Chapter 28
The search continued the rest of the day. Hours later, the sun had long since set and some of the groups, tired, had gone home for dinner. The police drove by and passed out flashlights for those of us who wanted to keep looking. No one in the family wanted to stop yet.
It was nine when we decided to give up for the night.
My entire family, minus my niece and nephew, had decided to go back to my father’s house.
And when we got there, my mother was already in the kitchen.
There were two large takeout containers on the counter, filling the kitchen with a tart, garlicky odor.
“We ordered in,” my mother said, seeing the look on my father’s face. “Italian. I thought … I don’t know, after everything, I thought it might be nice to eat all together.”
I looked at the containers. She had ordered the family meal deal from a local place we had frequented when I was younger.
Paper plates and plastic cups were stacked up on the dining-room table.
Even Megan and Mallory were present, not an iPad in sight.
It was hard to reconcile all of this with the conversation I’d had with my mother at Denny’s two days ago.
But from the way my mother looked at my father now, it was clear she wasn’t still suspecting him.
Had my parents spoken? Had she run her theory by Tommy or Suzannah and realized how ridiculous it sounded?
Or had Pullman told them all about what Sam had seen back then?
Maybe the reality of today had scared them into seriousness. We all had to be coming to the same conclusion that no matter how much we wanted the opposite, it was looking more and more like Hazel was gone. She had been missing too long.
We all made our way to the dining table.
I took a seat beside Suzannah. Tommy was still avoiding looking at me, choosing instead to stare at the food, which Mom had started to dole out.
Someone had placed a large two liter of Diet Coke in the middle of the table, alongside a couple of bottles of cheap red wine that I knew came with the meal deal.
I reached for one and cracked the cap. I felt so dead inside, and I needed something to make me feel again.
I let the wine gurgle out of the bottle into my glass, making an obnoxious slurping sound as it poured nearly to the top.
“Really?” Mom asked, eyebrows cocked in annoyance.
I brought the drink to my mouth, chugging back a sip that was inappropriately large.
Tommy reached for the bottle and poured himself a glass too.
He handed it to Suzannah, who followed suit, and soon the bottle was empty.
Steve shrugged and cracked the second bottle, pouring a glass for himself and then my father.
“I think we all need some after today,” he reasoned.
My mother sighed as she was handed a glass too.
It felt like we were in mourning. The entire scene was so surreal.
I kept picturing the family dinners and breakfasts we used to have before the arrest. It felt light-years away from the one in front of me now.
Where did the time go? I could see it all like it was yesterday, practically tasting the memories.
I could picture Hazel sitting in the corner, her tiny little arms reaching over the booster seat for a sip of Tommy’s or Will’s soda, a Nutella sandwich in her hand.
That baby was now nearly an adult. A fully grown person who wasn’t in her bedroom where she belonged, but presumed dead.
I choked out an unexpected sob. I wiped at my eyes, well aware of the glances coming my way. Suzannah reached out and stroked my shoulder. Her face looked pained.
Mom’s lip trembled. “I need to get more ice,” she said abruptly, the beginning of tears forming on her wrinkled face.
“How was the drive to Miami yesterday?” Steve said finally, taking a sip of his wine just as Dad chugged his own. He was scrambling for conversation. It seems Tommy had told everyone I’d gone to see Will. That was annoying.
“I hate Miami drivers,” I said.
Steve’s mouth turned up at the corners. “I mean, even Miami drivers hate Miami drivers.” He was trying, whether to make an effort or provide a distraction, I didn’t know, but I didn’t want to be ungrateful. I just couldn’t do the back-and-forth right now.
I couldn’t sit here and not talk about what I knew anymore. Too much time had passed. Maybe one of them knew something about it that could help the police. It was time for us to all be on the same page.
I got up from the table, walked to my purse in the hallway, and pulled out the copy of my book. The Publix receipt I was using as a bookmark stuck out of the top, indicating the handful of chapters I had left. The ones I planned on reading tonight.
My mother was back at the table when I reentered the dining room. She looked up at me and stiffened when she saw the familiar neon cover clutched in my hands.
“Why do you have that?” she asked, her voice eerily faint. I could see the rage simmering as she tried to process why I would bring this book to the table. There were few things she hated more.
I had to keep calm. I wasn’t going to get anything across rationally if I got upset.
Everyone around the table had gone quiet, all looking in my direction. I took a deep breath. “I have to tell you all something.”
“If it’s about that book, I don’t want to know,” my mother said, her eyes moving back down to her plate. “I am focused on finding my daughter.”
“This isn’t my copy,” I said. ‘“It’s Hazel’s.”
“What?” My father put down his fork. He stared at the hardcover like it was a bomb about to detonate. “I forbade her to read it. Hazel and I had a great routine here. She respected the rules.” He paused. “Did you give it to her?”
It felt like he had slapped me. His automatic assumption of the worst. I had always respected his wishes to keep Hazel out of it. It was part of why we’d grown apart as sisters. I couldn’t talk to her without wanting to talk about Will and what happened. It consumed me.
“I found it in her locker at the McCulloughs’ , ” I continued. I flipped through the pages so they could see. “She’d been annotating it.”
My mom was shaking her head. “No, no, no,” she said plainly. “Why would she be doing that?”
I took a deep breath. “Because she was investigating it,” I said quickly. “Hazel was looking into Alex’s case. That’s what she was doing the last few weeks before she disappeared.”
“Excuse me?” my mother hissed.
“What?” my father demanded. Tommy brought his fingers to his temples in frustration. Suzannah reached for him, squeezing his arm comfortingly.
Steve got up from the table. He reached for his daughters. “Girls, let’s go into the other room,” he said, ushering them from the table and toward the bedrooms. They followed him without complaint.
I sat back down in my seat, reaching for my glass of wine and taking another sip, desperate for the liquid courage. My father stared at me.
“She was making notes and investigating leads,” I continued. “She’d called Will and was asking him about everything that happened. And she had gone to see both Victoria and Sam Hopely. She was trying to narrow down suspects—”
“Do the police know about this?” Suzannah asked, her mouth hanging open in surprise.
“Pullman does,” I said, even though he didn’t know about the annotated book itself. I’d have to tell him now.
“Is this what you’ve been running around doing?” my father demanded. “Following a naive child’s investigation?” He spoke firmly, his face completely distraught. “Will killed Alex, Rose. It’s high time you acknowledged that.”
Across the table, my mother gave him a strained look. It was hard to forget that two days ago, she had been questioning that very thing herself. Had even considered the unthinkable. That my father was involved.
“You really don’t think her looking into all of this proves someone else was involved?” I asked, feeling the hot tears forming in my eyes. “They could have found out what she was doing! They could have tried to stop her!”
“And let’s say for a second that you’re right, Rose, and that’s exactly what she was doing,” my mother snapped. “Maybe she offended someone with her questions. Did you ever think of that? She could have gotten herself killed asking the wrong person the wrong thing.”
“Yeah, maybe the person who killed Alex!”
“Then it would be your fault, Rose! Is that what you want?” my mother reminded me tensely. “It would be one more life that your god-awful book took. It has tormented one man, and killed another. Or have you already forgotten about what you did to Mr. Hopely?”
She tossed the hardcover off the table and onto the floor, where it landed cover up.
The wine was rushing to my head. I couldn’t stop the words. “There was absolutely nothing good about Mr. Hopely. I know that firsthand,” I said.
Mom crossed her arms, her eyebrows raised in displeasure. “And what is that supposed to mean?”
“What do you think it means?” I replied.
The energy in the room became painfully awkward as the silence hung in the air. I could feel myself at the edge. The silence was forcing my hand. I was going to have to say something. Everyone watched as I downed the rest of the wine.
Tommy seemed to understand first. “You don’t mean …” he trailed off. “Did he do something to you?”
I had always expected to feel embarrassed if anyone found out. Humiliated, even, the way I had been that night. But now, those feelings were gone. So much worse had happened to all of us.
“You could say that.” I turned in my seat to look at my mother. Her expression shifted from rage to confusion. “I made Gary the murderer in my book because he deserved it.”