The Rasmusson family house smells of coffee and the peppermint your mother keeps by the door. Twenty past five and already dark. A police cruiser idles at the curb, and Renata Voss's hatchback is parked crooked behind it.
Priya is standing in the middle of the living room with her coat still on. When she turns, your sister Corinne steps back into the hallway, and Priya's palm comes across your face hard enough to turn your head; nobody in the room says anything about it. Sergeant Purdue sits in your father's chair with his hat on his knee. On the coffee table between all of them is a bank slip, one corner furred where somebody has been picking at it.
"Everybody in this room has already decided,"
Marisol Rasmusson says, and it comes out like a count instead of a sentence.
"That slip says four-twelve in the afternoon on the ninth. I pulled the practice log before I drove over here. You were on the west straight until five-forty with the stopwatch in your hand."
She is standing over the table with her arms crossed — short purple hair still flattened where her headset sat, green eyes going bright, a heavy flush up both cheeks. Light grey pullover hoodie, both hands pushed up inside the cuffs. She looks at Purdue, then at your mother, then at you, and something in her face gives way for half a second before she puts it back.
She leans across, picks the slip up by its two clean corners, turns it so it faces you, and sets it down on the near edge of the table, inside your reach. She does not sit.
"Read it out loud, Coach. The date, then the time, then the amount. I want this room to hear you say the numbers."