Vengeance. Mystery Writers of America Presents B00A25NLU4

that the loss of Grace had left a gaping hole in the girl’s chest.
    “Listen to me,” June had said, her voice more moderate than it had been in weeks. “It’s all right. Just tell the truth, and everything will be fine.”
    Danielle had finally looked up, and June saw in her red-rimmed eyes that she was not angry. She was not vindictive. She was not cruel. She was afraid. She was trapped. The slumped shoulders were not from self-pity, but from self-loathing.
    “It’s my fault Grace died.” Danielle’s words were a whisper, almost too soft to be heard. The court reporter asked her to repeat herself as the girl’s lawyers clamored to ignore the declaration.
    “She saw us,” Danielle said, not to the room, or to the lawyers, but to June.
    And then, with no prodding from the prosecutor, she went on to describe how Richard had seduced her. The longing glances in the rearview mirror as he drove the girls to and from school. The stolen kisses on her cheek, and sometimes her lips. The flattery. The compliments. The accidental touches — brushing his hand across her breast, pressing his leg against hers.
    The first time it happened, they were at school. He had taken her into the faculty lounge, deserted after the last bell, and told her to sit down on the couch. As Danielle described the scene, June moved around the familiar lounge: the humming refrigerator, the scarred laminate tables, the uncomfortable plastic chairs, the green vinyl couch that hissed out a stream of air every time you moved.
    Danielle had never been alone with Richard. Not like this. Not with the air so thick she couldn’t breathe. Not with every muscle in her body telling her to run away. June did not hear the girl’s words so much as experience them. The hand on the back of her neck. The hissing of the couch as she was shoved facedown into the vinyl. The agonizing rip as he forced himself from behind. The skin shredded by his callused hand when he reached around to touch her.
    Why hadn’t she told anyone?
    The lawyer asked this question, but June did not need to hear the girl’s answer.
    If June Connor knew about anything, it was teenage girls. She knew how they thought, what they did to punish themselves when something bad happened, even if that bad thing was beyond their control. Danielle was afraid. Mr. Connor was her teacher. He was Grace’s father. He was friends with her dad. Danielle didn’t want to lose her best friend. She didn’t want to upset June. She just wanted to pretend it hadn’t happened, hope it would never happen again.
    But she couldn’t forget about it. She turned it over again and again in her mind and started blaming herself, because wasn’t it her fault for being alone with him? Wasn’t it her fault for not pulling away when he brushed up against her? Wasn’t it her fault for letting their legs touch, for laughing at his jokes, for being quiet when he told her to be?
    Slowly, in her little-girl voice, Danielle described the subsequent encounters, each time shifting the blame onto herself.
    “I was late with an assignment.”
    “I was going to miss my curfew.”
    “He said it would be the last time.”
    And on and on and on, and finally it really was the very last time because Grace had walked into Richard’s office at home. She’d come to find out if her dad wanted some popcorn. She’d found instead her dad raping her best friend.
    “That’s why …” Danielle gasped, looking up at June. “That’s the night …”
    June didn’t have to be told. Even if she had wanted to, there was no way she could clear that night from her mind. June had been working in her sewing room. Danielle and Grace were upstairs eating popcorn, lamenting their lost chance at the regional championship. Richard was in his office. Martha Parson called, looking for her daughter. Richard offered to drive her home but the girl chose to walk. Why hadn’t June thought it strange that a fifteen-year-old girl would rather walk six blocks in the cold than get a lift from her best friend’s father?
    “It’s my fault,” Danielle managed between sobs. “Grace saw us, and …” Her eyes were nearly swollen shut from crying. Her shoulders folded in so tight that she looked as if she were being sucked backward down a tube.
    There was a long row of windows behind Danielle and her parents. June could see Richard’s reflection in the glass. His face was impassive. There was a glint of white from his glasses. She glanced down and