Confessions: The Private School Murders Read Online Free PDF Page B

massive stone walls, stained-glass windows, and soaringroof lines. Our tiger parents had loved this school because of its small and very exclusive enrollment, but they’d also been obsessed with its headmaster, Timothy Thibodaux. The man was highly intelligent, even by Angel standards.
    I had a like-hate relationship with Mr. Thibodaux. He was sharp, of course, but I didn’t trust him. Not since he’d refused to let us return to school once we were under suspicion for our parents’ deaths. Not
charged
with their deaths, just under suspicion. Yet he’d turned us away at the front door like a bunch of beggars in a Charles Dickens novel. At least he’d apologized for that slight a couple of weeks later when he’d been forced to take us back.
    Even I had to admit that Mr. Thibodaux was good at handling the twenty kids in his class, nearly all of them privileged and untouchable. Harry and I, these days, were the exceptions. Our parents were dead and we were broke. But Mr. Thibodaux hadn’t turned us away again—not yet, at least—because we were paid up through the school year. Next year, of course, I had no idea what would happen.
    Harry and I were panting as we left Hugo at the door to the rectory, where the fifth graders had their classroom, and the two of us trotted up the front steps of the large stone church. We took a right turn off the narthex and climbed the stairway to the choir loft under the vaultedceiling. This was our classroom, with its stunning long view of the nave and the altar.
    Mr. Thibodaux was waiting at the top of the stairs. He wore an impeccably cut brown suit, green-framed glasses, and a mournful expression.
    “I’m happy you Angels could make it,” he said. And I actually couldn’t tell if he was being sarcastic.
    I noticed the grief-shocked faces of our schoolmates as Harry and I took our seats, and I gave C.P. a nod. We stowed our book bags and sat perfectly upright with our hands folded in front of us.
    “Due to your incessant texting, I’m sure you all know that Adele Church has been killed,” Mr. Thibodaux said. “I would be grieving at the loss of any of you, but Adele, in particular, was a very promising student, a talented musician, and a generally sterling person.”
    A few of the kids sitting behind me began to cry. Mr. Thibodaux noticed but went on.
    “You may not know this, but my relationship with my students doesn’t end at graduation. In a way, that’s when it begins. I see all our graduates every year, and I am amazed at how each of them has grown. The brilliant ones don’t always go straight to the top but take a winding and unique path. The slackers sometimes spring into action, and sometimes they turn slacking into a fine art.
    “But whatever my students do, whomever they become as adults, I take pride and pleasure in knowing that we all crossed paths here, that we learned from one another here, that we helped one another become…”
    He trailed off, and one of the girls behind me gulped back a sob.
    “Adele lost her life, and we all lost her. We will never see her become who she was meant to be, but I know we will all always remember our dear, shining Adele.”
    Mr. Thibodaux crooked a finger in front of his lips, holding back tears as he looked across the room at an intricate stained-glass crucifixion scene in one of the windows.
    “Please pray for Adele, keep her in your thoughts, honor her in whatever way you feel appropriate,” he said finally, clearing his throat. “There will be a service for Adele this Saturday at St. Barnabas. Grief counseling will be provided here immediately. If you will all gather at my office door and form a line along the green wall, a therapist will see you forthwith.
    “Class is dismissed.”
    Everyone slowly rose from their seats, but I was frozen in place. Harry looked back at me just as I started to shake.
    “Tandy?” he said.
    Grief counseling
. The reason my parents had given forsending me to Fern Haven. At the time