Read Online All for One by Ryne Douglas Pearson - Free Book Online

tell him what really happened.”
    “He was trying to trick you,” Bryce said.
    “Duh!” PJ shot back.
    “What’s with you?” Joey asked her.
    PJ gave Bryce a sharp look, then shook her head. It hadn’t been a good day. Damn you, Walter Curtis. “Nothing.”
    “My mom got ticked off at the cops,” Joey said. “She said that if they didn’t let me go she would call my dad and have him come up from Miami to defend me. They released me right then.”
    “What did they do to you, Mike?” Bryce inquired.
    “Nothing. Just asked a lot of questions. The same ones over and over. You’ve just got to remember to give the same answers.”
    Joey nodded. “If you mess up they can use that against you later. It’s called prior inconsistent statements.”
    “Did your dad teach you that?” Bryce asked. Everyone knew that Joey’s dad was a big lawyer down in Florida, with a new wife and a boat he raced on weekends.
    “Nah. OJ.”
    Jeff did a one-handed drum roll on the table. “See, it’s all okay. We did it. Today was good. Didn’t you think so?”
    “It was...yeah, okay,” Michael agreed.
    Joey nodded cautiously. “So we’re okay. Miss Austin is okay. Everyone in class is okay.”
    “Right,” PJ said, understanding Joey’s unspoken concern. “Except we don’t know about Elena.”
    “If she’d talked we’d be in jail right now,” Jeff said.
    Bryce looked to PJ. “You said she wouldn’t talk.”
    “I don’t think she will,” PJ said. Her confidence had been tempered by Elena’s absence.
    “So what do we do?” Bryce asked Joey.
    “We do this. We do what we’d normally do. Just like we said. Act normal and don’t talk about it. Don’t even think about it.”
    Bryce nodded. It wasn’t the easiest thing to do, keeping it all inside, but Joey did make sense. He hadn’t been wrong so far. “And Elena?”
     Joey held up one hand. His fingers were crossed.

Six
    Four o’clock, the sun low and yellow over her left shoulder, Mary Austin strolled across the ball field to the teachers’ parking lot and to her Jeep Cherokee. She heaved her shoulder bag onto the passenger seat, climbed in, and locked the door before collapsing forward against the steering wheel, arms hugging and forehead touching the cool, leathery circle.
    “Thank you,” she sighed, releasing the half breath she’d anxiously horded since rising that morning. It was done. The first day back. She breathed deep and long, again and again. Done. Done. Done.
    And it had been all right. They were all okay.
    Almost all, she corrected herself, thinking, Elena. Not that her absence was beyond understanding, but Mary had hoped so dearly that they all would be able to get back to normal. In a month, a week, a day; it didn’t matter how long. Just that they all would move on. Let what happened the previous Wednesday exist as another reality that would be dealt with as needed. This reality, the reality for her and for the children she knew so dearly, was the prime reality. It was stability, it was predictability, it was consistency, it was safety. She’d worked so hard to create this place for them, and she’d seen them thrive. Excel. Change. Mature. She’d seen that first hand.
    She had also seen one child almost destroy it in life. She’d be damned if she was going to let him complete the damage from the grave.
    They would all be fine, Mary told herself. They were survivors. Elena, too. She would b—
    “BITCH!!!”
    Mary’s head jerked up at the cry, and at the crunch of metal on metal, and the tinkly breaking of glass. Through the windshield she saw Chuck Edmond, standing at the left front of her car, a silvery baseball bat held in one hand and an open switchblade in the other. He glared at her and eased to the driver’s side of the car, the bat coming high and swirling round and round like the weapon of some karate master until it came suddenly down upon the windshield right in front of her, carving a million spiny webs in the gentle