I sink into my chair because I feel like I’m close to fainting, then I take a few breaths before asking the next question.
“That person, the one who sent the message, did you pay them to do it for you?”
Instead of answering, she turns away from me again.
“Oh, my God, Mom. What did you do?”
“I only did what any loving mother would do for her child.”
“Did you kill one of the girls that Alex is accused of killing?” It’s a question I never thought I would ever ask my mother, but I have learned the hard way that life is full of surprises.
She comes to kneel in front of me. “Please forgive me. I just... I couldn’t let him get away with it, not again.”
“Which one?” I whisper. “Which girl did you kill?”
She rests her head on my lap and whispers a single name.
“Brittney.”
Chapter 40
“Iwanted him out of your life.” My mother’s mouth has taken on an unpleasant twist and her dark eyes are hooded like a hawk’s. “I wanted him to suffer.”
I press my nails into my palm. “But you didn’t need to have an innocent girl killed. She did nothing to you.”
We’ve been talking for three hours, and I’m still trying and failing to understand. I’m shocked to the core. How could she do something like that and continue her life as if everything is normal?
She revealed to me that when she followed us to Aston, she worked in the kitchen of a fast-food restaurant opposite the high school, one that was frequented by the students.
Her plan was to keep an eye on Alex. She knew he would kill again and this time, she didn’t want him to get away.
She followed him for weeks until one night, she watched him follow a girl from the school, Brittney McLaren. My mother stalked him while he stalked Brittney.
Knowing that it was only a matter of time before he did the unthinkable, she hired a man she found on a forum online. She instructed him to catch Alex in an act that was sure to send him to prison for the rest of his life. She paid him to do whatever it took, even if it meant committing a murder that would get pinned on Alex.
The hitman told her that during the rape, Alex strangled Brittney, but she didn’t die. When Alex left, the hitman stepped in and finished the job.
That should have been the end of it, but my mother panicked and was sure the authorities would pin Brittney’s murder on her instead of Alex.
“It seemed simple in my mind,” she says in a hoarse whisper. “But after it was done, I realized I had made a mistake. I wanted Alex to go to prison, but I knew if his mother stepped in and made it go away, the authorities would continue to search for the real murderer.”
I don’t know what to ask her, so I allow her to continue.
“I was scared, so I told the guy to get rid of the body and clean up any evidence that might lead to me. I didn’t want to know where the body was buried. He promised no one would find it.” She blows out a breath. “Then I left town. I needed to get away in case…” her voice drifts off.
“Alex still ended up being a suspect,” I murmur. I can’t even get myself to look at her.
The woman who gave birth to me and raised me, the woman who taught me right from wrong, now sounds more like a criminal mastermind than my mother.
Her confession explains why she has not gone to church once since I returned home. She used to be one of those people who never missed a Sunday service or prayer meetings during the week. I thought it was because she hated to leave me on my own. How could I have known that the reason was much deeper and darker?
Finding out about the things my husband had done was excruciating enough, but this is much worse. Our conversation feels like surgery without anesthesia.
My mother shifts next to me and swallows loud before continuing in a low voice. “After a few weeks, an eyewitness… one of Brittney’s neighbors contacted the police and told them that before Brittney disappeared, they saw a woman around the neighborhood a couple of times.”
That woman was my mother, watching Brittney, waiting for Alex to come for her.
“So you went ahead with your initial plan of framing Alex?”
