Free The Pact by Jennifer Sturman Page B

right?” he asked, pausing and turning back to face me. The sun pouring in through the open doorway silhouetted him, and his bulk cast a long shadow across the floor.
    “I was wondering—you had a nightcap with Richard last night, didn’t you? Out by the pool?”
    “Yep. All the guys did. Just a quick drink and a little male bonding before we went to bed.”
    “Did everything seem…normal?” Normal seemed like a lame word choice, but Sean would know what I meant. I was hoping for easy enlightenment, something that could explain—without implicating anyone I knew or cared about—how Richard had ended up floating facedown and lifeless in the pool.
    “Did everything seem normal?” he repeated thoughtfully, his hand on the door’s brass handle. “Yeah, as far as I could tell. Nothing strange happened that I noticed. Nothing out of the ordinary. That’s what’s so weird about this whole thing. I mean, Richard seemed like his same old self.” Sean was too nice to say what Richard’s same old self was like. He’d known Richard longer than any of us—they had both lived in Eliot House while at Harvard, an enclave that prided itself on its reputation for preppy elitism. “Lowest GPA, highest starting salary,” bragged the house T-shirt one year, only partly tongue-in-cheek. They also belonged to the same finals club, one of a handful of exclusive fraternities housed in discreet redbrick buildings around campus. Neither Eliot House nor the club really suited Sean, but he was reluctant to be the first Hallard in five generations to stray from tradition. Both of these venues gave Sean ample opportunity to get to know Richard, and I knew from comments that Jane had let drop that his opinion of Richard was no higher than my own.
    Sean continued, “It’s so bizarre to think that there we were, just a few hours ago, talking about how the Yankees are doing this season and other nonsense, and the next thing you know…” His voice trailed off. “It doesn’t make any sense.”
    “No,” I agreed. “It doesn’t.”
    “I keep wondering what could have happened. There must be a good explanation, but for the life of me, I have no idea what it is. I thought for a moment that maybe he committed suicide, but Richard was as far from suicidal as…” He didn’t finish his sentence, unable to find the appropriate simile.
    “Was he really drunk?” I asked, trying to mask the hopeful tone in my voice. It felt awkward and inappropriate to probe like this, but I desperately wanted to believe that it had, in fact, been possible that Richard could have had so much to drink that he could have fallen into the pool and been too far gone to save himself. Matthew’s assessment and Richard’s well-documented ability to hold his liquor notwithstanding, I was definitely rooting for accidental drowning as the cause of death. If suicide was out of the question, the only other alternative was less than appealing.
    Sean considered this for a moment and then gave a decisive shake of his head. “Well, he seemed to have had a good bit to drink, but we all had. And he’s always been able to drink even the most serious drinkers under the table. I think the rest of us were far worse for wear than he was. I was practically ready to pass out by the time I went in to bed.” He flashed me a self-deprecating smile. “Quiet married life hasn’t done much for my level of alcohol tolerance. I only have a hazy memory of Jane coming in, although, according to her, I really distinguished myself on the snoring front last night.”
    I had to laugh. Sean’s snoring was legendary, capable of raising roofs and setting windowpanes to shaking in their frames. Then I thought about what he’d said. If Sean had gone to bed before Jane, he must have come in before 2:00 a.m., which was when I’d arrived in the bedroom I was sharing with Emma, also a little worse for wear from several hours of steady drinking, after my friends and I had decided to call it a