That betraying muscle beneath his eye jerked, but he said quietly, “If I failed anyone, it was Lily Thalberg.”
Now Mariah did flinch. Sometimes she almost forgot Zofie’s small playmate, the child who had started so much when she whispered, “Zofie’s daddy.”
“You believed her.”
“Yes.”
“Did you ever question her identification of my husband? I mean, seriously question it?”
“Did I consider that she might be transferring the terror from her own daddy to someone else’s? Is that what you’re asking?”
“I…” She swallowed. “Yes. Or from her grand-daddy, or…”
“Or someone. Anyone but your husband.”
Her mouth worked. Put that way, she sounded childish. Blame anyone but Simon. “He didn’t…he couldn’t…”
Harshly, Detective McLean said, “And yet, you left him.”
“Yes.” Now she froze inside as well as out. “To my eternal shame.”
He let out a ragged breath. “Ms. Stavig…”
“No.” She straightened behind the desk. “It is far, far too late for recriminations.” Not for guilt. Never for guilt. “I shouldn’t have started this. I’m going to ask you to leave if this is what you came to talk about.”
He moved his shoulders as though to ease tension. “You know it isn’t.”
“Then tell me what you need to know.”
“So you can ask me to leave?”
“So that my students don’t still find you here when they arrive for class in—” she glanced at the clock “—twenty-five minutes.”
His gaze followed hers to the clock and he muttered an incredulous oath. “That’s not long enough.”
Although he would loom over her, Mariah pulled out her chair behind the large teacher’s desk and sat. “I suggest you take advantage of that time,” she said crisply.
Frustration and something else showed in his gray eyes. “All right,” he said abruptly. His tone took on an edge, a sneer. “Here’s a question, Ms. Stavig. Why do you think, when Tracy Mitchell decided to tell her story, she chose you of all teachers to hear it?”
CHAPTER THREE
MARIAH STAVIG’S FACE was gently rounded, far from classically beautiful. She lacked the dramatic cheekbones or lush mouth that were currently in vogue. Her extraordinary eyes, gold and brown with flecks of green, framed by thick dark lashes, more than compensated, in Connor’s opinion. She had delicate features, pale, creamy skin and thick, dark hair worn in a loose knot on her nape.
Her face of all others had haunted him for years.
Now she stared at him with the intense dislike he had seen in his dreams. “Precisely what does that mean?” she asked sharply.
Still dogged with frustration and the bone-deep knowledge of wrongdoing, because he had played a part in destroying her marriage, Connor said, “It was a question. Nothing more. Why you?”
“My students trust me,” she said stiffly.
He half sat on a student desk in front of hers, letting one leg swing. “Tracy Mitchell is a seventh-grader. Right? You’ve had her now for…what?” He pretended to think. “Seven, eight weeks? I gather she’s not a top-notch student. How many students come through here a day? Be honest. How well can you even know the girl in that length of time?”
“Not as well as I do some of my eighth-and ninth-graders, of course. But Tracy is…noticeable. She dresses and acts older than her age. She’s smart but not a good student. She tends to talk back, speak out of turn, exchange loud comments with friends at inopportune moments. But sometimes there’s also something a little…sad about her. Do I know her well?” Ms. Stavig tilted her head. “Not yet. Do I know why she’s the way she is? No, but I can guess, having talked to her mother several times.”
“Already?” He hoped he didn’t sound as surprised as he was. “She a real troublemaker?”
“No. Simply an underachiever. I find it best to ride herd on kids from the beginning.” Her mouth firmed. “Now tell me what you meant to imply. What possible bearing does Tracy’s choice of me as the teacher to tell have on anything?”
“I thought maybe rumor told her you had escaped marriage to a sexual molester. That she assumed you would be sympathetic and not question her motivations or the…details of her story.”
Emotions flashed across Mariah Stavig’s expressive face before she narrowed her eyes. “But, you see, most people at school didn’t know Simon. I have no reason whatsoever to think Tracy Mitchell was aware that my ex-husband was accused of sexual molestation. And if she did know, she would also know that I supported him when he said he was innocent.”
“Did you?”
She ignored the question, although anger flared in her eyes.
“In fact, she would know that I think this kind of accusation rather resembles a witch hunt. Too often, it’s all emotion and little truth. If she were smart, she would have chosen another teacher. When I realized what she wanted to talk to me about, I almost asked her to do so.”
“And yet,” he mused, “you did listen and you went to your principal.”
Her face became expressionless. “I am legally obligated to report Tracy’s story.”
“If you weren’t?” He leaned forward. “Would you have told her to forget it? Maybe suggested she just ask to change classes? Chalk up the sex to experience? How would you have handled it, Ms. Stavig?”
She bent her head as if in rapt contemplation of her hands, flattened on her desk blotter. “Tracy’s situation is…different.” She spoke very quietly. “Of course I would have taken action.”
He didn’t say, Just as I had to take action. He didn’t have to. She looked up, shame staining her cheeks.
“I do realize that you had to do your job.” Now her hands knotted on the desk before she seemed to notice and moved them to her lap, out of sight. Her voice was low, halting. “I’m sorry for what I said earlier. It’s not your fault Lily accused Simon or that you couldn’t prove either his guilt or innocence. I do know that.”
Now he felt like crud. This whole interview had been about him. He’d desperately wanted her to say just this, and manipulated her until she did. If he had never seen Mariah Stavig before, he would have approached her very differently.
“No,” he said abruptly. “I’m sorry. You have every reason to harbor…bitterness toward me. Probably I should have bowed out of this investigation because I knew that. Instead I’ve been making little jabs, just to see a reaction.”
She stared, her lower lip caught between her teeth. “Why?” she whispered finally.
Connor closed his eyes for a moment. “Because I couldn’t take the way you looked at me yesterday. As if I were another kind of monster.”
“Why did you care?”
He could barely make himself meet her gaze. “Because I do have a conscience, believe it or not. I knew what I’d done to you, the decisions I’d left you to make. Every day I leave people to make those decisions. You were…symbolic, I suppose.”
“You wanted me to say it wasn’t your fault.”
His grunt was meant to be a laugh. “Yes. How small we can be.”
“Yes,” she said softly. “We can be, can’t we? My decision to leave Simon was mine alone. But I wanted to blame somebody so I didn’t