Chapter 23
I was sitting on my bed, my hair wrapped in a towel, as I cried and read more of Hazel’s words. I had sped through the book, desperate to get to her thoughts on the trial. Her thoughts littered the pages, everything from the simple So unfair to There were so many suspects!
It was morbid to read her thoughts now. All of her investigating had been for nothing and the weight of it crashed down on me. I couldn’t stop crying.
My phone rang with a call from Tommy, who had gone home after our argument. The sound interrupted my latest round of sobbing.
“What is it?” I asked, trying to calm myself down enough to speak.
“The body,” Tommy said. “It wasn’t Hazel.”
“WHAT?” I was confused but relieved.
“It wasn’t her,” Tommy said as he cried in relief, telling me the rest of the story.
Hazel was not dead. At least not yet. My parents had gone to ID the body and realized immediately from the dark hair peeking out that the teenage girl they had found was not my sister.
The girl’s face had been badly beaten, so it was hard to tell who exactly she was, but there had been a small scar on the shoulder that Hazel didn’t have.
It was most likely the girl from Hobe Sound who had disappeared two weeks ago.
The one I had mentioned on The Morning Hour: Lakelynn Hale.
I was instantly relieved. Sure, I was pissed too. Pissed that I had spent the last few hours believing my baby sister was dead and had been left in a canal, but there was hope in her still being missing. Missing was good in this case.
I lay on my bed, staring at the ceiling.
My searching had nowhere else to go. No more threads left to untangle besides mystery Nick, and even that felt tenuous now.
I had no idea what Hazel would have done after she had left Sam’s.
Had she believed what Sam had told her about Will?
Had she stopped looking then? It seemed the most likely.
Even if it didn’t account for where she was now.
I was no closer to finding her than I had been before. I felt completely useless.
I wasn’t sure how long I stayed lying like that. Long enough that I heard the front door open and close. Heard my father shuffle to his room quietly.
But then my phone rang. I picked it up, puffy eyed. It was Victoria, an old high school picture of her flashing on the call screen. What could she possibly want?
I took a deep breath and answered the phone, not bothering to sit up.
“Hello?” My throat was raw.
“Rose?” Victoria’s voice sounded far kinder than it had the last time we’d spoken.
“Yeah,” I mumbled. I still felt numb.
“I just heard about the body from one of the cops outside,” her voice cracked. “Is it … is it her?”
So that was why she had called. She thought Hazel was dead. I didn’t know whether I found the gesture compassionate or annoying. I didn’t know if I cared.
“It wasn’t her,” I said softly.
“Oh, thank god.”
There was a pause. I didn’t know what else to say. “Is there something you need, Victoria?”
“Sam called me,” she said. “She told me you stopped by, and what you guys talked about. About Alex and Isaac. I didn’t know about any of that.”
Sam had kept that from Victoria too? I wasn’t necessarily surprised. She’d probably been embarrassed.
“It doesn’t matter,” I told her. “Isaac didn’t kill Alex. He was in another state.”
“I know,” Victoria said. “She told me.”
I sighed. I didn’t understand why I was rehashing this with Victoria. I was too exhausted and upset for this right now.
There was a sharp inhale on the other end of the phone.
“You know, I’ve been having my doubts about Will for a while.
When Sam told me about Isaac, it made me realize that anyone Alex was sleeping with could have been a suspect.
” Victoria was speaking so quickly that the worlds were almost jumbling together.
“And then when that cop told me they thought they had found Hazel’s body, it hit me how serious this all is. ”
It took me a second to process her words. I sat straight up, clutching my phone tighter to my ear.
“What are you trying to say, Victoria?”
“I didn’t tell you this earlier because Alex swore me to secrecy,” she said. “Seriously. She didn’t tell anyone this. I only know because I caught them once leaving the community park, and it was obvious they had been sleeping together.”
My mind immediately went to Nick. It had to be …
“Who?”
“Her teacher,” Victoria said. “That young cute one.”
Her teacher. The words rang in my ears. I was grateful I was sitting down because my knees would have given out beneath me. She couldn’t have said that. I was hearing things.
“A teacher?” I repeated. “Do you know what his name was?” I asked her.
“Mr. Myers,” Victoria said. “But Alex always called him by his first name. I think it was—”
“Bradley,” I answered, as my entire body began to shake.