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My dad’s phone pings then with a text. I feel worry jolt through him as he looks down at the screen.
“What is it?” I ask. “What’s wrong?”
“No, no, nothing—it’s not about the research,” he says.
He hands me his phone. I look down at the text: Accident file for Hope Lang will be available for review at 9 a.m. today. Sincerely, Detective Oshiro.
I have to read the message three times before I fully understand its meaning, like it’s coming out of nowhere, even though I am the one who has called Detective Oshiro pretty much every day since I got back from Maine, asking to see my mom’s accident file. I feel surprisingly foolish, too, now that I have gotten what I wanted. It’s because of what Quentin said—that my mom’s death wasn’t an accident—that I got so obsessed. It’s not as if anything else that Quentin claimed up at the camp turned out to be true, but knowing that hasn’t loosened my grip. Even my dad admitted that he had considered the possibility that my mom’s death hadn’t been an accident, though he backpedaled hard as soon as he could tell I was fixating.
“I am only going to say this once, Wylie.” My dad’s voice is quiet and firm. “And I am saying this as your father, but also as a psychologist and because I don’t want to see you hurt any more than you already have been. Looking in your mom’s accident file could be extremely traumatic for you. Extremely. There might be photographs or details that are far more upsetting than you can possibly anticipate.”
It is true that I have thought a lot more about getting my hands on the file than about what it would be like to actually look in it. It seemed so unlikely I ever would. Detective Oshiro had said that he needed clearance, higher-up approval, permission. Case closed or not, they didn’t ordinarily have the families of victims coming by to rifle through their files.
Jasper. I want to talk to him about this. Maybe I need to, the way the thought of him just popped into my head. He has listened to me go on and on about my mom’s accident ever since we got back from the camp. He gets how much I have wanted to look in that file. But he will also understand how not sure I feel about finally getting what I want. Jasper’s single best quality, I have learned, is his ability not to judge. But it’s not as if I can have that conversation in front of my dad.
“If I can’t handle it,” I say. Because I can’t show doubt, not to my dad. “I’ll stop.”
My dad’s shoulders sag. “Okay,” he says quietly as he turns around, head hanging low as he starts to clean up the dishes.
“Dad,” I begin, though I don’t even know what it is I want to say. “If you don’t want me to go …” I can’t even get myself to fully make the offer though. I’m too afraid he might take me up on it.
Instead, he turns to look at me. He crosses his arms and presses his mouth tight. All I feel now is love, his love for me—so pure and simple and complete. And for the first time ever—being able to feel that so clearly—I am grateful for being an Outlier.
“Well, you shouldn’t go down there on an empty stomach,” he says, motioning to my plate. “Eat something and I’ll drive you.” He looks at his watch. “It’s not long until nine.”
I look up at the little clock over the stove: 8:34 a.m. I’ll try to call Jasper on the way, see if I can come earlier if I finish up with the file before ten. It’s not the same as talking to him now, but it’s something. The station isn’t far from his house. If I can’t reach him, I’ll go to his house at ten a.m. like we agreed.
And maybe after we’re done gluing his loose pieces back into place, we can spend a little time on mine.
“Can we just go, um, now?” I ask.
My dad nods slowly.
“Yes,” he says finally and with some effort. “We can go now.”
5 (#ulink_417c855f-fb79-54b7-831f-09de48b117a2)
THE POLICE STATION IN THE center of downtown Newton is a tidy redbrick and white stone cube on a block next to several other municipal buildings and a bunch of trees. I’ve never had a reason to be inside. Even after the camp, they drove us straight home, then the agents arrived. But looking at the building from the outside now, it looks a lot like a brick version of the Seneca police station—if the Seneca police station had taken up the entire building.
But once we’re inside, any similarities disappear. The Newton station is much larger and more modern, not to mention busier than the one in Seneca. It’s actually way busier than I would have imagined. With the low crime rate in Newton, I can’t imagine why so many people are at the police station.
There are a dozen desks lined up in a large room behind a railing to the left. At a tall desk in front sits a tired-looking uniformed officer doing intake. He has thinning gray hair and rumpled eyes and he is dismissively sorting people into a second set of lines: complaints to be filed, summonses to be paid. It all seems seriously bureaucratic and super boring.
My dad and I take our places at the back of the line, and I listen as people register their complaints. One man’s apartment was broken into, a woman’s car was vandalized. And on and on. It’s 9:05 a.m. by the time we are next in line. I called Jasper twice on our way to the police station and he didn’t answer. And now, not only do I want to talk to him, but I’ve also got a bad feeling about him not answering.
“Yes. Hello!?!” It takes me a minute to realize that the officer behind the tall desk is finally talking to us.
“Wylie?” My dad puts a concerned hand on my arm. He’s taken my hesitation as a sign. “You don’t need to do this.”
“Yeah. I do,” I say, meeting my dad’s stare as firmly as I can.
Reluctantly, he nods and we step forward. “We’re here to see Detective Oshiro,” my dad says. “We have an appointment.”
“Wait over there.” The old guy points toward the railing in front of the desks without looking up at us, then picks up the phone.
We aren’t waiting long when I see Detective Oshiro heading our way. I’ve only met him once, and I’d forgotten how tall and imposing he is. Broad shoulders, crisply pressed shirt, and fashionable tie. Good-looking and young. Not too young, but younger than my dad. And way younger than the rumpled old detective I had in mind before he turned up on our steps the day after the accident.
That day, Detective Oshiro was calm and kind and exceedingly competent. Firm, too, in laying out the facts of my mom’s accident. That it was an accident. He never wavered on that—there was nothing to lead investigators to suspect otherwise. It was simply the way the car had impacted the railing in the area of the gas tank that had caused it to burst into flames. There was no evidence of foul play.
“There is something you should know, Wylie,” my dad says suddenly. His voice is rushed and tight, like this is his very last chance to make something right. “They think your mom had been drinking the night of the accident. She was upset and I take responsibility for that,” he says. “Anyway, it doesn’t change anything. I just didn’t want you to be surprised if you saw some mention of it in the file.”
“Drinking?” He actually feels relieved confessing this. Me? I’m furious. “What the hell are you talking about?”
And here I thought he’d been trying to protect me from grief. Was this—this thing that makes no sense whatsoever—what he was trying to avoid me knowing? My mom had the occasional glass of wine and that was it.
“Wylie, I know—”
“That is not true,” I snap. But I sound like a ridiculous little kid, refusing to accept that the tooth fairy isn’t real.
“Dr. Lang, it’s nice to see you,” Detective Oshiro says before my dad can respond, but he is wounded. I can feel that much. And I am glad. My dad and Detective Oshiro shake hands and then the detective turns to shake mine. “If you want to come back through here, I’ve got you guys set up in a conference room in the back. That way you can take as much time as you need.”
Detective Oshiro has made peace with this. He didn’t want us coming down and going through the file in the first place, but now that we are here, he’s not going to be anything but professional.
I expect the other detectives in the room to stare at my dad and me as Detective Oshiro leads us toward the conference room, for some kind of hush to descend. They’re here. They’re about to find out everything. But they don’t even look up from their desks. Because they do not care. Because there is no great secret about to be revealed. At least not one that is going to turn back time and bring my mom back, not something that will make all this Outliers nonsense go away. Is that why I’m actually here? Am I putting my dad through this trauma for that, a distraction?
“I can go in myself,” I say to my dad as Detective Oshiro stops about halfway down a row of doors. I am still pissed at him for dropping this whole “drinking” bomb on me, but now I feel ashamed, too. “I feel bad I even made you come down here.”
My dad turns and smiles at me, sad but also grateful. “I’m not sure I can handle looking through anything myself, but I’ll stay in the room with you.” He reaches down and squeezes my hand. “I know that none of this has been easy on you, Wylie.” And he means all of it—the Outliers, the camp, Quentin, my mom’s accident. “I want you to know that the way you’re handling all of it—I am so proud of you.”
THE ROOM IS plain and windowless, but clean, with floor-to-ceiling glass between it and the main room where all of the detectives are seated. It is surprisingly quiet inside, like maybe it’s soundproofed. There is a small table against the wall, two chairs on one side, a single chair on the other. A rectangular cardboard box—long, about the size of three regular book boxes—sits in the center of the table. Looking at it, I feel my heart catch.
“I’ll be right outside if you need me.” Detective Oshiro points to a desk that is only a couple steps away. “Please don’t remove anything from the evidence bags, and nothing can be taken from the room. If you see anything of value in your mother’s personal effects, let me know. I’ll make sure you leave here with it today.”
“Okay, thanks,” I say, checking my watch: 9:15 a.m. “I’ll be fast.”
Detective Oshiro nods and then closes the door after he leaves. I take a deep breath as I stare down at the box. Suddenly, this feels like a mistake. And I may not know exactly where that feeling is coming from, but that doesn’t make it any less real.
“You should take your time, Wylie,” my dad says. “We’re here now, and I don’t think you’re going to get another chance.”
He’s right. As much as I want to get this over with, I need to be thorough. It’s now or never.
I keep my eyes on the box itself for a minute. It looks brand-new, the top crisp, the label clean and clear. Name: Hope Lang. Date: February 8. Description of Matter: Automobile Accident. The ordinariness is both a relief and a disappointment. A tiny part of me did hope it might say Murder somewhere. Another part of me was dreading that, too.
As I lift the long lid from the box, I turn my head away, allowing a moment for the most awful of the ghosts to escape. I rub my palms against my jeans then to dry them and suck in some air as I turn back to the open box, bracing myself to see something truly horrifying, like my mom’s charred bones. But it’s just an ordinary box divided into two sections, one with hanging file folders, the second with a stack of evidence bags.
The bag on top holds something small and black and silver, like a hardened lump of mixed clay. It isn’t until I look closer that I realize it is a car key. Or what was once a car key, melted now beyond recognition. My stomach inches up into my throat. My dad was right—this is more awful than I thought it would be. Because now all I can think about is my mom liquefied. And Cassie, too. Everything and everyone I have ever loved reduced to a puddle—and then hardened into a shapeless rock.
I turn away from the evidence bags and toward the files, glancing over at my dad to see if he is watching me. I have a faint hope that something in his face will give me a real reason to stop. But his eyes are on his phone, reading something, an email or a text. His brow is furrowed as he begins to type. He is not going to rescue me from my own terrible idea.
I turn back to the box. I wanted to come here. I need to trust that I had a good reason. And I need to get it over with, fast. The first file contains an accident investigator’s report, notes from the interviews that Detective Oshiro conducted with my dad, Gideon, and me. I pull out the notes from my dad’s. They go on for several pages that I have no stomach to read but for this: “Husband reports Lang departed the home in a state of agitation, though husband has no reason to suspect self-harm.”
Gideon’s interview is much shorter. I can remember him sitting there on the steps that night. No tears, only stunned and silent. But in its few lines the report contains: “Son states his mother left the house at approximately nine p.m. He does not have a specific recollection of her mental state.”
I can remember they asked me something like that, too. They were so focused on my mom’s mood. Because they thought there was a chance she’d killed herself, I realize now. One car, a fatal accident. Ruling out suicide is probably standard. I don’t recall how I answered, but when I scan the notes from my interview, I discover that apparently I decided to lie: “Daughter reports that mother went out for milk. Mother was in a good mood.”
I wonder who I’d been trying to protect: My dad? My mom? Myself?
The next thing I pull out is the autopsy report. It’s a single page that shakes in my hand as I try to keep my eyes toward the top of the page, likely home of the most innocuous details. Name, height, weight. But even that is not entirely safe. There is the word “estimated” behind both my mom’s height and weight. After all, a fractured and scorched skeleton hardly reveals such details. I squint down the page until I get to the notes at the bottom, to the cause of death: Blunt-force trauma. Manner of death: Accidental. I let go of the breath I’ve been holding. At least she was already dead when her car caught on fire. It is such a pathetic relief.
The next folder looks empty until I tilt it and an envelope slides out. I peer inside with my head pulled back and catch a glimpse of photos of the blackened and mangled front of my mom’s car. I close my eyes and swallow hard, hoping that will keep me from throwing up as I jam the envelope back in the file.
“Are you okay?” my dad asks. When I look up, he is watching me.
“Are you?” I ask, deflecting. “You’ve been tapping on your phone nonstop.”
“Oh, yeah, sorry.” He always falls for distraction mixed with guilt. “The assistant from Senator Russo’s office emailed a minute ago. Apparently if I go right now to DC, I can meet him and someone from the NIH this afternoon.” His tone is dismissive as he shakes his head. “And this meeting is now a prerequisite before they’ll even consider my funding. And if I don’t go to this meeting I will now have to wait until September for anything to happen because the senator is off for summer recess. Feels like they’re trying to create a situation where I’m the one who can’t make it. I’m not even sure a senator is allowed to get involved in NIH funding.”
“There’s no way you can get there?” As much as I’ve been avoiding information myself, I don’t want his pride to be the reason he doesn’t find out something important.
He checks the time. “If I go right now to the airport, I guess I could be down there in time for a late afternoon meeting and then back home for bed.” He thinks doing this would be kind of absurd, though. I can feel it. Insulting to snap to it because they’ve told him to. But hesitation is also tugging at him like he is afraid of something slipping through his fingers.
“But maybe you should go?” I ask. Because that seems to be the way he feels.
“There are other ways to get the research funded, Wylie.” He frowns as he stares at the floor. Then he nods. “But I suppose I should go, yes. I’ve never been willing to play this politics game, which is probably why it’s taken me so long to get my research this far. But it’s too important now not to be willing to put up with some politics.”
And I know what he means by “now.” He means with me so directly involved.
I nod. “Then you should go.” Though I feel a deep pang of regret once I’ve said it out loud. I just wish I knew what it was exactly that I regretted.
“I don’t want to leave you here.” He motions to the box. “Doing this.”
“I’ll be fine,” I say, and while this does not feel entirely true, it also does not feel like a complete lie. It’s a reason for him to go—a good one. He should take it. It’s bad enough that I’ve put him through this whole thing with the file when I’m not even entirely sure why I’m doing it. “I’m supposed to see Jasper when I’m done anyway. I promised him I’d come by his place. I can walk from here.”
“Oh,” my dad says, failing to hide his concern. “‘Promised’ sounds serious.”
He likes Jasper well enough, but he worries about the same thing Dr. Shepard does: Jasper pulling me down. And it’s much harder to argue with my dad. He’s seen the state that Jasper is in—the circles under his eyes, his way of staring off into space randomly when you’re right in the middle of a conversation. I get why my dad is worried. I’m worried. But ever since my dad said his piece about Jasper shortly before Cassie’s funeral, he’s tried hard to keep his mouth shut about our friendship. Rachel, on the other hand, took the funeral as an invitation to jump right into the fray.
“HALF THOSE GIRLS will end up pregnant by the end of college, if they go to college,” Rachel muttered to me, motioning to Maia and the others. We were at the reception at Cassie’s house, which followed her funeral. Maia and her friends had been buzzing around Jasper from the start, “attending” to him in a way that was gross and also pointless because he was so out of it. “And, I mean, are they serious with the short skirts and the shaking their butts in his face? It’s his girlfriend’s funeral.”
I turned to look at Rachel, not sure whether to be pissed or grateful—for her being there in the first place, for weighing in on Maia and her friends, for trying to act like my mom. Because that’s what she was doing. That’s what she had been doing ever since I got back from Maine. And maybe that’s what made me angriest: her pretending that she could ever live up to who my mom had been.
“They are serious,” I said flatly, trying not to watch. Trying even harder not to care. I already knew enough about Jasper to know that their attention was making him feel worse. Like less of a person. Or more like a terrible one.
Maia and her friends had sniffled at Cassie’s service, and there’d been some running mascara. But I had been near enough to feel that underneath all of that, there wasn’t much more than a collective: ugh, crap, that totally sucks, but Cassie was kind of a disaster.
“Well, I think you should stay away from Jasper, too. I mean, look at him,” Rachel went on. “He’s a total mess. And this is exactly the kind of situation where—well, I could see how things between the two of you could—”
“Stop it,” I snapped at her. “I mean it.”
How dare Rachel pretend she had some special insight into Jasper and me? After everything we’d been through, Jasper and I were friends, but that was all. Of course, I would have much preferred if Rachel hinting otherwise didn’t bother me quite as much as it did.
Maybe I didn’t want a reminder about how someone “normal” would be feeling in this situation. Maybe normal was like Maia and her friends: ready to turn Jasper from friend into boyfriend at the first hint of the light turning green. I cared about Jasper. I cared about what happened to him. But not like that. No. I did not.
I was much better off steering way clear of all those kind of complications—and that wasn’t denial or whatever Rachel might think. It was what I wanted: none of it. Trevor—my one real foray into the world of romance a year ago—had been right to dodge the responsibility that was me. I would definitely never wish me on Jasper. Not now. Everyone was so worried about him dragging me down, but who knew how far or how fast I might fall? Or how deep I’d take him with me.
“Sorry.” Rachel held up her hands, then tucked them under her armpits. She wasn’t sorry, though. I could feel how badly she wanted to say more about Jasper and our “relationship.”
“Why are you even here, Rachel?” My face went hot as the floodgates opened. “I mean, seriously?” My voice was too loud; people were starting to stare. “You were my mom’s friend. And she’s dead. If you think you’re helping me, you’re not. So why don’t you go find something else that will make you feel better?”
Rachel blinked at me, stunned. But instead of storming off or telling me I was being rude, she nodded. “You’re right.”
Then she stepped closer and wrapped her arm around me. And, of course, I started to bawl. Couldn’t help myself. I didn’t stop until I felt someone’s hand on my back. My dad, I assumed.
“I’m so sorry, Wylie. I know how much she meant to you.” A man’s voice, not my dad. And from the look on Rachel’s face, she did not approve of his hand on me.
When I turned, it was Cassie’s dad, Vince. His hair was chin length now, his face softer with his new beard. This was the hippie Key West version of Vince. Sober for nearly a year, he had opened a kayak rental place and otherwise totally cleaned up his act. He had also gotten super New Agey weird, Cassie had told me once, but with a kind of pride. At least he wasn’t drinking anymore.
Vince had delivered the eulogy and it had been beautiful—moving and eloquent and thoughtful. It managed to bring out all the best qualities of Cassie while putting her death in a meaningful context. So perfect I would have expected to feel differently about Vince the next time I talked to him. But here he was—and there I was—thinking what I always did: that he was totally full of shit.
“I’m sorry about what happened,” I said.
He smiled then in a way that looked kindly and spiritual, but felt, in every way, the complete and total opposite. “Well,” he said, and that was all.
I waited for him to go on. To say all those things people do: it was no one’s fault, we all know how much you loved Cassie, blah, blah. But he stared at me instead. Like he was waiting not so much to hear whether I blamed myself, but to enjoy how much I did.
“Um, take care,” Rachel said finally, dismissing him.
But he just smiled at her. “It is both a tragedy and a gift that Cassie will be missed by so many.” He turned back to me. “Be sure to tell your dad that I’m sorry for his loss, too.”
Then he squeezed my arm in a way that should have been warm, but felt creepy. And what loss? My mom? He’d seen my dad so many times since then, hadn’t he?
“What a dick that guy is,” Rachel said when Vince had gone. “I know he lost his daughter and all, but I bet he was a dick way before that.”
“He’s a minister now,” I said. “Or something like that.”
“He can still be a jerk.”
“Is there anybody here that you do like?” I asked, even though I couldn’t argue with her assessment of Vince.
She smiled. “You.”
BY THE TIME my dad finally leaves—after much hemming and hawing and him saying that he’s worried about me, and me saying he doesn’t need to be, and lots and lots of details about where he’ll leave his itinerary—it is almost 9:40 a.m. I try Jasper again, but once again the call rings and rings before finally heading to voice mail.
My stomach has officially started to churn.
I move fast through the rest of what’s in the box, turning to the evidence bags. Luckily, there isn’t much that survived the fire, which is why we never received anything in the way of personal effects. Nothing my dad had wanted, anyway. The things in the evidence bags must have been thrown from the car when it hit the guardrail. A set of headphones I imagine tangled in a nearby tree. There’s one of my mom’s blue clogs, too. I always hated those shoes. I’d been trying to convince her to throw them out instead of getting them fixed again. The force it must have taken to rip the shoe off her foot and hurl it away from the car. What was she doing wearing clogs in the middle of winter anyway? I lift the shoe, only a tiny bit. But as soon as my hands are on it, I know it’s a mistake. Don’t touch the shoe. It will make you cry. When I drop it, there is an odd, hollow thump.
I move the plastic bags around until my hand lands on what’s under the shoe. Smooth and hard and kind of flat inside its bag. When I pull it from the very bottom of the box, it’s a bottle. An empty vodka bottle. A small one, the kind you’d hide in your purse, or even in a big-pocketed jacket.
