Epilogue
Twenty Months Later
“That guy was definitely looking at me, Rosie.”
Despite having legs infinitely longer than mine, Will walked so much slower. He had yet to master the way New Yorkers navigated crowds. He moved out of the way of people, thought that everyone was looking at him; he took offense when people pushed past.
“He was not looking at you,” I told him. “He was looking at me.”
Will snorted. “Do you think you’re more famous than me, Rosie?”
“I know I am. I’ve been a public figure for years now. I’ve been on television, remember? And where have you been? Oh yeah, that’s right: in prison.”
“I don’t think those are things I can forget!” Will said, making light of it. From the moment he was released four months ago, he had eased his transition with humor. And therapy. Lots of therapy.
We were lucky he’d gotten out so quickly.
Sixteen months was practically unheard of, and in many ways was thanks to Pullman and the Hopelys.
I hadn’t spoken to any of them since Cassandra’s visit to my backyard, but I had a feeling she had rallied them.
The three sisters had even released a statement on Twitter, urging the Florida governor to release Will as soon as possible.
I had sent them each a letter. Only Victoria ever responded, but it comforted me to think that they all knew I was grateful.
Will had been released with a hefty settlement.
Florida issues fifty thousand dollars for every year someone has been falsely imprisoned.
After eleven years of imprisonment, his settlement had been well over half a million dollars.
The state didn’t share this news publicly; I could only imagine the outcry if they had.
In the wake of Tommy’s arrest, people had trouble separating Tommy and Will.
Rewarding Will was the right thing to do, but some people might feel like it was rewarding Tommy too.
It didn’t matter that none of us had spoken to Tommy in over a year.
Since Will’s release, the family had made a conscious effort to see one another more.
We all, me and Dad included, spent Thanksgiving in Tampa with Mom and Steve, which turned out to be surprisingly fun.
We tried to make it special for Will and Hazel, and figure out how we were going to make our new family dynamic work.
We never mentioned Tommy if we could avoid it.
It wasn’t easy. Suzannah’s parents had taken their kids and moved to North Carolina.
They had gotten full custody after Tommy’s life sentence and Suzannah’s thirteen years.
My parents wanted to fight it, at least for visitation rights, but we were all exhausted.
Suzannah’s parents answered only half of our texts and wouldn’t let anyone visit.
It was killing my parents not to see their grandkids, but some part of me wondered if it was easier this way.
For now, those kids probably needed a more stable environment than any of us could provide.
Tommy wrote us all frequently, and I kept all of his letters unopened in a drawer in my desk. I knew I would look at them eventually. Despite all of the horror that Tommy had caused in our lives, he was still my brother. But I needed time, and I didn’t know how much yet.
“Hazel texted me,” Will said now, smiling down at his phone. He was impressed with the latest iPhone I’d bought him. “She said she’s coming up next Thursday.”
I smiled. “I know. I just sent her the flight info yesterday.”
I had made good on my promise to reconnect with my sister.
Despite my hatred of Florida, I had already been down three times to visit her and had flown her up here one weekend every other month.
We kept up with each other over texting and social media.
I had also paid for her therapy, picking the most well-respected and expensive trauma therapist I could find down there. It was the least I could do.
Will and I had recently signed a seven-figure deal for a joint memoir.
The real story of what happened in 2010, and the years following.
We were going to explore everything this time: what Gary had done, Tommy’s involvement, life behind bars.
We’d spent the last year and a half drafting it—with Hazel’s input, of course. Pullman would even write the afterword.
I had been hesitant to get back into it, but Marta had told me that if I didn’t write our story, someone else would.
This was my opportunity to get it right.
To tell the whole truth. It was to be my apology.
To Alex. To Will. To Hazel. There was so much I hadn’t known when I wrote The Smileys.
And with Will’s and Hazel’s added perspective, it was easier than I’d expected.
Will and I bought a beautiful townhouse in Harlem. New York seemed like the best place for him to live. It was easier to blend in amongst millions of people. Hazel still hoped to attend college in the city. She wanted to move in with us the following year. We were excited to welcome her.
“She just laughed at my excessive emojis,” Will said, frowning at his phone screen.
I cracked a smile. “Well, you’re out of touch.”
“It’s going to take me a bit to catch up on social media etiquette. Think I can get Hazel to teach me how to use TikTok, or should I ask Marta?”
“Marta will tell you not to use it. She takes my Twitter away from me every other week.”
Will grinned. “That’s because you tweet obnoxious things about true crime.”
“It’s my job,” I said.
“Our job,” he reminded me with a wink.
I looked down to check my phone. I had a text from Flannery about brunch plans for the next day, and under that a new message from Pullman.
So, the homicide conference I’m speaking at in Manhattan is next month, he wrote. Any chance you’d like to recreate our Chili’s dinner? Do they even have Chili’s in New York City?
I smiled and replied. They do, but we have better restaurants than that here.
His response came instantly. It’s for nostalgia, Rose.
If you really want to be nostalgic, I wrote, you could always cuff me again. I like it rough.
Great, he wrote back. Now I’m hard at a crime scene and it’s entirely your fault. Enjoy the podcast and call me later.
I had stayed in contact with Pullman after I returned to New York.
Our late-night phone calls going over the case for the book had slowly turned into enthusiastic rounds of phone sex.
He’d flown up twice now to see me, and I had relished telling my romance friend Candace that she had been enthusiastically wrong about cop sex.
Beneath the rural detective persona, it turned out he was a deeply brilliant person.
Annoyingly so. His talent was being wasted in a small town, and I told him that every day.
“I like him because he can keep up with you,” Will had said when he caught me texting Pullman one night. “He takes your shit and gives it back to you.”
I hated how cliché it was, to sleep with the handsome detective who’d been investigating my sister’s case. It was a book trope, but Pullman had gotten under my skin. He’d really pulled through for us.
“Stop texting Officer Handsome.” Will nudged my shoulder. “We’re here.”
I looked up from my phone. We walked into the grand lobby of a sleek apartment building, past the doorman. I pressed the button for the elevator, and we headed up to the tenth floor for our interview with true crime podcaster Heath Lye.
“Flannery wants to know what time we’ll be done,” Will said. “Do you have any idea?”
“Probably around four,” I said, still trying to shake the weirdness of his words. Will had recently met Flannery at a book event. He had liked her instantly and read all of her books so that he had something to talk to her about next time. They’d been dating ever since.
Flannery was the complete opposite of Alex: a smart and sarcastic writer who wore only black.
She and Will were a good match, though it freaked me out to see him with a girlfriend when the last one I ever saw him with all but sent him to jail.
But I had fought for Will to have a life and now he was living it.
When we got up to the penthouse, Heath was waiting with his door open. “The Dearlings!” he called jovially. “You made it!”
He reached out and shook each of our hands. “Nice to meet you, both. I’m so excited to have you on.”
“You too,” Will said. “I love the podcast.” He’d binged Two Truths and a Lye over the last two weeks when I told him Heath wanted to have us on to promote the book.
“Glad to hear it. Come on in.”
He ushered us through the apartment and into his private studio. After a few minutes of explanation and pleasantries, we started to record. We had promised Heath fifteen minutes, a teaser segment for the book now that preorders had opened.
“So, let’s start with Will,” Heath said, his alluring voice floating through our headphones. “Can you tell us about this experience from your perspective?”
Will took a deep breath. “I guess it started where all stories like this start. With my family. We were really close growing up …”
I took a deep breath. Will’s story was going to end the same way it had begun. With us: the four Dearling siblings.