“Maybe. Do you know of any data to support that?”
Why did I feel like Rory had probably seen the data?
Hailey shrugged. “That doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.”
Rory didn’t exactly wink, but his eyes got a little twinkly when he was amused. And he seemed to find us pretty amusing. Saving up stories to share at the next office party?
Not that Rory looked like a guy who spent a lot of time at a desk.
Gentleman explorer? His clothes were so perfect, they could have been chosen by a film wardrobe department.
No, if I had to guess, I’d say Rory looked like someone who spent time on the firing range. I was starting to get a stop-in-the-name-of-the-lawvibe.
Anyway, his curiosity appeared genuine when he asked, “Why do you think she turned down help from the bus driver and hid from the sheriff’s deputy?”
Hailey made a face. “I don’t think there’s any mystery about that.”
“No?” Rory turned to me. “You seem pretty confident you know what was going on that night.”
There was definitely a challenge in that.
Which I accepted. “No. I don’t know what happened that night. I just try to think, given this set of circumstances, what’s the most likely thing that would have happened. And then I go from there.”
“And you think that in this set of circumstances, the most likely thing is this lone girl, over a hundred miles from home, would turn down help after a car crash?”
Hailey said, “That’s what she did.”
Rory waited, eyes on mine.
Did I know him from somewhere? Because he sure seemed to know me.
I said, “She wasn’t injured, and it was obvious the car wasn’t going anywhere that night. I think she couldn’t be sure she wouldn’t get a DUI. A DUI is a disaster for anyone at any time. And the timing for Deirdre would have been especially problematic. She just needed six to eight hours to make sure the alcohol was out of her system, and then she could safely retrieve her car and see about salvaging her plans for the week.”
“So she leaves the scene of an accident?”
I glanced at Hailey. She wrinkled her nose but restrained herself to swallowing a mouthful of beer.
I said, “There was no property damage, no injury to anyone or anything. In New Hampshire, that’s a misdemeanor at most. Yes, she’d risk being cited for a misdemeanor over a DUI. Most kids her age—and probably a lot of adults—would do the same.”
Rory considered, conceded. “Yeah. Maybe.”
“Also, though there’s plenty of debate about the run-down condition of her car and the cause of the accident, there’s more reason to believe the car stalled out than she overshot the curve. I think she was shaken up, but still thinking clearly, weighing the risks, considering her options.”
“Walking off into a winter’s night was thinking clearly? You have an unusual perspective.”
I shrugged. “Do I? Sometimes we all have a tendency to forget that Deirdre was only twenty-one.”
“An adult.”
“Sure. Technically. But twenty-one is pretty damned young. Take it from someone who’s spent years trying to teach twenty-one-year-olds stuff they don’t think they need to know.”
His smile was half-grimace. “Okay, I have to give you that one.”
“In fact, if I consider some of the decisions I made at twenty-one, chances I took, risks I thought were worth it?” I shook my head. “At twenty-one you still feel invincible.”
“Truth.” Hailey wiped foam from her lip.
“If you stop thinking of Deirdre as a helpless victim following some preordained path to her doom and start viewing her as a resourceful young woman determined to get out of a scrape, her choices make perfect sense. She couldn’t anticipate she might be that unlucky anomaly in the crime stats.”
