Little Broken Things by Cheryl Bradshaw

Author:Cheryl Bradshaw [Bradshaw, Cheryl]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pixie Publishing

Chapter 27

Shawn claimed to have valuable information. Information I wanted. But did I believe him? I slid my cell phone back into my pocket and decided to find out.

“Start talking,” I said.

“You were right before.”

“Right about what?”

“I stopped by Kennedy Nixon’s house on the night she died.”

“Why did you lie to the police when they questioned you?”

“Because I wasn’t involved in her death. The fact I was there before she died shouldn’t matter.”

“It does matter, and you were involved. Why were you there in the first place?”

He leaned against the wall, bowed his head. “So, I’m at work one day and Kennedy shows up. She apologized for spreading rumors about me around school and said she wanted to make it up to me.”

“What was your response?”

“I told her to leave, and she started talking, well … like a crazy person.”

“And how does a crazy person talk?”

“She said she was glad she got the chance to say she was sorry before it was too late.”

“Too late for what?”

“I wondered the same thing, so I asked her. She started laughing. One minute she’s flipping out; the next, she’s laughing so hard she can’t stop. I may have called her a, you know, a freak or something—because, I mean, she was one, right? She looked me dead in the eye and said I didn’t need to worry. The freak wouldn’t ever bother me again because she planned to kill herself that night.”

If what he told me was true, it panged my heart. How isolated and alone she must have been to consider ending her life. I thought about the flaws in today’s society. Far too many spent their lives picking themselves apart until all the meat was stripped from the bone. What meager spirit remained lacked the strength to fight—the light becoming so dim, they were no longer capable of freeing themselves from their troubles.

“After Kennedy told you what she was planning, how did the conversation end?” I asked.

It was a question he didn’t want to answer.

He cleared his throat and avoided eye contact, the smug, overconfident façade he’d displayed earlier, replaced by a look of shame.

“I may have accused her of lying,” he muttered under his breath.

“About killing herself?”

“Yeah, I thought it was one more lie in a string of others to get me to feel sorry for her. After I said it, she looked at me and didn’t say a word. She just stood there with a funny look on her face. Then she got into her car and left.”

“If you thought she was lying, why did you stop by her house?”

“Look, I know what I said to her, all right? Something in the way she was when she left bugged me all day. I thought, what if I was wrong, what if she wasn’t joking? So after I finished work, I drove to her parents’ place. My plan was to check on her, prove to myself she was bluffing. Then I was going to leave.”

“Was she alive when you arrived?”

He nodded.

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