“Like I said, we’ll talk about everything later.”
From the tension on her face, I can tell she’s struggling. There’s so much she wants to say, but she’s not ready to face the pain.
I sit up in bed, ignoring my throbbing head. “You’ll not do this. You’re not going to shut me out like you used to do to Dad. I need to know why you turned your back on me, and I need to know if you knew Dad was innocent.”
She turns and stares at the wall for a long time before nodding. “You’re right. Your father was innocent. Someone else murdered Lacey Simmons.”
“And you know who that person is, don’t you?”
I’m hoping she’ll say no. I don’t think I can handle being betrayed by another person I love.
“Yes,” she says. “Alex Watson.”
“Why?” I ask in disbelief. “If you knew, why didn’t you ever say anything?”
She falls to her knees in front of my bed. “Please, don’t think badly of your parents. We did what we thought was right at the time, for you, for us.”
I’m too afraid to ask what that is. What exactly is she talking about? My mind is a whirlwind of confusing emotions.
“Tell me what you did.” I clench my teeth, my jaw aching from the tension. “I need to know. I deserve to know.”
She closes her eyes, clasps her hands in front of her, then opens them again. “That boy, Alex, he killed that girl in the shed… at his house. Your father saw him do it.”
“Go on,” I push. Falling apart is not an option. I need to hear everything, then I can decide how to react to it.
She picks herself up from the floor and drops into the chair I used to sit in when I was doing homework at my desk. She lowers her head into her hands.
“Your father wanted to go to the police to report everything, but Alex’s parents made him an offer.”
My fingers tighten around the quilt that’s keeping me warm. I feel nauseous. Maybe it was a mistake to ask for all the information at once, but it’s too late now. The can of worms is wide open and there’s no way they can’t crawl out now.
“Was he offered money, Mom? Did they ask Dad to go to prison on Alex’s behalf?”
She looks up and shifts the chair closer to the bed. “We had so many debts, so many things we needed to pay off.”
I allow a hush to fall between us. It’s only disturbed by the sound of my old clock ticking above my bed.
“Dad ended up killing himself because he couldn’t cope with prison,” I say finally, remembering the day we got the news. “If he didn’t accept that money, maybe he would still be alive.”
“I don’t think he did,” she says.
I stop breathing. “You don’t think he did what?”
“That he took his own life. He would never do such a thing. He was a strong man. He would never have left us, not without a goodbye, not in that way.”
“You think the Watsons did it?”
“Yes. I think they did it to make sure your father didn’t tell the truth.” A tear trickles down my mother’s cheek. She wipes it away quickly.
Alex admitted he was behind Jeffrey’s death, but he didn’t say anything about my father’s suicide. But both men had stood in the way of his freedom. I know for a fact that his mother would stop at nothing to keep him out of prison.
“I need to call the police,” I blurt out.
“You don’t need to.” My mother comes to sit next to me on the bed. “It’s all over.”
“Is Alex dead? His mother shot him.”
“No, he survived, but I heard he’s in critical condition.”
