This was one of the pieces of evidence I could never explain, though. Because if Alex had been raped by someone, why was there no forensic evidence of it, no further traces on her body or clothes besides the semen?
The Hopelys had cried at the prosecutor’s words. Will had sobbed. My family sat in silence.
I looked at my mother as the prosecutor pulled out images of the autopsy. The DNA samples and the vaginal trauma they claimed they found. It was written all over my mother’s face. She thought Will did it.
She confirmed it later, sobbing in the kitchen, drunk for the first time in years. “Keith,” my mom sobbed. “There is no other explanation. She was raped, and his was the only DNA found.” My father just nodded, wrapping her up in a hug.
It was the moment I decided to hate her.
A week later, Will was given a life sentence. My mother cried in the courtroom. Later that same day, she removed every picture of him from the house and proceeded to act like Will didn’t exist. Whenever I defended him, she ignored me. And six months later, she moved to Tampa and started over. Completely fresh. As if it all never happened. Me writing the book was the final nail in the coffin for our dying relationship.
I tried to reconcile all of this with the woman who now sat sobbing in front of me in Denny’s.
“I don’t understand what you’re telling me,” I said blankly. “Now you think Will is innocent?”
Her mouth hung open slightly as she nodded her head. “When I was in the room with Detective Pullman, he asked me about your father,” she said, making direct eye contact with me now. “He asked me about his relationship with Hazel.”
I could see where this was going. I watched her face scrunch up to stop the tears falling down her cheeks. “He asked me if I thought their relationship was ever inappropriate.”
“And what did you say?” I pressed.
“I said no,” she whimpered. “Obviously. But he kept going on about how the two of them lived alone down here, and how unlikely it was that some stranger had come in off the street and snatched her.” Her entire body shuddered. “And so, naturally, I’m sitting there wondering where the hell my daughter is and what happened to her, and whether or not my ex-husband had something to do with it.”
My hands shook as I clutched my coffee cup tighter. “He had so much to say, Rose. About why your father never moved out of Loxahatchee, eventhough the rest of us did. Why he spent so much time alone. How Hazel did make it home that day. And then I started thinking about back then, and how quickly he agreed with me when I told him I thought Will might have done it. He never argued with me.” She paused to hiccup. She was speaking fast now. “Maybe he was so quick to condemn him because … maybe he did it, Rose. Maybe it was him.”
She was still crying and people from halfway across the restaurant were turning around to look.
I didn’t have the words. I was having trouble forming thoughts.
“You think Dad killed Alex?” I hissed, unable to keep the venom from my tone.
“I … don’t … know,” she wailed. “I was sure back then that it had been Will. I’d made my peace with it. Even though I ruined my relationship with you over it. And now my other daughter is missing. That’s a hell of a coincidence.” She wiped her eyes. “All those things the detective was saying … What am I supposed to think?”
“Not that my father is a killer!” I tried to catch my breath. “First Will, now Dad. Who’s next, Mom? Tommy?Me?Exactly how many of us are you going to accuse of murder?”
She looked like I’d slapped her. Her body pressed backward against the booth, moving as far away from me as she could. “I was trying to ask your opinion,” she said softly. “I was trying to see if I’d failed to protect you. I don’t know what to think anymore.”
“This is ridiculous, Mom,” I said, shaking my head. “Dad didn’t kill Alex, and he did not hurt Hazel. I don’t care what Pullman said. They have it out for us. They are jumping through hoops to try and find a way to make us involved in this, when everything points to someone else!”
My mother stared at me, her eyes wide and wet. “I heard the door open the night Alex died,” she whispered. “You remember that beeping the door made?”
I remembered the door alarm. It was an irritating little squeak that most of us had learned to tune out, but Mom was the lightest sleeper. She was hypersensitive to it, always making sure no one had accidentally let out Davis.
I was unsure where she was going with this. She continued, “Dad was in the computer room that night.”
It wasn’t uncommon for them to sleep apart. Dad snored and Mom couldn’t sleep through it.
“I didn’t think much of it at the time, but it woke me up, and I was a little annoyed because it was after midnight.”
Midnight.Right in the window of Alex’s estimated time of death. No, there had to be an explanation for this.
“Mom, that door would open a thousand times a night,” I reminded her. “Davis was old. He scratched constantly to be let out. We all did it all the time on autopilot. Plus, it was finnicky. Are you forgetting that it chirped even when the door wasn’t open?”
“But that night? Ofallnights.” She shook her head. “I told your father about it, and he told me to keep it to myself. So I did.”
This was the first time I was hearing about this, which meant I was likely the only person to now know aside from my parents. She’d probably never said because she knew it would look bad, even if it was just a coincidence. It would look bad for Will.
“What if your father said to keep quiet about it because it was him?” my mother asked, interrupting my line of thinking.
