“Is it true, Brianne?” Gabriel asked. “Did Audrey talk to you about Anne?”
Brianne bit down on her bottom lip as tears pooled in her eyes, tears she seemed determined not to let fall. She looked at Talia, then at Gabriel, and then at me, her expression now resigned. “Audrey came to me, and she started asking questions about everyone in our friend group from high school. She mentioned the cabin, finding a locket, and something else, though she didn’t say what. I was just … I was trying to protect you, to protect our family.”
Talia leaned against the wall, her head shaking. “You killed her! You killed my best friend to protect your secret, and Dad’s. How could you?”
“Oh, honey, I’m so sorry,” Brianne said. “I know there’s nothing I can say to ease your pain. I was scared, and I … I didn’t know what else to do. She was sure Anne had been murdered, and she planned on going to the police with the new evidence she’d found. I tried talking her out of it, but it didn’t work. There was nothing I could say to change her mind.”
As Brianne’s confession settled in, Gabriel buried his head in his hands.
“I can’t believe that this is … what you, what you did to her,” Talia said.
“I’m sorry,” Brianne said. “I never meant for either of you to find out about?—”
“Stop! Just stop it! I don’t want to hear anymore! I’m going to be sick!”
Talia slapped her hand against her mouth and screamed. Then she turned and ran upstairs, slamming a door behind her.
Brianne turned toward me. “I just did what I thought I had to do. Now I wish I could go back and fix everything.”
But she couldn’t go back.
A sweet girl had been denied the chance to live out her life, all because of a horrible secret.
Outside, the sound of tires crunching over gravel cut through the room.
Headlights flashed through the front windows.
Foley and Whitlock had arrived.
40
Whitlock stepped in first and took in the scene, his eyes landing on Gabriel standing near the table, Brianne seated, pale and hollow-eyed. Foley entered behind him, his eyes narrowed as he clocked all the faces.
“Somber crowd,” Whitlock said.
Foley turned toward me. “Care to explain what’s going on here?”
I nodded and began, starting from the moment Gabriel admitted Anne left the bonfire with him, to the cabin, to the fall, to the years of silence, to the truth now sitting between us like a live wire. Then I continued with Brianne and her confession.
When I finished, both Foley and Whitlock had moved their hands to their hips, heads shaking.
“I say, it’s a lot to take in, isn’t it?” Whitlock said.
I turned to Gabriel. “There’s something you haven’t admitted yet.”
He looked at me, offering a slight nod.
I continued.
“Your wife has always known about what happened to Anne. And yet, you left her out of the story.”
Gabriel didn’t answer right away. He turned toward his wife, searching her face, his expression desperate and broken.
Brianne met his gaze.
“It’s okay,” she said. “You don’t have to protect me anymore. Yes, I knew. I’ve always known. He called me that night, right after Anne fell. I was his best friend long before I was his wife, you see.”
“What did he say?” I asked.
