Almost there, the text reads.
Good. I’ve been standing near the Saint Ambrose greenhouse for fifteen minutes, shivering in the late February cold and wondering if I’m being stood up. Not by Tripp, but by someone I haven’t seen much of in the past few weeks.
I pull my hat down lower over my ears and scroll through the rest of my texts, then linger on one from Tripp. It’s a picture of Al sound asleep in the storage room at Brightside Bakery, and it’s so cute that it makes me smile every time I see it. But that’s not why I keep pulling it up; it’s because I like to see the Love you he sent afterward.
We’ve said it in person now, but this is the first text version, and I’m a big enough nerd that I screenshotted it.
Then I reply with a heart to a picture of Uncle Nick giving a thumbs-up after physical therapy. His lawyer stopped by yesterday, letting us know that there wouldn’t be any criminal charges in Dexter’s death, and that the Sturgis Police don’t consider Uncle Nick a suspect in Mr. Larkin’s murder. “Maybe it really was a drifter after all,” the lawyer said before she left.
But I know better. At least, I think I do.
The wind stings my eyes and blurs my vision as I hunch my shoulders and squint at the horizon. Is that—yes. Finally. I hold up a hand, and get a languid wave in return.
“Sorry I’m late,” Charlotte says, stopping a few feet away. She’s wearing a stylish black coat and no hat, and she pushes back her chestnut hair with one hand as she gazes around us. “To…whatever this is. Why are we here?”
I don’t have a great answer, except for the fact that in some ways, this is where it all started—the committee meeting that paired me up with Tripp. “I like it here,” I say. “And I wanted to talk privately.” There’s a loud whistle then, as the baseball team takes the field below us for what they’re optimistically calling spring training. “But not too privately.”
Charlotte arches a brow. “What an interesting beginning.”
“Here’s the thing,” I say. “I can’t stop thinking about Mr. Larkin—” “That’s your first mistake,” Charlotte interrupts.
“You told me in the auditorium during the Winter Dance that it might be dangerous to keep poking around, which turned out to be true. But you also said I might not like what I found, and I’m wondering…Why did you say that?”
Charlotte’s cool gaze roves over me for a few seconds before she replies, “Your uncle, of course. The argument in the woods with Mr. Larkin. I’m surprised the police aren’t more concerned, to be honest.”
“But Shane was alone when he heard that,” I say. That came out during Shane’s recent interviews with the police; he’d been by himself, separated from Tripp and on his way to meet Charlotte, when he came across Mr. Larkin’s body. A few minutes later, he said, Charlotte emerged through the trees and started screaming. I assume the police interviewed Charlotte again too, but if so, she’s been tight-lipped about it. “You weren’t with him.”
Charlotte blinks before offering a polite smile. “I heard it too.”
“Yeah,” I say. “That’s what I thought.” Her brow knits, and I add, “It doesn’t make sense, you know. All this drama swirling around Mr. Larkin— the abusive dad, the brother in hiding, the stolen money, the argument with
Uncle Nick—it just doesn’t make sense that none of that would be related to his murder. So I started thinking: What if all of it is?”
“Oh good.” Charlotte’s lips curl into a smirk. “You’re sharing theories.
Why am I the lucky Watson to your Holmes, exactly?” “Because of what you said in the auditorium.”
“Look, Brynn, I was having a bad night,” Charlotte says with her first touch of impatience. “I don’t even remember telling you to stop poking around, but—”
“It’s not that,” I interrupt her. “You said, ‘Mason is Mr. Larkin’s brother?’ ”
She shrugs. “So? I’d just heard the two of you talking.”
“Yeah, but it wasn’t your question that’s been nagging at me. It’s the emphasis you put on Mason’s name. ‘Mason is Mr. Larkin’s brother?’ ” I repeat. “If that were the first you’d ever heard of Mr. Larkin having a brother at Saint Ambrose, you wouldn’t have said it like that. You would have emphasized a different word. You would have said, ‘Mason is Mr. Larkin’s brother?’ ”
Charlotte’s not wearing a scarf, so I can see her nervous swallow, and goose bumps erupt on my arms that have nothing to do with the cold. But her voice is as calm as ever when she says. “Sorry, but I don’t see why that matters. You probably heard wrong, anyway. You were pretty stressed.”
“I heard you fine. Here’s what I think: I think you said it that way because you already knew that Mr. Larkin had a brother at Saint Ambrose
—but until right then, in the auditorium, you thought it was Shane.” I feel a spark of triumph when Charlotte swallows again. “You used to follow Shane around all the time in eighth grade, and his locker is right next to where Mr. Larkin’s classroom was. I think you went looking for him the day Mr. Larkin told Mason who he was, and you stopped outside the classroom while they were talking. Or rather, while Mr. Larkin was talking, because Mason didn’t say a word. I think you listened, saw Mr. Larkin leave, and then saw Shane come out of the classroom. He’d been asleep in the coatroom, but you didn’t know that. And you didn’t know that Mason was still sitting where Mr. Larkin had left him, totally shell-shocked and
silent. All you saw was Shane, so you thought he’d just learned about a half brother who wanted to send him back to a dangerous father.”
Charlotte, composed again, lets out a light, dismissive laugh. “Your imagination is something else, Brynn. Forget reporting. It’s a waste of your talents. You should be a novelist.”
“I think you wanted to help Shane,” I continue. “You’d do anything for him, right? So first you wrote an anonymous letter to Mr. Griswell, accusing Mr. Larkin of stealing the class-trip money. That’s the kind of thing kids our age would do—take care of the problem by getting rid of the source. But my uncle got the letter by mistake and talked to Mr. Larkin in the woods near Shelton Park—right when you were there, about to meet up with Shane. So, yeah, you heard that conversation.”
I advance a few steps, keeping my eyes locked on Charlotte’s. “After that, you knew what you were up against with Mr. Larkin. He wasn’t the kind of guy who would back off because of an anonymous letter, or who’d be intimidated by your family. He liked a fight. What did you say in the library?” I move closer still, not waiting for a response. “ ‘There’s more than one way to be awful.’ Mr. Larkin must have seemed pretty awful to you then. I think you were angry, and—you struck out. Before Mr. Larkin even realized you were there.” I drop my eyes to her hands, encased in soft leather gloves. “And you didn’t leave fingerprints, because you were wearing those. Or something like them.”
“Wow,” Charlotte says as the wind artfully tosses her hair like it was hired for that exact purpose. “You’re really going all in on this.”
“I don’t think you meant to kill him,” I say. I can picture eighth-grade Charlotte vividly in my mind’s eye, unable to believe what she’d done. She probably stood frozen beside Mr. Larkin’s body until she heard Shane approaching, then hid—hoping, maybe, that Shane would pass a different way and not notice Mr. Larkin. But he did, and Charlotte had to make a choice: keep hiding and tell people that she’d decided not to meet Shane in the woods after all, or join him and pretend to be shocked.
As always, Charlotte picked the option that brought her closer to Shane.
“It was an unlucky blow,” I continue. “But you weren’t willing to take the blame—and Tripp gave you an out. You didn’t know why, but you were happy to take it. And you’ve been keeping him close ever since.”
Charlotte can’t help herself. “Not lately,” she points out. “Not by choice,” I counter.
When I first shared this theory with Tripp, he resisted it, and I can’t blame him. In a lot of ways, Charlotte was a good friend to him. But the more we talked about it, the more he started to come around—and even though he won’t say it, I think part of him is relieved that Charlotte as Mr. Larkin’s killer makes more sense than Lisa Marie. He wanted to come with me today, but I didn’t think it was a good idea. I didn’t think Charlotte would let anything slip if he were here.
We stare at each other in silence, until Charlotte finally asks, “Are you done?”
“Yes,” I say, straightening my shoulders against my body’s sudden, almost irresistible desire to go limp.
“Good,” she says. “This was an interesting little delusion of yours, but that’s all it is, and you don’t have a shred of proof that says otherwise.” Her crystal-blue eyes bore into mine. “I wouldn’t recommend you go around repeating this. Not everybody has my patience.”
I nod, unfazed by the polite threat. I’m only surprised it took her this long. She turns to walk away, and I say, “Bye, Charlotte.”
“Get help,” she calls without looking back.
Maybe I shouldn’t have confronted her, but the thing about Charlotte is
—I’m pretty sure it’s better to see her coming. And she’s not entirely right; I have a little proof.
Last night I took my photocopy of the anonymous letter Uncle Nick had received—he’d kept it all these years and had managed to dig it up. I brought it to the attic and rooted through my box of Saint Ambrose middle- school mementos until I found what I was looking for: the binder containing the leaf project I’d done with Charlotte back in eighth grade. After everything that had happened with Mr. Larkin, we were late turning it
in, and I did almost all the work. Charlotte’s only contribution was a neatly written cover page with our names.
The anonymous letter accusing Mr. Larkin was typed, but the envelope it came in was handwritten—and the writing matched our leaf project cover page. In particular, the G in Griswell looked identical to the G in Gallagher
—more like the number six than a letter.
It’s not much, I know. And I’m not sure, honestly, whether I hope Charlotte ultimately gets punished for what she did. I meant it when I said that I don’t think she intended to kill Mr. Larkin. But she did, and a lot of people suffered because she wouldn’t own up to it. I don’t want Charlotte to spend the rest of her life doing whatever she wants, to whoever she wants, without ever having to answer for it. Because when that happens, you end up with a Lisa Marie.
Those matching Gs aren’t proof that Charlotte killed Mr. Larkin, but they’re a start. Step one, if you will. I watch Charlotte walk away until she’s just a dot in the distance, and then unlock my phone and search out yesterday’s text from Carly.
We still miss you at Motive. Can I convince you to come back? Step two, I think, before replying: Yes. How about tomorrow?
