“A little. I might go home now. My dad cleared it with the school, if I felt overwhelmed. I’m about two-thirds whelmed.” He pauses. “I don’t want to cry in front of everyone.”

“It’s too soon. You came back too soon.”

“It’s better here. I can’t stay in that house with my dad. It’s smothering. This is easier, believe it or not. How are your parents?”

“My…They’re fine. I mean, not fine. They’re coping.”

She’s looking at her salad and then another wave of sympathizers comes by. There are kids like that, who want to attach themselves to drama. Rumor has already spread that he’s moving soon to London. She thinks: He’s not interesting; he’s a mess. He gave me a key and he smiled at me and he made me think we had something and I’ve got this horrible problem because he’s thrown me to a wolf.

Ned is polite to the students, who move on after rote expressions of sympathy. He looks down at his plate. He’s barely touched his two slices of pizza.

Now he looks up at her. “Julia. I think I know who did it.” He says the words like they’re painful.

She just stares at him. She feels drunk with fear. Then she moves around her salad with her fork, and she says: “Then you have to tell the police.”

“You’re not going to ask who it is? That’s like the reaction of 99.9 percent of the human race.” His voice is very small.

“What I care about is you and what you do,” she says. “I don’t want you to do something stupid.” Who, who, who? she thinks. He can’t mean my dad. He can’t. So who could he mean? Marland? If it’s Marland then the guilt has to be crushing Ned. If he never deals the prescription drugs then Marland never enters his and Danielle’s life.

She can almost see Ned summoning the words. “Look. All I have to do is get him talking on tape…” And then his phone pings, a ringtone she’s never heard before.

“That’s my dad,” he says, almost in relief, and picks up the phone. Looks at the screen.

And she sees something change in his face. Now he looks at her.

“What…? What is it?” she asks. Dread in her voice.

“Dad said he saw the two detectives who were at the meeting come to your house and take your dad away in a police car.”

“That can’t be,” she says.

“My dad ran over to the driveway and asked if they were arresting your dad and they said no.”

“They’re just interviewing him, then.”

“At the station? Why at the station?”

“Ned…who do you think did this?”

He looks at her. “What do you know? Why are they talking to your dad?”