there. The scene’s all cordoned off and they’re searching.”
“For what?”
“Evidence. Maybe for who did it.”
I turn from Josh in that instant, hold either side of the sink, and try to concentrate on breathing to stop the kitchen from spinning. Basel’s still begging, his meowing coming from every direction. The police are searching for who killed Ford. Any half-decent and mostly sane person would want a murderer found. Me: I worry that the answer to who killed Ford Holland isn’t as simple as all that. I worry that being dead isn’t what I used to think it was. And this matters because the person I loved best in the world isn’t alive.
For someone who’s dead, Ben is everywhere. He’s in the sailboat that showed up on my steamy window; he’s in my great-great-grandmother’s rosary appearing in our hiding spot; he’s in the fog; he’s in my doorway; he’s at the foot of my bed; he’s downtown, stargazing. Ford is dead, and I wonder if Ben was in the woods behind his house with him. What about when Maggie died? Did Ben chase her through the preserve? Is it being alive that limits you to one place? You’re stuck in class, or at home blowing out your hair, or on the couch texting your best, or wherever, just so long as it’s a single place, constrained by time and distance. I used to think that death limited you to zero places. You died and that was it: dead. But perhaps dead doesn’t mean gone?
A hand cups the back of my neck. I start. “Sorry,” Josh mutters, stepping away, jamming his hand in his pocket. “Are you okay? I was worried about telling you.”
“Why?” I ask, suddenly annoyed. I hated Ford—Ford who called me foul names and whispered lurid insults in my ear. I’m glad he’s gone.
Josh’s brows shoot up. “Because of Ben,” he explains gently. “Because it’s another death and that probably dredges up . . . pain. Plus”—his eyes go around the room—“I heard that you and Ford were outside at my party toward the end and that maybe you . . . liked him?”
I frown. “No,” I say. “I didn’t like Ford. Not at all. Although I’m sorry for his parents. We just ran into each other in your backyard, and truthfully, he was never nice to me.”
“Oh, okay,” Josh says, the lines there between his eyebrows.
“There wasn’t anything obviously wrong with Ford’s body?” I ask. “Injuries? Signs of how he died?”
Josh rubs his closed eyelids. “Not that my mom heard, no. The coroner took him and they’ll do the same tests they did on Maggie, same exam they’d do on anyone, I bet.”
Josh’s pocket buzzes angrily. His hand comes out with his cell. “Crap,” he says. “I was texting with Duncan and Rusty when my mom heard about Ford, and I told them. They must have told Carolynn, because she keeps calling.”
“They’ll be able to tell if Ford was poisoned,” I say. “If rosary peas were in his stomach.”
Josh looks up from texting on his cell. “Yeah, sure they will. Do you think the same person who killed Maggie killed Ford?”
My hands are jittery at my sides. “I don’t know. Probably. Their deaths were in such close proximity, time-wise and both here on Gant, where there’s never been anything like this before Ben.”
“But who would kill Maggie and then Ford? They only knew each other from school, and they weren’t even friends. There’s no connection.”
There is one glaring connection Josh doesn’t see. Ben had reason to be angry with them both. I shrug in a vague way. I want Josh to stop thinking about it. He couldn’t come up with the answer I have; he isn’t increasingly uncertain about what’s impossible. “They’re random victims,” I tell him.
His cell clatters on the counter where he’d placed it between us.
At B’s. Where R U?
The text is from Carolynn.
Josh snatches it up. “We should go over to B’s,” he says.
I follow him to the front door. “I’ll come in a few minutes. I need to call Willa.” I watch Josh walk, dazed, cutting across our neighbor’s lawn. I wait until he disappears, and then I sprint through the back door. My bare feet pound the stairs cut into the rocky slope, my hair comes loose from its ponytail, strands slashing what I see of the harbor. With the wind still, the water has the look of a frozen ice-blue pond. There are trails of smoke emanating from the opposite shore in the