Page 41 of Dear Debbie

Tabitha looks less than thrilled to see me, but she manages a halfhearted smile. “Hello, Debbie.”

I touch her arm in a gesture of sympathy. “How are you feeling today? Still throwing up?”

At the question, several of the other women flash us an alarmed look.

Tabitha frowns at me. “I’m totally fine, thanks.”

“Are you sure? You look a bit peaked.”

“I’m not peaked,” Tabitha says through her teeth. “I’m fine.”

Several of the women are now staring at us, so I decide to let her off the hook. I nod at the police car. “Do you know what’s going on?”

Tabitha is not excited to talk to me, probably because she’s embarrassed that she vomited in my presence yesterday, but she’s also an incorrigible gossip. She battles her emotional turmoil for a moment, then finally says, “Somebody called the school and said they saw a camera in the showers of the girls’ locker room.”

“A camera?”

“A nanny cam—like for recording.” She clutches her chest, her eyes wide. “Can you imagine? Some sicko was recording high school girls taking a shower!”

Now the question of the day: “Do they know who?” I ask.

She shakes her head. “There are no security cameras that record outside the locker room and obviously none in the locker room. So I’m not sure if they have any suspects.”

Oh, come on. I’m pretty sure the anonymous tipster mentioned a name.

I endure another twenty minutes of speculation among the group of women, and I’m tempted to turn around and go home. I’m sure I’ll hear how it plays out on social media. But just as I’m about to give up and go back to my car, the doors of the school burst open. The police are leading a man out of the building in handcuffs.

“Oh my God!” Tabitha grabs my arm tightly enough that her nails bite into me. “It’s Coach Pike!”

It is indeed Coach Pike. His hands are cuffed in front of him as the police escort him out of the school. He makes the mistake of turning in our direction, and every single woman whips out her phone practically in unison and snaps a photo of the coach being arrested.

“I didn’t do it!” Coach Pike is yelling. “That camera wasn’t mine! I don’t know how that stuff got on my phone!”

“Yeah, right,” Tabitha mutters to me. “Does he really think anyone believes that? What a creep.”

“Such a creep,” I agree. And then, just to add more fuel to the fire, I add, “I used to see him staring at the girls’ butts during soccer practice. I’m not at all surprised.”

“Oh my gosh!” another mother exclaims. “I always knew there was something off about him!”

The dam has burst, and now all the women are excitedly exchanging stories about what a jerk Coach Pike was. We’re still sharing anecdotes when the police car drives away with the coach in the back seat.

33

COOPER

Debbie burned the pancakes this morning.

She’s never burned pancakes in the entire time I’ve been married to her. She’s not a gourmet cook, but she never burns things. And the pancakes weren’t just a little on the brown side—they were black on the bottom with an acrid odor. The entire kitchen reeked.

It seemed like a particularly ominous sign.

When I get to the office, Mrs. McCauley is sitting primly at her desk. She gets to her feet when she sees me. “Mr. Mullen, can I have a word?”

I don’t really feel like having a conversation with Mrs. McCauley, but I obediently approach her desk. “What’s going on?”

“Mr. Bryant has decided to take a spur-of-the-moment fishing trip,” she says. “He informed me via email this morning that he would be absent for the rest of the week.”

Fantastic. That means I don’t have to see him.