“Um. Just taking a walk. That’s all. I just wanted to, uh, see the water, then your dog scared me and I freaked. I’ll, uh, just be going now.”
Did she really think he was that stupid? Her house was next to his. If she wanted to see the water, she only had to walk into her own backyard, not scale the fence to come into his.
“Hold on a second.”
His flashlight gleamed on something metallic in the grass. He nudged it with his foot and saw it was a spray can. With a sinking suspicion, he turned the flashlight onto his new boat. Across the hull in glaring red letters he saw “Fascist Pi” written in two-foot-tall letters.
Either she had a thing against math equations or she hadn’t had time to finish writing an inflammatory slur against police officers.
“Wow. Nice artwork.”
“It was like that when I got here. I didn’t see who did it.”
He shined the flashlight on her. Again, did he look that stupid? “I can see the spray paint residue on your finger. I believe that’s the very definition of red-handed.”
She hid her hand behind her back, as if she were five years old and had been caught playing in her mom’s makeup.
As he took a step closer, she stepped back, though she lifted her chin. Whether that was instinct or courage, he didn’t know. One part of him had to admire her grit, even as he acknowledged that, ridiculously, his feelings were hurt.
What had he done to earn this kind of vitriol? He had tried to be nice to Silver since she and her family moved to Haven Point. He had talked to her a few times when he was making visits to the school and had even cracked a joke or two with her and her friends.
“I have two questions,” he said as he flipped on the lights of the boathouse so he could get a better look at her handiwork. “The obvious one is why.”
“What’s the other question?”
“Answer the first one, then I’ll ask the second.”
She didn’t meet his gaze. She still looked scared but he thought some of her abject terror seemed to be fading. She even reached down to pet Yukon, then faced him with an expression of defiance mingled with a shadow of guilt.
“I don’t know,” she finally said. “I guess it seemed like a good idea at the time.”
It wasn’t an uncommon excuse from kids who didn’t always think through the consequences of their actions, who considered themselves invincible and were only interested in the thrill of the moment.
He had never personally been able to figure out the thrill of defiling someone else’s property. Vandalism as a way to pass the time always annoyed the hell out of him.
“It wasn’t. Obviously. It was a very, very bad idea. You see that now, right?”
She shrugged and looked down again without answering. When it became clear she wasn’t going to respond, Ruben frowned.
“Second question. Who else did this with you?”
“Nobody,” she said quickly. Too quickly.
He had heard other voices, had definitely heard that “run” command ring out across the backyard.
“You’re in enough trouble, Silver. Don’t compound it by lying to me. We both know that’s not true. Who was here with you?”
She lifted her chin again and in the pale light, he saw defiance in her eyes. “Nobody. Only me.”
“Why are you standing up for them? They were only too quick to leave you here to face the consequences—and Yukon—by yourself.”
“You don’t know anything,” she snapped.
“I know that was a pretty rotten thing to do, letting you take the rap when you weren’t the only one involved. Was this whole vandalism thing even your idea?”
She didn’t respond, which he had a feeling was answer enough.
“What’s going to happen to me?” she finally asked. “Are you going to arrest me?”
“That depends. Is my boat the only thing you’ve tagged tonight?”
She looked down at Yukon, as if hoping the dog could help her figure out how to answer.
“Silver?” he pressed.
“No,” she finally said, her voice low. “You’re going to find out anyway. I might as well tell you. We... I did two other things. A shed down the street where the mean old guy who always yells at kids lives, and Mrs. Grimes’s garage door.”
Gertrude Grimes taught English at the middle school and had been a cranky old crone back in the day when he went there. The intervening years hadn’t improved her demeanor much.
“Are you going to arrest me?” she asked again. Her voice sounded scared and upset and, again, he caught that trace of guilt on her features.
He had the feeling Silver was having a hard time adjusting to life in Haven Point. Was this simply an outward sign of that, or was there more to it?
Technically they were within the town limits, which made this a case for Cade Emmett, the police chief of Haven Point. He could call for an officer and they would take Silver to the police station. She could be charged with criminal mischief and channeled into the juvenile justice system.
Sometimes that was absolutely the best course of action for a wayward teen, a firm and unmistakable wake-up call, but he wasn’t sure Silver’s actions justified that.
“First you’re going to show me everywhere you hit tonight. With luck, we can talk to the owners and persuade them not to press charges as long as you promise to clean up after yourself. Then we need to go talk to your mother.”
She opened her mouth as if to argue then closed it again, as if finally realizing just how much trouble she had created for herself.
“I’d rather you just arrest me than take me home,” she said glumly. “My mom’s going to freak.”
“Either way, she’s going to find out, Silver. Trust me, you’re going to want to pick door number two, the one that doesn’t include a trip to juvie.”
As Dani might have predicted, Mia fell asleep about halfway through the movie. Her youngest rarely made it all the way through a show. She would settle in, fully intending to persevere through the whole thing, but every time she curled up and drifted off.
Silver, on the other hand, couldn’t bear not seeing things through to the end. If she started a movie, she would do whatever necessary to stay awake until the closing credits rolled past.
The girls had plenty of other differences. Mia loved dressing up, trying on Dani’s few nice cocktail dresses and high heels, playing with dolls, drawing her own paper dolls and cutting them out. Silver had never done any of those things. When she was Mia’s age, she loved soccer and hockey and watching the Red Sox, though at heart she was a die-hard Mets fan, even at six.
Despite their different personalities, Dani worried about her girls exactly the same.
As she sat in the darkened family room with her sleeping daughter on one side and their aging mutt on the other, Dani’s thoughts circled back to her worries that she had made a grave mistake in moving to Haven Point.
All through those long, difficult years working on her undergraduate degree, then the even harder work to her doctorate, she had dreamed of raising the girls in a place just like this, somewhere rural and peaceful,