my heart. How I wished I could have been there. How I wished to sit by Henry and feed him mashed-up food. I’d even have settled for changing one of his stink bomb diapers because it would make life seem normal again.
“I have so many questions,” Amanda said. “So many.”
“And I’ll answer them all. I promise. But the cops have a bigger claim on me right now.”
“Just let me come down there. I can explain some things. There’s so much more to this.”
“No, you don’t have to come down here. Stay with Henry.”
I heard her breath on the other end of the line. “Do you need a lawyer?” she asked, again showing her practical side. “Is it that serious? I don’t want you talking to the police without being protected.”
I considered the possibility. “I’m not sure. Maybe.”
“I’m going to ask Dad. He knows every lawyer in Rossingville.”
I wasn’t sure what to think. It hadn’t all sunk in yet. The deep shame I’d carried with me for years, the belief that I’d killed someone in that accident . . . none of it was true. But I couldn’t bring myself to feel relieved.
Maggie Steiner was still dead. Emily was still hurt.
And Jennifer Bates was gone too. Along with Kyle Dornan.
Such a waste. So much waste.
Rountree emerged from a back room and pointed at her watch. I looked around. I had no idea where they’d taken Blake or Aaron. I assumed they were being held in their own rooms, and they’d keep us all separate as we told our tales. At least that was the way it happened on TV.
“I have to go,” I said. “I don’t know how long this will take. I really don’t. I’ll try to call again if I can, but . . .”
“I get it. I’ll be here with Mom and Dad.”
“Okay. I love you.”
“I love you too.”
I started to put the phone down, but Amanda’s voice came through the line, stopping me.
“What’s that?” I asked.
She paused for a moment. Henry’s banging increased in frequency and volume.
“I just said . . . I understand that there may be some things you tell them that are delicate. I get it. I do. I know sometimes these things come out whether we want them to or not. It can all get very tangled.”
I wanted to ask her for clarification because it sounded as though she was speaking about something else, something besides the events that had spun out from Jennifer’s death.
But Rountree came over to the desk and tapped her watch again, this time more dramatically. And there was no way to say or ask anything with any presumption of privacy, if that presumption had even existed in the first place. So I told Amanda good-bye and hung up, and then followed Rountree back to the room where I was to be questioned.
And the police devoted hours to questioning me. To say it was unpleasant would be the understatement of the century. In order to explain to them how I ended up in that basement with Aaron and Blake, I naturally had to go back to college and start the story there. And then it continued all the way up until the events of the previous twenty-four hours, including how I had ended up in Jennifer’s house the night she was killed, the removal of her phone, the withholding of those details from Rountree the first time she came to the house.
All of it.
Rountree came and went. Sometimes I sat for long stretches by myself, and during those times, I replayed the events of the past day, especially everything that happened in that basement in Hilldale Estates. I’d spent the past six years of my life burying and secretly making amends for something I hadn’t played as large a role in as I’d always thought. Blake had been driving that night. And he’d not only lied to me about it, but he’d used it to coerce me into going into Jennifer’s house.
But knowing those things brought me no great relief.
Blake, someone I once considered a close friend, had lied to me for years.
And setting aside how much I feared exposure at his hands, I had made the choice to give in and go along with entering Jennifer’s house the previous night. I shouldered the blame for that. I might face criminal charges for it. In fact, I couldn’t see how I wouldn’t.
What I’d thought while talking to Amanda was true—it was much better to have it all out in the open.
But my life would never be the same afterward. I’d never be looked at the same, and I wouldn’t be the same. The uncertainty surrounding that scared me more than any criminal charge that might have been coming.
Everything felt new and out of control. No social media post or Instagram filter could put the right shine on my past decisions.
Shortly before midnight, Rountree returned for the final time. She told me we were just about finished, and I’d be able to return home under certain conditions.
“You can’t leave town,” she said. “And if we call you because we have more questions, we need you to jump. And I mean really jump.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” I said. “I just want to spend time with my family again.”
She held a small notebook and flipped through the pages. I’d stayed focused on her questions the rest of the day, but with our time nearing its end, I worked up the nerve to ask a question I’d been thinking about for hours.
“What is happening with Aaron?” I asked. “And Blake?”
Rountree kept looking at her notes, but she answered. “Our friend Aaron Knicely is in quite a bit of trouble. He has a lawyer on the way, so things with him might take a while to sort through. That’s all I can really say about that.”
She added nothing else and kept turning pages.
“And Blake?” I asked.
She looked up, closed the notebook, and tucked it into a pocket inside her jacket. “He’s in his own sinking boat. We’re going to be looking into this car accident from the past. He faces legal jeopardy over that. I can’t tell you more. And we’ll be deciding about possible criminal charges related to everything you did. Going into that house, taking the phone.”
A few hours earlier, Rountree had brought me some crackers and a bag of pretzels from a vending machine. Except for those, I hadn’t eaten in hours. Despite that long stretch, my stomach felt nauseated, not empty. And when I said Blake’s name, the nausea increased along with a sour taste in my mouth. I wanted to feel relieved to be done with him, but the imagined freedom and lightness refused to come.
“He’s asked for a lawyer about the accident, so it could take a while to get sorted out,” Rountree said. “But Aaron is telling the same story you are about the accident and the events in that basement. If that makes you feel any better.”
I thought about it for a moment, looking at the scarred top of the beat-up table where I sat.
“I’m not sure it does,” I said. “I understand it, but it doesn’t make me feel any better. Someone was killed. And someone still got hurt. Bad. And I was there for part of it, acting like an idiot. Nothing can absolve me from that.”
Rountree nodded in a sagelike manner. “Not even envelopes of cash stuffed in a mailbox.”
I looked up.
“Yes,” she said, “everyone’s going to know you’ve been giving the Steiners the money. There’s no way people will think Blake did it.”
Her words started to sink in.
“Do you think the Steiners knew what Aaron was coming to do to us?” I asked. “I told you about Dawn Steiner. Could this relate to them in some way? Could they all be in on this with Aaron? Getting revenge together? You don’t know who killed Jennifer yet, do you? Was it Aaron? He said he was with her.”
“We’ll look into everything. We always do. But you were the goose laying golden eggs. They didn’t seem to want that money to stop coming.”
“Yeah,” I said, accepting it all. “But I guess you can’t buy your way out of guilt.”
Rountree stood up. “Maybe understanding that is the first step toward moving on.”