“No, I’m not saying he’s innocent. I know he’s not, but if it’s true that they weren’t alone—”
“It doesn’t change anything!” He all but yells. “I don’t care if there were ten people who saw him do it. He still did it!” Heath grits his teeth. He’s trying to calm down, but it has little effect on the temper he has barely leashed. “Do you want to know why the cops never mentioned a third person? Because there wasn’t one. Your brother lured my brother to the woods that night—”
I start shaking my head as my eyes well up. “I know what happened. I don’t need to hear—”
“—got him drunk, and then, when Cal stumbled or turned around for some reason—”
I shut my eyes, wishing I could shut my ears too.
“—your brother drove a knife into my brother’s back, severing his spinal cord so that he couldn’t even try to get away!”
My eyes snap open when Heath grabs my arm, not hard enough to hurt, but enough to force my attention where I don’t want it. It’s the same place he put his hand before, when he was trying to reassure me about showing up at his work. There is nothing comforting about his touch now.
“Look at me! You think I like saying this, picturing my brother dying? He was on the ground, couldn’t even crawl away, but he was alive. They found gouge marks in the ground and dirt under his nails from his trying. Your brother is the only one who knows what Cal’s last words were. I bet they werehelp, andstop, andplease God, and—”
I jerk free from Heath, my eyes flashing at him. “Why are you doing this?”
Heath’s eyes are shining. “Because it was your brother’s prints. Your brother’s knife. His—” He bites off a word and shakes his head as he tries to keep from losing it in front of me. Heath steps toward me, his voice soft now as his eyes swim with unshed tears. “That’s all I need to know. If that’s not enough for you...” He takes a step back again, and I can feel the disgust and anger he’s so long held for my brother seeping into the space between us.
I suck in a shaky breath, wishing I could tell him whatever he needs to hear to take me back in his arms, but I can’t. Every time I blink, I picture Cal’s lifeless body, lying on the moonlit grass.
I blink again and see my brother’s bloodied hands desperately reaching for the sink as Dad restrains him.
I see my sister crying into a plate of cold spaghetti.
I see Mom sobbing against the white tiles in her shower.
I see Jason in his orange jumpsuit and the lines that fear have etched into his face.
I see that fear swell into outright terror when I pounced on his slipup earlier.
I see Heath’s unshed tears and the tight pull of his lips as he looks at me, except he no longer seesme—he sees all he’ll ever see: the sister of his brother’s murderer.
When I leave Irene’s office I hold my head high even as I’m breaking inside with every step. I don’t make eye contact with any of the employees or the staring customers as I exit the grocery store. It’s clear that Heath’s voice carried, and when it reached its limit, the people nearest the office were only too glad to pass along the highlights from our conversation. The news will spread faster than a brush fire. I can’t outrun it as I head toward Daphne, chased by whispers on all sides.
CHAPTER 31
Mom knows exactly when visiting hours end at the prison and exactly how long it takes to get home. My phone has been ringing nonstop for the past forty-five minutes. Forty-five minutes where I neither called nor answered my phone. Forty-five minutes during which time I know she’s been vividly imagining Jason’s crushing sense of abandonment because she didn’t visit him. Forty-five minutes where his breakdown was so cataclysmic that I can’t bring myself to come home and tell her about it. Forty-five minutes where anything could have happened—and in her mind most definitely did happen—to me. Forty-five minutes where I never visited Jason at all but abandoned him and the whole family.
I come to a gradual stop at the yellow light in front of me. My phone is ringing incessantly as she punches redial the second my voice mail picks up. I glance at it each time the shrill, old-fashioned rotary ringtone I set floods the car, but my fingers don’t even twitch in its direction. I don’t know what I’d say to her or if I could hide the tears still choking my throat. I can’t look at the phone when I finally reach one shaking hand out to switch it off. I have to stop thinking about Heath. Then I have to stop thinking about what Jason said. Then I have to think of an excuse to give Mom for being late and not calling or answering my phone.
Then I can retreat to my room and curl into my bed, and if I’m quiet, I can cry without anyone ever knowing.
It’s worse than I imagined when I turn past our fence and up the long, red dirt driveway to our house. Mom flings herself free from Dad’s arms and sprints down the porch steps, phone clutched in a white-knuckle grip in her hand. I can see the tears streaming down her cheeks while she’s still thirty yards away. Dad moves to the top step but no farther, eyes on me, waiting.
I can hear Mom’s gasping sobs, and I start hurrying to meet her. I don’t have to feign the sick guilt and remorse I feel for having put her—and Dad and Laura—through this. “Mom, I’m so sorry. The screen on my phone shattered and I couldn’t answer—” The painfully tight embrace I’m expecting from her raised arm turns into an ear-ringing slap.
“Carol!” Dad calls from the porch as my whole body half turns from the impact.
My hand flies to my cheek, hot and pulsing under my palm as I turn back to Mom. The shock of being struck is blocking out the pain. I’ve never been hit before, not by anyone. My parents never spanked me as a child and biting was the worst Jason and Laura and I ever did to each other. For a moment it doesn’t feel real until I meet Mom’s tear-filled eyes.
Every inch of her is shaking. She opens her trembling mouth but no words come out. I’m just as incapable of speech, but I lift my phone and show her the screen, shattered by my heel stomping and grinding into it minutes ago barely a mile from the house. Her eyes dart to it and she sucks in a shuddering breath. I can’t help but flinch when she reaches for me, but this time her arms wrap around me and her hand moves to cradle my head to hers. She’s saying something, but I can’t make out the words through her tears. I hug her back though, and I say I’m sorry over and over again, and promise her that Jason is fine, but I don’t cry.
Dad pries her arms from me some minutes later, she lets him, but only because he transfers her grip to him. Once inside, Dad suggests that Mom go wash her face and she nods in agreement, glancing at me so that I see her tearstained face one last time. As she goes upstairs, I move into the living room, wishing the ground would open up and swallow me. I watch Dad’s eyes follow his broken wife; I can’t keep my chin from dropping to my chest.
The floorboards creak as he walks around the couch toward me until his scuffed workboots come into my view.
Mom may have struck me, but I’m expecting Dad’s words to level me for what I’ve done. Instead I find myself wrapped in his strong arms and held just a little too tightly.
