Chapter 4: The Boy With the Right Smile
My husband, Daniel, answered on the second ring.
"You need to come home," I said.
"Right now.
Don't ask me anything yet.
Just come home."
He was there in eleven minutes.
I heard his car in the driveway and met him at the door.
His face went through three expressions in two seconds when he saw Walter sitting at our kitchen table.
"This is Walter," I said.
"He's the man Chloe has been bringing lunch to.
He came here this morning because Chloe is in trouble."
Daniel looked at me.
"What kind of trouble?"
I handed him the note.
He read it once.
Read it again.
Set it down on the counter very carefully, the way you set something down when you don't trust your own hands.
"Who is he?" Daniel said.
His voice was quiet in the way that meant he was working hard to keep it that way.
"We don't know yet," I said.
"But whoever it is, he knows Walter came here.
He called me.
He told me to put the note away."
Daniel looked at Walter.
"Did Chloe ever mention a name to you?
Anyone at school she was afraid of?"
Walter thought for a moment.
"She mentioned a boy once.
About six weeks ago.
She said something like, 'There's this guy in my class who won't leave me alone, but it's fine, I can handle it.' I asked if she wanted me to do anything.
She laughed and said what was I going to do." He paused.
"I should have pushed harder."
"You came here," I said.
"That's more than most people would have done."
Daniel had his phone out.
"I'm calling the school."
"Wait." I put my hand on his arm.
"If we call the school and they pull Chloe out of class, whoever this is will know immediately.
He's already watching.
He called us within minutes of Walter arriving."
Daniel stopped.
He looked at me.
"So what do we do?"
"We need to know who he is before we make any move." I turned to Walter.
"Did she ever describe him?
Anything at all?"
Walter was quiet for a moment.
"She said he was popular.
That was the word she used.
She said, 'Nobody would believe me anyway because everyone thinks he's so great.'"
Daniel sat down heavily in the chair across from Walter.
"Popular," he said.
"Fifteen years old.
Has photos of our daughter that he's using to keep her quiet." He pressed his fingers against his mouth.
"This is someone she trusted at some point.
You don't get that kind of leverage over someone without getting close to them first."
I thought about the past few months.
The names Chloe had mentioned at dinner.
The friends she talked about.
There was one boy she'd mentioned more than once in September and then stopped mentioning entirely — a name that had simply disappeared from her conversation the way a door quietly closes.
"Ryan," I said.
Both men looked at me.
"She talked about a boy named Ryan at the start of the school year.
She said he was funny.
She said he was in her English class." I looked at Daniel.
"And then she never mentioned him again.
Not once.
I didn't even notice until right now."
Daniel was already pulling up the school's website on his phone — the student council page, the sports rosters, the honor roll list from last spring.
He turned the screen toward me.
There was a photo.
A boy with dark hair and an easy smile, standing in the front row of the junior varsity soccer team.
The caption read: *Ryan Mercer, Grade 10.*
The smile in the photo was the kind that made adults trust you immediately.
I felt sick.
"We need to see what he has," Daniel said.
"Before we go to anyone, we need to know exactly what we're dealing with."
My phone buzzed on the counter.
A text from an unknown number.
*Smart people don't make this into something bigger than it needs to be.*
Daniel read it over my shoulder.
His jaw tightened.
"He's not watching the house," Walter said from the table.
Both of us turned.
"If he were watching the house, he'd have sent that the moment I walked in.
He sent it now, which means someone told him.
Someone at the school saw Chloe's face this morning and reported back to him."
The room went quiet.
"She has a friend who reports to him," I said slowly.
Walter nodded.
"That would be my guess."
I looked at Daniel.
He looked at me.
May you like
Somewhere across town, our daughter was sitting in a classroom, terrified, believing she was protecting us by staying silent.
And the boy with the easy smile thought he had already won.
