Chapter 32
I don’t know how long I stared at the photo but eventually Hazel’s door opened, and my father walked in. It could have been minutes or hours since I’d fled the dining table. Time had lost all meaning to me.
“Rose, are you—” My father stopped, his face stunned by the scene in front of him. The tears rolling down my face and the mess I’d made. I had somehow made it to the floor but I sat surrounded by the vomit that hadn’t landed on the bed. “Are you okay?”
Okay? It was a ridiculous word. I’d always hated it.
I hadn’t ever been okay. I’d lived my life in two hemispheres: Before and After.
The happy life before Alex was killed, and the bitter, resentful one after.
I could feel a third era emerging now. Before, After, and This.
This awful fucking discovery. This heinous third act I didn’t write and never saw coming.
I would never be okay again. How could I be?
I was an idiot. Completely blind. I had spent the last eleven years defending Will with every ounce of my being. I had slept at night comforted by the idea that I was defending my innocent brother. I knew my brother couldn’t be capable of this. Turned out, I was only half-right.
“Rose?” my father asked again. He was crouching in front of me. It had been years since I’d seen him sit like this—his knees weren’t great. His sweatpants skimmed the small pools of vomit as he put both hands around my face and made me look at him. “What the hell is wrong now?”
When I didn’t answer, he shouted for my mother. “Lyla!”
My chest rose and fell as I ran through the evidence in my head.
The unlocked back door. The alarm that woke mom up.
Pieces of evidence that just as easily applied to Tommy as to Will.
Tommy had the same alibi. And who would possibly suspect Tommy when Will was right there?
Will was Alex’s jilted, angry ex-boyfriend, the person she had most recently had sex with.
Why would it be Tommy? I’d refused to accept that Will had done it, and I wanted to extend the same loyalty toward Tommy, but if I was sure that the same person was involved in both Alex’s murder and Hazel’s disappearance, then I couldn’t cross Tommy off the list. Will couldn’t be involved with Hazel.
He was locked up. And Tommy … I shuddered.
He had been here. If Hazel had put this all together, she wouldn’t have hesitated to confront him—they were so close. He would have had a motive.
“What is going on in here?” Mom’s voice rang out loudly. Her eyes widened in surprise once she saw me. “What’s wrong with her? Keith, what’s going on?”
“I don’t fucking know, Lyla. I came in here to check on her and found her crying, practically comatose, and covered in vomit.”
I looked up and saw my mother looking terrified, with Suzannah just behind her. My sister-in-law, my lovely, generous sister-in-law. Did she know? Did I have to tell her?
“Where …” It was all I could manage. I stopped and wiped my face and tried again. “Where is Tommy?” I asked carefully.
“He just left to pick up the kids from my parents’,” Suzannah said. “We’ve been cleaning up downstairs, and I’m going to meet him at home.”
“He isn’t here?” I felt a moment of relief as Suzannah shook her head, replaced with panic as I realized he was with my niece and nephew.
“Suzannah, was Tommy working from home the day Hazel went missing?” I asked.
She looked confused. “What. Why?”
“Answer the question.”
She glanced from my parents to me. “Yes. I think so. He pretty much always works from home,” Suzannah sputtered, trying to figure out where I was going with this.
It felt like my chest had cleaved in two, cracking my ribs open to expose my frigid heart.
“Were you with him?” I pressed her.
Suzannah still looked confused but was becoming more scared by the second. She spoke slowly. “No, the kids were with my mom that day so I could run a bunch of errands. Why?”
I felt another wave of pain rush over me. Pullman had told me that Hazel had been spotted on the west side of town—which was where Tommy and Suzannah lived. Had Hazel confronted him there with what she’d figured out?
My mother was in front of me now, shoving my father to the side.
“Rose, baby. What is going on?” It was clear she understood that something had happened.
My voice turned shrill. “I think … I think Tommy killed Alex,” I said, barely getting the words out through my sobs. “And I think Hazel confronted him about it.”
Suzannah jumped backward, like I had hit her. “No.”
My father shook his head. “What are you talking about?”
I could barely breathe. I could hardly form the words.
“Sam Hopely told Hazel that she saw Will out there with Alex that night,” I managed, struggling to catch my breath as my parents made eye contact.
“She never told the police because she said she felt guilty, like maybe if she’d done something she could’ve stopped what happened.
” I swallowed. “But she also told Hazel, and then me, that Will was wearing a bright orange T-shirt.”
I picked up the photo of Hazel and Tommy and handed it to my father. “I found this face down on Hazel’s bookshelf.”
My father said nothing, staring down at the framed photo.
“Oh, come on,” Suzannah said, frantic. “It’s a T-shirt, Rose! That doesn’t mean anything!”
“Keith …” My mother trailed off, reaching for the frame. My father handed it over without a fight.
“I think that’s why she was on the west side of town,” I said, more tears falling as my parents processed what I was saying.
“No!” Suzannah shook her head. “No, no, no. I … This isn’t possible, Rose.”
“But the shirt,” I said, my whole body shaking. “They looked so alike back then. Hazel must’ve thought—”
“You don’t know what Hazel thought!” Suzannah seethed. “And there has to be a better explanation for all of this besides the color of a T-shirt!”
She was pacing, her face growing more and more angry.
“For someone who’s spent her entire life defending Will, you sure feel pretty comfortable accusing your other brother of the same thing!
” The insult stuck and she kept going. “I’m sure Will had an orange shirt too.
Or they shared that one. My god, this is hardly a slam dunk. ”
Maybe. It would be so easy to believe that. I too had thought of his University of Florida merch. But one of them had to have done this. And if Hazel’s and Alex’s cases were connected, the way I knew they had to be, then it had to be Tommy.
“I’m calling him,” I said, scrambling for my phone in my pockets and realizing I left it on my own bed. My mother was still clutching the frame. My father was frozen beside her.
Suzannah let out another cry of frustration. “This is ridiculous, Rose!”
“Then he can tell me that!” I said. I had flat-out asked Will this question a thousand times, in a thousand iterations. Did you hurt Alex? Did you kill her? Every time, I had believed him.
I had never asked Tommy. Never had any reason to before now. But I needed to confront him now. To hear his voice when he answered my question.
My father’s phone was sticking out of the pocket of his sweatpants. I reached for it, thankful he didn’t believe in passcodes. I scrolled to his recent calls. Tommy was the second to last. I pressed the button, holding the phone to my ear.
“Do you have any idea what this is going to do to him?” Suzannah’s voice was shrill. “What you’re accusing him of?”
I ignored her, focusing on the click as Tommy answered on the second ring.
“Dad?” Tommy sounded panicked. “What’s wrong?”
“It’s Rose.” My voice was stronger than I expected it to be.
“What happened? Where’s Dad?” Tommy was worried. I felt my resolve weaken. This was Tommy on the phone. My little big brother.
I clutched the phone. “Where is she, Tommy?”
Tommy’s voice was panicked. “Who? What are you talking about?”
It sounded so sincere. Could he honestly not know? Was he lying? Would he forgive me if I was wrong?
“Hazel,” I said carefully. “Where is Hazel?”
There was a moment of silence on the other end of the line. A flicker of hesitation. My chest constricted in pain.
“Rose—” he said quickly.
“Did you kill her, Tommy?” I asked, my voice breaking in two. I didn’t even know which girl I was asking about. Hazel or Alex.
Suzannah reached for the phone, trying to pull it out of my hands. My father held her back, a few steps away from us. The silence on the other end was unbearable.
“Did you kill Alex?!” I shrieked into the phone.
More silence, broken only by Daisy and Felix’s chirps in the background.
“Tommy, please,” I said again, desperate now. “Is Hazel alive?”
I could hear his breathing turning heavy, like he was preparing to cry.
“Rosie.” Tommy’s voice was breaking now too. I could hear him crying. “I’m sorry. God, I am so sorry.”
He hung up. The phone fell into my lap. My sister was gone.
“What did he say?” Suzannah’s voice was quiet.
“He … he said he was sorry,” I choked.
Suzannah ripped herself from my father’s grip, yanking her own phone out of her jeans and frantically dialing. I heard the familiar voicemail greeting. Hey, it’s Tommy. Leave a message.
I picked my father’s phone back up and scrolled through his contacts with shaking fingers until I found Detective Pullman.
“Hello?” Detective Pullman’s voice was clear. “Mr. Dearling?”
I could hardly think. “It was Tommy,” I said. “He killed Alex and Hazel.”