Forever, Again

  “He’s on permanent leave,” the man said. “Did you have a math problem you need help with?”

  I was so surprised that for a long moment all I could do was stand there with my mouth open. “He’s on…permanent leave?” I asked.

  The man moved to the corner of the teacher’s desk and perched sideways on it. “Yes. I’m Mr. Clawson. I’ll be taking over through the end of the year.”

  “Why?” I asked. “I mean…what happened to Mr. Bishop?”

  Mr. Clawson shrugged. “Hey, somebody offers me a job, I don’t ask too many questions. Anyway, I didn’t get the feeling he was coming back next year. I’ll probably take over for him permanently.”

  I hugged the large binder I was carrying to my chest. “Oh,” I said, totally at a loss. Now how was I going to get to the bottom of this? Belatedly, I realized Mr. Clawson was staring expectantly at me. “Um…thanks,” I said, and fled the room.

  Making my way through the mass of students hurrying to get their things and escape from school for the day, I finally reached my own locker and, with a heavy heart, saw that Spence wasn’t there.

  He always waited for me after school to drive me home. With a sigh, I put my head against the door of my locker and fought back tears. I wanted to tell somebody what I suspected was going on and I immediately thought of Mr. White, but if I went to him, I knew he’d start digging and he wouldn’t stop until Spence got his acceptance to UCLA revoked.

  I still held hope that Spence and I would go away to school together. He’d gone to meet with Mrs. Bennett yesterday, and afterward he’d told me that he was pretty sure she was going to grant him the scholarship even though she’d heard all the rumors about how he’d cheated on his SATs. I knew with her help we could come up with the rest on our own, and it was such a relief when he told me that. I thought he’d be happy about it and all the tension and anxiety he carried would finally go away, but if anything, since talking to Mrs. Bennett, Spence seemed even more on edge.

  “Amber!” I heard behind me. I whirled around, startled out of my own moody thoughts, to find Bill Metcalf there with a panicked look on his face. “You gotta come with me!” he said, reaching for my arm.

  “What?” I said in alarm. “Bill, why? What’s happening?”

  “Spence and Jamie!” he said, tugging me at a run down the hall. “They’re fighting!”

  We raced to the end of the hall and found a crowd of kids blocking the doorway. Far behind us came the urgent calls from Mr. Stewart, the gym teacher, but nobody was letting him through. Bill pushed and shoved and forced our way through the kids and out into the open, and there, rolling around in the dirt, were Spence and Jamie, each of them bloody and going for broke as they rained blows down on each other and tried to gain the upper hand.

  I pulled out of Bill’s grasp and threw my binder at them. “Stop it!” I screamed. “Stop it right now!”

  The binder hit Spence in the forehead, and with a grunt he let go of Jamie, rolling away from him. Bill lunged forward, grabbed Jamie around the waist from behind, and pulled him away from Spence. Meanwhile, I put myself between the pair while Spence got to his feet, breathing hard and looking mad enough to murder someone.

  “Stop it!” I shouted again, getting up in his face and grabbing hold of his torn and dirty shirt, then looking back over my shoulder at Jamie, who seemed every bit as angry as Spence. “What the hell’s the matter with you two?!”

  Around us there was total silence except for the repeated calls from Mr. Stewart somewhere down the hallway, demanding to be let through.

  Stewart was a small, slight man, and mostly a joke. Nobody respected him, and I knew the assembled crowd would be very slow to part for him. If he found Jamie and Spence fighting, he’d suspend both of them, which would threaten their graduation.

  Neither of them answered me, and Spence sent one more blistering look at Jamie before he began to turn away. That’s when Jamie lunged forward again, almost pulling free from Bill’s restraining arms.

  “You ever come near any of us again, and I’ll fucking kill you, Spence!” he shouted.

  With that, Jamie did manage to pry himself free from Bill’s grasp, and stormed off.

  I watched him go, and tears filled my eyes. Jamie was Spence’s best friend, the closest person to him besides me. What would the end of their friendship do to Spence, who was already in a very dark place? I didn’t have time to think on it. Mr. Stewart’s shouts were getting closer, and I turned back to my boyfriend.

  “You have to go,” I said.

  He bent down, picked up my binder, and handed it to me without a word. Then, averting his eyes, he turned and jogged away. I watched him for a long time, well after the crowd began to disperse, his form getting smaller and smaller, as he kept up that steady pace through the parking lot. With every step I knew that, in more than one way, he was getting farther and farther away from me.

  WE SAT IN THE PARKING LOT of Mrs. Greeley’s hair salon, trying to work up our nerve.

  “Are you sure you want to do this?” Cole asked me for the fifth time.

  I knew why he was hesitant; it was one thing to confront an old schoolteacher about any misdeeds he’d been involved in thirty years earlier. It was a whole other thing to confront the mother of a dead teen—a girl who was falsely blamed for the murder of her boyfriend.

  Plus, I really liked Gina. She’d been so nice to me the other night. I hated to upset her. Not to mention the fact that if I really was the reincarnation of Amber Greeley, in a sense, Gina was my mother, and the last thing I’d want to do was hurt her by bringing up what had to be the worst weeks of her life.

  But the only other option besides talking to Gina was to confront my grandmother, and I wasn’t brave enough for that. At least not yet.

  “No, I’m not sure,” I said, answering Cole. “But I think we have to try and talk to her. She might know something about Bishop.”

  Cole took a deep breath and then nodded. “Okay. Let’s do this.”

  We’d already agreed to let me do the talking. After entering the salon, the same girl with blue-tipped hair who’d let me in a few nights before greeted us.

  “Hey,” she said, sizing us up. I couldn’t help but notice that her gaze lingered on Cole. “Gina’s just finishing up with a client. She told me to let you guys into the break room.”

  We’d called on the way down from Bumpass, and I’d mentioned only that I had something very urgent and personal to talk to Gina about, and that I was bringing a friend. She’d told me she could spare twenty minutes at two, so we’d raced to get to the salon on time. We’d made it with five minutes to spare.

  The break room wasn’t much—just a small walled-off room with a soda machine and a mini refrigerator, plus a round table with four seats. I stood near the table, but Cole moved off to buy two Dr Peppers for us.

  “Thanks,” I said when he handed me one. The act reminded me of a time when Tanner and I had been waiting to see his aunt, who was sick in the hospital, and he’d bought me a Coke, but only after asking me to pay for it. Tanner had been a tightass even though he had his own trust fund.

  I thought about Sophie’s text again, and the urge to reach out to her was pretty strong, but what would I say? What words could mend all the hurt between us?

  “Hey there,” I heard as I twirled my phone in my hands. Looking up I saw Gina moving aside the curtain that separated the break room from the rest of the salon.

  “Hi, Gina,” I said shyly.

  “Hi, Mrs. Greeley,” Cole said.

  She paused when she saw him and I swear a little color drained from her face. Walking to him she said, “You must be Cole Drepeau.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said, taking her extended hand when she offered it.

  “My Lord…” she said, gazing at him. “You look so much like your uncle. For a second there, it was like seeing a ghost.”

  He blushed, which I found adorable, and she motioned for us to sit down. “So!” she said. “What brings you
two by?”

  Cole looked at me and I cleared my throat nervously. “Gina, I…I want to talk to you about Amber.”

  Her eyes narrowed ever so subtly. The mention of her daughter and the appearance of Spence’s nephew was no doubt making her wary.

  “What about Amber?” she said.

  “Cole and I have been doing some research for a school project, and we think we might have discovered something important.”

  “About my daughter?”

  “Yes, and no,” I said. “See, we don’t think that Amber had anything to do with Ben Spencer’s murder.” Mrs. Greeley’s gaze darted to Cole, he nodded, and she turned back to me with less suspicion and more curiosity. “We think,” I continued, “that there might have been a teacher involved.”

  “What?” she said, her eyes widening. “Why do you think that?”

  “Something my mom said,” Cole told her. “She remembers seeing a man on her front porch threatening my uncle a couple of weeks before he was murdered. She heard the name Bishop and says the police were told about it, but they never followed up on the lead. It turns out that a guy named David Bishop used to teach at Chamberlain High. And we know from this”—Cole paused to pull up the yearbook we’d brought with us from the car, and turn to the pages we’d marked—“that both Amber and Ben knew him.”

  Gina seemed very rattled by the appearance of the yearbooks and the images captured inside. “Have you gone to the police?” she asked.

  “No,” I said. “Not yet.”

  She brushed her bangs away from her eyes. “That’s probably wise,” she said, but her mouth had drawn into a thin line. “This teacher named Bishop isn’t much to go on, and I doubt those sons of bitches would reopen the case. They blamed Amber for Ben’s murder, and never once believed me when I insisted my daughter didn’t commit suicide. Still, it could just be a coincidence.”

  “We don’t think it is,” I said. “We think he had something to do with both their murders. And we also think my grandmother might in some way be involved, too.”

  “What?” she said, clearly shocked by my accusations. “Why?”

  I looked at Cole for reassurance, and he nodded. “Because we found out where Bishop lives now.”

  “Where he lives now?” she repeated. “What does that have to do with Amber’s and Spence’s murders?”

  “Bishop lives in a house that used to belong to my grandmother,” I confessed. “It’s on a lake in Bumpass.”

  Gina’s mouth fell open. “You’re telling me this teacher moved to that lake house?”

  “You know about it?”

  Gina got up and stepped a little away from us to fold her arms across her chest, as if she were suddenly very cold. “I know about the house,” she said. “I thought your grandparents sold it.”

  “I asked my grandmother about it when I was looking at an old photo album of hers a few years ago. She said it’d been taken over by a friend of the family, but she’d said it in a way that made me think she wasn’t so happy about it.”

  Gina was visibly trembling now, and when at last she turned back to us and moved to the table again to sit down, she was quite pale. “Who have you told about this?”

  “Nobody,” Cole said.

  She put a hand on Cole’s arm and squeezed it. “Don’t,” she said. “Do you hear me?”

  “What?” I asked. “Gina, this man could’ve murdered your daughter. And if my grandmother was involved…I mean, she’s my grandmother, but if she had anything to do with Amber’s death, then I know my mom and I can’t live with her, or, honestly, let her get away with it.”

  It dawned on me in that moment that I felt no real love for my grandmother. There’d always been something about her that was off. Her manipulations. Her conniving ways. How she bullied everyone around her. All of it left me wanting nothing to do with her. And then I had to wonder why? What would Grandmother possibly have against the teenaged daughter of her hairstylist? What had Amber or Spence done to Maureen Bennett? What was the connection between them other than Gina Greeley?

  I glanced over at Gina, who I was surprised was shaking her head sadly at me, as though I wasn’t really getting it.

  “Lily, I’m going to tell you something that you have to promise me you will never, ever repeat. Do you promise? Both of you?”

  “I do,” I said.

  “Me, too,” Cole added.

  Taking a big breath, Gina said, “Your grandmother is an incredibly powerful woman. She runs this town. Always has. Always will. That has never been something anyone from here has ever questioned, but after my daughter died there were rumors that I’ve always refused to believe. People can be vicious and cruel, and I thought it was just the town gossip, but the rumor going around was that Maureen Bennett shut down the investigation into Ben Spencer’s murder the moment my daughter was found dead. The day after Amber died, one of my closest friends swore to me that she saw Maureen having a long lunch with the detective assigned to the case—”

  “Detective Paparella?” Cole said.

  Gina sat back in surprise. “Yes. You’ve heard his name before?”

  Cole realized he might’ve revealed too much and he said, “My mom told me about him.”

  “Ah,” Gina said. “He died almost a decade ago. Horrible man. I never wanted to believe that the rumors about Maureen swaying the investigation were true. Especially since I couldn’t understand what would motivate her to do something like that. She knew Amber was my daughter, of course. Amber worked here on Saturdays, but their interactions, although sometimes tense, weren’t anything that I felt mattered a great deal to Maureen. And yet, something about that rumor has always bothered me.

  “Maureen never did explain why she deeded me this property, or sent her men and supplies to help fix it up. I suppose that, in those moments when I really thought about her uncharacteristic generosity, I recognized the taint of something else with it. It wasn’t anything Maureen said or did, but there was a look in her eye when she found me unable to get out of bed. It was more than sympathy. It was…I don’t know. The fleeting look of a guilty conscience, perhaps?

  “But, one thing’s for sure, once I got back to being busy with the salon and my growing client list, I had less time to pressure Paparella about reopening my daughter’s case. I’m wondering now if all this”—Gina paused to gesture toward the walls—“was simply a distraction.”

  Cole and I looked around the room, then at each other, then back to Gina. It was a lot to think about and it left a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach.

  “Anyway,” Gina said next, “the point is that, as long as Maureen Bennett still has breath in her body, the investigation into Ben and Amber’s death will remain closed. No member of the Fredericksburg PD will touch it, and I know that for certain now. Maureen loved that lake house. She never would’ve given it up if it hadn’t been to her advantage.”

  “But what could that be?” I asked. “I mean, why would she want the murder investigation shut down?”

  “I have no idea,” Gina said sadly. “Like I said, Amber had met Maureen on a number of occasions here at the salon, and I knew that neither liked the other. My daughter was always polite to your grandmother, but the undertone of defiance was there. Amber was very protective of me, and, back then, Maureen liked to bully me and make snide comments about my appearance, parenting skills, and the way I ran my business. Amber chafed at all of that. I knew that Maureen picked up on Amber’s defiance, and that sometimes caused her to treat Amber like a lowly servant. She’d send Amber on ridiculous errands just to throw her weight around. I put up with all of it because Maureen supplied me with referrals and because Amber never complained.” Gina sighed and put a hand to the side of her face. “I failed my daughter in that way. I certainly did.”

  “Did Amber ever mention this Mr. Bishop?” Cole asked.

  Gina shook her head. “No. But in the final weeks before she died, she was very worried that Spence was caught up in something that had gotten out of
hand. She told me one afternoon that Spence had gotten into a fistfight with a friend of his, which wasn’t like him at all.”

  I leaned forward. We hadn’t heard about that. “Who?”

  Gina shrugged. “Amber never told me. When it came to Spence she was very guarded. He and his family always seemed to be caught up in some sort of crisis, and Amber’s father and I worried about her getting sucked into things no teenage girl should have to handle. Amber knew we would react protectively and that we worried, so she was always light on the details. I did know that the boy in question was one of his friends from the football team, but which one I don’t know. Still, I do remember that Amber was very upset by the fact that the two friends were no longer speaking to each other. I could tell she was especially worried about Spence at the time. He’d been behaving oddly, and she confessed to me that she was afraid he’d gotten himself into some kind of personal trouble and was in over his head.”

  “Do you think this teammate would know what trouble Spence was into?” I asked.

  “The young man from the fight?”

  I nodded.

  “Maybe,” she said. “Amber and I were very close, but she kept a lot from me. When I pressed her about what trouble Spence might be in, she wouldn’t tell me. Instead, she backpedaled and said she was probably just being dramatic. I simply figured it had something to do with the Spencers’ financial situation, which had always been precarious. When Spence was murdered, however, I wondered if the trouble he’d gotten himself into had been the reason he was killed. In the days after he died, Amber totally shut down. She didn’t eat or sleep or talk, and I kept thinking she’d open up to me once the grief had subsided a bit. Of course, she never got the chance to get past the grief.”

  Gina’s eyes misted and she dropped her chin to take a moment to compose herself. After clearing her throat she continued. “I realized after Amber died that she’d hidden a great deal from us. I never knew that she and Spence were intimate with each other, or that she was seeing a counselor at school to talk about her problems. With me, she was always putting on a happy face. She was in love with Spence, and she was looking forward to her future as a psychiatrist.” Gina’s expression turned both prideful and melancholy. “She got accepted into one of the top schools for psychiatry, you know. UCLA. She and Spence were all set to move to California together.”