Chapter 36
THIRTY-SIX
PRESENT DAY
Josie
I stare at the man in front of me, trying to process his words. He’s saying I didn’t kill Christopher Langley.
“How is that possible? I’m the one who shoved him. I saw him go in the water. That’s where he hit his head. That’s where he drowned.”
Next to me, Ian’s face is deathly pale.
The security guard’s eyes fly to mine. “You didn’t see him hit his head, though, did you?”
“No. Not exactly. I was running away.”
“After you left, Christopher climbed back out of the water.”
My mouth drops open, but I’m truly speechless. “What do you mean? How is that possible?”
“He was alive when you ran away. He was fine. Just wet and very, very angry,” the guard says.
My thoughts are flitting around in my head like a fruit fly.
Christopher was alive after I ran? I didn’t kill him?
“How is that possible?” I repeat hysterically.
For over a decade, I thought I killed a man, believed I ruined not only his life, but his family’s.
Even if he was a terrible man, even if it was an accident, this fact has haunted me.
It’s affected every decision I’ve made for my entire adult life.
And in one moment, everything has changed.
I stare at the guard. “So how did he end up back in the water?” I ask, but then the security guard’s words come back to me. You didn’t kill Christopher. I did. “You pushed him? You killed him?”
Ian steps in now. “I know your name is Sam, and you worked for my dad. But you need to start from the beginning. Were you on duty the day he died?”
Sam nods. “The beginning goes back to three years earlier. My sister, Jeanine, was a server at the Harbor Sailing Club, too. She was a college student who came for the summer with some friends to work.” He turns to Ian.
“She got to know your dad. He had a thing for pretty girls who served him at the club.”
I blink. I always wondered if I was the only one.
“Apparently, he was cold and aloof to the other servers, but Jeanine said he was different with her. He tipped well and made a point to remember her name. She found it all charming and said she thought it was because she wanted to be an architect and she showed interest in his work.”
This story is so familiar because I’ve lived it. Except I thought Christopher had singled me out because of Ian.
Sam stares past us, out at the water. “One day, he ran into her in town. They got to talking and she said he was even friendlier away from the club. He bought her lunch and offered to take her to his latest build site to show her around. He wanted to share his design plans with someone who would appreciate them.” Sam’s face is pale and haunted.
“I’m not saying Jeanine was a saint. She knew he was married.
She probably knew his interest was in more than talking about architectural design.
But she was nineteen and flattered by the attention.
So, she went with him to the building site. He took her on a tour.”
Would you like a tour of the house? Christopher had a playbook that was cold and rehearsed.
“And in one of the upstairs bedrooms,” Sam continues, “he cornered her and assaulted her.”
I hear Ian’s sharp intake of breath. I want to go to him, to comfort him, but I’m frozen in place hearing this story play out so like my own.
“She didn’t get away.” He turns to me. “Not like you did.”
I press a hand to my mouth. “I’m so sorry.”
Sam runs a hand through his sandy hair, his face anguished.
“We would have come and gotten her the minute we found out. We would have encouraged her to go to the police and taken her back home to Ohio.” He drops his hands to his sides helplessly.
“But she didn’t tell us. When we talked on the phone, she said everything was fine.
But she secretly fell apart. She couldn’t eat, she stopped going to work.
Her friends thought it was because she was going through a breakup, and she’d get over it soon.
But she didn’t get over it. And one night when all of her roommates were out, she took a bottle of her roommate’s Xanax from their shared bathroom closet and swallowed it with a pint of cheap liquor. ”
This is so much worse than I imagined.
“They found her when they got home from their party later that night.” Sam closes his eyes. “It was too late.”
My heart is pounding out of my chest and my head is full of static. Something about this story is familiar. Not just because there are echoes of what happened to me. I’d heard of a server at the club who died by suicide. On my first day, Alice scolded one of our coworkers who joked about it.
Ian is shaking his head slowly, like he’s in a daze. “I’m so sorry.” His voice breaks. “I’m so fucking sorry.”
I turn to Sam. “How did you end up working at the Langleys’? How were you there that day?”
“Jeanine left a note, and that’s how we knew what happened with Christopher.
She wrote about how she met him, the way he offered to give her a tour of his building site, the interest he showed in her architectural ambitions.
And…” He stares past me, out at the water.
“She told us what he did to her. I knew she couldn’t have been the first one.
With men like that, it never happens once.
” Sam takes a breath and my heart breaks for all he’s been through.
And he was right. Christopher was a repeat offender. I’m proof of that.
“Why didn’t you go to the police when you found the note?”
“My dad’s a lawyer,” Sam says. “He knew that without other evidence—something like a rape kit or other accusers—a note from a girl who’d died wasn’t enough proof to compel the police to arrest him, let alone allow a DA to convict him.
And without a strong case, we couldn’t put my mother through that. ”
A shiver runs through me. This is how men get away with it, over and over. Women feel alone, afraid to come forward, so there are no rape kits or other accusers. And the cycle never stops.
“I decided to move to Sandy Harbor,” Sam explains.
“I kept a low profile and got a job with the security company the Langleys used. I wanted to keep an eye on him, to make sure he wouldn’t get away with it again.
If I could find other victims, we could go to the police together.
At first, Christopher had a lot of women coming and going, but they all seemed to be willing participants. ”
All of the affairs Ian mentioned.
“And then one day,” Sam continues, “I saw you sneak past the security booth. I didn’t know at first that you’d gone by. The job was boring, and I was using the time to get my master’s degree, so I was busy studying. You must have come on foot because I didn’t see a car pull up.”
I nod.
“But then I turned and saw you down at the end of the driveway, going into the house. I looked back at the security footage of you sneaking by and realized how young you looked. You were dressed for the pool instead of in designer clothes like Christopher’s girlfriends.
I knew Ian and his mom were away, and I realized what was happening.
” Sam takes a shaky breath. “I snuck around the house, trying to look in the windows, and that’s when I spotted you two out on the dock.
” He looks nauseous. “I couldn’t believe it when I saw how he had you pinned on the couch. ”
Ian closes his eyes.
“I didn’t know you were there. I had no idea.” I was so terrified, so focused on how to get away from Christopher.
“I was running down the steps by the pool, trying to get to you, when I saw you shove him in the water. And then you took off into the dunes. I went down to the dock to confront him just as he was climbing back onto the dock. We got into a fight.”
My entire world tilts. Christopher really was alive after I left. He didn’t die in the water where I shoved him. The guard saw him climb out.
I didn’t kill him.
“I was just so angry when I saw him doing to you what he’d done to my sister.
I wanted to threaten him, to make sure he never did anything like that again.
But then he came at me. He said I didn’t know who I was messing with.
He got up in my face. I pushed him, that’s all.
” He closes his eyes as if it’s playing out in his head.
“He went sideways and hit his head on one of the pilings. And then he fell into the water and just kind of… floated there. I knew he was dead.”
“You didn’t call an ambulance,” Ian says. I turn to look at him and his face is like granite. “You didn’t call for help.”
“No,” Sam whispers. “I went back to the guard house and deleted the security footage of Josie.” His face twists.
“Look, I know I should have called 911. But it was clear he was dead. And that man destroyed my family. He killed my sister just as directly as if he’d handed her those pills and the bottle of vodka himself.
My mother will never recover. If I’d been arrested, I don’t know what she would have done.
Maybe ended up like my sister. I wasn’t going to find out. ”
Tears prick at my eyes, and I can’t help but feel compassion for him. I can’t blame him for any of it. Except—
“Ten years have gone by. You would have gotten away with it. Why are you here looking for me now?”
Sam shifts his weight and looks down at his feet. “You and I were the only people there that day. The only people who knew what had really happened. I thought you knew Christopher got out of the water. He was yelling at you when I got to the dock. I thought you saw me try to stop him.”
“No.” I shake my head over and over, remembering the burning in my lungs and the pain in my feet as I ran. “I was so afraid; I just took off. I didn’t look back. The only sound I heard was my heart pounding, my own gasping for breath.”
“When the news came out that he’d died, I was afraid you’d go to the cops and tell them you saw me,” Sam says.
“But your family disappeared off the island, and nobody ever came forward. They ruled it an accident, and ten years went by. I finally started to believe it was behind me.” He takes a heavy breath.
“But then your sister showed up here last summer. She was hanging around Ian and his friend Garrett. And suddenly, the past came careening back.”
I stare at him, dazed.
“At first, I thought Madeline’s reasons for coming back must have had to do with Christopher’s death.
Why else would she be here after a decade?
So, I started hanging around the bar asking questions, trying to find out what she knew.
But her boyfriend didn’t like that, so I stopped.
But then I saw the wedding announcement and realized you’d probably be coming to town.
It felt like maybe it was my chance to finally talk to you, to put these secrets behind me and stop looking over my shoulder, waiting for it to all come crashing down. ”
“I get it,” I say breathlessly. “I know how that feels.”
Sam steps toward me. “I had no idea you thought you’d killed Christopher.
After what he did to you, you didn’t deserve to live your life thinking that you’d killed anyone.
” His face contorts, beseeching, desperate.
“Please believe me that I would have tracked you down sooner if I’d even thought that for a minute. ”
He looks so sincere, so truly devastated.
“I believe you.”
“Thank you.” And then he turns to Ian. “Now that you know everything… Please. I’m begging you not to go to the police.”