Page 37 of Second Chance

“Tony,” Daniel says gently. “You know you went through something incredibly traumatic, right?”

Tony opens his mouth to protest—hedidn’t. It was Gianna who lost someone important to her. It was Colette who was wrongfully arrested. It was Daniel whose friend was murdered right outside his building by his other friend. And Daniel was this close to falling into the river from a distance at which water becomes harder than concrete. But Tony can’t get the words out.

“Stacy’s gun was pointed at you. She kidnapped you after everything Gianna and I did got you dragged into her orbit. Youhave every right to be scared and to need people in your life to support you right now.”

Tony takes a few deep, measured breaths, but in the end, he can’t manage more than a nod.

“Want me to drive?” Daniel asks.

“You hate driving my car.”

Daniel shrugs. “True. But I also hate seeing you upset.”

They switch, and Daniel cursing about the way the key sticks in the ignition and the squeaky noise the windshield wipers make when it starts drizzling keeps Tony distracted for the rest of the drive.

He hasn’t talked about it much, the hour or two after Stacy Allan pointed a gun at his chest with shaking fingers and walked him into the woods to kill him. Tony went through it with the police, of course. They had to write down an account of everything that happened, but otherwise, he didn’t think it worth mentioning.

He remembers sacking out in the hospital waiting room with Jeff while Daniel was in surgery after Stacy shot him in the hand. Jeff knew enough of what happened to give a rough account of events when Detective Taylor showed up with Colette.

The detective reviewed the story with him over weak hospital coffee, and Tony told her about it, feeling as if he was hovering above his own body. He remembers burning his tongue on the coffee; he doesn’t remember any of the words he said.

He does remember how it happened, of course. He was in Stacy’s office, asking her a series of innocuous questions about how to get Gianna back into school after her education was summarily halted by her pregnancy. Stacy gave him a whole series of tips and pamphlets, all of which turned out to be useful. Tony found them in the inside pocket of his jacket after it wasall done and saw no reason not to use them. He left them on the dining room table for Gianna. Stacy might have murdered a man, but no one could accuse her of being bad at her job.

That was how he got her. When Tony realized she wouldn’t give him anything useful about Mario’s murder based only on questions about accommodations for students who were single mothers, he tried a different tack. He told her how angry he still was at a dead man for getting his sister in the situation she was in. It wasn’t a lie. The anger still chokes Tony sometimes, how Mario derailed Gianna’s life so thoroughly, and he didn’t even live to deal with the consequences.

And Stacy—Stacy agreed. Vehemently. So vehemently, it shocked Tony.

He and Daniel planned for Tony to press her for information because she had access to the emails being used to frame Colette. Neither of them thought, until that moment, she had anything to do with the murder. But Daniel has this thing he says when he gets frustrated at his own tendency to overcomplicate everything, this theorem—Occam’s razor. The simplest answer is often the correct one. Faced with a woman ranting on and on about how terrible it was when men took advantage of their students, a seed of doubt started to grow in Tony’s mind.

Like an idiot, he pushed it. He asked if maybe, possibly, Stacy thought the murderer did the right thing. Next thing he knew, she whipped a handgun out of her green fake-leather purse and told him he really shouldn’t have asked.

The rest of it was logistics. Stacy took his phone off him, had him unlock it with his fingerprint, and texted Daniel to throw him off the scent. She hid the gun in the folds of her coat as she marched him out of her office and down toward the woods. During winter break, Lobell campus was mostly deserted, so it was easy to act as if they were going for a walk.

Tony didn’t think to be scared until he stood over the water with the gun in point-blank range of his face.

Maybe Tony has worked too hard to forget it because now Daniel has brought it up, he can’t find his way back to equanimity, to forgetting how scared he was when reality sank in.

Tony thinks of Daniel saying the worst has already happened, so he can’t summon fear. He thinks of Lily’s face, tiny in his rearview mirror, shaking and crying and trying so hard not to let this ruin her second chance. He thinks of Sean, projecting calm and nonchalance and only letting Colette know he’s secretly worried. Tony thinks of Colette trying her hardest to never need anyone. He thinks about how, last time, they stumbled on the murderer by accident. This time, the murderer left a fucking note on the door.

There’s nothing he can do about any of it, and that’s what he hates most of all. He doesn’t know how to handle not being able to fix things.

They finally get to his parents’ house, and eating dinner with them feels like trying to breathe underwater. Tony talks shop with Pa—it’s slow going now summer break’s over, with fewer people driving up to Boston or down to the city every other day. Tony agrees with Ma about making up another get-well-soon basket for Kyle’s wife. Apparently, her doctor’s visit revealed she has what might be early stages of arthritis as a consequence of Lyme disease, so she’s not out of the woods yet.

Gianna asks Daniel if there’s been any news.

Daniel tells her it’s probably not dinner conversation with a sidelong glance at Tony.

“Are you going to the memorial thing for Professor Lawrence on Thursday?” Gianna asks.

“Yeah,” Daniel says. “I was planning to. You too?”

Gianna shrugs. “If I can find a babysitter. I only took one class with her, but still.”

“You can bring Lia,” Tony offers. “I’ll hang out with her outside.”

“Thanks.”

Daniel bumps their knees together. “You don’t have to come.”

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