Chapter 14 #2
“Are they love letters?” I was angry now. Angry that this was how I was finding out. Angry that after years of devoting my life to getting him out, and enduring vitriol from the Hopelys, my brother had never, not once, mentioned this. Victoria said nothing.
“I would’ve thought your crush on Will would’ve been hard to maintain while you were testifying against him, but maybe that attraction was stronger than we all thought.”
Victoria looked pissed off. “It’s not like that,” she said, though the color blooming in her cheeks suggested otherwise.
For a moment my brain pushed ahead, trying to imagine a world where it made sense that Victoria would be writing to Will.
A man she’d always had a crush on, but a man who’d been with her sister.
Was Victoria actually obsessed with him?
Obsessed enough that she considered killing her sister to be with him?
And then it backfired when he’d been arrested instead?
No. I stopped that line of thinking. That was crazy.
“That’s a little suspicious, Victoria. You get that, right?”
“Suspicious how?” she hissed, seeing the look on my face. “Oh my god. Are you going to accuse me of killing Alex now?”
Color rose to my face, showing my embarrassment that she had followed my line of thinking.
“You’re insufferable,” Victoria snapped. “I didn’t kill my sister, Rose. I can’t believe I even have to say that.” She shook her head sadly. “I write to Will because I feel bad, okay? I feel bad about everything that happened during the trial. We weren’t all as honest as we should have been.”
I scoffed loudly, and her eyes darkened again.
“The truth is the prosecutors pressured us to make it sound like Alex was some virginal flower corrupted by your brother, but we all knew that wasn’t the case.
We just knew that it would ensure Will was arrested.
And we were so young and still grieving.
We wanted to get Alex justice …” She swallowed.
“I read the book, and while I think the whole thing was disgusting, I started to sympathize with Will. We’ve even talked about how much the book negatively affected him too. ”
That felt like a kick to the chest. Will had told her he didn’t like the book? All of this information felt like it was going to make my brain explode. But I swallowed the anger I felt. This wasn’t the time.
“So, what?” I said, trying to make sense of it all. “You think he’s innocent now?”
“I don’t know!” Victoria replied. “I have doubts now, I guess? In his letters, Will sounds like he used to be. Like the boy I cared about back then. Not like a murderer. But then my mother and sisters are still convinced he did it. I basically never see Cass or Sam anymore because they can’t help but bring it up.
I can only stand to live with my mom because she never talks about any of this.
Except for how much she hates you, of course. ”
I ignored the barb about her mother and pondered the rest. It explained why I hadn’t found any recent pictures of Victoria with Cassandra or Sam.
“As much as it kills me to ask you, of all people, for a favor, I need you to keep this to yourself,” Victoria said, noticing the look of apprehension on my face. She added, “It would kill my mother to know that I’m in touch with him. She’s gone through enough.”
I considered this for a second, seeing the desperation on Victoria’s face. “I’ll keep it to myself. For now,” I told her carefully, guarded.
Victoria’s fingers moved to her head, massaging another incoming headache.
“I should go,” I said. I grabbed my bag from the ground. I had gone from zero leads to several in just this one conversation and had a lot to look into. I’d also have to find some time to visit Will and find out why he’d kept his correspondence with Victoria from me.
“Going so soon?” Victoria asked sarcastically. I didn’t respond. I stood up from the rocking chair at the exact moment a silver Lexus SUV pulled into the driveway.
“Shit.” Victoria was instantly out of her chair.
It took a couple seconds for me to process what was going on. Victoria practically pushing me off the patio; Mrs. Hopely climbing out of the driver’s seat of the SUV, her face tight with rage.
“Mom,” Victoria started, walking toward her mother as I headed for the side of the house, “listen—”
“What is she doing here?” Mrs. Hopely was seething, her face turning pink as she glared in my direction.
She looked a lot older than I remembered.
Like she had aged twenty years in seven.
Her golden-brown hair, the hair she’d given to her girls, had two inches of grey roots, and her face was lined and worn.
I guess it made sense. She’d been through so much.
I didn’t want to have this confrontation now, or ever really. I quickened my pace, moving toward the trees in between our homes, but Mrs. Hopely was faster, pushing past her daughter and walking right behind me.
“You are disgusting.” Spittle flew from her mouth as she pushed into my space and stopped me in my tracks.
“Mom!” Victoria pleaded. “Please. Stop. It isn’t worth—”
“Disgusting!” Mrs. Hopely shouted directly into my face. She was shaking with rage. “I wish the very worst for you! Do you know that?”
“Mom, please,” Victoria begged again, grabbing her left arm. “Come on. Let’s just go.”
But she couldn’t restrain her mother. Mrs. Hopely was too furious.
“It should’ve been you.” Her voice crescendoed and broke. “I have spent every night since that insipid book came out wishing it was you who were dead. You’re going to burn for what you did!”
And then her hand collided with the side of my face.