25. Savannah
Chapter 25
Savannah
I shouldn’t be drinking. I know.
But there is nothing else that can help me.
Nothing to dispel the thoughts in my head.
It’s been a week since I walked into Peter’s office and he told me Michael washed his hands of my case.
And in that week, it feels like my life has completely fallen apart.
Finally losing all hope, I moved out of the motel and back into my house. There’s nothing more that the person who framed me wants to do except kill me.
And if that will put me out of my misery, then so be it. I know that the cards are stacked against me and the helpless side of me realizes that I’m not getting out of prison once the verdict is given.
Before the final hearing, I might as well live recklessly.
I’ll call my father.
I should.
I reach into my jeans pocket and pull out my phone. The words are slurred and my screen is blurry, but I reach his number and dial. It takes three rings for him to answer.
“Hello?”
I laugh.
“Hello? That’s how you greet your only daughter? With the same voice you use for a stranger?”
“Savannah?”
The realization in his voice makes me laugh some more.
“You don’t even have my number saved in your phone! Wow! I bet you have Peter’s number saved, though!” I yell. “And I bet you have it saved under best son”.
“Or is it only child, seeing as he’s the only one you care about? All my life, I tried pleasing you. I wanted the compliments you gave freely to Peter, but your eyes were disappointed and displeased every time you looked at me.” The words spill out of my mouth before my brain registers them.
“Where are you?” He asks somberly.
I look around. A bar. A bar somewhere. With a lot of people and a bartender friendly enough to keep refilling my glass.
“Wouldn’t you like to know? If I tell you, what are you going to do about it?”
“You’re the reason I was going to marry Brandon and that I’m now being accused of murder! If you had just let me be. If you didn’t push me to marry him because he was the “best I could get”, then I wouldn’t be in this mess! You’re the reason my life is shit!”
My chest heaves as finally, after a decade or so, I finally get the words out.
The things I could never tell my father before. I swallowed my emotions each time his words cut through me like a knife.
“Where is Peter?”
“How should I know where your perfect son is?” I sneer.
I take a swig from the shot glass in front of me.
“I’m sure you can call him,” he says
“I’ll get him to come pick you up. Tell me where you are.” He continues calmly.
“You don’t care.” Tears roll down my cheeks. “You never did. You’d rather someone else take responsibility for your disgrace of a daughter.”
“I knew from a young age that if I was going to be a failure, you would distance yourself. And now have I failed? Have I failed, Daddy? Look, I even succeeded in getting myself implicated as a murderer.”
I hear his sigh from the other end.
“You have not disappointed me, Savannah. I only pushed you because I wanted you to be the best.”
I wipe the tears from my face, sniffing.
“And the only way you could do it was by putting me down? Telling me that if I couldn’t get into the best law schools, then I shouldn’t bother applying to any?” I sniff.
“Never caring about my grades? Only praising Peter? Was that the only way you could teach me to be the best?”
“I did what I had to do,” he admits.
His voice is stern. Unremorseful.
And then I realize that calling him was a mistake.
“Right,” I say, some of my inebriation leaves me with the knowledge of my mistake. “And I’m doing what I have to do. Before you disown me, I’ll do it for you.”
“I no longer have a family. From today on, you and your wife are dead to me.”
I end the call.
“Family issues?”
“I’m going to prison,” I blurt out.
“Cool,” the bartender responds.
“What are you doing here?” A voice behind me asks.
I turn around to see Alice standing a few feet away with her hands thrust on her hips.
“Alice!”
She marches up to me. “What are you doing, Savannah?”
“Don’t scold me. I don’t have the strength right now,” I plead.
She comes up to the bar and, reaching for the shot, she drinks it all. She makes the ahhh sound as she slams the glass on the bar.
“I’m not scolding you. I told you that if you want to drink, you call me.”
I laugh.
“Okay. You’re the only person who hasn’t let me down yet. Why?”
She shrugs as she sits next to me. “Maybe it’s because I know I’ve hurt you already, and I’m trying to make up for it?”
I wave my hand, dismissing her worry.
“The past is in the past. Besides, Brandon was the one who made you feel like he would give you the world,” I say.
“But I believed it. Even as I talked to you and you spoke about your wedding, I still believed it. I shouldn’t have. I should have been smarter.” Alice confesses.
I should have been smarter too.
If I had a time machine and would go back with the knowledge I have now, I would not have let Brandon charm me at that event.
Instead, I would have politely refused and found somewhere else to be. Or I’d leave to save myself and have struck up a conversation with someone else, but they might have ended up dead, too.
I would not say yes to him.
I would not get engaged, either.
“And, I wouldn’t be going to prison for something I didn’t do.”
“You’re not going to prison,” Alice says with conviction.
Sighing, I place my hand on her shoulder.
“I know you have faith in me, but I think it’s time you face reality, Alice. Even my attorney ditched me, and the person he placed in charge of my case thinks I killed Brandon.”
“He does? I thought you were supposed to be innocent until proven guilty in this country.”
I chuckle.
“Oh well. He keeps asking me if there is anything I haven’t told him. Especially now that the person who framed me has a video of me supposedly entering Brandon’s apartment.”
Alice gasps. “How? You didn’t go there, so why would they have a video of you?”
I tell her what happened when I walked into the office to see Peter and Michael and what was on Michael’s laptop.
Alice is shaking her head by the time I’m done.
“The video is doctored, I’m sure. But the person is a sick bastard because that’s the only explanation for what is going on,” Alice says defending me.
“Another glass?” The bartender interrupts our conversation.
I shake my head. “Bottle. Alice will be drinking with me.”
“Oh no, no, no,” she shakes her head. “I’m your designated driver. I can’t drink.”
“Nope,” I shake my head. “This might be my last free night out. The evidence against me is mounting, so I know Elaine Rogers will be coming for me soon.”
“Drink with me tonight and let’s forget all our problems.”
We end up drinking enough liquor to have us both so drunk we can barely walk. The bartender calls us a cab and helps us to it.
While the ground is spinning around me, I notice that Alice looks like she’s about to pass out. I’m reminded of how things were before she slept with Brandon and we were friends.
Back then, I remember that she could never hold her alcohol, so she would have one, and that was it. Always holding down the fort for the others.
That was what I remember from when I still had friends.
Now I have nothing—no friends, no attorney, and soon, I’ll have no freedom.
I rattle my address to the cab driver, although I don’t realize it until he stops in front of my house. Sighing, I help Alice out, fishing my key out of my purse and opening the door.
The familiarity of a place I called home for so long hits me, and tears pour down my cheeks. I manage to get Alice to my room while throwing our bags down in the living room.
Then the nausea hits, and I run to the bathroom, kneeling on the floor, I vomit everything in my stomach until there is nothing left, and then I lay down on the bathroom floor to rest.
“I’m a mess,” I whisper. “Why wouldn’t Michael leave? He must have seen that I had feelings for him.”
I sit with my knees hugged into my chest for a while before finding the strength to get up.
I wash my face in the bathroom sink before heading to the bedroom, intending to get some sleep. Sleep doesn’t come when I hear Alice’s phone ringing.
It’s not my phone, so I let it ring. It ends, and then a message beep.
I see a preview on her home screen as I am walking past the counter and glance away. But the words flash in my mind and I look back, but her phone has gone dark. Opening it with Alice’s Face ID is easy, but what isn’t is seeing the message on her phone.
It leads me down a rabbit hole.
What I see is that Alice has been messaging someone, asking them if they’ve gotten the money. She talks about a boy in the message and then my name is mentioned.
What is this?
Why would Alice pay someone to tell a boy to deliver a letter and then say that the letter is about me, and it must get to the other person?
The entire thing is so confusing that I put her phone down and head to the bedroom.
I sit on the other side of the bed and look at her, splayed out asleep.
“What are you hiding from me?” I mutter.
It hits me, as I sit there, that I trusted Alice too much too soon. I should have known that someone who would sleep with my fiancé while laughing with me is not to be trusted. Ever.
I needed a friend, and she was there, so I fell with my eyes closed.
I did it again.
I’m so gullible.
At least, I was.
Now I know not to trust her. I’m not sure what she’s up to, but I know that I’m going to find out.
I just need to close my eyes for a bit.