Chapter Nine
“What happened, honey?” Pam asked, meeting him in the entrance hall. Obviously, Ryan hadn’t confessed to her, because she looked like her normal self—sweet, loving, and concerned about him. But she must already have been in Ryan’s room, because Moose trotted up behind her.
“It was nothing, really. I hit the Dumpster at the Wawa. I clipped the edge.” Jake gave her a brief hug, so he didn’t get any residual airbag powder on her clothes. She was dressed for the gym, in glasses, ponytail, and a long T-shirt over her black yoga pants, but worry was etched into the lines of her lovely face.
“How did you do that? You weren’t on the phone, were you?”
“No, I hit the gas instead of the brake.”
“Really?” Pam recoiled, puzzled. “You’re a better driver than that.”
“I know.”
“So how did it happen?”
“God knows. I needed my coffee.” Jake let her go and shrugged it off, or tried to. He’d been too preoccupied on the ride home to make up a detailed story about the accident. “Mike’s is right there, and I don’t think it’s totaled, so it’s a nuisance, but that’s all.”
“Thank God.” Pam’s intelligent blue eyes searched his face from behind her glasses. “What’s that powder on your sweater?”
“From the airbag.” Jake brushed it away, but Pam lifted her eyebrow.
“The airbag went off? How fast were you going?”
“Not that fast.”
“But you have to be going a certain miles an hour for the airbag to go off. You must’ve been going kind of fast.”
“I didn’t think I was, but whatever. We’re insured, and I’m not going to sweat it. I have to rent a car.” Jake looked around for Ryan, masking his anxiety. “So what’s up with Ryan?”
“I don’t know, he seems really sick.” Pam raked her nails through her hair, which had a ridge from her ponytail. “He’s thrown up twice and he looks terrible.”
“Oh no.” Jake let his concern show.
“And he hardly slept last night. He didn’t want to tell me because he knows he can’t be sick now. The game’s Sunday. It’s the playoffs, remember?”
“Right.” Jake had forgotten. He didn’t know how Ryan would bear up under the pressure. It was getting worse and worse.
“He could have something, like a bug, but he was hiding it from me. I heard him in the bathroom and went in. He’s miserable, but there’s no fever. It could be the flu, there’s something going around.”
“That’s probably what it is. The flu.” Jake’s heart went out to his son. It sounded as if Ryan was distraught over the news about Kathleen, which was just what Jake would have expected. Ryan had to have known Kathleen, at least to say hello. And she had died at his hands.
“Wait a minute.” Pam frowned. “Did you tell me he had a hamburger last night, at the diner? I should call Sal right now and make a complaint.”
Think fast. “No, he didn’t have the burger. He only had ice cream.” Jake had to prevent her from calling Sal, who would tell her that he and Ryan hadn’t even been in last night.
“But you said he had a burger.” Pam frowned, more deeply. “I remember because I was surprised. He’d been saying he wants to eat less meat.”
“He ordered the burger, and I ordered a sundae, but when the food came, he thought mine looked better and we ended up switching.” Jake knew this was believable because everybody coveted his ice-cream sundaes, but he was the only one who ever ordered them.
“Oh, okay. Then it wasn’t the meat. Good.” Pam cocked her head. “Hmmm. It could’ve been that cheesy crap with the nachos, at the movie.”
“Right.” Jake wanted to talk with Ryan alone, which would be a problem now that Pam wasn’t going to the gym. But he knew how to make that happen. “Meanwhile, I didn’t get any breakfast. I didn’t even get my coffee yet.”
“I can fix you some eggs, if you want.”
“I’d love that, thanks. I’ll change and stop in and see him.” Jake went to the stairwell.
“Okay, I’ll call you when they’re ready.” Pam went to the kitchen with Moose following her, his toenails clicking on the hardwood. Jake hustled upstairs, knocked on Ryan’s door, then slipped inside his room.
“Dad!” Ryan looked pale and drawn, and there were dark circles under his eyes. His hair was a rumpled mess, and he was sitting up in bed in his sweats. His laptop, notebooks, and an open textbook lay scattered around him. “Did you hear? It was Kathleen Lindstrom. She’s in my class. She goes to my school.”
“I know.” Jake hurried over, scooped Ryan up, and hugged him close. He could feel his son slump against his chest, as if there were no strength at all in his young, athletic body.
“She’s my age.” Ryan’s voice sounded hoarse, about to give way to tears. “I didn’t know her, but a lot of my friends did.”
“I know, I know.” Jake held him closer, rocking him a little, reflexively. For a second, he didn’t know who was comforting whom, because they both felt so guilty and heartsick, bound by remorse.
“Janine Mae, that girl, the one I was going to go out with tonight, they were best friends. They both ran track. Dad, she even has MacCabe for homeroom. Remember Mrs. MacCabe?”
“Yes, of course, I’m so sorry.”
“God, it’s so horrible.” Ryan pulled away, his face a tormented mask and his weary eyes glistening. He yanked his laptop over, his movements suddenly frantic. “Look, you should see on her Facebook page, they already made it a memorial and everybody’s posting how they’re so sorry and how could somebody do such a thing, to leave her to die in the street, and she was so nice, she had to work after school—”
“Oh, this is just awful.” Jake glanced at the memorial Facebook page, which showed a photo of a grinning Kathleen Lindstrom, but he didn’t have the heart to read the posts. He realized he’d have to set aside his own anguish to help his son, and be strong for him.
“I told Mom I was sick, but it’s just that I feel so terrible, and you should see, everybody’s posting about it, how sad it is, and it made me throw up, and the only reason I stopped was there was nothing left. Dad, I already got a text from Janine Mae saying she’s so upset, and like, she was so cute, everyone on the boys team wanted to take her out.” Ryan’s words sped up, and he started scrolling through Facebook, tapping the trackpad. “Look, Dad, I think her mom and dad are divorced, and look at this, the track coach said on our Facebook page that nobody’s allowed to run on Pike Road anymore. Caleb says on his page the school is going to stop all the teams from running there—”
“Ryan, please, I know how you feel, but maybe you shouldn’t look at the computer anymore.” Jake kept his hand on Ryan’s shoulder. “It’s making it worse—”
“But I killed Kathleen, I killed her—”
“Lower your voice, please.” Jake glanced toward the door, though Pam couldn’t hear from the kitchen. “Son, I’m worried about you—”
“Dad”—Ryan interrupted, tapping the trackpad in an agitated way—“they’re all talking and texting and posting about her, and how could this horrible person kill her and leave her, and they all mean me, but they don’t even know—”
“Ryan, we did it, we’re both responsible, but you need to try and not get too focused on this.” Jake tried to calm him down, but he could see that Ryan was hardly listening.
“Dad, no, you know what, I was thinking, if we tell them how it happened, we could explain that I wasn’t high at the time—”
“Tell who?”
“The police.”
“No, we couldn’t,” Jake said firmly. “If they test you and find out you smoked, you would be guilty of a DUI and vehicular homicide. If you got tried as an adult, which is distinctly possible, that could be a ten-year prison term. We can’t go to the police. Don’t even think about that. I know we did the wrong thing—”
“No, it was all my fault. I hit her—”
“Ryan, we can’t keep going over and over this, around and around in circles.” Jake had to tell him about the car accident at the Wawa, because it would look strange to Pam if he didn’t. “Listen, I just had a fender bender that will cover the damage in the car.”
“What? How?” Ryan’s eyes widened, glistening and bloodshot.
“I don’t have time to give you the details, and it doesn’t matter.”
“Don’t forget your coat in the garage—”
“I’ll take care of it, and I didn’t forget.” Jake knew what to do with the coat, but the car had taken priority. “I knew as soon as I heard that it was Kathleen, how you would feel, but you need to let me handle—”
“I just can’t believe it. I hate myself, I hate this—”
“I know how you feel, but we have to keep it together.” Jake squeezed his shoulder. “This is the time to stay calm. Let me handle everything. I know what’s best for you, I really do. I love you.”
“You said that I could get ten years in jail if they charge me as an adult, but what if they don’t?” Ryan began to calm down and met his gaze evenly. His bloodshot eyes were still wet, but he was no longer on the verge of tears. “What if they decide I’m a kid, a juvenile? I went online and did the research—”
“You can’t find an answer like that online.” Jake didn’t add that he’d tried.
“But I found these websites for lawyers, and if I go in the juvenile system, it looks like a lot less time—”
“No website can tell you whether you’ll be tried as an adult. Considering who your mother is, they might want to make an example of you.”
“But you don’t know that, you can’t tell that for sure. What if we went to a lawyer?”
“No, we need to keep it to ourselves—”
“We could go to a lawyer together and tell him what happened, and see what he said.” Ryan seemed to recover, sitting up straighter, his voice strengthening. “Maybe there’s a way we can still make it come out right. We could go to the police and make them understand.”
“No.” Jake stiffened. “There’s no way.”
“But if we could get, like, an expert opinion—”
“I know what I’m doing, son.”
Ryan blinked, and Jake knew he was remembering the year that his dear old dad got laid off, rejected for every job he applied to, dressed up for interviews that got canceled. Pam and Ryan had seen him every morning, leaving the house for his rented cubicle, wearing a tie and jacket like a costume. It had been the year that his family had learned Dad wasn’t infallible. Jake felt as if he could never live it down, but he had to try.
“Ryan, I do know what I’m doing. You have to believe me.”
“But the lawyer on one of the sites said that anything clients tell him is confidential. Is that right, that he can’t tell anybody?”
“Yes.”
“So then why can’t we go?”
“How are we going to go see a lawyer together? What do we tell your mother?”
“She doesn’t have to know. She has that dinner tonight, remember, for whatever? She has to go, she’s supposed to give a speech.”
Jake had forgotten that, too. He was so preoccupied with Kathleen and Ryan.
“Dad, what if she goes to the dinner, and you say you have to stay home with me because I’m sick, then you and me can go to a lawyer?”
“No, I don’t want to do that.” Jake’s every instinct told him to contain the information. Any lie he told, like the one about the hamburger, not only led to other lies, but greater exposure. “I’m not even sure you should go with me if I see a lawyer. Then we can’t tell him that I was driving.”
“Why not?”
“Because if we tell him that I was driving and it’s not the truth, he can’t represent to the court that it is.”
“How do you know that? You’re not a lawyer.”
“I know a few things, Ryan.”
“That makes no sense.” Ryan frowned in confusion. “You mean it’s okay if he keeps it secret that we committed a crime, but it’s not okay if he keeps the details secret, like who was driving?”
“Yes.” Jake realized it didn’t make sense, either. “Look, I admit, I don’t know the niceties, but I don’t like the idea and I doubt that we could get a lawyer that quick anyway.”
“What if I already got us one?”
“What?” Jake asked, dismayed. He could see Ryan’s life exploding, flying into a million pieces, right before his eyes. “What did you do?”
“Don’t be mad—”
“I’m not mad, I’m scared, for you! What did you do?” Jake tried not to raise his voice. Panic gripped his heart. “Ryan, this is a secret. Once it’s out, it’s out, and you can’t put it back.”
“Don’t worry—”
“Ryan, did you call? Did you use your cell phone?”
“No, I sent an email, but I made up a second new Gmail account under a fake name, John Kane. I didn’t use my own name. It’s safe.”
“Ryan, they can still find out it’s from your computer, if they trace that. You know every computer has its own ISP address.”
“The lawyer’s not going to look it up, and nobody else is either. You don’t have to go if you don’t want to, but I want to.”
“Wait, hold on.” Jake had to slow him down. “Tell me what you did. What did you tell him?”
“Nothing. All I said was that I needed to talk to an expert.”
“You didn’t tell any of your friends, did you?”
“No.”
“You swear?” Jake’s fears started to run away with him. “You didn’t tell anybody on the team, or this girl you’re supposed to go out with?”
“No, Dad, I swear, I didn’t, I only emailed the lawyer and he emailed back.”
“What were you thinking?” Jake reached for Ryan’s arm. “Don’t you realize how serious this is? You can’t tell anybody what happened! You can’t play games with this!”
“I’m not playing games. I want to see if there’s another way—”
“You can lose your whole life over this, Ryan. I’m not going to let that happen, and we’re not going to see any lawyer.”
Ryan pursed his lips. “Dad, I want to see a lawyer. All I did was write an email.”
“Show it to me.”
“Here.” Ryan grabbed his laptop, hit a button, and swiveled it around, and Jake read the lawyer’s response, which came up first:
Dear Mr. Kane, I am available for a confidential consultation entirely free of charge, anytime this evening starting at seven o’clock. I look forward to hearing from you. Sincerely, Morris
Jake read down to see Ryan’s email. He felt himself losing control of the situation, which terrified him.
Dear Sir, I have a confidential question about a DUI law. Are you available tonight? Sincerely, John Kane
Jake looked up, stricken. “Who is this lawyer? Where is his office?”
“Westtown, but he could meet us wherever we wanted. It doesn’t have to be his office. I bet it could even be in a car.”
“Ryan, this guy can put two and two together. If he gets an email like that and he’s in Westtown, he’ll know there was a hit-and-run sometime last night, and that you’re probably—”
“Dad, don’t be mad, please, don’t be mad.” Ryan’s brow furrowed deeply under his messy hair. “I’m just trying to do the right thing.”
“I’m not mad at you, I’m worried for you. Worried sick.”
“But I would feel better if I knew it was the only thing left to do, like, we really tried to see if we could do the right thing, but we just couldn’t, in the end.” Ryan’s voice turned pleading, his eyebrows sloping down plaintively. “I’m just trying to deal with it, and if the lawyer says this is the right thing, the only way, then I think I would feel better.”
“You’re being naïve, son. You don’t know how bad this can get, and I’ll be damned if I’ll put your life into the hands of some second-rate DUI lawyer.”
“He went to Yale.”
“He’s a stranger. He doesn’t know you or care about you, or love you like I do.” Jake had to get Ryan in control. “We already decided. There’s no going back. What’s done is done. It’s done.”
“Can’t we just go, to make sure? For me?”
Suddenly, there was a commotion in the hallway, and Moose burst through the door, bounded into the room, and jumped on the bed, landing in the middle of Ryan’s worksheets and knocking into the laptop.
“No, buddy!” Jake faked a laugh, grabbing the dog by the collar.
“Whoa, Moosie!” Ryan moved the laptop out of harm’s way and closed the lawyer email.
“What are you two up to?” Pam entered the room, puzzled. “Jake, I called you twice. Your eggs are ready.”
“Sorry, babe. We’ve been solving a mystery. You were right. He had the cheese nachos.”
“I knew it!” Pam smiled in triumph, then looked at Ryan. “Honey, nachos in a movie theater? Really?”
“Sorry, Mom,” Ryan said, with a sigh.