Melancholy Baby

41

The campus police had Sarah in an interview room at the campus police station.

“Why did the cops come?” she said when I came in.

“This is Brian Kelly,” I said. “He’s a Boston police detective.”

“I don’t care,” Sarah said. “Why did the cops come and get me.”

There was a conference table and six chairs, but she was standing with her arms folded tightly across her chest.

“We were worried about you,” I said. “We wanted to be sure you were all right.”

She stared at me.

“All right?” she said. “Of course I’m not fucking all right. My father’s dead and it’s my fault. How fucking all right is that?”

Brian somehow managed to fade from the confrontation a little. He didn’t move much, but it was clearly my conversation.

“It is not your fault,” I said. “It is the fault of the person who shot him.”

“And if I hadn’t gotten this crazy bug in my bonnet,” Sarah said, “he’d still be fine.”

I could almost hear Mrs. Markham saying “bug in your bonnet.”

“Sarah, there is something terribly wrong in your family.”

“Yeah,” Sarah said. “Me.”

“No,” I said. “Not you. You’re the one who saw it. Your parents don’t remember things that everyone remembers. Your father lied about his past. A simple, painless DNA comparison would have answered your concerns. Neither of them would submit.”

“My father was going to,” she said. “They got the swab from me.”

“Where?”

“I did it at the college infirmary.”

“Do you know if he did it?”

“No.”

“Do you know, if he had, where he’d have done it?”

“No.”

“The infirmary will know where they sent the swab,” Brian said.

I nodded.

“Why do you care now?” Sarah said.

“Maybe it had something to do with his death,” I said.

“You mean someone didn’t want him to?”

“I don’t know. But he died shortly after he decided to do the DNA test.”

“That’s crazy.”

“Yes,” I said. “It is. And it’s crazy that somebody hired men to beat you up. And it’s crazy that your mother won’t do the DNA comparison. And you’re the one that saw the craziness first. You had to do what you did. Someone had to. There was something fundamentally wrong in your family. We still don’t know what. But we will.”

“I wish I’d never started all this,” she said.

“I don’t blame you. It’s a lot nastier than you expected it to be. But I’m with you. And the cops are with you. And we’ll hang in there together until we find out why.”

Sarah sat down suddenly at the conference table and folded her arms on the tabletop and put her face down on them.

“I loved him, you know,” she said.

Her voice was muffled.

“Sure, I know,” I said. “I love my father.”

“Even if he wasn’t my father. I loved him. Mostly, he was nice to me.”

“Regardless of biology,” I said. “He was your father.”

She nodded her buried head without speaking.

“I need to ask you one more question,” I said.

Sarah nodded, her face still down.

“How do you get your trust money?” I said.

“It just shows up in my checking account every month,” she said.

“Wire transfer?”

“I guess so.”

“From where?”

“I don’t know.”

“Where do you have your checking account?” I said.

“Pequot Bank.”

“Here in Walford?”

“Yes. On Oak Street, right across from the student union.”

“And before you came to Taft?”

“I didn’t get it,” Sarah said. “I wasn’t old enough.”

“When does it come?”

“First of the month.”

I looked at Brian. He nodded and tapped himself on the chest.

“Okay,” I said.

She stayed the way she was. I looked at Brian. He shook his head slightly and shrugged and turned his palms up.

“Are you rooming with anyone?”

She shook her head.

“Boyfriend?”

Shake.

“Would you like to go home?”

“No.”

I didn’t blame her.

I looked at Brian. He looked at me. He smiled faintly. I nodded slowly and took a deep breath and let it out.

“I want you to come stay with Rosie and me for a while,” I said.

Sarah was silent. Her face was still down on the table, resting on her forearms. She didn’t move.

Then, without looking up, she said, “Okay.”

I looked at Brian again. He was staring up at the ceiling.

“While we’re packing,” I said to him, “maybe you could check where the infirmary sent the DNA sample.”

“Let’s have Sarah join us,” Brian said. “They’ll be more co-operative if the donor is doing the asking.”

“Okay with you, kiddo?”

She was sitting up now, looking at us.

“I guess so,” she said. “What about the school? If I don’t go to class, I’ll get in trouble.”

“I’ll talk to the school,” Brian said. “If the dean is a woman, I’ll charm her. If it’s a man, I’ll frighten him.”

Sarah almost smiled. “It’s a woman,” she said.

“Oh, good,” Brian said. “Charming is so much easier than scary.”

“It is?” I said. “I can’t usually tell which you’re being.”

Sarah actually did smile, though very slightly.