Sawyer cocked an eyebrow. “Seven and a half.”
Tara cleared her throat from her spot on the couch. “I wear a seven and a half, as well, Detective. It’s a pretty common size for women.”
The detective regarded her with a small bob of his head. “We’re not making any accusations here, Mrs. Dodd. Just trying to establish some facts.” He turned back to Sawyer and pressed the photograph toward her. “Do you recognize this shoe?”
Sawyer took the picture. “I have those shoes. But so does pretty much every girl at Hawthorne.”
“May I see them, please?”
She was taken aback. “My shoes?”
“Just what exactly are you getting at, Detective Biggs?” Andrew asked.
“We’re working on a theory—just a theory—that there may have been someone else in the car with Kevin that night.”
Sawyer’s breath hitched. “What?”
“The passenger seat was moved back—just enough for someone to have slipped out the door.”
“But the car—everyone said it was smashed. Wouldn’t a passenger have been killed? Or at least hurt pretty severely? And why would someone not say something? Why wouldn’t they say they were in car?”
Detective Biggs held up his meaty hands. “Right now it’s just a theory. Like I said, we’re just trying to establish the facts, figure out as best we can exactly what happened that night. The seat being in that position could just be a coincidence. And the shoe stuck in the mud—well, it could have been left in the car prior and gotten kicked out on impact, or it could have even just been there on the side of the road. You kids spend a lot of time up there on Hicks. There’s always a lot of junk left behind.”
Sawyer felt strangely ashamed, like the detective had stumbled on her generation’s dirty little secret.
“May I see the shoes, Sawyer?”
Sawyer nodded mutely and climbed the stairs, her mind tumbling over the idea that someone could have been in the car with Kevin. If someone had been there, she mused, why would that person let him drive if they knew he’d been drinking?
She picked through the detritus on her closet floor, shoving past prom shoes and track sneakers. The pair in question—a fairly nondescript pair of mall-issued metallic flats—wasn’t there. Sawyer flopped back onto her butt on the floor, frowning. She did a cursory check under the bed before half-heartedly picking through a bulging cardboard box labeled “Sawyer.”
Twenty minutes later she stepped down the stairs and shrugged. “I can’t find them.” Sawyer gestured toward the photo Detective Biggs laid on the coffee table. “But those can’t be mine.” She licked her lips, forcing the words past her teeth as the images of that night flashed in her mind. “I wasn’t wearing them that night.”
Detective Biggs sucked on his teeth and seemed to consider Sawyer’s statement. Everything in her went on synapse-snapping high alert and suddenly, without knowing why, Sawyer felt guilty. When the detective broke the silence what seemed like eons later, Sawyer finally breathed.
Biggs thrust out a hand to Sawyer’s father and stepmom. “Sorry to have bothered you, Mr. and Mrs. Dodd.” He nodded at Sawyer. “You have a very smart daughter there.”
Sawyer watched her father and Tara shake Biggs’s hand, frustration prickling her spine when no one corrected Biggs, no one reminded him that Tara wasn’t her mother. When the detective offered his hand to Sawyer, she shook it woodenly, saying nothing. Once the door closed and he was gone, Sawyer blinked.
“I’m going to go take a shower.”
“Don’t you want to eat something first?” Tara asked.
Sawyer shook her head, feeling the dead weight of…something…sitting in the pit of her stomach. “No, I’m not very hungry.”
She turned her back on Tara’s and her father’s expectant stares and pulled her backpack over her shoulder. Once she got to her room, she shut the door, dumped the pack, and stashed the note where no one would find it. Then she turned on the shower as hot as she could get it, as if the water could wash away the last year of her life.
***
Sawyer was in her pajamas, hair wrapped in a towel turban, and stretched out on her bed when there was a knock on her doorframe. She looked up from her Spanish homework and blinked at her father.
“Hey,” he said softly.
“Hey.”
He walked in, sitting on the edge of Sawyer’s bed, one hand fanned out on her bedspread. “She’s trying, you know.”
Sawyer didn’t say anything. She kept her pencil moving even though she had ceased conjugating verbs and was now doodling circles on her notebook paper. “I know.”
“It’s not easy for her.”
Sawyer looked up, betrayal flashing in her eyes. “It’s not easy for me, either.”