Chapter 36
Tommy was talking through the sobs. “I was in a blind rage. I didn’t plan it, I promise. You have to believe me.”
I squeezed my eyes shut. I was ashamed that I had spent so much time criticizing Alex.
Sure, she was a bitch. She had cheated and lied and hurt people, but she was only eighteen years old.
Practically the same age as Hazel. She should have had years to grow up and change and grow out of it.
And even if she hadn’t, she didn’t deserve to die.
To be killed in that way. Worse people than her were still living.
Tommy’s gaze was on me, while his hand still rested on his gun. “Say something,” he begged. “Please. Anything.”
“How could you let Will take the fall for this?” I demanded. “Even if you didn’t plan on hurting her. Even if you did it because of what she did to Will, which is bullshit, by the way. How could you then let our brother suffer for what you did?”
His answer shook me to my core. “I didn’t at first! I didn’t know they would think it was Will. I didn’t know they had slept together that morning. I thought they’d think it was a stranger.”
“And when you realized they thought it was him?”
“I was scared! I didn’t want to go to prison. I knew I wouldn’t survive there.”
“So you let Will go instead?! You let them take his entire life away from him for something he didn’t do?”
“He was older. And bigger. More capable.”
“Of suffering?”
Tommy stiffened, his gaze darkening. “I should have known he was the only one you’d care about in this whole thing. He’s all you’ve ever cared about. Even before Alex.”
I was about to deny it, but he wasn’t wrong. Will had always been my idol, the golden boy of the family. No one could deny that.
Tommy’s grip on the gun tightened. His stress was palpable. The tears were slipping down his cheeks. I needed to keep him talking.
“And what about Hazel?” I pressed, though I wasn’t even sure I wanted to hear it anymore. If what happened to her was even a fraction of what had happened to Alexandria, I wasn’t sure I’d make it out of this house without killing Tommy myself. “What did you do?”
Tommy looked away. “She rode her bike here the day she disappeared, and she sat me down. She told me she knew what I did. She figured it out just like you said. She was going to tell the police and said she hated me. It broke my heart. I’ve always been here for her, the only sibling left after you moved.
I was here when you left and never looked back.
She loved me, and for once, I was the family favorite.
She didn’t even remember Will. And then she turned on me.
” He reached over and took my face in his hands.
He ignored the way I flinched. “I’m so fucking sorry, Rosie.
I love you all so much. You know that, right? I loved our family more than anything.”
Words. These were just words. They meant nothing. And I’d know. I’d spent so much time begging people to listen to me, written a whole book begging the world to exonerate Will, and it never made any difference. We had still ended up here.
“I’m going to kill myself,” Tommy told me firmly. “You don’t have to deal with me anymore.”
“No.” I grabbed his arm tightly, holding him to me in a hug.
I needed to know where Hazel was. How he had killed her.
Where he had put her body. My right hand reached around him for the gun, which he’d now placed down on the table behind him.
I had never held one, and it felt heavy in my hands. “You can’t.”
“I have to. I can’t live with this anymore.”
“You don’t get to create this mess and leave me, all of us, to deal with it again!” I screamed at him, suddenly bringing the gun to my head. I knew holding it to him would mean nothing. He wanted to die. The question was whether he would let me die.
It was a risk I was willing to take. For Will.
For Hazel. Wire or not, I knew how long legal proceedings take.
Even with Tommy dead, Will might never get out.
And what did it matter, really? Even if I did shoot myself in the head, would it really be worse than living with this?
With everything he had just told me? I positioned the gun at the side of my temple, and Tommy shifted away from me.
“If you move again, I will shoot,” I told him.
“Rose,” he pleaded.
“You have a wife,” I said, desperately. “You have children. Be a fucking man and own up. For everything you’ve done. If you love me—or Hazel or Will, or any of us—you will walk out that fucking door and take responsibility for the girls you killed.”
Tommy stared at me. “Girls?”
“Women, whatever. Alex and Hazel,” I snapped.
“But Rose,” Tommy said. “I didn’t kill Hazel.”