“I disagree,” I said. “I think you’re the perfect company for a certain someone.”
She raised a brow. “Who?”
“Logan,” I said. “He’s at my house. He lost his girlfriend, the love of his life, and you lost your best friend. The two of you don’t need to carry the pain of it alone, not when you have each other.”
“I wouldn’t even know where to begin or what to say to him.”
“I wouldn’t worry about all that right now,” I said. “Just sitting in the same room together is sometimes enough.”
As the record came to a stop, she pushed herself into a sitting position.
“Okay,” she said. “But just for tonight.”
“That’s all I’m asking.”
She ran a hand along her face and stood, slipping on a jacket, and turning the record player off.
As the room fell quiet, she followed me downstairs, pausing on the porch and turning to look at the house behind her.
“I don’t think I can come back here for a while,” she said.
“That’s fine,” I said. “I’ll be here to help you, whatever you need, all right?”
She nodded, then followed me to the car.
We pulled away, and the house faded into the dark behind us.
And she didn’t look back.
Not once.
42
One month later, the town was still reeling.
Not in a loud way, and not with spectacle. Cambria absorbed shock the way it always had, through hushed conversations in grocery aisles, lowered voices at coffee counters, and the careful way people chose their words when names came up that no longer felt safe to say aloud.
Two people everyone thought they knew.
Two crimes separated by decades.
And a single truth that had been waiting for the right moment to surface.
At long last, Anne Fontaine’s name was spoken without speculation attached to it. Audrey’s death was no longer a mystery shaped by rumor. Justice, such as it was, had come late and imperfect, but it had come.
After the truth came out, Talia worried at first that the town would turn on her, that her parents’ actions would stain her by association. But I knew otherwise.
People showed up.
They checked in.
They left notes on her car.
Brought her flowers and food.
They made it clear, in quiet ways, that love could survive even the worst kind of truth. Talia wasn’t part of her parents’ crimes, and she wouldn’t be punished for their actions.
Talia moved into Audrey’s parents’ house within days of everything coming out. It made sense to her, she said. The rooms still held Audrey’s presence, and the grief she felt was easier when shared with others as they tried to move forward together, one unsteady step at a time.
