“I should have told you,” said Cecilia. “I should have told you the moment I knew.”
John-Paul Fitzpatrick.
He had such nice hair. Respectable-looking hair. Not like Connor Whitby’s shifty-looking bald head. John-Paul drove a shiny, clean family car. Connor roared about on his grimy motorbike. It couldn’t be right. Cecilia must have it wrong. Rachel couldn’t seem to shift her hatred over from Connor. She’d hated Connor Whitby for so long, even when she didn’t know for sure, even when she just suspected, she’d hated him for the possibility of what he’d done. She’d hated him for his very existence in Janie’s life. She’d hated him for being the last one to see Janie alive.
“I don’t understand,” she said to Cecilia. “Did Janie know John-Paul?”
“They were in a sort of a secret relationship. They were dating, I guess you’d call it,” said Cecilia. She was still crouched on the floor next to Rachel, and her face, which had been drained of color, was now flooded with it. “John-Paul was in love with Janie, but then Janie said there was another boy, and she’d chosen the other boy, and then, he . . . Well. He lost his temper.” Her words faded. “He was seventeen. It was a moment of madness. That makes it sound like I’m trying to excuse him. I promise I am absolutely not trying to excuse him, or what he did. Obviously. Of course there is no excuse. I’m sorry. I have to stand up. My knees. My knees are hurting.”
Rachel watched Cecilia rise to her feet with difficulty, look around for another chair and drag it closer to Rachel’s before sitting down and leaning toward her with her brows knitted so fiercely, she looked like a constipated baby.
Janie told John-Paul there was another boy. So the other boy was Connor Whitby.
Janie had two boys interested in her, and Rachel had been completely unaware of it. Where had Rachel gone wrong as a mother that she’d had such little knowledge of her daughter’s life? Why hadn’t they exchanged confidences over milk and cookies in the afternoon after school like a mother and daughter in an American sitcom? Rachel had only ever baked under duress. Janie used to eat buttered crackers for her afternoon tea. If only she’d baked for Janie, she thought with a sudden burst of savage self-loathing. Why hadn’t she baked? If she’d baked, and if Ed had swung Janie in joyful circles, then maybe everything could have been different.
“Cecilia?”
Both women looked up. It was John-Paul.
“Cecilia. They want us to sign some forms . . .” He saw Rachel and stopped. “Hello, Mrs. Crowley,” he said.
“Hello,” said Rachel.
She couldn’t move. It was as though she were anesthetized. Here was her daughter’s murderer standing in front of her. An exhausted, distressed, middle-aged father, with red-rimmed eyes and gray stubble. It was impossible. He had nothing to do with Janie. He was much too old. Too grown-up.
Cecilia said, “I told her, John-Paul.”
John-Paul took a step back, as if someone had tried to hit him.
He briefly closed his eyes, and then he opened them and looked straight down at Rachel with such sick regret in his eyes, there was no longer any doubt in her mind.
“But why?” Rachel said, and she was struck by how civilized and ordinary she sounded, discussing her daughter’s murder in the middle of the day, while dozens of people walked by, ignoring them, assuming theirs was just another unremarkable conversation. “Could you please tell me why you would do such a thing? She was just a little girl.”
John-Paul ducked his head and ran both his hands through his nice, respectable hair, and when he looked up again, it was as though his face had shattered into a thousand pieces. “It was an accident, Mrs. Crowley. I never meant to hurt her because, you see, I loved her. I really loved her.” He wiped the back of his hand across his nose in a careless, hopeless gesture, like a drunk on a street corner. “I was a stupid teenage boy. She told me she was seeing someone else, and then she laughed at me. I’m so sorry, but that’s the only reason I have. I know it’s no reason at all. I loved her, and then she laughed at me.”