Sound Carries

33.

The next morning, the phone rang.

Blearily, I picked up, tried to force my voice into something that sounded like a person. "Hello?"

"Leah?"

Audra's voice, shrill, irritated.

I sighed. "Yes."

There was a slight huff, then - "Are you in Gabriel's room?"

Her voice sounded astringent.

"What?" I sat up, pressed the phone to my ear with my shoulder as I pulled one sock on. "No. Of course not. You called me by mistake. Again."

Audra made a low, impatient sound, and then I heard the muffled click of the receiver.

I remembered, with sudden and stark clarity, the phone call I'd received the morning after Hannah had disappeared.

I'd forgotten all about it. At the time I'd thought it was Hannah. But if she had already been lying at the bottom of the tower, then it had to have been someone else on the other end of the line.

Whoever that person was, they hadn't told me who they were. But Audra was the only one who ever called this room.

Any other day, like today, Audra would have told me it was her. But what if she hadn't wanted me to know she had been calling Gabriel?

The implication surrounded me like a heavy fog, not something I wanted to consider. Why wouldn't she have wanted me to know? She normally didn't have a problem with it.

It couldn't have been. There was no way.

But the truth was there, stacking up steadily against her.

Gabriel's voice from last night came back to me.

I didn't know what else to do.

What if it was possible that Gabriel knew something?

Audra, even without the pressure of a lead, looked like she was crumbling. Gabriel was worried about her. They'd gotten back together, and he said it because he hadn't known what else to do. Had his confession last night possibly been a cry for help? Did Gabriel know what really happened that night?

I resolved to find out.

Cecily's bed was empty and unmade as I slung my feet over the edge of the bed. I was right in the middle of considering how I should tell Oliver – who, I noted with a slight twinge, was Gabriel's best friend and closest confidant – what I was beginning to suspect, when I remembered the night before, and I slowed in my enthusiasm.

I'd gone to bed last night bitter and deflated. Oliver hadn't come to check in, and I assumed he'd gone back to the party.

I sat there on the edge of the bed, trying to decide how I felt about that. It just didn't feel important, not then, with everything that had just occurred to me.

I checked his room, but Colin, annoyed and sleep ruffled, arrived at the door to tell me that Oliver had already left, and that he thought he'd said something about piano, so I wandered down to the practice rooms, but didn't find him there either.

The school was eerily quiet, draped in the post-party silence of late Sunday morning. It wasn't until I was walking down the backway past the auditorium that I heard a familiar piano piece, and realized where he was.

I walked into the auditorium from the back, not surprised to see that Oliver had rolled the piano out into center stage, and was sitting quietly, no music on the stand, just playing idly.

"I can't believe they let you do that."

He startled, turned, saw it was me, and let his hands fall from the keys. "Hey."