Peter invited Danny and Celeste over and showed them to his room for privacy. The soft, quiet conversation they shared was short but emotional.

Danny and Celeste both started crying when Peter, teary eyed himself, told them about the conversation he’d had with his parents.

Rion really did it.

And Amber had been pregnant.

“So… So your parents know?” Danny said as they passed around tissues. “Did you tell them what Rion said?”

“Yes,” Peter said, his mouth twisting at the memory. “It was a rough conversation. They got really upset. They said they need some time to think about everything. We visited Noa last night too, but… It was awkward. None of us knew what to say.”

“You didn’t ask him anything else about Rion?” Danny said.

Peter shook his head. “I didn’t want to get into it last night. I couldn’t bring it up.”

Danny understood completely. He was really upset about the whole thing too. It was so messed up.

Rion really did it. Rion really…

“But… But if she hit her head,” Danny said. “If Amber… Then maybe Rion… I mean, what he did was horrible, but…but maybe she really was dead already? Didn’t he mention that when he told us? Didn’t he…?”

It hurt to say, but he wanted it to be the truth. He didn’t want Rion to have killed her. If Amber slipped and fell and was already dead, then…what Rion did was still wrong but it didn’t have the same weight. Because that way, Amber would have already been gone.

It was easier to accept. It hurt just a tiny bit less.

“I don’t know,” Peter said, shaking his head. “My parents said it looked like Amber hit her head. That’s what the police said. But whether that killed her or the blow dryer did… No one knows.”

“Please, can we not talk about that?” Celeste said. She had her face in her hands. “I don’t want to think about it. I hate it.”

“Sorry,” Peter said.

“Yeah…” Danny said.

They lapsed into silence, going for another round of tissues.

“I have Amber’s diary,” Peter said. “Mom and Dad gave it to me.”

“Did you read it?” Danny asked.

“Just the last few pages,” Peter said. His voice was tight. He didn’t look at them when he spoke. “It was like my parents said. Amber found out she was pregnant before they’d gone to the cabin. She’d done a test. Apparently, she was about three months along…”

“I helped her get the pregnancy test,” Celeste said, sniffling.

“What? You mean, you knew?” Danny asked.

Celeste shook her head. “No. Amber said… She said she’d missed her… She was worried and wanted to have a test to be sure. I didn’t think she… It didn’t seem like… She didn’t say anything else about it.”

“Geez,” Danny said. “Man, this is…”

“It’s a lot,” Peter said.

It was hard for Danny to imagine that Amber had been pregnant. It was hard to imagine that Rion had put her in the bathtub and…

The whole thing was messed up. None of it felt real.

Danny reached up, raking his fingers through his hair.

“And you haven’t talked to Jesse?” Danny said.

“No,” Peter said. “How can I? What am I supposed to say? Obviously I was wrong about Rion, but…”

“He has the right to know she was pregnant,” Celeste said. “He was the father. He…he needs to know.”

Peter grimaced. “I want to agree with you, but… Telling him is not going to go over well.”

“Yeah,” Danny said with a wince of his own. He remembered how Jesse was acting the other day. “I don’t think he’s going to take it well…”

“But we have to tell him,” Celeste said. “Imagine if something like that happened to one of you. You’d want to know, wouldn’t you? Even if it hurts…”

“Yeah,” Danny had to agree again. “But I think… Maybe we shouldn’t break it to him all at once? What if we tell him that Rion was telling the truth and then…then wait a bit before telling him the rest?”

“I don’t know. I feel like he’ll be even more mad and hurt if we keep it a secret from him,” Celeste said. “I think it’s better to do it all at once.”

“I don’t know,” Peter said, pinching the bridge of his nose, leaning back. “I really don’t know. I’m stumped. I think no matter what we do, he’s going to get really upset. There isn’t any easy way of doing it.”

“Maybe…if we give him Amber’s diary?” Celeste suggested.

Peter got up from his seat on the bed. He went and got the diary from a drawer on the desk Danny was sitting at. It was a binder, packed full of loose-leaf. It seemed like Amber had been inspired by Rion’s scrapbook.

Peter held it up.

“Do you want to read it?” Peter asked.

Celeste flinched, looking down. “No…”

“You?” Peter said, offering it to Danny.

He shook his head. He didn’t feel comfortable looking through Amber’s old stuff. A diary was supposed to be personal and private and… Thinking about reading it was making his skin crawl.

That diary was Amber’s property. It was private. And now she was dead. No one should be looking at it. It felt wrong.

“It was hard enough for me to look,” Peter said. “I don’t know if it will be any easier for Jesse. I feel like seeing this won’t make him any happier.  It won’t change the facts.  It’s… Everything is just messed up, and…”

He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, steadying himself.

“I don’t think there’s going to be anything we can do to make Jesse happy,” Danny said. “He loved Amber so much. No matter what, this is really going to hurt him. I… I don’t know.”

“What do we do about Rion and Noa?” Celeste added. “We know Rion was telling the truth. And Noa… Was he lying then?”

“I don’t know. Probably,” Peter said. “Maybe we should avoid visiting them for a day or two. I mean, I’ll go with my family to see Noa, but… I think we need a break. And maybe we should take some time and figure out the best way to explain things to Jesse.”

“It’s going to be really hard,” Celeste said.

“Yeah,” Danny agreed. “There’s no good way to break the news to him.”

And, really, Danny felt horrible for Jesse. It was going to hit him the hardest. There wasn’t a good way to tell him. It was going to be a mess, a disaster.

“I have to be the one to do it,” Peter said.

“Are you sure?” Celeste asked.

“I was the one calling Rion a liar,” Peter said. “I apologized to you for that already, but I need to apologize to him too. I owe it to him.”

“We could go with you or something, though,” Danny said. “I mean, you don’t have to do it by yourself.”

“You’re right,” Peter said. “But I still have to be the one to tell him. I feel responsible. I just…need time. I need to sort it out in my own head first.”

“You don’t have to feel responsible,” Celeste began but Peter shook his head.

“I was the one who insisted that Rion wouldn’t do that. I was the one who called Rion a liar. I really wanted to believe it and I… I was wrong. And I need to admit that to Jesse.”

“But what you said made sense,” Danny said, twisting the tissues in his hands. “Like…you’re right. We still don’t know how the pictures are involved or any of that. And…it’s really not like Rion. I can’t believe that he… It doesn’t seem like him at all. It doesn’t make sense.”

“Maybe we’re still missing something,” Peter admitted. “Maybe. But we know what Rion did. And Jesse needs to hear it. I need to be the one to tell him.”

“At least let us come with you,” Celeste said.

“Okay,” Peter said. “If you want to come, I’ll let you know when I’m doing it.”

“So… We’re going to take a day or two to cool off and then talk to Jesse?” Danny asked. “That’s the plan?”

“That’s the plan.”

“Okay then…”

They lapsed into another brief silence. There were no more tears, but the atmosphere was heavy and somber.

“I’m going to tell Sarina,” Celeste finally said.

“What?” Danny said, sitting up. “Are you crazy? She’ll freak out all over again!”

“If we start talking about it and we tell Jesse…” Celeste began and then shook her head. “Rumours spread so fast. Maybe no one else will know, but…do we really want to risk Sarina finding out because someone else told her? She’ll probably only hear a partial truth and lose it. And the way she treated Rion before…”

“Yeah, I get that,” Danny said, “but Sarina’s going to go ballistic. I mean, she was willing to beat the shit out of Rion right in front of us. What do you think she’ll do when she hears that…that he…”

Danny couldn’t say it. The words caught in his throat.

The thought of telling Sarina filled his chest with a dull ache. He knew what she was like. He knew how she could fly off the handle and how stubborn she could be. If Sarina found out…

Even if Rion really had put Amber in the bathtub with the blow dryer, he did not deserve whatever Sarina would do to him.

“It’ll be so much worse if Sarina hears it from anyone else,” Celeste said. “And no one will see it coming. At least this way we can tell Rion we told Sarina. He’ll know and…and that’s better than getting sideswiped. I can try to talk her down, too.”

“I don’t think she’ll listen,” Peter said. “I don’t know… It’s a bad idea. I don’t think Sarina will find out. I doubt Jesse will tell anyone.”

“All it takes is for one person to say the wrong thing to someone else. Or around someone else,” Celeste said. “Everyone’s always listening and talking… People already know that we don’t hang out with Sarina anymore.”

“They do?” Danny said. “But…what? Who’s talking about that?”

“All of our neighbours,” Celeste said.

“One of my old friends asked me about it when we ran into each other at the post office,” Peter added. “And the last time I went to the store, the cashier… You remember Melanie? She asked me if it was true that Sarina beat up Rion while we watched.”

Danny had spent so long in the city that he’d forgotten how fast the rumour mill could run. He was taken aback.

“But…but no one was there,” Danny said. “How could anyone know?”

“We went to the hotel and had coffee right after. Anyone could have heard,” Celeste said.

“Not to mention that some people have nothing better to do than peek through their curtains and watch everything that goes on down the street,” Peter said.

“It’s not like that in the city,” was all Danny could say. “I… Wow.”

“Maybe you’re right, Celeste,” Peter said. “Maybe we should tell Sarina. I just have a bad feeling about it.”

“I’ll talk to her,” Celeste said. “We’ll have a conversation. I feel like she’s getting better. She said that she tried to apologize to Rion. And she gave him those chocolates…”

“Why do I feel like all of that will go right out the window the second she knows what happened?” Danny said with a grimace. “I don’t think it’s a good idea.”

“I know,” Celeste said. “But Rion’s as safe as he can be right now. It’s not like Sarina would have an easy time hurting him in the hospital.”

Some tiny, really mean part of Danny wondered if Rion deserved to have Sarina sent after him. But he immediately crushed the thought, appalled that he’d had it in the first place.

What Rion did was horrible. It was awful. But it was a mistake. Rion didn’t mean to hurt Amber. His logic was just…messed up. And he’d been a dumb kid, and…

Danny couldn’t think about it too hard. Not right now. It was making his head and his heart hurt.