Chapter 19
It was pouring rain on my way to Miami the next morning, which pissed me off. The only thing worse than being surrounded by Florida drivers was being surrounded by Florida drivers in the rain.
It had also paused the search for Hazel, though Detective Pullman had called that morning and told my parents that a good rain might help “uncover” something, as though that was a comfort and not the most horrifying thing on earth.
I walked over to Sam’s apartment and took a deep breath before I knocked on the door.
I didn’t know what might be waiting for me on the other side.
Sam had been vehement in the years since I’d last seen her about her dislike for me.
She’d called me a bitch, whore, slut, hypocrite, and cunt.
She had sent me very long, very detailed DMs. Had she hated me even more because she knew, even if I didn’t yet, that I’d exposed her boyfriend’s cheating to the world?
There was silence for a few seconds before I heard rustling and a dog barking. Someone shushed it as they approached. I heard a chain slide then the front door ripped open.
“You have got to be kidding me,” Sam snapped. “What are you doing here, Rose?”
I couldn’t get over how different she looked.
She was so thin. She’d always been skinny, but now she looked almost malnourished, just bones and a thin layer of flesh.
I wondered if she had suffered from the same afflictions as me.
Her hair was different too. Gone was the familiar Hopely gold, replaced by yellowing bleached hair cut into a choppy shag, dead and dry.
She was wearing wide patterned pants and a thin grey tank top with no bra.
I tried to remember the last time I saw her. Probably at the trial. Sam had left Loxahatchee for good the fall after Alex died.
“Hi, Sam,” I said carefully. “Can we talk?”
“Now what the hell do you want to talk about?” she asked, her voice rising. “My murdered sister? Your heinous book? My dead dad?”
I squirmed. Straight to the point. “I have good intentions here, I promise. My little sister, Hazel, is missing, and I think it might be connected to everything that happened—”
“I have nothing to offer you, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to give you even a single word of content for another book.” Sam moved to close the door. I weighed my options and decided it was time to time rip off the Band-Aid.
“Okay, fine, I’m here to talk about Alex fucking Isaac a week before she died.” Sam stopped in the doorway. “But I can write about that in the next book, if you’d prefer.”
I watched Sam’s expression change, her features pulling together. She looked angry, infuriated even, but not surprised. So, she had known.
After a tense moment that felt more like a few minutes, Sam grimaced, opening the door wider, beckoning me in and turning on her heel. “Fuck you for this, Rose. Seriously.”
I had hoped we might be able to step out to a café or some other neutral territory, but I wasn’t going to risk this opportunity. I slipped into her apartment and shut the door behind me.
Sam’s place was sparsely decorated. The furniture looked like it was foraged from yard sales, and the only spot that had any personality to it was a table near some sliding doors that was covered in craft supplies and plastic storage bins.
“Sit,” Sam ordered, nodding at a brown suede chair. I sat down tentatively while she threw herself on the pilly gray sofa.
“Just so you know,” Sam said, “I thought long and hard about what I would say to you if I ever saw you again. I came up with some really good stuff, but actually looking at you is enraging me too much to remember most of it.” She paused.
“You’re a foul human being. Everything you’ve done since that summer is disgusting. ”
I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, I know. I got your DMs.”
Sam’s face didn’t relax. “Be happy that’s all you got.”
“Look,” I pressed, “I know a lot has happened between us, but no one can find my sister. It’s been days now, and I can’t leave any stone unturned.”
“I guess it’s not Hazel’s fault that her siblings are psychos,” Sam said, “but what does this have to do with my sister? Or Isaac? If that’s really what you came here to talk about.”
I took a deep breath. “I think the same person who killed Alex has something to do with Hazel’s disappearance.”
Sam’s head lolled to the side. “Why won’t you let this go?” she demanded. “I’m sorry that Hazel is missing, okay? As despicable as I think you are, she doesn’t deserve that. No one does. But Will killed my sister. You’ve spent eleven years denying that fact, and it’s clearly making you crazy.”
I was getting really sick of people calling me crazy.
“Will didn’t kill her,” I said evenly, trying to stay calm.
“You know what,” she continued, “I wouldn’t be surprised if this was some kind of publicity stunt from you. Hide your sister away for a few days to cause reasonable doubt? Convince everyone the real killer wasn’t caught to get Will out of prison? It’s really depraved, even for you.”
She’d gone too far. It was one thing to insult me. Or Will. But to accuse me of orchestrating this whole thing with Hazel for publicity? I couldn’t let that one go.
I knew I needed to recalculate this. “Look, I think Hazel thought there was more to this story too. She was looking into Alex’s murder right before she disappeared.
You might know from my book that I saw Alex fucking some guy the night of Matty Mueller’s party.
Hazel figured out that it was Isaac. And clearly you already knew that. ”
“Of course I knew,” Sam said. “Even before your sister came down here a week ago to ask me the same question.” My breath hitched in my throat.
“I saw the way Isaac looked at Alex that whole week he was staying with us. It drove me insane. And I caught him coming out of the woods after the two of you that night. I wasn’t stupid, Rose. I knew what they were doing there.”
I was right, Hazel had followed the steps to Sam too. And Sam had always known what happened. Which gave her motive. I realized the position I was in and side-eyed the closed door.
“Did you confront Alex?” I asked.
“Yeah. Alex and I had it out that night and I broke up with Isaac. I made him leave and then had to lie to my parents about it.” Sam, for the first time, paused, looking a little confused.
“I am surprised Hazel didn’t tell you this already.
I didn’t believe her when she said she wasn’t here on your behalf. ”
So Hazel had confirmation that Isaac and Alex were together that night, the information coming straight from Sam’s lips, which meant either Sam or Isaac or both were likely to be implicated here.
I was feeling out of my depth. I had to get the fuck out of here and call Pullman.
I would finally tell the police everything I knew.
I went to stand up, but the pained look in Sam’s face kept me rooted in the spot.
Despite what had happened to the Hopelys, I’d somehow imagined that they had persevered.
That it was my family who had truly suffered, whose lives were irrevocably ruined.
But looking at Sam felt like looking in the mirror.
Both of our lives had been destroyed by what had happened to our siblings.
And as much as I wanted to suspect her, to have someone else to blame, I had to admit that hers didn’t look like the face of a killer.
Sam spoke up again, looking at me directly.
“I can tell what you’re thinking, and the answer is no.
Isaac didn’t kill Alex or hurt Hazel. The night of Alex’s murder, he was at his summer house on Cape Cod.
His entire family was there, and so was the new girl he was banging.
I saw the photos all over Facebook. I still remember how shitty I felt. ”
“Did you tell Hazel that too?” I asked, and Sam nodded. Fuck. There went my next lead.
“Yeah, I did. And then she asked me if I knew about anyone else Alex was sleeping with,” Sam said.
“And?” I pressed.
“I never knew what was true or not with her. Alex would say anything to raise her own image.” Sam sounded conflicted, her issues with Alex as unresolved in death as in life.
“And it definitely came off badly, but she struggled with her own demons. Everyone was always watching her, expecting her to be perfect, to be cool. That’s complicated in its own way. ”
“Names, Sam. I need names.”
“I don’t fucking know, okay?” Sam said, sounding annoyed.
“You know, when I confronted her about Isaac? She didn’t even look sorry.
She blamed him, of course. Said he’d coerced her.
But it wasn’t the first time she’d cheated on Will and we both knew it.
Anyway, it doesn’t even matter who else she was sleeping with,” Sam said angrily.
“None of them killed Alex. Will did, Rose. We know he did.”
I resisted the urge to throw what I knew about Victoria and her growing beliefs in Will’s innocence in Sam’s face. I bit the inside of my mouth.
“You don’t know that for sure,” I snapped. “No one does.”
“Yes, I do!” Sam shouted. She looked venomous. Her face was red with rage, pent-up grief, frustration, all the things I was feeling but for a different reason. “I saw him, Rose! I saw him out there with her that night!”
I stopped, staring at her in disbelief. There had never been any eyewitness accounts of what happened.
Sam had never said anything to the police or at trial about seeing Will that night.
If she had, they would have thrown away the keys to the jail.
My book never would have been published.
Eyewitnesses, unreliable or not, were alibi killers.
“What are you talking about?” I asked, my voice suddenly small.
Sam’s bony chest was rising and falling as she looked at me, her eyes filling with angry tears. “I was up late that night, Facebook-stalking Isaac and his new girlfriend, and I saw them out of my bedroom window,” she said, trying to catch her breath. “Alex and Will were talking in the woods.”
My body was shaking, and I was trying to hide it. No. It couldn’t be. She was wrong.
“It was late,” I reminded her. “And dark. It could have been anyone out there with her.”
Sam shook her head, tears quietly rolling down her cheeks. “It was Will. He was wearing his bright orange T-shirt, the one that practically glowed in the dark.”
My knees felt like they were about to give out, but I did my best to keep it together. My breathing slowed to a crawl.
The University of Florida, Will’s prospective college, was known for its colors: blue and orange. Will loved wearing the merch. I couldn’t remember what he was wearing on the evening of his graduation, of Alex’s death. Was it one of those T-shirts?
“I saw him push her to the ground, and I just went to bed because I was still furious with her about what happened with Issac,” Sam said sniffling. “I thought Will knew too and was confronting her. I figured she deserved it.”
She had to be lying. Will swore to me he didn’t do this. I knew he didn’t. I knew my brother.
“And you didn’t tell anyone this because?” I demanded. “That’s pretty big fucking evidence to withhold.”
Sam was fully crying now. “I never said anything about it because I felt guilty!” she snapped at me. “I could have done something. I could have woken my parents up, went out there to help her. Do you have any idea what that feels like? The guilt of knowing you could have saved your sister?”
Yes, I thought. What if Hazel and I had been closer? Would she have told me about what she was looking into? Could I have helped her or stopped her? Would she still be missing right now if I had? Sam was wrong. I knew about guilt firsthand.
She kept going, “And then it didn’t matter because they had all that evidence against Will anyway. We knew he did it. I didn’t have to admit what I had seen because it wouldn’t have changed anything. Except for making everyone hate me.”
I didn’t know how to feel. I couldn’t imagine why she would make this up, why she would admit something like this to me if it was a lie. But that meant …
No, I stopped that line of thinking immediately. There had to be some other explanation, some other guy.
Will didn’t kill Alex. My entire life rested upon this fact.
“Did you tell Hazel this?” I asked Sam, furious. Had she been poisoning my little sister with these theories, turning her against our brother?
Sam nodded, her face pained. “Yes, I told her when she was here. I felt sorry for her. She was so upset, so convinced her brother had been falsely imprisoned. I’ve always had a soft spot for her.
You remember I used to babysit her back then?
I thought it would help her to know that justice had indeed been served. I didn’t want her to end up like you.”
My head was spinning. I had received too much information in too short a period of time and I didn’t know what to do. None of it made any sense. My mind was grasping at straws trying to make sense of it.
Sam wiped her eyes and regained her resolve. “Now, get out of my house, bitch.”