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his pen. “If you want to continue
     to beat yourself up, go right ahead, but it’s doubtful that he was killed randomly.
     If it wasn’t random, it was either from circumstance or premeditated. Circumstance
     also seems unlikely, since that is usually the result of being in the wrong place
     at the wrong time, and it’s hard to see how using the men’s room in an almost entirely
     empty elementary school could be the wrong place.”
    “Or the wrong time?”
    “Or the wrong time,” he agreed. “That leaves a murder of premeditation, and that gets
     you off the hook.”
    I wasn’t so sure that his explanation would hold up to the ugly light of reality,
     but since all he was doing was trying to make me feel better, I didn’t start slicing
     great whacking holes in the analysis.
    Instead, I went on to describe how Dennis had agreed to volunteer his time to help
     the PTA. “He grew up in Rynwood,” I said, “did you know? Went here to elementary school.”
     We might have been sitting in one of the rooms where Dennis had spent a school year.
     That desk there might have been where Dennis sat.
    I sighed.
    Stay away from that line of thinking, Beth. It’ll just depress you, and what good
     will you be to anyone if you’re sunk into a pit of despair?
    Quotes from one of my top-ten favorite movies of all time,
The Princess Bride,
flashed through my head, and I began to feel a little less desolate. I told Gus about
     tonight’s PTA meeting, about me calling for a break. How Marina and I hadn’t left
     the room, so I didn’t know who was where when. How people were coming back into the
     room when the gun went off. How Nick and I ran down the hall. How Nick chased what
     we assumed to be the gunman. How I found Dennis. How someone had called 911. And Gus
     had been there for the rest of it.
    “Okay.” He wrote and wrote, then finally stopped. “Now comes the hard part. Who was
     in the room with you and Marina when you heard the shot?”
    “Nick and Carol Casassa,” I said promptly. “And Randy Jarvis. Tina Heller wasn’t in
     the room, but she was just outside the door. Um . . .” I closed my eyes, thinking,
     and gave him the name of two other PTA parents. “Those I’m sure about. Anyone else,
     I can’t say.”
    “Keep your eyes closed,” Gus said, “and see the room again, just before the gun went
     off, when you and Marina were arguing about what’s secret and what’s not.”
    “We weren’t arguing,” I said. “We were . . . talking.”
    “Think about the room just before the gun went off,” he said. “You were at the table.
     Marina was on the other side of it. Randy Jarvis was sitting down. Nick and Carol
     were standing behind the back row of desks. Lynn Snider was talking to Rachel Helmstetter.
     Do you see anyone else?”
    “Whitney Heer,” I said, surprised. “I’d forgotten. Whitney and a friend of Natalie
     Barnes. I don’t know her name, but I can get it.”
    Gus made a satisfied noise. “Good job.”
    I glowed a little. Getting praise from Gus was like getting a pat on the back from
     a much older brother. After our falling-out in the spring, I hadn’t been sure our
     relationship would ever return to its former solid friendship. But after a few weeks
     of prickly choir practices, he’d asked, in an unusually diffident way, if I’d mind
     having breakfast with him at the Green Tractor.
    I’d hesitated, but had eventually agreed. The meal had started off more awkward than
     a blind date between two freshly divorced people. We’d sat. Ordered. Sipped coffee
     (Gus) and tea (me). Studied a menu we both knew better than our social security numbers.
     It was Ruthie, owner of the Green Tractor, who’d made things right.
    “Here.” She’d shoved aside our napkins and silverware and slapped new paper place
     mats on top of the bright green ones we’d already had. Kid place mats, with line drawings
     for coloring in with crayons. A kitty-cat and puppy-dog place mat