Chapter 2 #3
The office, formerly “the computer room,” was on the far side of the house beside what was once Will’s bedroom.
The desk was against one wall and the old PC that had lived there for years was gone, replaced with a small, lightweight silver laptop that was presumably my father’s.
He probably liked the routine of using the computer here, even if the device was now portable.
The old leather couch was also still there. I headed straight for it and took a seat, a small cloud of dust rising with my weight. Newbury reached for the aerodynamic desk chair and spun it so that he was facing me, letting Pullman go for the rickety wooden one shoved in the corner.
“So, Rose,” Newbury started, unearthing a pen and pad from his pocket. “You live in New York City?”
I stopped fidgeting in my seat to focus. We’d be starting with the softball questions, it seemed.
“Yeah, I do.”
Newbury nodded. “How long have you lived there?”
“About three years.”
He nodded. “Expensive city. Went there once with the wife. Don’t know how you do it. No offense, I’m sure it’s fun, but everyone crammed on top of one another like that …” He shook his head. “I’ll never understand it. I like having land to myself.”
Cops always mentioned the wife, even if she didn’t exist. It was a tactic. To make them appear more human. More likable. It was annoying, as was his cliched hatred of New York.
“Yeah, well, I find that places with a lot of land tend to have a lot of bigots living in them, so I prefer cities.”
That made Newbury stiffen.
“I don’t think we should make generalizations now,” Pullman said from beside him. I rolled my eyes.
“Why don’t we get back to the questions?” Newbury said, more curtly now. “Where did you live before New York?”
I sighed. It was painful to sit through this by-the-book interview. It wasn’t going to help find my sister any faster.
“I lived in Hanover, New Hampshire, while I went to Dartmouth,” I said, unable to hide my irritation. “And before that, I lived here.”
“‘Here’ meaning Loxahatchee?”
“‘Here’ meaning this house.”
Newbury nodded, but he already knew all of this. “Do you get back to visit a lot?”
We were cutting to the chase.
“Not really.” I kept talking to speed things up. “I come to Florida once or twice a year, but it’s usually to visit my brother Will in Miami,” I said, feeling my back teeth grind together. “I never come back to Loxahatchee instead.”
“And why is that?” Newbury replied.
“I’m sure you can gather why, Detective,” I said coolly. “But for your records, this place holds bad memories for me. If I want to see my family, there are plenty of other places I can do it.”
I was pleased with myself for keeping it somewhat together. I thought Marta would be proud of me too. I hadn’t called this town a cesspool of discrimination and gossip, the way I normally did. Newbury had his eyes locked on me regardless.
“So I take it you don’t see your younger sister all that often then?” he pressed.
Heat started to climb up the back of my neck and across the apples of my cheeks. I’d trained myself over the years to not let my face betray too much emotion, but every now and again it slipped.
“No, I don’t. Like I said, once or twice a year, whenever I come down to see my other brother,” I admitted, keeping my voice hard. I didn’t like the knowing look Newbury wore in response.
“I can understand that.” He looked down at his notepad.
“You live far away, and you young people text more than call these days, don’t you?
I can never get my daughter to answer the phone.
She sends it straight to voicemail.” Newbury looked up at Pullman briefly, letting out a rehearsed chuckle. “Do you text, you and Hazel?”
“Occasionally,” I said, but that was overstatement. I bit the inside of my mouth thinking about our text history—or lack thereof.
The truth was I was a shitty sister to her.
Hazel always tried to keep in touch, dangling the carrots of a relationship in front me, even though she was the child.
I ended up ignoring most of her messages.
And it wasn’t just texts. She sent me TikToks, replied to my stories on Instagram.
I just always had something going on. I did mean to respond, it just always slipped my mind, and now I had to admit that I had done the bare minimum for our relationship.
I tried to remember the last time she and I had spoken, and I felt my stomach flip. It was three months ago, back in January. I’d been in an Uber downtown to a meeting with my editor.
“Ohmygod, Rose!” She cried out when I picked up. “I’ve been trying to reach you for days.”
I was glad she couldn’t see my frown. Had it really been that long? “Hey, Hazel, what’s up?”
I heard her take an excited breath on the other end of the phone.
“So, remember how I told you that we were having all those meetings about colleges at school?” She didn’t wait for me to answer, saving me the embarrassment of realizing I had no recollection of her telling me this.
“Well, someone from NYU did a whole presentation last week, and it was so cool. I’ve become obsessed. ”
“That’s … great!” I said, hoping she couldn’t tell that I was becoming preoccupied by other messages on my phone.
“It made me want to come look at colleges up there, see the NYU campus, you know? I looked it up, and it’s not far from your apartment.”
“Yeah, it’s cool.” I continued scrolling.
Hazel kept gushing. “And I haven’t seen you since Thanksgiving, so what if I came up for spring break?
I could tour NYU, and we could get brunch at this cool place I found online.
Oh! And Chappell Roan is playing up there then too.
Remember that singer I keep sending you the TikToks of? Dad told me he’d get us tickets!”
As her words began to sink in, I closed my email.
“When’s spring break?” I asked. It had been a long time since I’d seen her, and I was touched that she wanted to come up here to spend some time together.
I knew that I’d let my loyalty to Will trample my connection to everyone else in my family, and Hazel was the most undeserving collateral damage.
“First week of March,” she said, sounding happy.
I opened my calendar and groaned, seeing the glaring red block on my schedule.
“Oh, Hazel, I have to be in Miami for Will’s appeals court then,” I said. “And then I’m on deadline for book two.” My agent had already capitalized on the publicity of my first book by getting me a deal for another “factionalized” murder, and as ever, we needed the money.
I could hear the disappointment in Hazel’s silence. I felt a wave of guilt. “What about April instead?” she suggested quickly. “I bet Dad would let me take a couple of days off school—”
“Ma’am—” The driver interrupted. “We’re here.”
I nodded. “Listen, Hazel, I just got to my meeting. Can we talk about this another time?”
There was silence on the other end. “Sure,” she whispered.
“I’ll talk to you later, okay?” I said, and hung up.
I never called her back. Life had gotten in the way.
I sent her a birthday present a month later via Prime, something horse related and expensive that my dad had told me she’d wanted, and I remembered her thanking me for it.
But maybe that had been a voicemail? Ugh.
It had. I knew I hadn’t called on her birthday.
The last words I’d spoken to my little sister were blowing her off.
I burned under the judgmental gazes of the cops as I told them this. “I’m super busy,” I added as an afterthought. “Which is not a crime.”
“No one is accusing you of anything, Ms. Dearling,” Pullman chimed in. “We just want to cover all our bases.”
He was the “good cop,” it seemed. Newbury leaned forward in his chair so he was closer to me. “Do you have any idea of where your sister might have gone?”
“I don’t know her friends that well, but I’m sure they would know where she hung out. I know she spent a ton of time at McCullough Farm. The barns and stables especially. She loves to horseback ride.”
Newbury looked unimpressed. “Anything else that might be helpful?” he pried. I could tell even he was getting bored.
I had no idea where Hazel was or who she was with, but I did admittedly have one theory I knew they weren’t thinking about yet.
“Well, there is one more thing. Have you considered the obvious?” I asked.
“The obvious?” Newbury’s eyebrows were knitted together. Beside him, Pullman’s spine went ramrod straight. “What do you mean?”
I uncrossed my legs. “I mean, whoever killed Alexandria.”
The silence that followed was long and expected. Nearly an entire minute passed as the two detectives exchanged loaded looks. I could practically hear their thoughts. She can’t be fucking serious.
“Alexandria Hopely?” Pullman asked, his face tight. He clearly thought I was insane.
I nodded, annoyed with him. “What other Alexandria would I be talking about?”
Newbury sighed. “Rose, Alexandria Hopely was killed by your brother, William Dearling.”
“Believe me, I understand that you think that—”
“He was convicted by a jury of his peers and sentenced to life in prison. This is not my opinion. It is legal fact, and he is serving the required time.”
I was angry. “Then why is another girl missing? A girl with a connection to that case? Are you suggesting that there are two different people snatching girls off the same street?”
Pullman, clearly uncomfortable, shifted in his seat. I realized that he looked about Will’s age. I wondered what he’d thought about all of this when it happened. If he was local, he may have even known Will. Or at least had mutual friends.
“I’m not suggesting that at all,” Newbury said.
“But there is no evidence that these two cases are related. Alexandria Hopely was found strangled to death in the woods behind your house mere hours after she went missing,” he snapped.
“Your sister is still unaccounted for. There isn’t any indication she has been hurt either.
So suggesting that she is being targeted by a killer on the run, eleven years after someone else was convicted of the crime based on solid forensic evidence, is ludicrous. ”
“You asked what I thought,” I reminded Newbury, irritated. “I gave you my opinion.”
He snorted, shaking his head in disbelief.
“Well, I thought you might be able to offer some rational insight. My mistake. Anyway”—he started to stand—“let us know if you think of anything else. I am sure writing a book like yours means you have your fair share of ill-wishers. I can only hope this isn’t related. ”
What a prick. I felt my molars grind together as I took a very deep breath, not breaking eye contact with the detective.
I had heard a lot of heinous things about myself in the past year.
That I was a liar. That I was a slut. That I should, and would, rot in hell.
But Newbury was implying something even more insulting.
I tried to count to three before I said anything further.
Marta’s sage advice for the rage that could suddenly come over me.
“If someone despised me enough to hurt someone, then it would be me missing, not Hazel.” The detectives shared another look, one that felt dangerously close to pity. “Are we done here?” I asked, the irritation in my voice evident. “I want to go find my sister.”
I got up without waiting for the answer and slammed the door.