Chapter Seventy Stella
Chapter Seventy
Stella
Lukas said Jeremy was on drugs. Lukas knows about these things. He sees cases like this all the time in his job. It wouldn’t
have been our fault if the kid overdosed. With that mother, he was never going to amount to anything anyway.”
I clicked off the recording and let Mom’s twisted statement sit there.
They’d treated Jeremy like his life meant nothing. Lukas actively set up the scheme, then participated in a cover-up, probably
more than one, to save his own political hide. He didn’t care about money. This was about power and position. Everything he
ever wanted was slipping through his fingers. He couldn’t accept the end, but he could abandon his supposed moral code to
change his circumstances. The same code he’d ignored when he touched Aubrey.
“None of that happened.” Lukas shook his head. “Your mom created a story. One that she starred in. We both know your mom exaggerates.
The whole town knows.”
He refused to concede. The staggering pileup of evidence, inferences, and coincidences didn’t shake him. Even after sneaking in, after holding a knife to Hanna’s throat, he thought he could emerge the hero. Lie enough, fudge the truth, point fingers, confuse the timeline.
“Those were only this week’s sins. Your depravity stretches back far longer than that.” I fast-forwarded to another damning
part of Mom’s unraveling.
“I followed Xavier to Patrick’s house after Hanna called. I don’t know what she said to Xavier but he was in a state. I’d never seen him like that. He needed to deal with that woman once and for all. Get her out of our
lives. I didn’t care how he did it and told him so. Then I created a diversion in case he needed cover like he did with Dea.
Like I’d done with my mother. I used his ridiculous truck to drive back and forth from the bookstore. I found Xavier at Patrick’s
house with Lukas. Xavier said Lukas owed him. Something about blaming Stella for not fixing Aubrey fast enough.”
So many awful words and stunning admissions, but I focused on two names. “Xavier and Lukas.”
“No. Okay. See?” Lukas’s tone suggested he thought he could weasel out of the damning recording. “Now you know she’s mixed
up. I was with you.”
“Lukas, did you forget to tell Stella you were already in my house when she called you to come over and help her?” Aubrey asked without her usual snotty affect.
The wall of coolness and snide jabs dropped, leaving a voice scorched with a hard-to-define emotion.
Pain? Anger? “Not to be indelicate, Stella, but your text popped up when we were in the passage behind my parents’ bedroom.
He was wild. Practically stripped my clothes off. ”
“Your parents’ bedroom?” Her words tore through me. My failings and my inability to draw a boundary put Aubrey in Lukas’s
path. It was his job to ignore a messy teen who liked to play games. He was the grown-up. The perfect guy who never got angry.
Who never did anything wrong.
Lukas tightened the knife against Hanna’s throat. “Everyone needs to listen to me.”
“Are you going to kill all of us? Is that your brilliant plan?” Aubrey asked. “Good luck with that.”
“I need a few minutes to explain. I don’t want to hurt Hanna.”
Aubrey snorted. “Why would I care if you did?”
I couldn’t stand looking at his face for one more second or think about what a weepy mess I’d been back then, so I focused
on Hanna. I needed her to stay strong. Angry. Ready to move. “Lukas got to the house and we split up to search the grounds
and the house for the kids.”
Aubrey shook her head. “No. He was already there. We saw you through the upstairs window. I didn’t see your car but watched
you walk into the yard. I got distracted because there were footsteps coming down the hall. Then I heard Mom, so I used the
passageway to get out of there.”
“Lukas stayed in the bedroom.” It wasn’t a question. I knew because I found him there, or I almost did. “He was heading out
of the doorway when I came up the stairs.”
“That timing doesn’t work,” Hanna said. “Aubrey said you were outside.”
Both things were true and that meant . . . I couldn’t believe what that meant.
“Mom was inconsolable that day. Raving and not making a lot of sense. She’d lost it. It was like this perfect family she thought
she’d built had turned out to be a fantasy and when she realized it she broke.” Aubrey glanced at Hanna. “I blamed you for
a lot of that until recently.”
“Are you saying Victoria killed everyone and herself in some sort of downward spiral? That would make sense. You weren’t right
there so you got away.” Shock. Disbelief. Lukas played the role as he hung on to Hanna like a shield.
“Have you always been this good of an actor?” My curiosity amounted to a desperate grab for absolution, but I really wanted
to know. The answer wouldn’t diminish the blame that wrapped around me that day but maybe the binding wouldn’t clench so tight.
The fog cleared. Every last wisp. Lukas had been on the property that day because he was assaulting Aubrey. I called him and
he left her to be with me.
“I checked the backyard. Everything was so quiet. I tried to call Xavier for an explanation and when he didn’t pick up I drove
over to his house but he wasn’t around either, so I came back to Patrick’s and ran into Hanna.”
Hanna pushed on Lukas’s arm, shifting it away from her neck. “I thought you’d been in the house and saw the blood.”
“Not then. Not that blood. I heard voices when I got into the house. It’s why I went upstairs to the bedrooms or I probably
would have gone into the kitchen and seen Patrick was already dead.”
“None of which you mentioned to the police.” Aubrey waved her hand in the air. “But carry on.”
I didn’t. One of many tragic mistakes I made that day. “I eventually found Lukas coming out of the primary bedroom.”
Lukas pointed his knife at Stella. “Stop talking before you say something you can’t take back.”
Did he really think he could save his reputation and mine after all of this? I kept my focus on Hanna. “There wasn’t a knife
on the stairs by then. I could see blood on the upstairs carpet and a pile of clothing, or what I thought in all the chaos
was clothing, on the floor of the primary bedroom. Was it a body? Did you kill Victoria after Aubrey left you? Did she see
you together or hear you or did she figure it out because you were up there half dressed?”
Aubrey nodded. “He worried Mom would find us. He’s the one who suggested I use the passageway to escape. But you didn’t follow
me. Did you, Lukas? She discovered you. She figured out what you were doing. It makes a sick kind of sense.”
“This is pure fiction. There’s no evidence. This is nonsense being spewed by a known liar whose own grandfather hid her away.”
Lukas made his you’ve got to be kidding me face. The one that said the person talking was being ridiculous.
I’d seen it too many times over the years. It was effective. Annoying.
Without hard evidence, the answer to who killed Victoria came down to Aubrey or Lukas. For the first time in my life, I didn’t
believe him. I believed her. She didn’t pretend to be decent. He couldn’t handle being flawed.
“You and Stella were my main suspects for killing Mom but now I’m thinking just you, Lukas.” Aubrey let out a harsh laugh. “Mom would have ruined you for touching me. Is that why she had to die?”
All those years of feeling lost and ashamed, thinking I destroyed our marriage by dragging him into a terrible scene that
he then had to lie about to save my career. In reality he left me to put distance between him and his crime. He walked out
to cover his sick choices.
The screech cut through my murderous thoughts. I saw the library shelf move. Jeremy dove out of the passageway and plowed
into Lukas. Knocked Hanna and Lukas to the floor and sent the knife flying.
Then the gun went off.