I don’t answer my sister; I don’t even turn to look at her. I can’t look at anything save for the two photos in front of me, photos that might finally explain what seemed impossible to me.
“He said there was someone else there that night.” I free the first photo from Jason’s wall. “He didn’t mean to, but he said it. I knew it had to be Allison, but I didn’t understand why she’d stay silent.” Laura is standing in the doorway when I turn, outside Jason’s room, never in. She’s shaking too, and that’s before I lift the photos.
The words start off slow, testing to make sure Laura doesn’t run screaming from the house, then grow faster, surer when she stays. I tell my sister everything about my last visit with Jason, everything about seeing Allison, everything I couldn’t tell Heath.
Everything that is starting to make a horrible kind of sense.
Jason loved Allison with every fiber of his being. I saw too much proof of that love for nearly a year while they were dating to ever doubt it. He would have died for her.
He had, I was sure now, killed for her. She was the reason he and Cal fought. And if she’d been there, maybe come upon them right...before. Maybe she ran. Jason said he’d run after someone. That would explain her guilt. Maybe if she hadn’t run, she could have stopped it. Maybe if Jason hadn’t run after her he might have stayed...there might have been time for him to regret his actions in time to get help for Cal...maybe... I can’t think too long about this, or it’ll all collapse like a house of cards.
The more I talk, the wider Laura’s eyes get, bugging out completely when I start toward the hall. “I have to talk to Allison again.”
“No!” It’s not the cry that leaves my sister’s lips that arrests me; it’s her charging into Jason’s room and clutching my arm. “Please, you can’t go. You can’t go. Not you too. Not—” She buries her face in my shoulder, sobs and pleas alternating from her.
The photos flutter to the floor as my arms come up to hold my little sister, each rack of her body calling a tear to pool unshed in my eyes. Laura’s terror is palpable, and with crystal clarity, I understand it. My arms tighten. Laura has already lost one sibling, and I’ve just told her I’m planning to confront the person who may have driven him to commit murder.
I have to go though, have to know what truly happened that night, but every time I try to release her and explain, Laura redoubles her grip and tears. I’ve never seen her like this. It’s so alarming, and loud, that I’m worried Mom will hear from downstairs.
“Okay, okay,” I say, rubbing her back. “I’m not going anywhere. Laura, I promise I’m not leaving.”
Her small, tearstained face lifts. “You can’t go.”
“I won’t. Come on, let’s go to my room, okay?”
Laura clutches at me all the way down the hall to my room where we awkwardly crawl onto my bed, holding each other the way we used to when we were little and Jason would pressure us into watching a scary movie.
We don’t watch any scary movies that night. We watchSome Like It Hotand with my sister’s head on my shoulder and her silky soft hair under my chin, I almost forget the two photos on the floor of Jason’s room.
Marilyn Monroe’s Sugar Kane is singing “Runnin’ Wild” on the train for the second time that night when I’m at last able to slip out from beside Laura’s sleeping form and tiptoe down the hall to Jason’s room.
The pictures are right where they fell.
It’s after midnight, but instead of going quietly back to my room, I grab my keys and move whisper-quiet downstairs and out the front door.
CHAPTER 38
Idon’t register a single car, a solitary landmark, not one single person on my way to see Allison, though for all the miles I drive I must pass countless people and vehicles.
The first thing I see is the neon red-and-gold sign from Rosanne’s Diner glowing in the night. It’s late, after 2:00 a.m. so the diner is even emptier than my previous early-morning visit. But Allison is there. I see her through the windows when I approach.
And she sees me.
Allison wasn’t enough for you? First it’s your brother’s girlfriend and now the sister of his murderer.
That’s what Gwen said to Heath. Nausea churns my stomach. He never mentioned her, not once in all the conversations we had, in all the times I confessed how desperately I just needed to understand. Is she the reason he shut me down so completely at his work? Did he know that she’d been there that night? Was he protecting her too? And why? For his brother’s sake or his own?
Could I have been this stupid? Everyone I trusted betrayed me. Why did I think Heath would be any different?
Because he was supposed to know what it felt like. We were supposed to be the same.
I physically try to shake these thoughts from my head, though the gut-twisting sickness stays slick inside me as I watch Allison jerkily shove a notepad into another waitress’s hands before pushing open the glass door to join me in the parking lot. She never takes her eyes off me, not once.
“I know about you and Calvin,” I say. I’m expecting the revelation to send Allison reeling, collapsing to the ground again. I’m not expecting her to slowly close her eyes and let out a breath it feels like she’s been holding for years.
“How?” she asks, her eyes still shut.
“I found a photo of you with him.” I swallow. “And from Heath.”
