4

KEEGEN

I’M THE LAST CHARACTER WITNESS. I have to follow up this douchebag from Tabby’s past who claims she got him drunk and convinced him to give her a ride home. Lawyer lady Deveraux has already punched a bunch of holes in his statement and mentioned that it has nothing to do with this, but he argues it did. “Mark was drunk, too,” he says. “He’s not here to say what happened, but maybe whatever she did to me, she did to him.”

I put on a tie this morning and it’s strangling me, like some kind of noose. I want to rip it off, but I try to sit still, like I did at high school graduation, my shiny black shoes tapping the floor, wanting it to be over with. I don’t look at Tabby, even though I know she’s looking at me. She asked for all this. I’m not going to say anything she can’t already expect.

When Paxton summons me, I walk up to the stand. My armpits are sweating through my shirt. I bet that makes me look guilty. I don’t need to feel guilty. I have the text message, the last one Mark ever sent.

“Did Mr. Forrester—Mark—did Mark tell you he was planning on breaking up with Ms. Cousins on the hike?”

I’m stone-faced. “Yes. He did. Said he’d been wanting to do it for a while, but was afraid of her.”

“Afraid of her how?” His hair looks plastered on. There’s never a piece out of place. That must take real effort.

“Her temper. She’d go off on him. She threw a sandwich at him one day while we were eating.”

“I was aiming for the garbage.”

I gape at Tabby. I’m pretty sure everyone does. A couple people laugh, a couple more gasp. She knows she’s not supposed to talk. She sat through everything else, through everyone else shitting on her, but a fucking sandwich reminds her she has vocal cords after all.

Paxton clears his throat while the judge reminds Tabby that this isn’t her turn to speak. I swear, Tabby winks, but maybe it’s just the light in here.

“Continuing,” Paxton says. “Mark confided in you that he was threatened by Beck Rutherford.”

“He didn’t have to,” I say. “I was there the night it happened.”

So I tell the whole story again. How we were in Elle’s backyard. How nobody knew who invited Beck, and nobody would fess up to being the one who did it. How Beck got in Mark’s face, then hit him, and told him to stay away from Tabby.

I tell them the other part, too. How Tabby enjoyed it. She watched it like it was some dramatic moment on a reality TV show. Her arms crossed, pushing her boobs up. Her hand over her mouth, probably covering up the smile she can’t get rid of. If you know Tabby, you know she wears everything in that smirk, and in those eyes.

“And you encouraged Mark to break off the relationship,” Paxton says.

“Yeah. I did. And I have to live with that. Because listening to me might’ve been what killed him.”

Someone coughs. It makes me jump.

“Describe your relationship with Ms. Cousins prior to Mark’s death.”

I wipe my forehead. “We didn’t have one. She was Mark’s girlfriend. I had my own shit going on. I mean, stuff. Sorry. I didn’t pay that much attention to her. Then when he went back to school, he started complaining about how insecure she was. How she freaked out whenever she saw pictures of him with other girls in them. I told him he should cut it off. She was in high school. He didn’t need that, on top of everything else he was dealing with.”

“By that, you mean his competitive swimming. His grades. The scholarship he needed to maintain to remain at Princeton.”

“Yeah. All that. And I mean, his grades were slipping. His training was still going well, I thought. Until—”

Paxton knows what I’m going to say, but he won’t say it for me. “Until?”

“Until he found out about the abortion.”

There’s a buzz in the courtroom, even though everyone has already heard all this. Tabby remains silent this time. I’m kind of surprised she doesn’t jump up to protest that it wasn’t her. I guess she’s already done enough of that.

“Would you say that Mark went into a downward spiral after that?”

I shrug. “We didn’t talk as much for the last couple months of his school year. He was busy with exams and stuff, and I was busy with work.” What a joke. Busy bagging groceries. “Then he came home for summer break.”

“How would you categorize Mark’s temperament at the start of the summer?” Paxton paces in front of me. I swear, this guy never stops moving. He would be annoying to live with.

“I don’t know. Normal, I guess. But he got kind of distant. I think Tabby was behind that.”

“She had a birthday party for Mark and didn’t invite you, is that correct?”

My mouth is dry. “Yeah. That’s right.”

“Why do you think she wanted to keep you away?”

I know exactly why that girl wanted to keep me away. “Maybe because she didn’t want me to talk to Mark. Get in his head. Tell him to dump her.”

“So you believe that Ms. Cousins had been planning the murder for several months, and taking calculated actions to keep Mark distanced from those he knew best.”

“Yeah. Yes. I do.” Hearing it put like that—murder—it’s brutal. Hits me in the stomach and it’s like I’m going to be sick. It’s easier to think Mark fell. Mark drowned. Not Mark was murdered.

“I have no further questions,” Paxton says.

But Deveraux does. I can’t leave yet because she has to cross-examine me. I hate that word. It’s all clinical, like she’s got a scalpel and is about to cut me open, move my organs around a bit. She even looks like she should be a surgeon, not a lawyer. Yeah, she’s hot, but in this sterile way. If she has a boyfriend, or a husband, I’m afraid for him.

“Mr. Leach. Keegan, if I may.” She clasps her hands together. “You stated that you didn’t have a relationship with Tabby. That she was solely Mark’s girlfriend.”

I gulp. “Well, yeah. She was.”

“And you never saw her outside of that friendship.”

“Only when she came into the Stop & Shop where I work. Which she did, sometimes. It’s the only place to get groceries in town.”

“So my client was never at your apartment. She never left anything there.”

Now the sweat isn’t just in my armpits. It’s everywhere, drenching my back, just like it did that day, my T-shirt stuck to it.

“No, she never came over. My place is messy. I barely have anyone over.” I try to laugh, but now my forehead is all wet, and when I wipe it with the back of my hand, my skin comes away all shiny. I look fucking guilty.

“When Mark went back to Princeton, he asked you to keep an eye on Tabitha for him, didn’t he?”

I nod. “Yeah. He did. But not in a creepy way. Just to make sure she was okay. Kind of like a big brother or something.”

Deveraux pauses. “But you didn’t think of Tabby as a little sister, did you, Keegan?”

She brings a picture of something up to the judge. “We’d like to present this new evidence. It’s a hair tie belonging to my client, found in Keegan Leach’s apartment.” She holds up her hand to her mouth, almost like she’s asking me to shh. “Before you try to say it isn’t hers, you might want to save it. Her DNA is all over it.”

I backpedal. “Well, Mark had a key. Maybe they came over when I wasn’t around, to be alone. You know.”

“A neighbor confirms Tabitha entered your apartment last fall. And several times after. Mark wasn’t with her, but you were, weren’t you?”

I swear, you can hear a pin drop in this place, and that’s the scariest part of all. Suddenly I know exactly what Tabby’s doing. Exactly what she must have been planning this whole time.

“Tell me where you were the night Mark died,” Deveraux continues. She’s gaining steam. Look at her face, all flushed. I bet she gets off more from this than sex.

“I was with my girlfriend,” I say. “Kyla. I told the cops already. So did she.”

“I know we have a witness who claims that after she woke up, you were gone, and when you came back, you were wet.”

“Yeah. I got up to take a shower. I do that sometimes.”

“But she never heard the shower running.”

Fuck. Fuck. “I mean, I don’t know. She had a lot to drink.”

“And there’s something else, isn’t there, Keegan? A fight you had with Mark that one of my witnesses was the only one to hear. Are you going to tell the court what the fight was about?”

I shake my head. “There was no fight. She’s making it up.”

Deveraux raises her eyebrow, which makes her look evil. “She?”

Fuck.

“You left your shift at the Stop & Shop twenty minutes early on August sixteenth.”

I scratch my head. “I don’t remember. I guess it makes sense if I was meeting Kyla.”

“But you didn’t meet Kyla until eight. And you slipped out that night, didn’t you? What were you doing while you thought she was asleep?”

I feel like I’m about to explode. It’s not like I kept a fucking log of my time. “I don’t know, okay? Maybe I went to jerk off. Or take a shit. I don’t remember every moment of my life.” That gets a few laughs, but mostly people are deadly silent. I make the mistake of looking at Alex, whose eyes are basically lasering holes into my skin.

I make the mistake of looking at Tabby again, and she’s enjoying this.

I made the mistake of looking at Tabby over a year ago. Girls should wear signs, or at least different-colored T-shirts. Red means I’m going to ruin your life.

She batted those blue eyes like a Disney character.

“No further questions at this time,” Deveraux says, and I’m terrified about what she means by that. Because at this time generally means there’s going to be a next time, and I don’t want to be around for that.