Elijah's irritation manifested until he turned his head and spat onto the ash-darkened ground. When he glanced back at her, his eyes had hardened into something unrecognizable.
“In case you’ve forgotten, your brother had a public defender. He was inexperienced, and when I brought the missing page to his attention, he thought the jury would misconstrue the resubmission of Mason’s full statement. Thought that maybe they would believe he was changing his story. And honestly, looking back, I don’t think anything could have saved your brother from a guilty verdict.”
Elijah’s barb hit home, but she wasn’t ready to face her part in it all. She refused to allow him off the hook quite yet.
“And Sam? You left out what he saw in the woods that night. Not the prosecutor, but you, Elijah. Care to explain that?”
“A drunk teenager stumbling through the woods, claiming he saw theThreshing Man? You think that would have helped your brother's case? The defense would have torn it apart, used it to paint the whole investigation as incompetent folklore nonsense.”
Elijah’s gaze dropped to the darkened ground.
“Sam was incoherent, babbling about trench coats, arms that were too long, and a figure that glided between trees. He couldn't tell me which direction he'd been facing, couldn't even say for certain where in the woods he was when he supposedly saw this...thing.” Elijah shook his head in disagreement. “What was I supposed to do? Tell a grieving town that the boogeyman took their daughters? Tell them to hang talismans over their doors to keep theThreshing Manaway? They already did that, and it didn’t help. They needed answers, not fairy tales.”
“So, you gave them my brother.”
Hadley’s anger shifted, not diminishing but transforming as she observed the complex emotions playing across Elijah's face. The certainty that had fueled her accusations began to waver, not because she believed him entirely, but because she recognized the human cost of the decisions he'd made.
Weariness washed over her.
The righteous fury that had propelled her through the confrontation ebbed away, leaving behind a hollow ache that could never be filled.She drew in a deep breath, suddenly aware of the landscape around them. Not just as a backdrop to their argument, but as a living presence with its own secrets and witnesses. The trees seemed to lean in, and their leaves rustled with deliberate purpose, whispering conversations just beyond comprehension.
The scent of damp earth rose from the ground where her boots had disturbed the soil, mixing with the sharp tang of pine and the faint metallic reminder of what had happened here. And somewhere in the distance, a woodpecker drummed against a tree trunk, the rhythm irregular yet persistent.
Life went on despite death.
Tension drained from her shoulders. In the quiet that had settled between them, she heard her own breathing.
“Sometimes, I can’t distinguish between what I actually remember and what the prosecutor constructed for me to say on the stand,” Hadley admitted softly. “He would ask the same questions over and over, phrasing them differently each time, until I started doubting my own recollections. I remember sitting up on the stand while he told me how important my testimony was. How I could be with my mother, but only after I told the truth. How I was being brave.”
“I did try to protect you from the worst of it.”
“Not enough,” Hadley replied, the words carrying no accusation now, just a simple statement of fact. “Not nearly enough. I told the world that my brother confessed to me that he murdered Emily Esten.”
Her confession hung between them.
Her part of the painful equation.
“I testified that Mason came out of the woods and said he'd done something terrible, that Emily wasn't coming back.”
A gust of wind swept through the clearing, bringing with it the distant scent of woodsmoke. Someone was going about their day as if the bad things in life couldn’t touch them. They were sorely mistaken.
“You were a child, Hadley.”
She shifted so that she could view the damage left behind from Reed’s death. Nothing else had changed, though. Mason was still in prison, young women continued to go missing, and the guilty party remained hidden among the community…blending in and allowing an urban legend to explain away his sins.
“Then it’s a good thing I'm not that ten-year-old little girl anymore, isn’t it?”
25
Hadley Dawkins
October 2025
Monday – 9:19am
There was a hollowness inside the police station that seemed to have a life of its own. It had invaded every corner and every room, only broken into the smallest of pieces by the furniture and items collected over the years. The hands of the black-and-white clock above Reed’s desk ticked away like a pulsing heartbeat. It was as if the tiny hands were in a relentless pursuit of a future that he would never get to experience.
Hadley twisted the antacid until it spun on its side. After wobbling for a few seconds, it landed on the hard surface of the desk. She picked it up and twirled it again. The repetitive action helped her think while she studied the whiteboard.The information dating back to 1978 was in chronological order, and eight young women's faces stared back at her from their photos.
