Fatality Read Online Free

her dealing with her parents and a judge. Nurses were bound to be kinder.
    She wondered how she was going to deal with her mother and father. They had had their hands full on several occasions with Tabor, but Rose as a rule came through for them. In part, she was naturally easier than her brother and in part, she enjoyed being the nice one, but also she wasn’t attracted to the edgy activities that drew Tabor.
    She missed her brother suddenly and painfully. His departure for college had left a great hole in the family and they had not entirely gotten over it. Dutiful Rose was not a substitute for star-material Tabor.
    “You’ve gone pretty far just to hide a few lines scribbled in a kid’s diary,” said Megan Moran. “I’m beginning to wonder, Rose, if you yourself had something to do with the murder.”
    Rose was so astonished she almost forgot her vow of silence and began to explain. You don’t understand. It didn’t happen that way. I wasn’t part of anything.
    But the police would say, How did it happen? What was it part of?
    Her parents walked in, and it was not Kate Bering they had brought. It was Mr. Travis, the criminal lawyer they had used that time they were here with Tabor.
    They think I need a major league lawyer, thought Rose, her heart sinking.
    Mom had been crying. Dad was red and puffy with fury, which was good, because if he’d been weepy, she would have wept with him and been weakened.
    Neither of them knew how to greet her. Do you hug and kiss a daughter you’re meeting in the police station because she stole a car?
    “Rose,” said her father, gripping both her shoulders, “you’d better have one good reason for doing this.”
    Since she did of course have one good reason, his anger only strengthened her resolve. “I’m sorry, Daddy, but that was my diary, and nobody has a right to read it, and nobody had a right to take it. Including Mom. So I took it back.”
    “And a police car with it! Are you proud of what you’ve done for some lousy paragraph in some childish old journal?”
    Rose thought this kind of conversation could probably go on for a while, and she was right. Rose returned to silence. Time passed unpleasantly.
    “Do you think this is a film set?” shouted her mother. “Cut the drama!”
    Rose remained silent.
    “Rose,” said Craig Gretzak finally.
    Everybody must be getting pretty sick of her name. One syllable, over and over. Rose, Rose, Rose.
    “Let’s review that time span,” said the policeman. “Anjelica Lofft invited you to spend the weekend at her father’s retreat.”
    Rose had never imagined herself being friends with Anjelica. Even in seventh grade, Rose was academic, a trait that separated her from Anjelica’s crowd. The invitation had been astonishing and wonderful. Rose was filled with excitement and pride that Anjelica had chosen her, instead of interesting and worthy girls like Chrissie or Jill or Halsey, who were quick to pooh-pooh the coming weekend. They pointed out that Anjelica used up friends quickly; that perhaps it would be more truthful to say Anjelica had no friends, merely acquaintances she adopted and discarded in the course of a week or a month. In a dark seventh-grade corner of her heart, Rose thoroughly enjoyed their jealousy.
    “You were thrilled, Rose,” said Megan Moran. “Anyone would be. The Loffts are a big deal. You told all your friends about it. Mr. Lofft and Anjelica planned to pick you up late Friday afternoon and drive to their lake house.”
    The Loffts owned the whole lake and the mountain behind it. They owned every one of the cars in their sixteen-car garage. The girls were only twelve, but Mr. Lofft had promised they could drive any of the cars as long as they stayed in the compound. Maybe go up in his private plane. Preview a movie that had not yet hit the theaters. Ride horses from his stable.
    “That Friday,” said the policeman, “when you left school, you walked two blocks to the Y for swim class.”
    It