Epilogue
Present
AMELIA DURAND WAS a free woman these days too.
Seated on a chaise lounge by the pool, just a few feet from where her mother’s legs had crumpled at an unnatural angle in death, Amelia scrolled through the local news videos on her phone.
Because she’d followed the legal case closely, her feed was full of reels of Jordyn Lawson walking out of the courtroom today after her release.
Later, Amelia would revisit her favorite Reddit page where people weighed in on the case.
Some lauding Jordyn as a hero for trying to find a killer in the hit-and-run police had all but given up on solving.
Others villainized Jordyn for her vigilante role in something that should have been left to law enforcement.
Amelia enjoyed their comments and wild speculations about what had really happened that Halloween night.
Especially since she was the only one who actually knew.
“Come on, Hazel,” Amelia called to her Great Pyrenees, the white fluffy dog still growing into her massive paws. She didn’t want to keep the furball out in the heat for too long. “Let’s go inside and cool off.”
Hazel leapt from her chaise, following Amelia into the casita through the French doors before she closed them behind them to keep in the air conditioning.
Not all of the lessons her mother had taught her were lost. Amelia did still remember to shut a door behind her.
But the rule against animals in the house had been well and thoroughly broken almost immediately following Sophie’s death.
Amelia had brought the Pyrenees pup home from the shelter the next week. Even ten months later, Amelia still enjoyed having parties at the house with all her friends. And all their pets.
Setting her half-finished soda on the small kitchen counter, Amelia breezed through the empty pool house while Charlotte attended her college orientation.
This year, with Charlotte out of high school and occupied with her course work, promised to be epic.
With their mother gone, Amelia could finally breathe freely.
If Luke got out of jail and came home?
Amelia wasn’t worried. She could handle her stepfather. He knew enough about what had really happened on Halloween night to give Amelia some space.
Some respect.
Opening the door that led into Sophie’s personal office space, Amelia lowered herself into the pale gray leather chair. She ran her hands over the mahogany desktop, smiling to herself as she remembered how perfectly everything had worked out.
She’d fought viciously with her mother, of course.
But that was nothing new because Amelia had despised her mother ever since Auntie T had been killed.
Amelia had known in her gut as soon as it happened that her mother had been the guilty party.
She’d overheard Tara and her mother arguing that night about ownership of The Clean Break.
Then, after Tara had left the house, Sophie and Luke had gotten in a heated argument about whether or not Luke was sleeping with Tara.
Her mother had been literally spitting with rage.
Sophie had left the house in a fury, saying she’d find out the truth from Tara once and for all.
When Sophie returned to the house, her face had been chalk white.
Luke’s SUV that she’d driven had been dinged up.
By morning, Sophie had behaved as if she had no idea what had happened, but Amelia knew.
It had been just one more reason to hate the mother who rode her constantly for not being smart enough, not putting in enough effort on her school work, not excelling in sports to the same degree as Charlotte did.
Those jabs still hurt Amelia sometimes. Even with Sophie gone.
She held out a hand to Hazel, who padded over to offer her comfort, putting her huge furry head on Amelia’s lap.
Amelia had named the dog for that crazy costume Auntie T had worn at the Witch Walk, when she’d tried to thumb her nose at the sexy witch costumes with her Witch Hazel outfit. That memory still made her smile.
Made her remember there were good people in the world.
People different from her. Different from her mom.
“You’re the best girl,” she crooned to the dog, petting the dog’s fluff for a minute before she searched her mother’s desk drawer for some stationery.
Finding the heavy linen stock Sophie had bought home from Italy, Amelia smoothed her fingers over the paper, her mind fast-forwarding from one Halloween to the next.
She’d bided her time with her mother. Tried to forgive her for running down one of Amelia’s favorite people.
But things came to a head last Halloween when her mother had been livid that Amelia had “snuck out” of the house with Charlotte to try and attend a friend’s party.
Amelia had finally had enough. She told her mother that she would reveal to the world that she’d killed Tara if she didn’t back off. She hated Sophie.
Then Luke intervened, trying to calm them down. Which would have been fine, until Brad Reynolds had overheard them. Luke had been scared that Brad might have unwittingly heard details about Tara’s death. So he’d tackled him, jabbed him with a needle that seemed to appear out of nowhere.
Amelia had known her stepfather had a little drug habit, but not that it had escalated to the point where he’d just happened to have a needle on him.
The sight of it had given her an idea. In the darkened house, it had been simple to retrieve the needle while her mother resumed berating her.
There had been a little liquid left in it.
Amelia didn’t even know for certain what it was at that time, but she was only too happy to steal up behind her mother from the shadows and inject her too.
The effects had been speedy. But even if they hadn’t been, Amelia had been too far beyond worrying about repercussions to care.
Something about Sophie trying to jail her in the house again, and on a night when all her friends were out, had been the final straw for her.
Still, their unhappy little dysfunction would have surely just gone on another day if Jordyn hadn’t wandered into the room then.
Amelia had hidden quickly, jumping into a darkened closet.
And she’d been able to witness the whole encounter between Jordyn and Sophie while the drug Amelia had injected into her mom was taking hold.
Later, after the toxicology report had been released, Amelia learned the drug had been ketamine, shutting down her mother’s thoughts and reactions.
For all Amelia knew, Sophie had never taken it before. She wouldn’t have any tolerance for it.
With fascinated delight, she watched Jordyn go toe-to-toe with her mother. Taking her to task for the murder that Sophie had never paid for.
Even then, her mother had been a coldhearted bitch, taunting Jordyn. Revealing her dark side openly. That was how Amelia knew that the drug was really affecting her. Wiping away her boundaries and her control. Sophie usually saved her deepest evil for behind closed doors.
So when Jordyn shoved Sophie in anger, Sophie reeled back with no way to stop herself, her body in the grip of a powerful anesthetic. The fall had been sickening. The scream terrifying.
But then … it was over. Jordyn had killed the wicked witch who had kept Amelia’s household under a suffocating dark spell. Freeing her.
For weeks, she’d tried to pick through her feelings.
Overwhelming relief. A little grief. A pinch of wistful nostalgia, although less for her mom than for what a mother–daughter relationship should have looked like.
Amelia had enough friends to know that normal moms expressed pride or joy in their kids, at least occasionally.
Though her older sister didn’t know what had really happened that night, Amelia could tell Charlotte was not really grieving for the loss of a woman who had made them work on ballet moves until their toes bled.
The woman who signed them up for so many sports, mentoring sessions, and volunteer activities that they routinely managed five hours of sleep a night.
They’d never been good enough to merit their mother’s love.
But Amelia was done looking backward.
Jordyn had gone free today, and tomorrow Charlotte would begin her college program. A page had turned for Amelia.
She decided to celebrate with a party. Not a pool party, or a pet party. Nothing lame and high school like that. She would celebrate the new school year with something more elegant. High class.
Maybe something that looked to the rest of the world like a nod to her accomplished mother?
“Oh Hazel, this is going to be good.” The idea came to her fully formed and perfect. She withdrew a heavy Montblanc pen from the middle drawer and uncapped it.
Then, setting the pen to paper, she used her best penmanship to craft a special invitation to her very own themed book club event. Taking care not to smudge the ink, she wrote:
Can you find the killer before another murder is committed?