But she won’t. He loved her—loves her—so much, and she won’t set foot in his bedroom.
“He’d come for you, you know he would. It wouldn’t matter what you did. He’d camp outside your cell if they let him, find a way to get himself thrown inside if he could, just so you wouldn’t be alone. Remember when he got you Ducky? He worked for Mr. Zellner at the pet shop cleaning cages for weeks, getting up at four every morning before school after we had to give the kitten back because you were allergic. Or what about that outer space diorama in third grade that you dropped and broke the night before it was due? He stayed up all night redoing it with you. He gave you his shirt when you fell and split your pants on the church hiking trip. Do you even remember how sunburned he got? He couldn’t go to school for a few days afterward.”
My heart is breaking saying these words, every one of them true. They should be breaking hers too, but they aren’t. She doesn’t let go of the doorframe, and her toes don’t slide even an inch forward. “How can you turn your back on him like this?” My head swings down and away, unable to watch her deny him even so small a thing when he would gladly give his life for her, or me, or anyone he loved. And he loved so much.
My gaze catches on the collage of photos tacked above Jason’s desk, his one nod to decorating. There are a lot of him with his friends, one of him and Dad fishing, one of him and Laura on the porch swing that Mom took unawares. He’s smiling down at her, and you can tell from the lift in her shoulders that she’s smiling too. I’m on my feet then, moving to pull it free to show it to her, but when I get closer, my eyes drift to another photo, one that had been blocked by a lamp from my angle on the bed.
I’ve seen it countless times. Before his arrest it was his profile picture on all his social media accounts and the wallpaper on his phone. It’s of him and his then-girlfriend, Allison. She’s on his back in the photo, laughing with her arms loosely wrapped around his bare shoulders, and they are both dripping wet from swimming. Jason’s face is in profile as he looks back at her, smiling. Seeing that photo the first time, I believed my brother when he said he’d marry that girl. I used to believe Allison felt the same way, and not just about Jason, about all of us.
My hands go to the edge of Jason’s desk, supporting my weight that suddenly feels like too much for my legs. Jason said she wasn’t in town that night, but would he have told us if she were? Or would he have lied to protect her from the accusations and implications that would have assaulted her if anyone thought she was a witness?
“Brooke?”
I turn to my sister, the photo of Jason and Allison in my shaking hand, but I don’t say anything. My thoughts are coming faster than I can sort them. Something happened to make him lose control that night, I know it did. I glance at the photo, at the lovesick boy and the girl who was never far from his side. If someone else was there, there’s only one person it could be.
CHAPTER 34
Despite having heard nothing from her for a year, it takes me only a few hours to track down Jason’s ex-girlfriend. According to her old college roommate’s Facebook page, she’s currently working nights to put herself through nursing school just outside Austin. I learned from the same former roommate that she doesn’t go by Allison or Ali anymore either, and that her famous waist-length blond hair is long gone too. Knowing all this still doesn’t prepare me for the first sight of her through the window of Rosanne’s Diner the next morning.
Unlike Allison,Lissa’shair barely reaches the shoulders of her cream-and-tan waitress uniform. It isn’t golden like I remembered it either; it’s duller and a little darker too, like it hasn’t seen the sun for a good long while. None of her looks like it’s seen the sun in a good long while. She isn’t as pale as Jason, but there’s a wanness to her complexion that is unsettling all the same.
I watch her for a few minutes, trying to see the girl I knew in the waitress listlessly taking orders and delivering food. She smiles easily enough at customers and coworkers, if with less abandon than she used to.
I can still remember the first time Jason officially brought her home to meet us during their freshman year at the University of Texas. They’d been dating only a few weeks, but it was already clear that my brother was walk-into-walls, forget-his-own-name in love with her. It was harder to tell just how much she liked him in return, but being with Allison made him happier than I’d ever seen him, and a big selling point for me was that she didn’t try to pull him away from his family like a few other girls had in the past.
Whenever she came home to visit with him, she was often the one who invited me and Laura to come to the movies or out to eat with them, and it rarely felt like an afterthought. She would even bake with me and Mom while Jason helped Laura with her homework, and afterward seemed perfectly content to watch TV with all of us squished onto the couch rather than slip off alone with her boyfriend—even when he not-so-subtly hinted that he could use a break from his sisters.
Allison loved spending time with us and made no attempt to hide how much she liked being a part of a family. Her own was tragically splintered. She’d been raised by a declining grandmother and had only a much older half sister to otherwise claim as family.
I liked having Allison around and I really liked how happy she made my brother. She and I were very different people, and while we probably wouldn’t have been best friends without Jason to connect us, it wasn’t long before my brother wasn’t the only one imagining a future where she’d become my sister.
Which was why she was the first person I’d called when Jason was arrested.
I never heard back from the frantic message I’d left on her phone that night, or any of the others I left afterward. I know Mom called her too. Allison never contacted any of us, never came to see us. Jason had no explanation beyond that he’d broken up with her and told her to get as far away from Calvin’s death as possible. I understood his wish, but I couldn’t fathom her leaving then any more than I can fathom it now. They’d been together nearly a year, and yet she vanished without the barest of goodbyes for any of us. She deserted Jason without a backward glance when he needed her the most. I know it would have been hard and I’m not saying she wouldn’t have ended up walking away in the end, but she left while there was still hope. I don’t know that I can ever forgive her for that. That’s all I can think of now as I watch her wave and smile to her coworkers before leaving the diner.
I push open my car door and cross the parking lot toward her. Focusing on the back of her head, I wait until I’m about ten feet away before I call out the name she tried to leave behind. “Allison.”
She stops, almost skidding on the asphalt. When she turns there’s not so much as a trace of a smile on her face. She shed her expression along with her nametag the closer she got to her car, like it was part her uniform as much as the clothes she wore. The second our eyes meet she freezes.
This close to her, I see more differences. The change in her goes beyond a tired girl finishing the graveyard shift at a busy diner. She looks...she looks how I feel most days. Bereft. I almost wouldn’t know her as the carefree girl who stole my brother’s heart. This girl looks like someone who’s lost something, who still suffers dearly from it. The trudge of her steps, the droop of her head. The girl in front of me looks like she’s never been truly happy a day in her life.
“Brooke?” Allison says my name and edges toward me the way someone might when entering a dark house they fear is occupied. She’s afraid of me; so afraid her voice is shaking. Then she goes still and deathly pale, her hands jerking closed around the strap of her bag. “Is it Jason? Did he—is he—?”
I stare at her, trying to decide if she’s afraid something happened to my brother or afraid for herself. I hate that I can’t tell. The former would soften my words while that latter would sharpen them in to spikes; it’s the uncertainty that keeps them flat. “Jason’s fine.” I almost choke on the word, as if he could ever be fine where he is, but I’m watching for her reaction too intently to get hung up on anything more than the straight facts.
Allison’s eyes drift shut and she draws in a breath so full it strains the buttons on her uniform. Her grip loosens on her purse strap before she opens her eyes again to find me frowning at her with a lump in my throat so big, it can’t be swallowed for all I try. She doesn’t move toward me, but it feels as though a part of her is reaching out to me. “I should have called you,” she says. “I should have been there. Your mom and Laura—I didn’t mean to leave like that, but I just couldn’t stay. I—I think about Jason every day. Sometimes he’s all I can think about.” A tear slips down one of her cheeks. The sight of that one, lone tear now when she couldn’t offer any when he needed them clears my throat.
“Then why didn’t you? I know Cal was your friend too, but you loved Jason, and you left before he confessed. You left while there was still a chance he was innocent.”
Allison sucks in a breath. It’s an insignificant sound when compared to the early-morning traffic buzzing by on the road behind us, but I hear it. I see what I’ve never seen from anyone else after making that proclamation: guilt. I take a step toward her, feeling the strength of conviction in my voice and willing it to still my shaking hands.
“Were you there the night Calvin was killed?”
I could have pulled out a knife and charged her and I don’t think Allison would have reacted more strongly. She lurches backward into her car, shaking her head in denial as tears stream down her face.
“No, I wasn’t. I wouldn’t have—I wouldn’t have—” A full, body-racking sob brings her almost to her knees.
I move forward automatically to catch her, and she clutches at my forearms, relying so heavily on me to support her weight that I stumble and nearly go down with her.
