“I killed him.”
“Who else was there?”
“I killed him.” Jason rises from his seat.
“Who else was there?”
The guards are at his sides, asking questions, but I ignore everything but my brother.
“Who else was there?”
“I’m done,” Jason tells the guards.
I’m on my feet now too. “Why won’t you tell me?”
“Now?” Jason is half pleading with the guards. “Can I go now?”
I call out again and again as he’s led away. “Who else was there?”
My brother doesn’t look back.
CHAPTER 30
Only one person can answer all the questions swirling through my head and he’s the one person I’m physically barred from asking. So I sit in the prison parking lot watching all the other visitors trickle out, some crying, some angry, others hurrying to escape a reality they can only confront for a couple hours a week. I feel prone to all three and yet I don’t start Daphne’s engine. I don’t even reach for my keys.
I’ve always had the same questions. What drove my brother to murder someone? How did he overcome a lifetime abhorrence of blood to stab someone to death? Why did he flee the crime scene and come home covered in blood repeating the same thing over and over:I killed him but I didn’t know, I swear I didn’t know.
After the first time in a year I’ve been alone with my brother, not only do I not have any answers, I have more questions. Who did he run after? Why hide the fact that he and Cal weren’t alone that night unless he was scared of something worse than spending half his life in prison?
I glance out the window at the looming gray building with its armed guard towers and coiled barbed wire wrapped around the top of twenty-foot-high chain-link fences. It’s not difficult at all to remember the first time Mom and I came here or the way I clutched her hand hard enough to bruise when we went inside. I gasp, sitting alone in my car thinking about seeing Jason trudging toward us, not wanting him to look up, and then feeling my knees start to buckle when he did.
His lip had been split and just barely scabbed over. One eyebrow was sliced open, and his left eye was so swollen that he couldn’t see out of it. Mom’s hands flew to her mouth but before she could say anything Jason told her in a low, raspy whisper that if she so much as thought about saying anything to anyone he would refuse to see her again. He’d glanced at me through his remaining good eye to make sure I understood that his threat was meant for me too.
He’d said it was nothing, a misunderstanding. But it was months before I saw my brother without fresh bruises on his face and longer still not to flinch each visit expecting them.
As I stare at the prison where Jason is locked inside, the windows start to bead with raindrops, but I can’t see them through the tears in my eyes.
I make the drive back to Telford faster than Mom and I ever have. For once, I don’t have to pretend not to notice the stares as I walk across the parking lot of Porter’s Grocery and through the automatic doors. I make a beeline for the first person I see with a nametag, a plump woman with fuchsia-painted lips that turn down as I approach.
“Excuse me, but could you please tell me where Heath Gaines is?”
“Heath is working right now.”
I ignore the frown she gives me as she takes in my face and the evidence of the tears I tried to wipe away. “I know he’s working right now.” I’m so flustered I fail to address her as ma’am. “I just need to see him. Please.”
She purses her lips and rests a hand on her hip, then her voice softens unexpectedly as she looks at me. “I don’t think you’re doing anyone any favors right now. Why don’t you go on home and think about whether or not seeing him—” him seeing me is what she really means “—is the best idea.”
I know I shouldn’t be here—I shouldn’t be anywhere—but when I finally left the prison this was where I came.
I glance past her and see the entrance to the back next to the butcher counter at the end of the aisle and I start walking, ignoring her calls to come back. Heath is a stock clerk, so that’s where he’ll be. I brush past the hanging plastic streamers in the doorway, barely glancing at the Employees Only sign as I do.
Boxes line hulking industrial rows of shelving that extend nearly to the ceiling. There are a few guys who turn in my direction when I enter, but I see only one.
Heath’s brows draw together as I approach. For the first time since I left the prison, I falter. How many people saw me outside? How many more heard me ask for Heath by name before charging back here? All these people watching us now are his coworkers, the people he has to see day in and day out, the ones who are going to expect him to act a certain way toward me—a way he’s not reacting.
“Is that—” one guy says. “Itis. That’s the sister of the guy who...”
“Brooke? What’s wrong?” Heath walks toward me, ignoring all the heads swiveling back and forth between us like they aren’t there. He reaches for my arm and searches my face in concern, oblivious or uncaring about the attention we’ve garnered.
