At the End of the Garden

Chapter Twenty-Eight

There wasn't a lock on my door, which was starting to feel like an inconvenience. My mum didn't come up to my room often and Dad always knocked, but still, I didn't want to risk anyone bursting in and catching me. Not that I was doing some awful criminal thing. I was talking to Eden on the phone.
"She didn't say anything else?" Eden asked.
"No." I told him, whispering. "She did sort of admit to knowing something?"
"What?"
"She said that there were things I'm better off not knowing, or something like that."
There was a moment of silence where neither of us had any new ideas, which made sense since neither of us really knew what we were doing and what for. Well, I think I did more than Eden, I just didn't know how to get to what I wanted.
"I don't know what else we can do." Eden said, "if you really think there's something - well, I don't know what you're thinking."
That was unsettling, doing nothing. So was doing something.
"We could always..." Eden began hesitantly. "Involve... I really don't what you're thinking but, police?"
I took too long to respond and Eden jumped back in with his own rebuttal. "I'm not sure what we'd say. That we're suspicious about some things surrounding an event that happened three years ago."
"Three years ago?" I repeated.
"That's what I said."
I sighed loudly, another bad habit my mum hated. "Ren and Michael went to the police about the coat, back when it first happened, and nothing changed."
There was another silence. I started to wonder why Eden was doing this. Did he realise that we didn't have the whole truth like I did and Sidney had? Or was he just, I don't know, making sure I wasn't getting in trouble?
"I still have the keys." I said.
Eden didn't reply for a while. "You want to go into his school office?"
"Yes."
"What for? What could we find?"
"What were you looking for when you went into his home office, anything specific?"
"Not really?"
"Exactly." I said with finality. "If... we could find something like the register on his home computer, I could put my thoughts together a bit better. We've just got to find a way to get in there."
"It would have to be after school."
I agreed. "And after Ms Claire leaves." That was the name of Victor Quinn's assistant.
"She leaves at normal time, my father works late on a Friday."
Another idealess silence. Until I heard a faint sigh.
"My father and I haven't haven't spoken about the incident, or at all since Wednesday." He said. "I could get him to come home early to talk, maybe."
"You could?"
"But it would mean you'd be on your own."
I swallowed so loudly Eden probably heard it.
"Okay." I eventually said. I don't think he was expecting that answer.
"Are you sure?"
"Yes."
"You don't have to."
"I can do it."
"Marie, you were too nervous to bring your phone into school."
"I can do it!" I said, feeling a bit frustrated that he brought that up. I wasn't brave. If in the end I was too scared to go through with this, I don't think either of us would be surprised.
"Okay." Eden finally said, unconvinced (like it wasn't his idea). "I'll ask him now."
Not long later, Eden hung up and I went to check the keys were still in my blazer pocket. I checked another three times that night and twice before I went to school in the morning. They hadn't gone anywhere.

"You better have an appetite when we go out tomorrow." Ren said, as I put my lunchbox (still half full of food) into my bag.
My heart had been in my throat all day, and I couldn't get any food to go past it. It was throbbing continuously too. I had way too much blood in my system, enough to make me faint. Eden had managed to arrange to speak with his father. At four today, Victor Quinn would leave his office and go home to meet his son. School ended at three-thirty.
"Yeah, are you feeling okay?" Michael added.
"I'm fine. Oh. But about tomorrow." I'd suddenly remembered.
"If you tell us you're too good for fast food I'm going to slap you." Ren said. It was enough to make me laugh. Her weird comments had a way of making me feel brave enough to say anything.
"No. It's not that. I'm grounded."
The pair of them looked reasonably surprised (Ren more than Michael), it was only the other day I'd told them I'd never been in detention before.
"What for?" Michael eventually asked.
"Um... Eden and I got caught sneaking into Victor Quinn's office, his home one."
"You what?" Ren snorted. "Marie, I have so many questions."
"Why were you in there?" Michael started.
Good question.
"That's another story." I said.
"Oh, come on." Surprisingly, it was Michael who made this whiny comment.
"Is this one of those things you've got to wait to tell us?" Ren asked.
"Yes, actually." I said.
There... wasn't much reason to keep anything from them anymore. After tonight, after Victor Quinn's school office, I was mostly out of ideas (there was still the rest of his house to search, but I wasn't allowed there anymore). If I had to get anyone else involved it would be these two. But I guess I was just hesitant to tell them what I thought, how me and Sidney had lied to them about the rumour and how we both were working from the assumption that their friend was dead.
"Monday." I added with finality.
"You'll tell us then?"
"Uh-huh."
"Fine." Ren sighed. "Though, if we were, say, to show up at your house with food tomorrow, you would be wrong to turn us away, wouldn't you?"
"Absolutely." I said, before telling them my address to make sure they were nowhere near my house at any point tomorrow.