“I thought maybe it was me he was interested in, like as a friend, like he wanted us to be pals again. He wasn’t there to toke, ’cause he didn’t toke, and he wasn’t there to joke around, because he didn’t joke either. He was just there. And then I got an inkling he wasn’t there for me, he was there for Hailey.

“Why is it that everything we most dread in this life we end up forcing on ourselves? I started making fun of him, needling him like I did, laughing at him for not reefing up with us, for being so quiet, for not liking no girls. Laughing at his back when he stormed off. And then one night, when he stormed off, Hailey, she gave me a look that froze my heart before she went off after him.

“It wasn’t long before I realized something was going on, and it drove me insane. The thought of her doing all the things with him that she wouldn’t do with me. I couldn’t sleep. I started hanging outside her house at night, waiting to catch her with him. I never did but that meant nothing. Sometimes, in desperation, I called out her name and that uncle of hers, a brutal piece of man if ever there was one, would rush outside with his shotgun and tell me to get the hell away or he’d spatter me sure all over the county. I knew he would, too, it was in him, but it didn’t mean a thing to me. I was insane. And then one day I just went after Jesse.

“I always was taller than him, stronger than him, and when as boys we wrestled, I always ended up on top forcing him to yell uncle. But he had kept playing ball and working out and the only thing I was exercising was my lungs, and this time it wasn’t even close to a fair fight. I started it, he finished it, and I ended up in the hospital.

“My cheek was shattered, my jaw broken, my knee was busted up, I had bruises up and down my side. When I came in, the doctors said I looked like I’d been hit by a truck, but that wasn’t the worst. Everyone knew what had happened, I had lost my girl to some closet queer, I went after him and he put me in the hospital. You know how in every high school there’s that guy? Well, I wasn’t him anymore.

“No one came visiting, not even my daddy, who was ashamed both that I had fought and that I had lost. Only my stepmom would keep me some company, staying by my side, wiping my brow when I hurt too much to move. And when I got out, it was like I had turned into something else, some ungainly cripple creature no one wanted to have a thing to do with. You can guess how I felt, like everyone had turned on me, and they had. And then there was my former girl and former best friend off together in their little blissful world, leaving me hobbling in the gutter. I wanted to kill them, I did. I wanted to kill them both, and I said so to anyone who would listen.”

“And so when you knew he was planning to meet Hailey at the quarry,” I said, “you were there waiting for him.”

“No, I wasn’t. I wasn’t, that was it, what no one would believe. I wasn’t there. I swear.”

“Then where were you?”

“Someplace else.”

“Where? With Hailey?”

He stopped talking, just shut down like a radio turned off for a long moment. He stopped talking and sat, and you could see the muscles in his face flinch as he considered which of his answers to tell.

“Yes,” he said finally.

“Hell you was,” said Skink. “Makes no sense that you would be, what with all the stuff happening between you and Jesse and her. You’re just saying it because you think that’s the surest way to keep your arse out of trouble. You’re still worried about it, aren’t you, mate? Even though it happened fifteen years ago and Hailey is dead, you’re still worried they’re going to think you done it.”

“Yes,” he said.

“But you didn’t, did you?”

“No.”

“And I believes you,” said Skink.

He looked up at Skink with a strange hope in his face. “Do you?”

“Yes I do,” said Skink, “but no one else did, did they?”

Grady shook his head.

“Your daddykins wouldn’t believe a word from your face. He was sure you done it, wasn’t he? He thought he had no choice but to bail out your arse. So he paid off his pals, the priest, the police chief, and the doctor, and worked a deal with Hailey. He worked a deal wheres he would pay for her college, pay for her to get the hell out of Pierce, so long as she made sure his boy didn’t rot in jail for the rest of his life.”

Grady Pritchett’s eyes widened. “How do you know?”

“Because you’re still in love with her, mate,” said Skink.

“No I’m not.”

“Don’t even try. I can recognize the signs.” Skink glanced at me. “It’s a frigging epidemic, being still in love with Hailey Prouix. But you wouldn’t still love her if she got you off for something you really done. That’s not the way it works. If she had done that, well, you’d be blaming her now for every wrong thing in your life.”

“She’s the only one I can’t blame.”

“There you go.”

“It was her idea,” said Grady. “She came to me while I was still in jail for questioning. She came to me, and when I told her I didn’t do it, like I told everyone I didn’t do it, she was the sole one who believed me. It was she who came up with the idea of her being my alibi. She said she would work it out, so long as I agreed to parrot her story. And I did. Because I swear to God I thought they were going to fry my ass. I didn’t know yet my dad had the fix in. Both for the charges, and for my life.”

“What do you mean?” I said.

“It was never the warmest between us. And when I stopped playing ball, which was so important to him, it turned hard. But after this, after him thinking I had killed Jesse, where the hell could it go after that?” He stopped for a moment and wiped at his eyes, and his cheeks glistened in the pale light of the lantern. “He made me stay until the coroner ruled it an accident and the investigation was closed, made me stay in the house without a word passing between us. Then late one night he came into my room, just the shadow of him with the light coming in from behind. He was holding a drink, I remember, the ice clinked against the glass. And he told me to go the next day, to just up and go and to never come back. And so I did, the very next day.” He wiped at his eyes once more. “I never did see him again.”

He lifted his beer and drained it. Skink rescued another from the death ring of plastic and tossed it to him. Grady popped it right open and swallowed all the foam that spurted out and then drank half of that one, too.

“After he died, well, he left most everything to my stepmom, who went down to live in Florida with some guy named Lenny, and he left me nothing except for one stinking used-car lot here in Weston. I thought it was him giving me another chance, thought I could turn it into something like he would have wanted me to, maybe a whole chain of dealerships like he had built. But inventory sucked, and sales, they’ve never been what they should have been, and with the kids vacuuming up the money there’s nothing left for expanding, and every day I go into that place it squeezes more life right out of me. I thought he was giving me a final chance, and now I know it was his final punishment for doing what I never did do.

“But I didn’t begrudge Hailey what she got out of it, and I still don’t. It wasn’t her fault the way she was, and she never fooled me about nothing. In fact, in the whole mess, what she did for me in the jail was the one decent thing anyone did for me. In fact, we was still friends, even after she moved east. I sometimes would drive up to see her in Philadelphia. So maybe you’re right, maybe I still had a crush. Hell, more than maybe. But she never encouraged it or let me do nothing about it. She was just always kind to me, and seeing her even for a little sometimes made me feel the way I felt before, when we was at the quarry at the start and I was still that guy and she was my girl and everything coming was going to be just so smooth.”