I jog back to the Parks building, but the salt air feels different. Tricky. Gusting in ways fishermen can probably read for weather, but just seems double-minded to me. One updraft flips my ponytail, then a downdraft flings loose strands into my eyes. Smacking me back and forth.
I slow down when I reach the boardwalk, and yank out my cell phone.
Prepare to die by Redial.
He answers on the second ring. “Cute, ain’t she?”
It takes me a moment, since I was expecting to get blasted for calling back when he ordered don’t call back. “Yes, she’s cute, when she’s not biting somebody’s head off.”
“Not happy to see you?”
“Me, I don’t know. But you . . .”
“How bad?” he asks.
“Like I stood up in church and yelled, ‘Beelzebub!’ ”
“I’ve heard worse.”
“Can we discuss geology?”
“She didn’t give you answers.”
“No,” I say, carefully. “She answered my questions. But now I’ve got a whole new set of questions.”
“Good. Then you’re learning.”
“But not winning.”
“If you’re learning, you damn sure ain’t losing.”
Fire’s in his voice. He’s mad at me or mad at Dorothee—or himself. And normally I’d let him simmer down and change the subject. But a weird kind of desperation grips my heart. Painful, but uncertain. Like standing on a cliff and knowing the time’s come to jump. I lean against the boardwalk’s rail, right next to a plastic sign with some textbook explanation of ghost crabs.
“Remember how I told you that a girl was buried in sand?”
“That plumb-awful thing you’re ignoring?”
I turn my face into the double-minded wind. “Not anymore.”
“About time. You want to help Drewsky? Quit frettin’ about this contest and find the creep who done put that girl in the sand.”
“That’s why I’m calling.” I describe the two sands, how they appeared under the scope. “Both dark, but one had shiny grains, unscratched.”
“Moh’s nine. Color?”
“Reddish. My guess is corundum.”
“Some years back, a heap of archeologists dug up China and found some tools. Axes. From 2500 BC. We’re talking a couple millennia before that dude you like, Jesus.”
“And?” I sigh. Teddy always gets in a jab when it comes to faith.
“The blades were still smooth. Guess what they were made of?”
“Corundum.” I push off the rail, stroll forward. Right now nobody’s out here bird-watching in the late afternoon. “But here’s the thing, Teddy. The other sand sample, from where the girl was buried, didn’t have that reddish hue. And the grains were pretty scratched up. But she wasn’t that far from where I took the first sample. Maybe two hundred yards away—and the sand’s completely different? How’s that possible?”
“Sounds like a real pickle,” he says cheerfully.
“I’m standing outside the Parks building.”
“A-feared of the red-haired woman, are ya? I know just how you feel.”
“Only I didn’t do anything to her.”
There’s another silence, like the split-second between a pulled trigger and the bullet firing down the chamber. I’ve crossed the line, I know it. I feel it, like I just stepped off the cliff. So he’ll either hang up, rip me into shreds, or—
That seaside sigh.
“I really need help,” I say.
“You know what’s wrong with Ellis?” he asks.
Mr. Ellis. Our headmaster. Who hates Teddy. Who wants to fire Teddy and purge St. Catherine’s School of its resident rebel. Only he can’t because Teddy’s in a wheelchair and twice won best science teacher of the year. Nationally.
“Look, I know Ellis makes things hard for you,” I tell him, trying to sound patient, “but right now’s not the time to—”
“Pride.”
“Okay. Pride. That’s Ellis’ problem. Good to know. Now can we—”
“Pride done ossified Ellis.”
Ossified. The geologic process where minerals, particularly calcium, invade soft substances and harden them to bone.
“Pride done calcified every livin’ chamber of that man’s heart.”
“Yeah, okay. But.”
“But I’m just like Ellis.”
I stare at the long pale grass below the boardwalk. Those flattened areas, smashed to the ground. Stomped on. The double-minded wind brushes the living strands back and forth, like it’s orchestrating some eulogy for some invisible place. “Why are you telling me this?” I ask.
“Pride’s some nasty business. You oughta know that.”
“Okay.”
“I broke that woman’s heart, Raleigh.”
Somehow I suspected something like that. But I never expected to hear the whole truth from a man who’s mastered the southern skill of dancing around a topic. And his voice sounds strange. Hoarse and soft all at once.
“You go in that building,” he says, slowly. “And you tell her I’m sorry.”
I need to know—How did you break her heart? When? And . . . was it like DeMott breaking my heart?
But the next thought strikes me like lightning. Pride. Pride says I deserve to know details about Teddy’s private love life.
“Thank you,” I tell him.
He hangs up.
It’s the softest click in the universe.