Robert B. Parker’s Fallout

Sixty-Nine

I’m going to be late for tennis practice,” Kevin said. “Coach needed to have it early today — he’s got somewhere to be.”

Big, good-looking high school boy. But one Molly wanted to crowd a little now. Trying to make something happen. Force the issue the way she had with Ainsley.

“I’ll write you a note for the coach,” Molly said. “Notes from cops are even better than ones from moms.”

“First Chief Stone comes to my house,” Kevin More said. “Now you. I thought my mom talked to you guys about that.”

“She did,” Molly said. “But even though a lot of people in this town work for her, we’re not two of them.”

“So now it’s your turn to hassle me?”

They were in the living room by now. The kid had wanted to just shut the door. But he didn’t, and had reluctantly let Molly into the room. He stretched his legs out in front of him. They just seemed to keep going.

“Or maybe just trying to get you to open up,” Molly said.

“About what?”

“You and Jack,” she said. “I told you already.”

“We were friends,” Kevin said.

“I’m starting to think you might have been more than that,” Molly said, trying to make it sound like more of an observation than an accusation.

“Who told you that!”

He seemed to know immediately that the words had come out hot, and loud. Or defensive.

He tried to take a beat.

“I mean, who said that about us?”

“No one did,” Molly said. “But I’m a cop, Kevin, remember? Sometimes we piece random things together, whether they’re actual facts or not.”

“Good luck with that,” Kevin said. “Did you really come to my house to talk shit about Jack and me being some kind of couple? Seriously?”

“Seriously.”

“We weren’t.”

“No shame if you were.”

“No,” he said.

The kid put his head down, and shook it slowly from side to side. Almost sadly. “No... no... no.”

He wasn’t looking at her.

His breathing seemed to be the only discernible sound in the living room. The whole house.

“What was really in the note, Kevin?” Molly said.

“I already told Chief Stone.”

“Tell me.”

“Before he went off to college, before we all went off to college, I just wanted him to know what a good friend he’d been to me, even though I wasn’t a sports star the way he was.”

“You write letters like that to any of your other classmates?”

“I’m going to, for sure.”

“But why was it so important for you to get this one back?”

“It had been for Jack to see, nobody else.”

He looked up now, perhaps tired of staring at the rug.

“Did the coach not want you around the team because he knew about you and Jack?”

“He didn’t know because there wasn’t anything to know,” Kevin said. “And he didn’t give me that as a reason when he basically cut me. But he at least suspected.”

“You told Chief Stone that you didn’t talk to Jack the night he died,” Molly said.

“No,” he said.

“No texts, no calls, no contact of any kind?”

“I wish I had!” he said. “Maybe things could have been different. But no!”

The kid leaned back, stared at the ceiling for a moment.

“Why are you doing this?” he said when he was looking at Molly again.

Molly told him then what she’d told Ainsley. What she’d been thinking. About secrets. High school secrets. And how the biggest she could think of, for a golden-boy Prince Charming jock like Jack Carlisle, was that he was using performance-enhancing drugs, which would have lost him his scholarship. But he wasn’t. Or he’d gotten somebody pregnant. Which he hadn’t. Or that he’d committed some kind of crime and covered it up.

Or that he had come to the realization, at the age of eighteen, that he was gay.

“Even though that should have been nobody’s business but his own,” Molly said in a gentle mom voice. Like Kevin was one of her kids.

Telling herself that in this moment, maybe he was.

“Even though it’s nothing anybody should ever be ashamed of,” Molly said. “Especially if you really love somebody.”

“I want you to please leave now,” Kevin More said. “And please leave me alone.”

“It’s true, isn’t it?” Molly said in a voice almost she couldn’t hear.

Kevin More looked at the ceiling again, for a long time. Then back at Molly.

It came out of him, just like that.

As if he couldn’t keep it inside any longer, whether he was basically talking to a stranger — and a cop — or not.

“Yes,” he said, his voice as soft as Molly’s had been.

“It’s true,” he continued.

And began to cry.

“Are you happy now?” he asked. “Did you ever get anybody to come out to you before, Mrs. Crane?”

“None of this makes me happy,” Molly said. “Not from the day we found Jack down on the rocks and it felt like this town got tipped over on its side.”

Then she said, “Does your mom know?”

“I finally told her,” he said.

“When?” Molly said.

“The day before Jack died,” Kevin More said.