trouble. And besides, my feed has private stuff on it.”
I am tempted to explain to Michaela the contradiction between feed and private but looking past her I see that Kevin Bantree and Rudy are walking toward a police car. I don’t have time to give a lecture on rumormongering on social media.
“Put your phone away and go back inside the chapel,” I snap, already walking away. I hear her calling behind me, something about needing to phone her parents, but I am already entering the graveyard. I want to stride purposely toward Kevin Bantree, making it clear he can’t just take my son away, but the soft, spongy ground sucks at my heels, causing me to wobble uncertainly like a drunk or a madwoman. Ahead of me, Rudy is loping alongside Bantree, shoulders rounded, hands in pockets.
“Hey!” I call, my voice shrill and desperate sounding. “Wait up!”
Kevin and Rudy turn and watch my lurching progress across the boggy graveyard. I’m panting and sweating by the time I reach them, and when I wipe my hand across my brow I see I’ve got some kind of black sludge on it. Grave dirt, I think, before remembering Rachel’s kohl. It’s on my shirt and hands. I must look like a crazy woman.
“Where are you taking my son?” I demand.
Kevin straightens his back while Rudy shrinks further into himself. “Rudy’s volunteered to come down to the station to answer some questions.”
“Not without a lawyer,” I say.
“It’s all right, Mom,” Rudy says. “I want to help. It’s for Lila.”
His voice is so tender when he says Lila’s name that I find I can’t argue with him. “I’m going with you,” I say.
“It would be better if you stay here,” Kevin says.
Better for whom? I want to ask but before I can Rudy says, “Please, Mom, I have to do this myself.” He might be five, asking to tie his own shoe, or ten, begging me not to yell at the boys who call him Wolf Boy. Let me fight my own battles, he is asking me, or don’t you think I can?
But Rudy doesn’t understand how the police will bully him into saying things he doesn’t mean. “Okay,” I say, “but I’m calling our lawyer and asking him to meet you at the station. Don’t answer any questions until he gets there, okay?”
Rudy nods and gets into the police car. I turn to Kevin. “There’s a rumor going around the Internet that Lila’s death has been ruled suspicious because there were defensive wounds on her arms. Is that true?”
“I can’t say anything about that.” Kevin’s face is carefully blank, as if he’s trying not to give anything away, but his lack of denial gives everything away. It must be true that Lila was murdered.
I nod. His expression has told me all I need to know. “I’m holding you responsible if anything happens to my son in your custody, Kevin Moore Bantree. You understand?”
His poker face falters; he’s surprised that I remember his middle name. I am too. A teacher must have used it in class; for a moment I see not Officer Kevin Bantree standing in front of me but his younger, teenage self.
Kevin is looking at me as if he’s seeing my teenage past too. “Your son is safe with me, Teresa,” he says gently.
Before he can see how it unnerves me to be called by my full name—no one calls me that anymore—I turn around and make my way back across the treacherous, boggy ground, fearing at each step that some hand from beneath the soil is about to reach up and grab me.
IT STARTS TO rain as I return to the chapel. Students are coming out of the assembly now, veering away, some toward the dorms, others in the direction of town. They look like rats fleeing a burning building, desperate to get far away from the repressive atmosphere of the chapel. As soon as they’re outside its orbit their voices get louder. The word murder rises off the damp graveyard earth like a miasma. Murder, murder, murder. A muttering of witches.
I don’t blame them. I don’t want to go back inside the chapel either. But where else can I go? Home? Back to the polished hardwood floors and ticking silence of our solid, safe Colonial? Without Rudy there, what does safety matter? What I want to do is drive to the police station, grab Rudy, toss him in the car, and head north. Disappear.
But Rudy’s not five. I can’t toss