Chapter 39
I couldn’t process what she was saying. Suzannah had put Hazel in the shed? My sweet, maternal sister-in-law was involved now? Had Tommy made her do it? Was that why they had been bickering? My mother had her hand pressed to her mouth.
I bent down toward my sister. “Hazel,” I said, trying to sound as calm as I could. “Tell us exactly what happened after you confronted Tommy.”
Hazel nodded. She reached out and grabbed one of my hands, and I let her.
She took a deep breath. “It was all from your book, Rose. It gave me everything I needed to put it all together. And when I figured it out, I rode my bike to Tommy’s after school.
He was there alone, and when I told Tommy what I knew, he didn’t argue,” she said.
“He didn’t fight me or try to lie. He just broke down and started crying.
He told me it was a big mistake, and that he had regretted it ever since.
” She paused and looked at our parents, both of whom were stricken.
She swallowed and kept going. “And then he asked me what I was going to do about it. And I got upset. I was shouting at him and telling him I couldn’t just live with it, that I had to tell Dad and the police, and you.
” She gave me a sympathetic look. “I mean you were right, and Will was sitting in prison … It wasn’t fair.
He begged me to keep quiet, and I told him I couldn’t do that, and he started wailing, you know?
I got scared and I ran from the house, but Suzannah ran after me. ”
Hazel’s eyes filled with tears. “She had just gotten home and overheard us. I expected her to be horrified, but she wasn’t. She had the weirdest look on her face.”
Hazel bit her lip. “I told her I was going to go to the police. I asked her if she could drive me to the station. It was, like, five thirty by then and getting kind of dark, and she nodded and told me to follow her, except when I turned around, she had pulled a fucking gun out of her purse. She told me if I didn’t do what she said, she would shoot me. ”
My mother reached for Hazel, burying her against her chest. For a minute, Hazel sobbed in her arms. I watched them, feeling rage coursing through me. Suzannah pulled a gun on Hazel?
She’d better hope the cops got to her first, or I was going to kill that bitch myself.
“She made me walk to the neighbors’. She had a key to their shed because she would sometimes let their gardeners in and out while they were gone.
She forced me inside. I was screaming, but the shed was so far back from the house that I knew no one could hear me.
She left me there for like a whole day before coming back with food and water.
I had to pee on the floor and everything. ” Hazel’s face twisted in pain.
My rage worsened.
“She always had the gun on me, no matter what. She kept telling me it was just for a couple of days until she figured out what to do. I asked her why she wouldn’t turn Tommy in.
Why she wanted to protect a murderer. And she told me that she already knew.
That when Daisy was, like, two, she found Alex’s necklace tucked into a pair of socks hidden in a box of Tommy’s old stuff in the garage.
But she didn’t tell anyone. She didn’t want Tommy to go to prison.
” Hazel trembled again and I had to dig my nails into my palms.
What a crazy fucking bitch.
“I asked her where Tommy was. Why he wasn’t coming to talk to me too. She wouldn’t answer. I could tell he didn’t know I was there. I really thought she was going to kill me.”
Hazel was sobbing. “I’m so sorry! I should have come to you guys, to the police, and none of this would have happened. I just wanted to make sure. I knew what happened to Will. I didn’t want to do the same to Tommy. I wanted to be wrong!”
I touched Hazel’s arm, seeing in her face the four-year-old I used to comfort.
“None of this is your fault,” I said. “This was all Tommy.”
I had questions for her. A lot of them. But for now, I just wanted her to recover.
“Are we going to be okay?” Hazel asked. “Are we going to get past this?”
I couldn’t imagine what she had gone through. What the past week had been like for her. She was too little to remember the shitstorm from last time.
“Yes.” I tried to sound convincing. “We’re all going to be okay.”