chapter twenty-two-6

"I was there," he said again, and his voice cracked on the last word. I stood up, stepping toward him, relief coursing through me when he didn't back away. I touched my hand to the side of his face, feeling the wet strands of his hair against my fingertips, and gently angled his face toward me. I slid my thumb across the trail a tear had left on his cheek and started to say something when he unexpectedly looked past me. He went rigid under my hand as I looked over my shoulder. Through the plexi-glass, I saw Mrs. Tomlin standing on the sidewalk behind us, her hair windblown and her clothing dotted with the rain. A package of cigarettes was clenched in her hand as she stared reproachfully at us. I took my hand from his face, keeping my eyes focused on her, before I realized, as I heard his shoes shuffling against the ground, that her glare was only directed at me. Then I realized something even worse, my scars burning against my skin as if they were fresh and still dripping blood. She'd heard me. When I looked away from her and back over my shoulder, I saw that Kolby was gone and halfway across the street with his hands still limp at his sides. I watched, a lump forming in my throat, as he headed for his father's car in the parking lot of a closed drugstore and reached for the door handle, yanking on it. His fingers slipped because he'd forgotten to unlock it. After he grabbed his keys, he looked back over to where I stood. It almost seemed like he was hesitating, a breath rising in his shoulders. But then he looked away from me, unlocking the car, and slid into the driver's seat. And then he was gone, like I knew he would be. When I turned around, I realized, with dread like ice water in my veins, that she wasn't. The heels of her black pumps sank into the hotel's front lawn as she strode toward the bus stop, the sound of the ground squishing beneath her muddying shoes soon replaced with the clicking of her heels against the pavement as she rounded the corner. Her eyes were wide as she stared at me, stepping into the cramped space. For a moment, she just stood there, incredulous, and I realized that his ocean-blue eyes were hers, and that they looked just as dark as his had been that night. "What is the matter with you?" she whispered harshly, and her voice shook with anger and resentment. I tried to ignore the sting I felt within my chest as I heard her tone. "My son is dead and you're . . . you're out here claiming that he . . . my son would never do something like that. He was a good person." I could only stand there, uncertain of what to say or do, my lips parted as if I was readying to defend myself, to say that he wasn't, but every breath I took in felt like it was all I was capable of. Inhaling, exhaling, inhaling. "You are just like her. I hoped that you weren't, Clara. I really did. But you are just like your sister. Always out to hurt him. Can you just leave him in peace? Hasn't your family taken enough from him?" "What?" I shook my head. "No. I never wanted to hurt him. I loved him, Mrs. Tomlin. I really did. But then he—I'm not lying." Then I told her what I had been holding in since September. "It's why Emily killed him." She scoffed in response, shaking her head so forcefully it caused locks of her hair to fall from her bun and land against her shoulders. There was a bitterness in her gaze that looked so unusual on her it was almost startling. "So are you saying my son has been raping you since he was eight years old then? That's why she killed his puppy, right? To get back at him?" "That wasn't her," I said quietly. "That was Griffin. My friend, I don't know, she thinks she's Nancy Drew or something, but she figured it out. He killed your puppy. It's, like, a part of a triad. Hurting animals, starting fires, bed-wetting—" "That was Emily," she interrupted, and there was something in her voice that made me hesitate. "You were younger. She used to come over and ask to play with the dog all the time. And I let her. One day, he came back limping and she said she'd accidentally closed a door on his paw, and I believed her. So the next time she came over to play with him, I let her. A couple of months later, she asked to take him out for a walk and when she got back, she said that he'd run away from her. Griffin was devastated. Cried for days. Eventually, someone at the police station called us and said they'd found his collar covered in blood, and a paw in the woods. My husband thought it must have happened after, but I think I knew. I think I always knew." "Mrs. Tomlin—" "Stop spreading accusations about my son. Find another way to get attention or a defense for your sister or whatever it is you want. Let Griffin rest in peace." And then, as the pounding of rain quieted against the bus stop, she turned away from me, lifting one of her hands to brush back a stray strand of hair. I remembered what Bex had told me, about Emily hurting Wilson Westbrooke the same way Griffin Tomlin had hurt me. The lies she'd told about his friends hurting her, or even him hurting her. Each truth rammed into my ribs, knocking me off-center. I remembered that she'd stabbed Griffin Tomlin with a knife the police never found, the clothes she kept in plastic bags in her closet, the funeral and her eyes looking empty as she listened to the tearful eulogies his family delivered. Then I remembered Elizabeth Monner, buried beneath the roots of my father's dead vegetables and clumps of frozen dirt. Griffin would've had to sneak away into our backyard to bury her without being seen or heard. I remembered how Griffin had said he would bury me in my father's vegetable garden in the text messages he'd sent, and how Emily was the only one who'd read them. I thought about when I'd overheard detectives theorizing that the reason the killer had given up on dismembering her was because he wasn't strong enough. But Griffin was a pitcher, he was strong enough. I took a step backward, the beats of my heart shattering my rib bones as I slowly sat back down on the bench. She'd disappeared the day after he'd broken into my bedroom, when I was asleep in the abandoned barn, drunk and alone because she'd left to get more beer. The pocketknife I'd brought with me from the night before was gone when she left. Elizabeth Monner was stabbed with a knife they never found. Aniston said not to tell the police about Griffin. Because she knew. She knew it wasn't him. Suddenly everything seemed too real, too clear, too strong. I leaned forward, sure I was going to vomit onto the concrete. The rushing sound of my pulse thrashing in my ears echoed against my skull, overwhelming me, as I realized the truth. The truth that felt too big in front of me to not be shattered underneath it. Emily killed Elizabeth Monner.