He says some more that sounds a lot like noble cause corruption and self-licensing, but I’m not listening anymore. He hasn’t told me to hand in my badge or clean out my desk. He also doesn’t send me to Internal Affairs. But I register the words “no police powers.”

He touches the photo on his desk.

The way he’s framed this, I know I should feel like I’ve gotten off lightly. But I don’t. I feel like the rug’s been ripped out from beneath me, that everything I believed in is a lie, and I’m free-falling toward a truth I don’t want to see.

“And Marlitt—I mean it.” He glares at a spot to the right of my ear. “Stay away from the Kappa Phi Omicron house, the brothers, and the university. Anything that looks even remotely like it has to do with Kappa Phi Omicron, I want you to turn and run in the opposite direction. Is that clear?”

I nod.

He gives me a long look. Wishing, I think, that he could believe me.

Fifteen

Saturday, December 7, noon

Outside the station, the pale sun slips in and out of the jagged pines without giving any warmth. Somehow, December’s begun without me noticing. The news crews have vanished, but a man emerges from a black car. He’s heavy around the middle with silver hair and an air of dispassionate confidence that is so similar to Michael, it’s clear this is Ed Williams, his father, the university president. But he doesn’t look like a man who’s just found out his son has been torturing freshmen, an administrator who’s discovered scandalous fraternity misconduct has been happening at his university. His face is impassive and hard, and despite myself, I feel a fleeting shiver of sympathy for Michael.

I glance back at the gray building with the feeling they’re all watching—my departure or the president’s arrival, I’m not sure. Just in case, I stride deliberately to my car, back straight, head high, hands clenched into fists.

The fatigue hits as soon as I pull out of the station lot. The wide, treeless highway has me feeling exposed, and I turn onto a side street, letting the narrow lanes hold me close.

I don’t mean to drive by the house. The beautiful one with the slender black columns and pristine white paint. But I find myself parked outside.

Katie sits on the brown lawn, tucked beneath an oak tree. I watch as other girls filter up and down the double front staircase, casting her occasional concerned glances. One runs across the grass and gives her a fleeting hug, but Katie doesn’t react, and the rest treat her like a piece of yard furniture or a resident ghost. This new version of Katie is antithetical to their buoyancy. Their lightness and laughter are no match for her grief.