chapter thirty-one-1

The wind brushed over my face through the strands of hair I'd recently dyed a light shade of brown as I kept my eyes closed, listening to the gentle ripples of the water wetting the beach sands and the distant calls of seagulls behind me. I didn't look like her anymore—like Emily or the girl who'd believed in her or who'd believed in Griffin, only to be terrified by them both. I looked a little different, fresher, with bones that were a little stronger. Like someone who knew scars weren't just indications of the wounds inflicted upon us but proof we'd healed from them. Blood had stopped spilling. The bruising had disappeared. The skin had fused back together. You'd healed. I'd healed. I'd been so consumed with what had happened that I'd clung to the pain that used to be there instead of letting it go. I opened my eyes and took in the blue waters that glimmered in front of me as I stood ankle deep in the grains of wet sand covering my bare feet, freezing them. The bright November afternoon was warmer than usual but still cold enough for the lake's beach to be almost completely abandoned. There was no one here who knew who I was or what had happened the day before, unlike the news vans that lined the streets outside my house, reporters clamoring for some kind of quote from me on what I thought about the verdict, hassling me as I got into the car my mom and I picked out last August—a used green hatchback—but I'd ignored them as I usually did. I already knew who would be interviewing me about the verdict. The jury determined the death of Elizabeth Monner had been pre-meditated. The prosecutors believed Emily lured her into her car on August nineteenth, two days after my birthday, with the intention of killing her. The police were never able to find where Emily had committed the murder, but there were fibers from the trunk of the car on her body and in the shallow grave, suggesting she'd been there at some point. There were pictures from both of the crime scenes, her decomposing body in the earth and his floating facedown in a pool, and I held my breath for every moment, my ribs aching as I heard the devastated sounds of Mrs. Monner, or sometimes the Tomlins, crying somewhere in the courtroom. My mom eventually had to stand up and leave the room, wiping the back of her hand against her lips and smearing her lipstick across her skin. My father, seated behind Emily, didn't get up from his seat or cry or even demand to know why she'd done it. He just sat there behind her with nothing but allegiance, his side clear and obvious. He never wavered from her, not even when evidence started to mount against her, but it was as if none of that mattered to him. Emily was what mattered to him. When he continued to blame Griffin Tomlin's death on the poor influence he believed Wilson Westbrooke had been to her, and actually blamed him for Elizabeth Monner's murder, I started to broaden the distance between us. He never told me he didn't believe me—he even said that Griffin must have tried to rape her and that's why she killed him—but I could see that my sister's last victim was my father. She had consumed him, gripping on to his trust and bringing him closer. Closer into the illusion that she was real. One of the expert witnesses on the stand, who studied the behavior of female killers, said he believed the reason Emily had murdered Elizabeth Monner was because she'd wanted to use her death as an icebreaker to get closer to Griffin Tomlin while simultaneously indulging her sexual sadism. It was a sociopath's version of talking about a common interest, like sports or television shows, but warped and twisted. When she'd heard about what he'd done to me—which was corroborated through DNA found on the underwear he'd taken from me, left in that box in the barn, and on the pocketknife I'd kept—the expert said she recognized a piece of herself in him. It was attractive to her. They both experienced sexual gratification from manipulating and controlling others. But he rejected her. The prosecutor said Griffin most likely either denied the allegations I'd made against him or he was afraid of her. She'd escalated sooner than he was ready for. "Then," the prosecutor continued, "after almost a month of rejection on his part, he finally agrees to meet with her, only to reject her again, and she just snaps. She had been leaving him gifts, like the body of Elizabeth Monner, and even offered him her own sister. Which would kill two birds with one stone, so to speak. Ms. Porterfield was jealous of the attention Griffin Tomlin paid her younger sister, and by offering her to him through an opened bedroom window, she's building trust with him and getting rid of her." I tried not to flinch as I heard this, even though it wasn't as if I hadn't already suspected, but it felt different hearing someone say it so passionately to a selection of people who had never met me before. My mother was still somewhere outside, since she couldn't bring herself to hear about the open window again after the first time I'd told her, back when they were preparing for the trial. My father never really believed it, claiming the prosecution was twisting things or that the texts weren't actually from Emily but someone using her phone, but it changed something for Mom. She wrote Emily letters sometimes, some she sent and others she didn't, but she never went to see her. She never told me, but I thought the only way Mom knew how to love Emily now was from a distance. "And Griffin Tomlin goes and rejects her, time and time again," the district attorney continued, gesturing to Emily. "He's not interested. And maybe he threatens to tell the police about the girl she killed to impress him, and she decides to kill him. Out of both rage and self-preservation." His parents were in the courtroom, near the back. They'd both worn black clothing, as if they were still at his funeral. They'd moved recently, when the trial had neared and evidence started to trickle into the media that became harder and harder for the locals to deny. After someone smashed in their mailbox and defaced their garage door, they'd gathered their belongings into a moving truck and left before even selling the house. I wasn't completely sure where they'd moved—Aniston suspected somewhere in Pennsylvania—but they still came for the trial. I kept glancing over in their direction, wondering if they were ever looking at me. I wanted them to know that I was sorry they'd got tangled into this, that I never wanted for them to feel so hurt or for their son to be murdered. But instead of saying those things—which I felt would've been left unheard in their ears any- way—I turned around in my seat and looked to Emily, taking her in for the first time since February. Her hair was longer now, and maybe a little duller—not as blond, not as strawberry—and her skin wasn't quite as tan as I remembered it being a few months earlier. She wasn't wearing the beige jumpsuit again, but instead a navy pantsuit with a flowing light-pink top underneath the blazer. Aniston was upset about that, grumbling that she owned the same blouse as a killer now. Sometimes I looked over at Wilson Westbrooke sitting a couple of seats down from me, wondering what he was thinking when he looked at her. She'd only caught his eye once, when she was entering the courtroom, and I'd waited for something to register within her. Guilt, dread, satisfaction, anything. But her expression was blank and her gaze was as dull as her hair. She'd finally abandoned him, dusted him from her hands and treaded on.