But Nicholas goes on. “Loss is hard. Very hard. I’ve known some lately . . . painful loss. It’s crippling, to be honest. Just crippling.”

  Things grow awkward, and no one wants to look at Nicholas.

  “Dude was smart,” Duffy says, saving us. “That’s what I know about him. Really smart. And he partied hard too. Sometimes too much. My roommate, Steve, kind of knew him. Told me Milo once downed a six-pack before a calc exam, and he aced the thing anyway. That’s smart, man. Real smart.”

  A few people laugh.

  Natalia says, “Well, I didn’t know Milo that well. I mean, just from that one seminar. But I’m sorry this happened to him. I mean, I’m just sorry for anybody who dies. I’m going to pray for him. And I’m going to ask my grandmother to pray for him too, which is practically a direct line to God. That’s how devout she is.”

  “That’s great,” the captain says.

  I wait a moment in case either of the other students who haven’t spoken—Sydney or Emily—wants to say something. And when they don’t, I go for it.

  “I didn’t know Milo either, since I don’t really get to know the students the way I used to. But everything you’ve all said is right. He seemed like a fine young man and an outstanding student. Maybe I’m thinking of myself as well, as a parent, but I’m thinking about his mother, who we heard mentioned earlier. When she finds out . . .”

  My vision swims. In my mind’s eye, I see my girls—all three of them. And Rachel. I’m not able to get any more words out.

  Nicholas takes a step closer and pats me on the back. “You okay, man?”

  “I’m good. I’m good.” I clear my throat. “Yes, I just wanted to say that about Milo’s family. And friends. You’re right about loss being hard, Nicholas. I lost my mother five years ago. It’s not the same as losing a child, but . . . ‘crippling’ is the right word.”

  It seems that perhaps the toasting and speechifying have run their course, that everyone who wants to say something has. But then Sydney lifts her glass into the air.

  “Well, Milo,” she says, “I guess this is how it ends.”

  She stares at the glass like it’s the only object in the room. And rather than offering a tribute, she seems to be speaking directly to her deceased friend, just as she did when I walked into the music room earlier and she apologized for something.

  “You once told me that karma is a bitch, which seemed like kind of a harsh way to look at things. But maybe you were right. Maybe I should have listened to you. I guess everyone is right. You are—were—smarter than all of us.”

  Her words put an odd kind of punctuation on the toasting.

  I, for one, am ready to throw back my drink. But I know Emily hasn’t said anything. I want to make sure she has a chance to speak if she wants, but I also don’t want to make her more uncomfortable.

  I pause a moment. If she doesn’t speak, we’ll go on. But Captain Stephenson steps in.

  “Emily, you haven’t said anything. Would you like to?”

  My grip tightens on my glass, wondering what she’ll have to say. I can’t be sure, but I think I notice a hint of a smile growing on her face.

  “Drink up, everyone,” she says, lifting her own glass and taking a big swallow. “Happy days.”

  32

  EMILY’S TOAST—OR LACK of one—in honor of Milo adds to the tension.

  Everyone sips from their glasses, but there’s a muted, obligatory feeling to it.

  I try to think of anything that might swing the mood in a positive direction. I sound like my grandmother, but it’s the only thing that comes to mind.

  “Who wants to go back for seconds?” I ask. “That food was delicious, wasn’t it?”

  Captain Stephenson nods at my untouched plate. “Did you even take a bite?”

  “I didn’t. Not yet this year. But I’ve had it before, and it’s always good.” I look over at Nicholas. “And I don’t think you had anything. Why don’t you go get a plate for yourself?”

  “I’m fine,” he says. “I don’t eat much.” He drains a decent amount of the bourbon from his glass. “In fact, maybe we should get on with the rest of the process. We have the interviews to carry out. That’s the afternoon portion. And I need to . . .” His voice trails off. He turns one way and then the other. “Shit.”

  “What’s the matter?” I ask. And I really don’t want to know if anything else is the matter. I’ve had enough of that for one day. For one year, really.

  “My briefcase,” he says. “I don’t . . . I must have left it upstairs when I was sitting up there. You came up to talk to me. . . .”

  “I can go grab it, sir,” Captain Stephenson says.

  “No,” Nicholas answers quickly. “That’s okay. I can’t let— I mean, I need to go get it. I appreciate your offer, Captain, but I’ll go get it. I remember where I left it.” He looks at me. “In the meantime, what do we do about . . . ?” He nods to the table, which is covered with dirty plates and silverware and water glasses.

  “Oh,” I say. “Well, in years past, we just carried our stuff out to the kitchen. The dining staff comes in when the process is over. We can do that while you get the briefcase.”

  “Excellent.”

  Nicholas leaves the room, drink in hand. We all start gathering up the mess.

  “If you stack them,” Duffy says, “I can carry them to the kitchen. Back home, I worked summers as a busboy at Bob Evans. I can stack dirty plates almost to the ceiling and carry them.”

  “Then we’re going to take you up on that,” Sydney says. “But no tips.”

  There’s a lot of clanking and clattering of dishes and silver, but pretty soon Duffy has his hands full. I grab some remaining pieces of silverware and follow him out.

  “Why don’t you all chill out until we start the interviews?” I say.

  Nobody responds. Even the captain holds on to his glass of bourbon like it’s a life raft.

  My leg bumps against something, and I freeze. Nicholas’s briefcase is sitting on the floor against the table leg.

  “Oh,” I say.

  “What’s that, sir?”

  “The briefcase. It’s here, not upstairs. Maybe— Never mind. He’ll be right back.”

  I follow Duffy out to the kitchen. He places his stack of dishes in the sink, and then I add what I’m carrying. He finds a towel and wipes his hands and passes it over to me.

  “It’s been kind of a crazy day, hasn’t it, Mr. Gaines?”

  “I don’t think ‘crazy’ is an adequate word.”

  Duffy looks back toward the entrance to the kitchen, making sure no one else is around. I follow his eyes and see no one either.

  “I’m kind of glad we’re here like this,” he says. “I wanted to tell you something.”

  “Sure,” I say.

  “It’s about Sydney. I’m kind of worried about her.”

  “I see. You mean, because she and Milo are friends.”

  Duffy makes a disgusted noise deep in his throat. Kind of like a bone is stuck there.

  He goes over to the kitchen entrance and sticks his head out into the hallway. Satisfied the coast is clear, he comes back and stands close to me.

  “More than friends,” he says, “at least as far as she was concerned. We talked about it outside on the . . . What did you call that porchico thing?”

  “Portico.”

  “That’s it. My roommate dated her roommate at one time. Well, ‘dated’ is kind of a loose term for what they did. You know how it is.”

  “I used to.”

  “It’s not really my thing. I mean, I just don’t have a lot of luck in that department. I go home a lot of weekends and work on the farm. Or at Bob Evans during the holidays. It’s frustrating. . . . People think because I joke around and stuff that I’m easygoing, but I’m not. College has been a little lonely for me.”

  “The fellowship money will help your finances. And maybe you’ll get more if you win the whole thing.”

  “I hope so. My mom sure does. But anyway, about Sydney. She and Milo did have a thing going on. That’s what I heard from my roommate. Steve. Not really dating exactly. Casually dating. That’s what Milo does a lot around campus. He was kind of known for it. A lot of girls liked him. You know, he’s smart and good-looking and shit. I guess. And, you know, the student population is about sixty percent women. The odds are supposedly stacked in favor of the straight guys. Hasn’t helped me much, but there you go. Maybe girls aren’t interested in a farmer. I showed up here as a freshman with cow shit on my boots.”

  “It’s more like fifty-seven percent women. But I see your point.”

  The floorboards above our heads creak again. And then there’s the sound of water running. Nicholas is using the bathroom upstairs, which I assume means he’ll be coming back down soon.

  “Milo just stopped dealing with Sydney. Just cut her off. I guess that’s also the way he does—did—business with the ladies. And Sydney was very upset about it.” Duffy pats his pants. “See, if I had my phone or if anyone had a phone, I could show you. But apparently she posted some stuff on his Instagram. Harsh shit calling him out for being an asshole.”

  “Are you saying you think Sydney had a reason to hurt Milo?”

  I remember Sydney standing over his body. And what she said before I walked in the room, those words I heard: I’m sorry.

  “To be honest, Duffy, it’s pretty clear you’re having some feelings for Sydney yourself. So why tell me all this?”

  “I’m trying to protect her from people saying that crazy stuff,” he says. “When we get out of here, everybody’s going to go wild, trying to assign blame for what happened. And they’re going to dig into all kinds of motives. Well, Sydney has a pretty good one. She was tossed aside by Milo, and then she said all that stuff on social media. A lot of people saw it.”

  The kitchen faucet drips, a steady beat below our conversation. I reach out and twist the handle, hoping to shut it off.

  “I appreciate you saying this to me, Duffy. I do. And I know Sydney’s pretty upset about Milo. We all are. But they seem . . . they seem close. They walked up together this morning.”

  “He was probably coming out of another girl’s room when he ran into her.”

  “It’s hard to believe anyone’s going to jump on blaming Sydney too much. It’s one thing to have your heart broken. That happens to all of us along the way. But it’s a big leap to go from there to killing someone. There’s no reason to think Sydney would do anything violent.”

  Something crosses Duffy’s face. A shadow that changes his expression. He taps his boot.

  “What is it, Duffy?” I ask.

  “You don’t know about her getting suspended from the volleyball team last year?” he asks.

  33

  “WHAT ARE YOU TALKING about, Duffy?”

  “I thought everybody knew. All the students heard about it.”

  “Well, the students hear about a lot of things that the administrators and faculty don’t,” I say. “And sometimes the athletic department likes to keep matters in-house.”

  “True enough. I was a student manager on the basketball team my freshman year. I thought about walking on. I played a little in high school, but I don’t think I’m good enough. I like to watch and think about the game more than play it. You know, strategies and substitutions and stuff. I might want to coach someday, work with kids.”

  Footsteps rumble down the stairs. They sound expensive—like leather boots hitting one-hundred-fifty-year-old wood.

  I raise my finger. “Hold on, Duffy.”

  I step out of the kitchen. Nicholas comes down the stairs. He reaches the bottom and turns toward the dining room, carrying a now-empty glass. His shirt is completely untucked, and I wonder if he was getting sick in the bathroom.

  “Are you ready to get moving?” he asks.

  “The briefcase,” I say.

  “What?”

  “The briefcase. You went upstairs for it?”

  “Oh, yeah.” He looks back up the stairs. “I guess I . . . I mean . . .”

  “It’s down here. In the dining room.”

  “Right,” he says. “That’s what I thought. Great, let’s get going.”

  “Yeah, just one second. If you go on in, we’ll be there.”

  “But we’re kind of in a hurry now,” he says.

  “Okay,” I say. “I mean, to be frank, we picked up a little time. We have one less interview to do.”

  “Yeah, well, still . . .”

  “Okay, I’ll be right there.”

  Nicholas goes on into the dining room, and I head back to the kitchen, where Duffy waits for me.

  “We should probably wrap this up,” I say. “The boss man is getting impatient all of a sudden. Can you tell me about Sydney?”

  “I should keep my mouth shut. Really, I just assumed you knew.”

  “I didn’t know, but if it’s relevant to what we’re doing here, you should tell me. My knowing might help Sydney.”

  “Okay, real quick,” Duffy says. “There was this freshman on the team last year. She came from a small town, never been away from home before. And some of the other players were giving her a bad time. Making fun of her accent, calling her a farmer and shit like that. I can relate, clearly.”

  “Okay.”

  “The men’s and women’s teams sometimes practice together since gym space is limited. And one of the male players picked up on this stuff, calling the freshman names too. Sydney told him to back off, and he wouldn’t. He just kept riding the girl until she was almost in tears. So Sydney went up to the guy. She threw one punch. And I mean it was a direct hit. Right in the nose. The dude was bleeding all over the place. Apparently, Sydney has two older brothers in addition to the little sister she mentioned, so she knows how to throw a mean punch.”

  “She was protecting someone from bullying,” I say. “Right?”

  “Maybe. But some people say she and the dude she clocked were, you know, involved as well. And that she wasn’t really trying to protect that freshman as much as she was trying to get back at that guy. See what I’m saying? If I know that, then all the students know it. And that’s going to come out when we leave here and everybody finds out Milo is dead. And Sydney was in this house too.”

  “He was probably poisoned before he got here. If it was even poison. And wouldn’t it make more sense to do something to him somewhere else on campus instead of here?”

  “There are more suspects here. All of us closed in. Competing.”

  “Duffy, the anger of ‘a woman scorned’ thing isn’t much of a theory anymore. Let’s just keep this to ourselves. Okay? You need to concentrate on the interview that’s coming up.”

  He nods. “Okay. I just wanted to get that off my chest.”

  “No worries.”

  “It’s just—when you couple it with what she did in high school, it might make her look really bad. And I don’t want to see that.”

  He starts to go, but I reach out and place my hand on his arm. “Hold up. What about high school?”

  Duffy sighs. “I didn’t want to mention it. I figured you might not know about that.”

  “About what? And you did mention it, so you must have wanted to.”

  Duffy sighs again. His eyes move around the room, inspecting everything but avoiding me. Finally, he says, “Okay, since you asked. Sydney went to juvie when she was in high school. Six months in the lockup.”

  “How do you know this?” Something prickles at the back of my neck. Little needle jabs.

  “We have a lot of the same friends. People talk.”

  “Well, if it’s just talk—”

  “When she was in high school—junior year, I guess—they had a teacher who was giving some of the volleyball players a rough time. A math teacher. He was going to fail a few of them, and if they failed, they couldn’t play. And if you can’t play, then, you know, you can’t really get recruited. Sydney’s really good. She thought she was going to play Division One before this happened.”

  “Before what happened?”

  “Well, she and some of the other volleyball players who were going to fail, they came up with a plan. I guess Sydney ran with a tough crowd in school. She grew up outside Chicago.”

  “What did they do to this teacher?” I ask although I don’t really want to know.

  But I have to. I have to know anything that can affect the day’s events.

  Or that might relate to Milo’s death.

  “They cooked up some plan to kidnap the guy,” Duffy says. “You know, jump him in his car, drive him someplace remote. Then—I don’t know—threaten him until he changed the grades. It all sounds pretty asinine out loud. Anyway, they tried to jump the guy, but it turns out he was a martial arts champion in college. One of Sydney’s friends brought a knife, but this math teacher disarmed her and took care of things until the cops arrived.”

  “Shit.”

  “Yeah. Sydney got six months. You really didn’t know this?”

  “I didn’t.”

  “That’s why she really didn’t get recruited by a better school. But she has that athlete’s mindset. If something gets in her way, she just runs it over. You know? Never take no for an answer.”

  “Duffy . . . Okay, we need to get back.” The needles in the back of my neck poke me with greater intensity. “I try not to make too much of what people do in high school. We’re all stupid then.”

  “Sure, of course.”

  But I can’t dismiss Duffy’s story as easily as I would like. If true—and I don’t know if it is—it means Sydney has a violent streak. A serious one.

  And if she wanted Milo gone for some reason . . .

  “Let’s just keep this to ourselves, Duffy. Okay?”

  “Sure. But it’s possible everybody knows. They for sure know about the volleyball thing. They might know about her stint in juvie as well.”