He nodded.
“That’s a good one.” Faith could see the guilt well up in him like water spilling out of a glass. “It’s all right, Jay. He would’ve found out eventually.”
“Then why didn’t you tell him?”
Because Faith was just the right mixture of emotionally stunted and controlling, which was something Jeremy would find out when his future wife screamed it in his face. For now, Faith said, “It’s not something I’m going to talk to you about.”
He sat up to face her. “Grandma likes Will.”
Faith guessed he’d overheard her conversation with Zeke. “She told you that?”
He nodded. “She said he was an all right guy. That he treated her fairly, and that he had a hard job to do but he wasn’t mean about it.”
Faith didn’t know whether her mother had been assuaging Jeremy’s concerns or revealing her true opinion. Knowing her mother, it was probably a mixture of both. “Did she ever talk to you about why she retired?”
He tugged at a loose thread on the bedspread. “She said she was the boss, so it was her fault for not noticing what was going on.”
This was more than she’d ever told Faith. “Anything else?”
He shook his head. “I’m glad Aunt Amanda has Will helping her. She can’t do everything by herself. And he’s really smart.”
Faith stopped his hand and held it until Jeremy looked up at her. The television offered the only light in the room. It gave his face a green cast. “I know you’re worried about Grandma, and I know there’s nothing I can say to make this better for you.”
“Thanks.” He was being sincere. Jeremy had always appreciated honesty.
She pulled him up from the bed and wrapped her arms around him. His shoulders were thin. He was gangly, not yet the man he was going to be no matter the fact that he ate his weight in macaroni and cheese every day.
He let her hug him for longer than usual. She kissed his head. “Everything’s going to be all right.”
“That’s what Grandmamma always says.”
“And she’s always right.” Faith squeezed him closer.
“Mom, you’re suffocating me.”
Reluctantly, she let him go. “Get some sheets for Uncle Zeke. He’s going to sleep on the couch.”
Jeremy slid his feet back into his sneakers. “Has he always been that way?”
Faith didn’t pretend to miss his meaning. “When we were little, every time he had to fart, he would run into my room and tear it loose.”
Jeremy started laughing.
“And then he said if I told on him, he’d gorge himself on beans and cheese and then hold me down and do it in my face the next time.”
That sent him over the edge. He bent over, holding his stomach as he brayed like a donkey. “Did he do it?”
Faith nodded, which made him laugh even harder. She let him enjoy her humiliation a little longer before nudging him on the shoulder. “Time to go to bed.”
He wiped tears from his eyes. “Man, I’ve got to do that to Horner.”
Horner was his dorm mate. Faith doubted anyone would notice one more noxious odor in their shared quarters.
“Get Zeke a pillow from the closet.” She pushed him out of the room. He was still laughing as he walked down the hallway. It was a small price to pay to see the worry momentarily absent from her son’s face.
Faith pulled back the comforter on her bed. Dirt from Jeremy’s sneakers was smeared into the sheets. She was too tired to change the bed. She was too tired to put on her nightgown or even brush her teeth. She slipped off her shoes and got into bed wearing the same GBI regs she’d put on at five o’clock that morning.
The house was quiet. Her body was so tense that she felt like she was lying on a board. Emma’s soft snores came through on the baby monitor. Faith stared up at the ceiling. She’d forgotten to turn off the television. Light flashed like a strobe from the action movie Jeremy had been watching.
Boyd Spivey was dead. It seemed impossible to grasp. He was a big guy, larger than life, the sort of cop you imagined going out in a blaze of glory. He was the exact opposite of his partner. Chuck Finn was dour, full of gloomy predictions and terrified that he would be shot in the line of duty. His defense during the investigation was the only one Faith had found credible during the whole mess. Chuck had claimed he was just following orders. To those who knew him, it seemed entirely plausible. Detective Finn was the quintessential follower, which was exactly the personality type that men like Boyd Spivey knew how to exploit.
But Faith didn’t want to think about Boyd or Chuck or any of her mother’s team right now. The investigation had eaten up six months of her life. Six months of sleepless nights. Six months of worrying that her mother was going to have a heart attack or end up in prison or both.
Faith made herself close her eyes. She wanted to think of good times with her mother, to recall some moment of kindness or summon the pleasure of her company. What she saw instead was the man in her mother’s bedroom, the black hole in the center of his forehead where Faith had shot him. His hands jerked up. The hostage stared at Faith in disbelief. His mouth gaped open. She saw the silver grill on his teeth, that his tongue was pierced with a matching silver ball.
Almeja, he had said.
Money.
Faith heard the floorboards creak in the hall. “Jeremy?” She pushed herself up on her elbow and turned on the bedside lamp.
He gave her a sheepish look. “Sorry, I know you’re tired.”
“Do you want me to take the sheets down to Zeke?”
“No, it’s not that.” He pulled his iPhone out of his pocket. “Something came up on my Facebook page.”
“I thought you stopped using that when I made you friend me.” Faith had never been the kind of parent to completely trust her kid. Her own parents had trusted her and look where that had gotten them. “What’s going on?”
His thumbs moved across the screen as he talked. “I got bored. I mean, not bored, but there was nothing to do, so …”
“It’s okay, baby.” She sat up in bed. “What is it?”
“Lots of people have been posting stuff. I guess they heard about Grandma on the news.”
“That’s nice,” Faith said, though she found it a bit ghoulish and, to borrow a word from her brother, dramatic. “What are they saying?”
“Mostly just that they’re thinking about me and stuff like that. But there’s this.” He turned the phone around and handed it to her.
Faith read the message aloud. “ ‘Hey, Jaybird, hope you’re okay. I’m sure the bad guys will get fingered. Just remember what your grandma used to say: keep your mouth shut and your eyes open.’ ” Faith checked the screen name. “GoodKnight92. Is that someone you went to Grady with?” Jeremy’s high school’s mascot was the knight, and he had been born in 1992.
He shrugged. “Never heard of him.”
Faith noted that the post had come in at 2:32 that afternoon, less than an hour after Evelyn had been abducted. She tried not to sound concerned when she asked, “When did he friend you?”
“Today, but a lot of people did. They kind of all came out of the woodwork.”