“Sam Hopely saw you outside that night with Alex,” I said, willing my body to stop shaking. “In your bright orange shirt. She told Hazel, and then Hazel confronted you about it, didn’t she?”
He didn’t say anything, but I could see it on his face. The guilt. He didn’t deny it.
“How?” I croaked. “How could you have done all of this? How could you have kept silent this last week when you knew exactly what had happened? How could you have stayed silent all these years?”
I felt emboldened. I didn’t care who I was with. I didn’t care about the gun in his hand. I shoved Tommy in his large, hard chest. “How could you let Will go to prison for this?” I shoved him again.
“Rosie, I’m sorry. I never meant for any of this to happen.”
“Bullshit!” I yelled. “Murder doesn’t just happen, Tommy!”
I couldn’t stop myself. I had spent eleven years completely consumed by what had happened to Alex. Every decision I had made, good and bad, had been in the name of Will’s innocence. Tommy had seen all of it. He had let me do it, knowing exactly what had happened all along. He had gotten to live his life. He went to college. He got married. He had children. All while the rest of us suffered with the aftermath of whathehad done. And when faced with the opportunity to fess up—to admit what he’d done when Hazel had uncovered it—he had killed her too. He had to be a sociopath.
I remembered the wire taped to my chest and looked at Tommy. I watched him sink to the floor, still holding the gun as he slumped down in front of the leather sectional. Nervously, I lowered myself to the floor beside him.
“I never meant to hurt anybody,” Tommy cried. “I never meant for any of this to happen. I promise.”
“Tell me what you did,” I begged as I reached for his arm, gently grasping it. “Please.”
I had to know. After years of defending Will, of swearing up and down on every news station in the country that my brother was innocent. After years ofsearching for suspects when the real one slept a room away from me. After a week of searching for a sibling who had long since been dead. I had to know.
Tommy’s face twisted in pain as he reached out and stroked the side of my head.
“You’re going to hate me,” he said, and then he began.
35
Tommy: June 2010
Alex Hopely was a bitch.
Everybody knew it. It wasn’t exactly a state secret. They saw the way she acted at school and the way she treated her sisters. But she was pretty and popular, and apparently those things meant more than being nice.
For as long as I had known her, Alex Hopely had only one good thing going for her: She loved my brother. And my brother adored her back.
Except for the day of his graduation. The day Rosie told him what Alex had done. From the moment he found out about Alex’s cheating, Will had looked cold. Which was out of character for him. He was such a happy, good-natured guy. Exactly what you would want in a big brother: funny, lighthearted, fiercely loyal. And I was a weird kid. I never had a lot of friends. Never dated—something Alex loved to bring up. I was different from Will, but that never mattered. He was so good to me, so generous in every way.
Watching him suffer made me sick. After the graduation, Will and Alex had gone to the beach to talk, and they were gone for a really long time. I waited for him at home because I figured he’d want to debrief, but when he got back, he looked like he’d been run over by a truck. There was no light left in his eyes. He told me they broke up, but he wouldn’t say any more. He looked broken, laying down on his bed and just staring at the wall.
“How are you doing?” I asked, sitting down beside him.
Will was hugging his pillow, not looking at me. “I want to fucking die,” he said, his eyes closing.
His words made my stomach turn. I’d never heard him speak like that.
“Do you want to talk about it?’ I asked him.
“No,” he snapped. “I just want to be alone, Tommy.”
I left his room, giving him some privacy, unsure of what to do with myself. Rosie was still at the Hopelys’, so I had no one to talk to. I went to my room and stewed. The longer I thought about it, the angrier I got with Alex. She was the person who had caused this mess. Per usual, her thoughtless actions had hurt everyone else and she probably didn’t even give a shit. I was sure she would have a new boyfriend by the time college started, while Will would go into his freshman year heartbroken. I was sick over it.
I was still up around midnight when I heard Davis howling in the living room, scratching at the back door, so I let him out. The house was quiet. Everyone had gone to bed hours ago. Mom and Dad had known something was up with Will—he’d avoided them all evening—but they’d given him his space, just like I had. I was in my pajamas by then, a pair of flannel pants and that horse shirt from the McCullough Farm that Hazel liked. I slipped on a pair of Will’s slides that were by the back door and went outside with the dog.
I stood in the warm summer night watching as Davis took his sweet time to pee. He started wandering toward the path between the Hopelys’ house and ours, and I was getting tired.
“Davis,” I called. “Can you hurry up? Please?”
And then I heard a voice say, “You know he doesn’t understand you, right?”
