I heard the front door beep, the sound of it opening and closing. I didn’t know who had left, whether it was my mother and Steve or Tommy and Suzannah, but I didn’t care. I grabbed Hazel’s copy of my book and walked down the hall to Hazel’s room. I was finally going to finish it.
I could hear voices coming from the kitchen as I sat on Hazel’s rug, my back pressed against the foot of her bed. I started reading. The last chunk of the book covered the trial, keeping most of the facts the same, but blaming Gary’s character instead. Hazel’s commentary here went:Oh my god! Why did the Hopely girls lie about Will and Alex having sex? Where was Gary that night?And the most painful one:Why didn’t Sam say anything about seeing Will that night?
I clenched my teeth. It was upsetting to see that something I’d been trying to ignore for days had been plaguing her too.
Sam had seen Will out there with Alex.
Without any other suspects to go on, it was getting harder and harder to ignore that piece of evidence. Was it possible that I had been completely wrong about all of this?
I slammed it shut and threw it against Hazel’s bookshelf. It smacked the middle shelf, knocking over some picture frames and tchotchkes as it fell to the floor.
I instantly felt bad for destroying any piece of her room. I immediately got to my feet, picking up her glass horse figurines and photos. I put the horses back on the shelf as carefully as I could, and then reached for the picture of Hazel and Tommy. The same one I’d looked at a few days ago.
I almost dropped it again.
Earlier this week, the picture had looked completely innocuous to me. Just a photo of Tommy and Hazel in their matching McCullough Farm T-shirts. A snapshot from a summer that could have been one of any number of normal, boring days.
But now it felt like the frame was burning my hands. I couldn’t unsee it now, a thousand childhood memories floating back in a millisecond. Just how much Tommy had looked like Will that summer, after his growth spurt. Tommy’s potent dislike for Alex. How often he had worn that farm T-shirt, mostly because it had a horse on the pocket that delighted Hazel. And, like all of the McCullough merchandise, it was bright orange.
Hazel had looked at this picture every day. She had come back to her bedroom after talking to Sam and seen it. That was why it had been turned down the day I’d come in here. She hadn’t wanted to look at it anymore, not after she’d pieced it all together. Hazel had figured it all out.
It wasn’t Will that Sam had seen out there with Alex.
It was Tommy.
I stumbled backward and vomited all over Hazel’s bedspread.
32
I don’t know how long I stared at the photo but eventually Hazel’s door opened, and my father walked in. It could have been minutes or hours since I’d fled the dining table. Time had lost all meaning to me.
“Rose, are you—” My father stopped, his face stunned by the scene in front of him. The tears rolling down my face and the mess I’d made. I had somehow made it to the floor but I sat surrounded by the vomit that hadn’t landed on the bed. “Are you okay?”
Okay? It was a ridiculous word. I’d always hated it. I hadn’teverbeen okay. I’d lived my life in two hemispheres: Before and After. The happy life before Alex was killed, and the bitter, resentful one after. I could feel a third era emerging now. Before, After, andThis. This awful fucking discovery. This heinous third act I didn’t write and never saw coming. I would never be okay again. How could I be?
I was an idiot. Completely blind. I had spent the last eleven years defending Will with every ounce of my being. I had slept at night comforted by the idea that I was defending my innocent brother. I knew my brother couldn’t be capable of this. Turned out, I was only half-right.
“Rose?”my father asked again. He was crouching in front of me. It had been years since I’d seen him sit like this—his knees weren’t great. His sweatpants skimmed the small pools of vomit as he put both hands around my face and made me look at him. “What the hell is wrong now?”
When I didn’t answer, he shouted for my mother.“Lyla!”
My chest rose and fell as I ran through the evidence in my head. The unlocked back door. The alarm that woke mom up. Pieces of evidence that justas easily applied to Tommy as to Will. Tommy had the same alibi. And who would possibly suspect Tommy when Will was right there? Will was Alex’s jilted, angry ex-boyfriend, the person she had most recently had sex with.
Why would it be Tommy? I’d refused to accept that Will had done it, and I wanted to extend the same loyalty toward Tommy, but if I was sure that the same person was involved in both Alex’s murder and Hazel’s disappearance, then I couldn’t cross Tommy off the list. Will couldn’t be involved with Hazel. He was locked up. And Tommy … I shuddered.
He had been here. If Hazel had put this all together, she wouldn’t have hesitated to confront him—they were so close. He would have had a motive.
“What is going on in here?” Mom’s voice rang out loudly. Her eyes widened in surprise once she saw me. “What’s wrong with her? Keith, what’s going on?”
“I don’t fucking know, Lyla. I came in here to check on her and found her crying, practically comatose, and covered in vomit.”
I looked up and saw my mother looking terrified, with Suzannah just behind her. My sister-in-law, my lovely, generous sister-in-law. Did she know? Did I have to tell her?
“Where …” It was all I could manage. I stopped and wiped my face and tried again. “Where is Tommy?” I asked carefully.
“He just left to pick up the kids from my parents’,” Suzannah said. “We’ve been cleaning up downstairs, and I’m going to meet him at home.”
“He isn’t here?” I felt a moment of relief as Suzannah shook her head, replaced with panic as I realized he was with my niece and nephew.
