Page 19 of One Night Years Ago

“That’s Sheriff Bowmann to you, Fowler. I’m not going to ask you again Take. It. Off.”

He sighed and shrugged out of his T-shirt. She tried to keep herself from looking at his carved stomach muscles as he did so. And then she saw the tattoo. It was a bird, on the left side of his chest, but smaller than his brother’s eagle. A cruder version. No flapping wings. Not the bird from her nightmares, after all.

Tears filled her eyes.

“That’s why the eagle was wrong. During the trial. I kept saying it, but nobody believed me.”

He nodded, looking ashamed. “I knew you’d remember the eagle. Jesse was tricked into getting it a year earlier. I left him alone for the evening. I wanted to go out with friends. And some people he considered his friends tricked him into getting that bird. He didn’t even realize it would never come off.”

“Where did you get yours?”

He let his body slide down until he was sitting against the wall, as if his legs couldn’t hold him.

“In prison. While I waited for the trial. I drew a picture of what I remembered. The guy wasn’t great, but it was enough.”

“It wasn’t you,” she said. Not a question, but a statement.

“It wasn’t me,” he confirmed. His eyes were filled with sorrow. She understood now why she didn’t feel threatened by him. He wasn’t her rapist. But then …

“You asshole. It was your brother. You protected him so he wouldn’t have to pay for what he did to me.”

He looked up, alarmed.

“No! He didn’t do it! He didn’t hurt you.”

She laughed, her voice reaching a hysterical pitch.

“He didn’t do it? I remember you … him, on top of me.”

She hated him then more than she’d ever hated him before.

“I should kill you right now.”

Hunter shook his head like he was stuck in a nightmare.

“Please believe me. He didn’t do it. He came home shaking. He told me what happened. He was trying to get the dress back on you. He didn’t realize what had just—" He paused, running a hand through his short dark hair. “Fuck.”

“You have two minutes to explain before I arrest both of you. This time you’ll both go to prison for what you did to Lanie.”

Once Hunter started speaking, it was like he couldn’t stop.

“Jesse’s my twin. It was a difficult birth; he was deprived of oxygen for too long, and ... he’s always going to be like a seven-year-old boy. But he didn’t hurt you.”

“I remember him,” she repeated, enunciating the words. “He was on top of me.”

He sighed as if in pain. “He found you like that. He didn’t know what had happened to you. He was trying to put the dress back on you. You can talk to him about it.”

A niggling doubt grew in her mind. She remembered again the large, startled gray eyes, and the way his hands had flapped around her body.

“How can you be so sure? I know he’s your brother, but …”

“After the trial, I asked my mother to take him to the doctor in the city. They confirmed what I already knew. He doesn’t have the sexual impulses of an adult man. He’s not violent. I swear to you, Natalie. He didn’t hurt you.”

She felt her eyes well up with tears. Everything she’d believed for the last twelve years was crumbling.

“So why did your mother take him to the doctor, if you were so sure?”

“I was 99.99% sure, but I needed that 0.01% certainty.” He paused. “I’m so sorry.”