Accomplice (15 page)

It felt like nap time—I figured on resting up, so that later on I’d be careful and alert. I dodged Dad and his full skillet and went upstairs to run a bath. I sat there until my fingertips pruned and then, afterward, shut myself up in my room. The sheets felt cool against my warm body. The pain in my back and shoulders reassured me; it felt good to ache from pure, hard work. It didn’t stop me from worrying about what had gone on with Chloe and me, but I only replayed the worst moments nine or ten times before falling asleep.

I’d set my phone to ring at noon, but then slept through it, so it wasn’t until two in the afternoon that I finally rolled myself out of bed and found fresh clothes. I checked my e-mail, but no one particularly exciting had written me. I wondered what Chloe was doing, how she was getting ready. Downstairs, Dad watched football and Mom sat on the window seat in the den, reading a paperback. The day seemed so normal, a little bit subdued. If Chloe had really been abducted, then this would have been the first day that it seemed a little bit like my family was getting back to normal. It hurt me a little, for Chloe’s sake. She’d practically grown up here, and it took us about a week to adjust ourselves to her absence.

And then another part of me…I don’t know…my parents were mine. We moved around the house quietly
and gratefully. Before all this, once in a while, especially when I was mad at my mom and dad, I’d pretend to be Mr. and Mrs. Caffrey’s second daughter. My parents were stricter about most things, and they talked mostly about the money they worried about spending and what Colt River had changed into. The Caffreys talked about books and took us into the city to visit galleries, to see shows. The one thing they were strict about was schoolwork and grades, but Chloe and I never had much trouble with that, anyway. Except for AP Bio, when Chloe and I both tanked first marking period. Mr. Caffrey went in for a meeting with a list of ways that he felt Dr. Bryson could adjust his teaching. He even met with the principal. The Caffreys hired a tutor and Chloe ended up with an A minus. My parents had me drop down to regular biology.

Right then, my dad looked pretty snug under a plaid wool blanket watching his Jets get their asses handed to them. He might never have gone to see the principal for the sake of my grades, but he’d kept me safe in a warm house. He’d raised an obedient girl, a good girl. A normal, uncomplicated girl who knew how to work hard and be kind. I would give anything to make sure he never thought anything different.

Around four, my mom came into the den and sat down on the rocker. “I was just going to go check on things next door. You want to come?”

It might have looked strange if I didn’t. I ran upstairs to grab my jacket and snuck a peek out my window to Chloe’s bedroom across the way. The curtains were closed. Downstairs, Mom had packed up a bunch of those earth-friendly grocery bags with some Tupperware containers of food. Mostly casseroles, but there was a loaf of her homemade bread and a whole bag jammed with rolls of paper towels and toilet paper. I understood that they were a mess and all and that it was partly my fault, but it still seemed to me like Mr. or Mrs. Caffrey could probably have purchased their own toilet paper. But Mom shrugged when she saw me looking in the bag. “One less thing for them to worry about,” she said.

My parents probably expected that I’d grow up to be a good person because they were. They probably never even imagined that I could construct an elaborate, diabolical scheme and lie, almost constantly, for weeks on end. I mean, who thinks that about their kid?

If our house felt warm and cozy, then Chloe’s felt stifling. It seriously seemed like the thermostat had been jacked up to eighty. My mom knocked on our way in, called out, “Brian? Sheila? We’re here.” I wondered if we’d still knock when Chloe came home.

Mr. Caffrey appeared in the doorway. “Ah, the Jacobs women!” he said. “A sight to behold!” For a second, I
wondered if he was a little drunk, but decided it was more that he was trying to act happy and jovial.

My mom could compete in jovial. “Well, we brought some goodies!” She tipped her head a little and flashed a smile. She looked like a lady in a paper towel commercial. She unzipped her coat and I groaned inside. That meant we’d be staying awhile. “Is something up with your radiator, Brian?”

“No, no—we just needed some tropical weather, we decided.”

My mom looked at him, mystified. After we set down all the bags and dumped the Tupperware into the fridge, we followed Mr. Caffrey into the great room. The Caffreys called their living room “the great room” because it was so big. Or, my dad liked to joke, because it was so expensive. Everything in it was huge—huge sofa, wide beams in the ceilings. Tall windows, and this enormous stone fireplace that took up a good share of one whole wall. Like when the settlers first founded Colt River, I bet that fireplace would have taken care of the entire town. Mrs. Caffrey usually referred to it as the hearth. I guessed if you had a fireplace large enough to fit a human being on a rotisserie, you were allowed to call it whatever you liked.

Cam had constructed a teepee in front of the fireplace. It was the canvas kind that you can buy at toy
stores. A dozen horse models stood in a row along the firehouse bricks. That wasn’t so weird, but Cam was sitting in front of the whole collection in his swimming trunks.

“What’s going on there, Cam?” my mom asked in her soothing voice. He shifted his eyes to her briefly.

“We just felt strongly that it was a bathing suit kind of day.” Mr. Caffrey said it like they’d voted on it or something. Obviously, Cam had been the main lobbyist. Mr. Caffrey had on shorts and a T-shirt and sweat beaded his forehead. It had collected on his upper lip. “It’s pretty warm in here, huh?” he asked my mom a little sheepishly.

“It’s definitely toasty,” she replied. Cam sat there, arranging the horses in various order across the stone fireplace. “Where’s Sheila?”

“Oh, she’s just resting.” He sounded a little lost, as if he’d been telling himself that all day.

Mom brushed off her hands and reached out like she was going to tousle Cam’s hair, then changed her mind. “Why don’t I go up and see if she’ll come down to visit with us?”

Mr. Caffrey actually looked relieved. “I’m sure she’d love to see you, Amy. You’ve been a lifesaver.”

“Don’t say another word.” Mom started up the wide, wooden steps. “Sheila, it’s Amy—I’m coming up.”

I watched Mr. Caffrey watch my mom ascend their
staircase, her hand on the carved banister. It occurred to me that he liked my mother, probably more than he was supposed to. Maybe he’d begun to appreciate her cooking or how kind she was to Cam, but probably it had to do with the fact that my mom was so capable. I remembered what Chloe had said, that I didn’t know everything about her family. Anyway, it was weird to see her dad look at my mom like that. Especially since I’d always suspected Mr. Caffrey looked down on my parents. Oh, he’d drink a beer on the porch with my dad all right. But when he’d take Chloe and me to the city, Mr. Caffrey would talk to me about art or theater or books in a tone of voice that told me he thought it was a real shame I didn’t already know about them.

He never called it charity, but that’s how he meant it. But for all her stupid art history courses and the thick books with vague titles on her bookshelf, Mrs. Caffrey had turned out to be pretty brittle. I remembered how she had lashed out at me, my mom, even Lila Ann Price. I couldn’t imagine that Mr. Caffrey hadn’t felt those fangs, too. And now it was his turn to feel grateful.

Standing there in the great room, I felt a little bit like Santa on December 24. I knew that early the next morning, Mr. Caffrey would tumble down the stairs, trying to adjust his eyes to the lights. He’d find me struggling through our back field, tugging along Chloe. Maybe Mrs. Caffrey would be like Sleeping Beauty—
she’d come floating down to the back porch and the color would flush back into her cheeks. Cam would take a break from lining up his horses over and over again, because all the people in the house would be safe and accounted for. I almost couldn’t take it—I wanted to say:
It’s going to be okay.
Or,
Just a few more hours—hold on for just a few more hours.

Instead I said, “I should really go back home and get started on my homework.” Mr. Caffrey looked startled, like he just remembered I was still in the room.

“Sure thing, Finn. Thanks again for all the help.” Cam blurted his alarm sound and I smiled at Mr. Caffrey. “What can you do?” he asked, bending down to gently squeeze Cam’s shoulder. He wasn’t a bad guy, Mr. Caffrey. I felt crappy for thinking he was actually a better guy after he lost his daughter.

I got back to our house and checked my phone but there weren’t any missed calls, just a bunch of texts from people I didn’t want to talk to, anyway. I tried to study but it seemed pointless—it’s not like I would actually be going to school the next day. I looked around in my closet because there’d probably be cameras around. At one point, I saw the red lights of a squad car pull into the Caffreys’ drive. They didn’t use the siren, though, and it had become almost normal for a policeman to stop by and give Mr. and Mrs. Caffrey an update. I talked myself out of panicking and running downstairs and confessing
from the back porch. I played computer Scrabble for a while and heard my mom come in at a little before six. When I went to check the window again, the squad car had gone.

The knock on the door shocked me. My mom’s face, the shaky tone of her voice. She asked me to come downstairs. She didn’t say “Finley,” so I knew I wasn’t in trouble, but when she said, “Finn, your father and I need to talk with you about something, please,” there was obviously something wrong. She’d been crying, for one. And Dad stood at the bottom of the steps waiting for us. He wasn’t even in a chair. Mom looked down at him and murmured, “Bart—turn it off.”

“Turn off what?” I asked. Dad stepped toward the den and reached for the remote. “What is it?” I was asking my mom, but I’d already brushed past her. On the television, they had Dean’s school picture back up. I asked, “Is he dead? Did someone hurt him?” But the TV cut to footage of police officers leading Dean out of his house. His hands hung cuffed in front of him, and his mom ran alongside, trying to hold a jacket over his face. From each edge of the walkway up to the Wests’ house, a throng of people leaned in toward Dean, the cops, and Dean’s mom. It was like they were trying to get a better glimpse of the sad parade.

“Dean’s great-grandfather was born in that house.” My voice was hollow. Everything felt hollow.

The woman sitting at the news desk looked satisfied with herself. “Tragic new developments in the case of missing New Jersey teen Chloe Marie Caffrey. Local police have charged a classmate of Miss Caffrey’s, eighteen-year-old Dean West, with her murder. The Caffrey family issued a brief statement thanking the community for their thoughts and prayers and requesting privacy during this difficult time. Police are still combing the area for the remains of the popular honor roll student. They urge anyone with information to come forward.” The camera cut to a uniformed man in a mustache, but my dad had regained his motor skills by then. He shut the TV off.

Nobody said anything for the longest time. I guess my parents were trying to figure out what to say. I was, anyway. It even ran through my head that it was a trick—somehow our parents had figured it out and rigged up an elaborate trap to see if Chloe and I would come forward. But my mom’s streaked cheeks looked as real as Mrs. West’s agonized face on the TV.

Finally I asked, “Why do they think she’s dead?” My mom shook her head.

“I don’t know. From what the police officer told Mr. and Mrs. Caffrey…” My mom looked helplessly at my dad and started again. “It sounded like they might have a confession.” She paused again, swallowed. “Or some kind of evidence.”

“Dean didn’t do this,” I said. Mom shut her eyes, rubbed the bridge of her nose.

Dad spoke up and said, “That’s not for us to say, Finn.”

“But you just met him—you called him a good—”

Mom spoke up then, enunciating each word clearly. “As a family, we do not have an opinion. Our concern is supporting the Caffreys.” I opened my mouth to argue, but my mom spoke again. “I know you cared for this boy, Finn, but the fact is that police don’t arrest innocent people for no reason. The truth might turn out to be slightly more complicated, but he’s obviously involved.”

Dad was studying my reaction, so I tried to compose my face—but at the same time I kept seeing Dean being propelled across his lawn. He’d looked so resigned. And then the jacket going up to shroud him—

“Finn,” my dad spoke carefully. “You realize what this means for Chloe?”

Our script could go to hell. “She’s not dead. I don’t care what they say.” We’d planned to meet that night in the woods. “Where do they think she is?”

My mom studied her fingernails. “The officer indicated to the Caffreys that they’d be focusing in the area behind the high school.” So at least that was clear.

“It’s not true.”

“It’s hard to believe any of it.”

“Why do they think he hurt her?” The pictures of Chloe, the notes between them—he must have explained those, because they released him the first time. I racked my brain, trying to pinpoint anything that had changed. “Is it because we met at the diner?”

“No, sweetheart.” Mom put her hand on my arm. It felt cold and clammy. “You can’t let yourself feel guilty for that—you were trying to do a kind thing. And the Caffreys will understand. I’m sorry for making it seem like we should hide that.”

“I don’t care what the Caffreys think about me. I’m telling you Dean didn’t do anything wrong—”

“They found some of Chloe’s clothing, Finn. He had some of her clothing.” Dad looked surprised at his own angry voice. He looked at my mom and said, “I’m sorry, but I think she should know what we’re dealing with here.” And then back to me, “It’s perfectly natural to have a tough time accepting this. It’s a terrible thing. But you can’t just ignore reality, either. We’re going to face this and we’ll get through it.”

I forced myself to nod. “May I go back upstairs, please? I just really want to be alone.” Dad’s eyes shifted toward Mom’s.