“But everything didn’t turn out OK—” I prompted.
She looked at me. “That’s right. As soon as her father fell, I told Elizabeth to call 911. While she was on the phone with them, giving them our address and such, I convinced Ali to go home so that my husband wouldn’t wake up and find him there.” She paused, blinking, like a computer that was short-circuiting.
“What happened after Ali left?” I asked, eager to keep her on track.
“Oh.” She seemed to come back to herself. “I wondered what was taking the ambulance so long, so I went to the kitchen to call them again. I told Elizabeth to get her father a pillow for under his head so that he’d be more comfortable.”
“And then?” I prodded.
“When I called 911, they said no one from our address had called for an ambulance. I was annoyed by the mix-up and told them to please send an ambulance as quickly as possible because my husband stumbled and fell and hit his head on the hearth.” A tear slipped down her cheek. “When I went back to the family room—” Her face crumpled with emotion. “That’s when I saw what Elizabeth had done.”
The hair on the back of my neck tingled. “What had she done?”
“She had the pillow over her father’s face.” She began openly crying. “She smothered the life out of him.”
I blinked. “What?” Did the old lady know what she was saying? “Are you sure?”
She reached for a tissue and blew her nose in a loud snort. “I’ll never forget it.”
“Lizzie killed her father? Is that what you’re telling me? She suffocated him?” As a seventeen-year-old girl? The horror of it was too much to contemplate.
“What could I do?” She twisted the tissue in her lap. “You’re a mother. Surely you understand that I had to protect my daughter.”
I closed my eyes, fully absorbing just how monstrous Martha Martins’s actions had been. Sacrificing Ali’s mental well-being in order to save her daughter. Nausea swirled in my belly. “You protected Lizzie at Ali’s expense.”
“Yes,” she said simply. “I had to choose between Ali and Elizabeth. I chose my daughter.”
“That’s obscene.” Disbelief trembled through me. “You allowed Ali to be tormented by a horrible lie for his entire adult life, to let him believe he’d done something unspeakable. What kind of people are you?”
The reality that Lizzie had killed her own father, and that her family deliberately let Ali believe he was to blame, left me speechless with outrage. I couldn’t find the words.
“I thought my guilt would ease over the years, but it deepened.” Mrs. Martins reached for another tissue from the box on the side table. “I called Ali because I needed him to know the truth before I died.”
“And did you share what you’ve just told me?”
She nodded. “I told him everything. Lawrence didn’t die from the blow to his head. He died by suffocation. I was terrified for my daughter. That’s why I told police that my husband stumbled and fell.”
I wanted to throttle the woman for what she’d done to my husband, for how she’d made him sufferfor decadesin order to protect her daughter. And herself. “How could you let an innocent teenager think he killed a man?”
“What could I do? Elizabeth was crying hysterically. She said we were finally free of him. That he’d never boss either of us around. She was tired of him being so strict with her. Of him never letting her go out with her friends. What could I do?”
I gritted my teeth. “You could have done the right thing. Which is tell the truth.”
“My husband was ... a challenging person. Lawrence was very uncompromising with Elizabeth. She couldn’t go out much at night like other teenagers, and she resented it. He believed a young lady shouldn’t date until she turned eighteen.”
How bad had it been? “Did your husband beat Lizzie?”
“He slapped her once after discovering she snuck out of the house to go to a party. That’s the only time Lawrence laid a hand on her. But Lizzie has always been high strung and very emotional.”
“Your lie infected Ali’s entire adulthood.” My voice trembled. “And you let a murderer walk free.”
“That’s why I told Ali the truth the day he came to see me.” She was twisting the tissues again. They came apart, little white bits littering her lap. “I needed to make things right.”
“You could never properly atone for what you did to him.”
“I know. But at least Ali knew the truth before he died. He was very relieved.”
Tears stung my eyes. “What did he say? How else did he react?”
