‘You’re supposed to be on my side,’ Thorne murmured.
Gwyn leaned in close. ‘You know I am,’ she whispered, so that only he could hear.
He drew a deep breath, then let it out. ‘I know,’ he murmured. ‘Let’s do this.’
She lifted her eyes to the mirror to find he was looking at her reflection as well. There was something there. Something grim but also . . . hopeful.
‘Yes. Let’s,’ she murmured back, and felt a tiny spear of terror because she was promising him . . . something. She wasn’t entirely sure what, and that scared the bejesus out of her. One step at a time. It was how she’d lived her life for the past four years. She’d get through the next few days. And then they’d see.
Baltimore, Maryland,
Sunday 12 June, 7.30 P.M.
This story . . . Thorne didn’t want to think about it. He never wanted to think about it. But he always did. Every time he walked into Sheidalin he thought of it. And he thought of Sherri.
‘I wasn’t born in this country,’ he started. ‘I came from New Zealand as a child.’
Every eye blinked at that. ‘I never would have thought that,’ Stevie said. ‘You have no trace of an accent.’
‘Because I left when I was young. And I was . . . persuaded to lose it when I moved to the US.’
Lucy’s eyes narrowed. ‘Persuaded by whom?’
‘My stepfather, but I’ll get to him in a minute. My father’s name was Thomas Thorne Junior. I’m actually a third.’ He swallowed hard, remembering his dad. How much the man had loved him. How much I loved him back. ‘My dad died when I was five, and my mother remarried. She told everyone it was because she’d fallen in love with Willy White, but that wasn’t true. She told my grandmother – my father’s mother – that it was because she could no longer afford to support me on her own, but that wasn’t true either. My grandmother paid the bills and made sure I saw every one of them, in case I ever had to do it myself someday. The life-insurance money my father had left my mother was more than enough.’
‘Why would your grandmother think you might need to pay the bills when you were only five years old, Thorne?’ Lucy asked, and he realized he’d gone silent.
‘She didn’t really expect me to pay bills, but she was old and she worried about what would happen if she died, because after my father’s death my mom started drinking. She drank a lot. Anyway, she met up with this man, Willy White, in a bar and brought him home. He was not a nice man. But by then my mother was no longer a nice woman either, so they got along all right. I was another story. He liked to use his fists and he was a big guy. I wasn’t this big then.’
‘Because you were only a baby,’ Ruby murmured, her voice thick. ‘He beat you?’
Thorne smiled down at her where she and Sam sat on the floor, twined around each other. He’d always had a soft spot for Ruby, starting back when she worked for Lucy in the ME’s office. She was fiercely loyal. ‘It’s okay, Ruby. I turned out fine.’
Her smile was teary, but that was because she was pregnant and her hormones were all over the place. That would make what he was about to say next hard for her to hear. He gave Sam a glance that he hoped communicated some kind of warning. He was relieved to see Sam’s arm tighten around her. All right then.
‘My mother married him because she got pregnant. He continued to beat the shit out of me. What I didn’t know at the time was that he beat her too. In any case, she lost the baby. All I knew was that she’d miscarried and that they yelled at each other a lot afterward. I didn’t understand why at the time. It made sense later. Anyway, he was an American working in New Zealand on a visa, and if his abuse became known and he was arrested he could lose his job, because his visa would be revoked. I only know this because it’s what they argued about most often. My mother would threaten to tell, and I wished she would. But she never did. His job ended and he was called back to the US. We came too. We became citizens a few years later, right about the time he lost his job. He’d come back from lunches drunk too many times. He blamed my mother and me, right up until the year I turned fifteen.’
‘Because then you became bigger than him,’ Sam said quietly.
Thorne knew he’d understand. Sam’s father had been an addict. Sam knew the drill.
‘Yeah. I told him that he’d laid hands on us for the last time. He hated me even more after that. He was barely making ends meet then. We counted every penny. But by some miracle . . .’ he grimaced as he said the word, because it still left a bad taste in his mouth, ‘I won a scholarship to a very fancy prep school.’
‘Ridgewell Academy,’ Gwyn supplied. ‘It was in the article about Richard Linden’s murder.’
He nodded. ‘Yeah. I hated it there. I was so hopeful at first. It was my ticket out of my own life, you know? I worked hard.’
‘So hard,’ Phil murmured. ‘You were my very best student.’
Everyone blinked in surprise once again. ‘You knew him then?’ Clay asked.
‘Phil was my history teacher,’ Thorne said, then smiled at the older man. ‘The only one who spoke up for me when the shit hit the fan.’
‘Because the others were fucking cowards,’ Phil growled.
Jamie petted his partner’s hair. ‘Easy,’ he soothed. ‘He turned out okay, remember? We did good.’
Thorne swallowed a laugh. ‘Yes. You both did good.’
Jamie gave him a wink. ‘And you were already potty trained. Bonus.’
Thorne cleared his throat, conscious of the stares pointed in their direction. ‘They kind of adopted me. But I’ll get to that in a minute. There were a few of us scholarship students and I think we were all equally disappointed. The school really didn’t want us there, except for a couple of teachers like Phil. Maybe Coach Marion, but that was only because I was lead scorer on his soccer team. We made the state finals every year I was on the team. But even he didn’t stand up for me when the chips were down. He started to, but the principal threatened his job. Threatened Phil’s too, but Phil did the right thing.’
‘Your coach had a wife and five kids,’ Jamie said softly. ‘Phil had only me, and I had a trust fund.’
Phil gave Jamie a questioning look, and Jamie nodded. Phil turned to Thorne. ‘Your coach contributed to your bail. He made us promise not to tell. He . . . he never really got over not standing up to the principal for you. But he cared. You should know that.’
Thorne stared at the two men who’d been his fathers all these years. ‘Really? I . . . I’ll need to think on that later. I need to get through this.’ Because he was coming to the worst part. Sherri. He shuddered out a breath. ‘I had a girlfriend. Her name was Sherri.’
Behind him, Gwyn inhaled sharply. ‘Your letters,’ she whispered.
He’d known she’d figure it out. ‘Yes.’ He closed his eyes, remembering Sherri’s face. Her laugh. The way she’d looked at him that very last day.
‘When we started the club,’ Lucy explained quietly, ‘we each contributed three letters of the name of someone we’d loved and lost. The L-I-N at the end was for my brother Linus, who died when I was fourteen. I’m guessing S-H-E was Thorne’s Sherri.’
Everyone looked over Thorne’s shoulder at Gwyn, whose body had grown tense against his back.
‘I-D-A was from my aunt,’ she said stiffly, and he had the distinct impression she was lying. He wondered why.
A glance in the mirror revealed that her expression had grown shuttered. ‘None of us told the others who the letters were for,’ he said, trying to take the group’s focus off Gwyn. She was probably at her nerves’ end just having so many people invading her private space. She’d had lots of parties before Evan’s betrayal four and a half years ago. She’d moved immediately afterward, and this condo hadn’t had more than a few people in it at one time. ‘We just put the letters together to make Sheidalin and moved forward.’
His attempt to divert attention hadn’t worked. Everyone was still staring at Gwyn, and she shifted behind him uncomfortably.