Chapter 1 #2
I choked up, collapsing against Thad. The cruelty of people never failed to shock me.
I couldn’t imagine being all alone, gasping in pain, while the world faded away.
We couldn’t even tell ourselves it was an instant death, or that she didn’t see it coming.
She spent her last moments bleeding out in darkness, all alone.
Thad sobbed. I’d never heard a wail like that come out of another person. He fell to his knees. That night was the first time, after all the years I’d known him, I saw him cry.
“I should’ve gone after her,” he cried out.
Each day after the tragedy, my heart broke into smaller and smaller pieces.
I didn’t think it was possible to sink so deeply into grief, but watching Thad struggle to come to terms with his new reality was agonizing.
All I could do was be there for him, but it didn’t feel like enough.
It wasn’t like I could bring his mom back to life, and if I couldn’t do that, then what was I really giving him?
I just wanted to be there for him, to try and talk sense into him when he blamed himself.
Eventually, he accepted he wasn’t to blame for his mom’s death.
The driver who got away was.
Finding the killer became Thad’s obsession.
Law enforcement also shared Thad’s tenacity.
I couldn’t help but think if it had happened to a family without the Fitzgeralds’ influence, the police wouldn’t have been quite so proactive (but I kept those thoughts inside).
News briefings ran continually, updating the public and asking anyone with information to come forward.
During one of those press conferences, my world shattered.
“We’re looking for a maroon truck. Nearby cameras captured the vehicle being driven erratically, and we believe the driver may have been intoxicated.”
As I sat on my couch next to my best friend, Daisy, who was skimming through a wedding magazine trying desperately to distract me from the news, my eyes remained glued to the screen.
“Drunk driving is so reckless,” Daisy said, looking up at the TV. “Even then, if only the driver stopped, who knows if Gina might still be alive.”
My chest tightened. “Exactly!” It made me so angry that the killer was out there, living scot-free, while Thad was being tortured by the loss of his mom. I hadn’t seen him smile since the police officer knocked on the door. Not once.
Daisy nodded, acknowledging my answer, but continued to flick through the magazine.
I should tell her to stop; that I wasn’t in the mood for wedding planning.
How could I be planning our future together when Thad was so unhappy?
He’d insisted that I continue planning our wedding.
Hell, he’d bought me the magazines, but this didn’t feel right.
“The right side of this car should have a pretty big dent,” the officer on TV explained. “More than likely, there is also blood on the vehicle. If you know anyone who drives a 2003 Ford Ranger XLT SuperCab, in any shade of red, please check out their truck and give us a call.”
His description made me jump to my feet. That was the brand and color of the truck my dad drove.
I hadn’t seen him drive it in a while.
I racked my brain for an exact date, but I wasn’t sure. Had the truck been in the garage since that night?
“Oh God, no,” I said aloud. The world started spinning.
It can’t be. It can’t be. It can’t be, I repeated in my mind.
It couldn’t be my dad. It just couldn’t.
But what were the chances of somebody else in the area having the exact same truck?
My chest tightened as the last couple of weeks played like a reel inside my mind. I called the other driver a killer.
A monster.
The person who sat behind the wheel that tore apart a family, that destroyed my fiancé, could be my own blood.
This is a nightmare. This can’t be real.
Daisy was on her feet. “What? What’s wrong?”
“Dad.” Even with the name coming out of my mouth, I couldn’t believe it. There was no way. My dad knew Gina Fitzgerald, and even if he’d hit her, he wouldn’t leave her lying there to die. He couldn’t.
Tired of waiting, Daisy squeezed my shoulder gently. “Summer, what about your dad?”
There was no time to explain. I ran out of the room and beelined straight to the garage. I flipped the switch, and my stomach fell.
A tarp covered the truck. Who covers a vehicle inside the garage? My dad had never once protected his truck in all the years he’d owned it.
Daisy stepped beside me and looked from my face to the truck. “Wait, you don’t think . . .” Her skin slowly paled before me.
Not bothering to answer, I stepped further into the garage, took a deep breath, and yanked the tarp off the frame.
Thaddeus
I woke up in my cell feeling nothing. You’d think leaving prison would be enough to make me crack a smile, but no such luck.
Prison bars may no longer keep me confined, but I’d never truly be free because I was a motherless son.
Money could buy a lot, but it could never bring her back.
My thirteen-year sentence (commuted to ten, including time served while I waited to go to trial), even though I shot a man in cold blood, was proof of how powerful money could be.
Hell, they only charged me with manslaughter.
Though the justice system said my debt was paid in full, I knew many in my hometown thought differently.
I collected my meager belongings and shuffled out of the prison. There was no fanfare. No excitement. I walked away from my home of ten years toward the waiting SUV. As I passed a trash can, I hurled my bag into it. I didn’t need a single memento of my stay.
As I got closer to the vehicle, Aston climbed out. He hadn’t changed a bit, other than the salt and pepper sprinkled in the hair surrounding his temples and in his mustache. “Mr. Fitzgerald, welcome back.” He grinned.
Seeing him didn’t shock me. My father would never waste his time on me. With my mother gone, and my sister off at college, only Aston—an employee—could pick me up.
“It is good to be back,” I said, then patted his shoulder before sliding into the back seat, savoring the feel of leather.
For the last ten years, all I’d seen were prison walls, and all I’d felt were hard chairs and a lumpy mattress. I couldn’t tear my eyes from the window. Trees flew past as we navigated the winding roads. Some had lost all their leaves; others pathetically held on to a few.
Some people, a lot of people, thought I was pathetic.
It was a word I’d heard a few times while incarcerated. ‘Poor little rich White boy,’ I often got.
On the surface, I had everything a kid could have wanted growing up. I’d heard the murmurs, the whispers, about what must have gone wrong to end up there. I wasn’t shy about telling my story.
Seconds into my explanation, they all said something along the same lines: “You deserve a medal.”
A piece of shit kills my mother, leaves her to die, and the courts were looking at misdemeanor vehicular homicide, not a felony. They wanted to cut a deal with the bastard. Hell no. I wasn’t going to let that happen.
“It’s going to be a while before we get home,” Aston told me from the front seat. “It’s a long drive.”
I was in no rush. There was no one in Tarrytown eagerly awaiting my arrival—with the exception of maybe Henry, my best friend, but he had a family and other priorities now.
As he drove, Aston and I caught up. I learned my father slept at a different house with his mistress most nights.
The home I’d grown up in had predominantly stayed empty—except for Aston and the cleaning company he let in weekly.
He was a strange man, my father. After my mom died, rumors spread that he decided never to remarry, probably afraid of bad press.
Instead he lived in secret with the woman my parents were likely fighting about the night she died.
Decade-old memories filled my mind. The engagement ring, and the emotional proposal I’d offered to Summer after five blissful years of being together. I’d always known she was the one, despite my father’s advice to ‘date around’ in college. To explore my options.
All I wanted was Summer.
The tears in her eyes as she said yes. The tender kisses. Our giggles as we planned how we were going to tell everyone the great news.
Then the world went dark, like someone switched the light off.
My mom’s smile was gone. I’d never hear her laugh again. Never drink her coffee or complain about my day to her. Never feel her ruffle my hair again as if I were still a kid.
After losing my mom to the screeching wheels of a cowardly, asshole driver, I had spent the following week in a blurred despair, barely able to move, eat, or put one foot in front of the other.
Summer never left my side.
She was my saving grace. Then, one morning, something switched inside me, and I woke up with a single purpose.
I would find my mother’s killer.
Just over two weeks after burying my mother, I got a phone call that would wreck me.
“You’re out of your fucking mind!” I’d yelled at Daisy through the phone. She had to be lying, right? Daisy’d had a crush on me for years, but I’d only ever had eyes for Summer. It had to be jealousy, some bizarre attempt to steal me from her best friend, I decided.
She didn’t yell back. Instead, she spoke calmly, gently. “I saw the truck. It still has her blood on it.”
My stomach had churned faster after that. Daisy knew I could check the truck for blood. Why would she make it up? It was easy to disprove.
“Where is it?” I’d croaked.
“It’s still in the garage, I think.”