“I lied.”
“You lied?”
“Yes. I wanted him dead. Because of what he did to you.” The words out loud in the quiet room seem to ricochet back to me and coat me in a film of slime. Jess’s shocked expression worsens the sensation. But I deserve every bit of her reaction.
But, but ... I’ve finally done it. I’ve said it out loud for the first time ever.
She shakes her head, looks down, tries to take it in.
“And Leon, his boyfriend? He was distraught about Railes lying, but everyone kept focusing on Leon as victim of a rape. He wanted me to back him about Coleman not holding the knife.”
“But you didn’t,” Jess says. There’s so much shock and surprise in her eyes that I want to crawl into the couch cushions and disappear.
But still, it’s there. The tiny release of pressure. I can feel it. Just a small stream of release after keeping the secret pent up for so long. It’s there. My heart is still beating hard, but it slows a little.
“I didn’t.”
“But why? Why would you protect Railes? You don’t even like those guys.”
“I despised everything about them. And in a flash I joined them.” Speaking this part out loud makes my heart speed up again. Shame prickles every inch of me. My cheeks burn with it. “It’s incomprehensible.Reprehensible,” I say. “I hate myself for it. I don’t know exactly how I came to it other than it was all twisted up in my anger at Coleman and what he did to you. And ...”
“And what?”
I close my eyes. I can’t face her stricken expression a second longer, but I know I can’t stop short. I open them. “This part is hard to admit.”
“What part?” More horror is growing by the second in the flabbergasted intensity in her wide-open eyes. A new wave of shame builds and unfurls like a wave inside me, pushes up through me to my head.
I shake it to dislodge the rush of it. And to avoid saying it. I’m not sure I can say it out loud to her. Surely, I think, I’ve already told her enough.
“What part?” she presses.
I shake my head again.
“Crosbie,what?”
“That I didn’t want to screw up my chances of making detective.”
She pulls her head back again, more fully this time, like a turtle. But a turtle doesn’t show disgust, and her eyes swim with it. “But you ended up quitting anyway? After you lied for Railes?”
“Yes.”
“But why haven’t you told the truth about it since you quit?”
I thought I just said the hardest part, but I realize what I’m about to say is even worse.Thisis the hardest thing to say to my sister. But this part, it’s less about the shame. The guilt. This is about the nuts and bolts of how it will affect me, her, and Sam altogether. I’m going at my thumb again, and Jess swats my hand hard to signal for me to stop. She could have slapped my face. It would feel the same.
“Cros? Why?”
“I’d go to jail, Jess. Obstruction of justice. Lying to the independent law enforcement agent. Not to mention that Leon took his life. Do you think one minute doesn’t go by when I don’t think that if I’d told thesame story as Leon, that if we took on the swamp thing that is Billy Railes, that Leon might still be alive?”
Tears push to my eyes. I press at the corners with my fingers. I’m tempted to grab Jess’s hand, but she must sense it and stands up from the couch. She looks at me with more revulsion and incomprehension.
“For God’s sake, you don’t evenworkthere anymore.” Her voice is high-pitched. Frantic but layered with hostility. “You could have at least told me after the fact. If I’d known the whole story, maybe I’d be processing this a little differently instead of feeling like the rug got pulled out from under me not once by Coleman, but again by Railes for killing him and taking away any chance that I—or even that Leon—had to confront him or deal with our grief in our own ways.”
I still feel like shit, like crawling into a hole, but my anger bubbles up through it all. I want to yell back at her,No, no, I know you, and you wouldn’t have processed things any differently! You’d be the same. Remember how you were after Mom died? You wouldn’t get out of bed. You couldn’t function. And maybe if you’d reported him from the get-go instead of being so afraid of how it would affect your popularity online, he wouldn’t have done what he did to Leon.
But I’m here to lay my sins down. To apologize, not make things worse.
“It was selfish. I was embarrassed that I’d covered for Railes. Ashamed. And I kept thinking that I handled the situation with Leon and Coleman so horribly not only because of my anger over what he did to you but also because of what happened to Sophie.”
