What could cause such a serious rift between lifelong friends?
The answer was clear. For a friend, her dad had gone against his principles. Afterward, he had hated both himself and his friend for it.
That poor woman. And pregnant, too. Pregnant. With whose baby? Avery didn't like what she was thinking. She glanced toward the doorway. Lilah was in the kitchen, preparing dinner. She would know. Like her mother, she had lived through it. Had watched as best friends grew distant, then to despise one another.
Avery grabbed her handbag, with the two journals tucked inside, and slipped into her shoes. She went to the bedroom door and peeked out. The house was quiet save for sounds coming from the kitchen.
She slipped into the hall and down the stairs. From the study came the sound of Cherry and Buddy, talking softly. Avery tiptoed past the closed door and headed to the kitchen.
Lilah glanced over her shoulder at her and smiled. Avery saw that she was grating cheese. She wore a ruffled, floral apron-a flour smudge decorated her nose and right cheek. The blueberry pie, pretty as a picture from Bon Appetit, sat cooling on a rack by the oven.
"You look refreshed," she said brightly.
"At least I don't reek of smoke anymore."
"There's something to the whole comfort-food thing, don't you think?" She turned back to her grating. "Macaroni and cheese, chicken pot pie, tuna casserole. Good, old-fashioned stick-to-your-ribs stuff. Just thinking about it makes one feel better."
If only it was so easy, Avery thought, watching her work. If only life were so simple. Like something out of Life magazine in the 1950s. Or an episode of an old TV show.
Life wasn't like that, no matter how much she longed for it to be. The picture Lilah presented was wrong. She saw that now. A deception. An illusion.
A picture-perfect mask to hide the truth from the world.
But what was the truth?
Avery opened her handbag and drew out the journal from 1988. "Lilah," she said softly, "I need to ask you something. It's important."
The woman glanced at her. Her gaze dropped to Avery's hands. "What's that?"
"One of my mother's journals. I found it in my parents' attic."
"But I thought your father had gotten rid of them."
"No. Mother had packed them away. They were almost all lost in the fire."
Lilah's expression altered slightly. Her gaze skittered from Avery's to the journal. "Not that one."
"No. Or one other."
"Thank God for that."
"Yes." Avery carefully slid it back into her purse. "I discovered something interesting in this journal, Lilah. I wanted to ask you about it."
"Sure, hon." She went to the refrigerator and retrieved a jug of milk. She filled a measuring cup full. "What do you need to know?"
"Whose baby was Sallie Waguespack carrying?"
The measuring cup slipped from her fingers. It hit the counter-top and milk spewed across the country-blue Formica. With a small cry, she began mopping up the mess.
"Lilah?"
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"Yes, you do. Whose baby was it?"
Lilah's movements stilled. The kitchen was silent save for the steady drip drip of milk dropping onto the tile floor.
"They're all dead now, Lilah. Everyone connected with the Waguespack murder investigation. All of them but Buddy. Do you know how damning that is?"
Lilah whimpered. Avery took a step toward her. "What really happened that night? Buddy, my dad, Pat Greene, they were all in on it. All covering up for somebody. Who was it, Lilah? Who?"
Avery grabbed her arm. "Those boys were framed, weren't they? They didn't kill Sallie Waguespack."
Lilah's mouth moved, but no sound emerged. Avery shook her. "Those boys were sacrificial lambs. It's in the journal, Lilah! I discovered it this morning. You were the only person I mentioned the journals to. Who did you tell? That's why my house was torched, to destroy the evidence!"
A sound of pain escaped Lilah's lips. "No. Please, it's not-"
"Stop protecting him, Lilah. You have to come clean. You have to make this right." She lowered her voice, pleading. "Only you can do it, Lilah. Only you can-"
"It was Buddy's baby!" she said, the words exploding from her. "He betrayed me, our children. This town. By day, Mr. Morality. Lecturing about how the citizens needed to take action, restore Cypress Springs to a God-fearing, law-abiding place to live. By night fornicating with that…with that cheap whore!"
Her tears came then, deep wrenching sobs. She doubled over. Her small frame shaking with the force of her despair.
"And she became pregnant."
"Yes." Lilah looked up, expression naked with pain. "That's when Buddy confessed to me what had been going on, that the woman was pregnant. I hadn't…I never-"
She bit the words back but they landed between them- She hadn 't known. She never suspected.
Avery's heart went out to the other woman. She had always thought the Stevenses had the perfect marriage. Apparently, Lilah had thought so, too.
"She was going to make trouble for him. She wanted to ruin him. Make it public. Shame him…all of us."
Lilah met Avery's gaze, calm seeming to move over her. "I couldn't have that. I couldn't have my family exposed to his filth. I couldn't let that happen."
"What did you do?" Avery asked softly, though she already knew.
"I went to see her. To beg her to keep quiet. To do the right thing." An angry sound escaped her. "The right thing? I was so naive. Sallie Waguespack wouldn't know the right thing if it hit her with a sledgehammer.
"She laughed at me. Called me pathetic. The stupid little house-wife." Lilah fisted her fingers. "She bragged about how she seduced him, about the…sex they had. She bragged about being pregnant. She promised that before she gave up Chief Raymond 'Buddy' Stevens, she would drag him and his family through the mud.
"We were in the kitchen. I was crying, begging her to shut up. I saw a knife on the counter." Lilah's eyes took on a glazed look. "I didn't do it on purpose. You have to believe me."
"Go on, Lilah. Tell me everything."
"I picked up the knife and I…stabbed her. Again and again. I didn't even realize…until…the blood. It was everywhere."
Avery took a step back, found the counter, leaned on it for support. "So Buddy took care of it for you," Avery whispered.
"Yes. I didn't ask him to. He told me to stay put, that he would take care of everything. But I didn't understand what that meant… didn't know until…the next day."
He framed the Pruitt boys. Manufactured the evidence against them and covered up the evidence against his wife.
He called upon his best friend to help. Pat Greene and Kevin Gallagher, too.
"I've had to live with that all these years. The guilt. The self-hatred. Those boys…what I did-"
She curved her arms around her middle, seeming to fold in on herself. "We were all so close back then. The best of friends. Buddy begged your daddy to lie, to make the medical facts agree with the evidence. To not request an autopsy. It was easy because the Pruitt boys were dead."
"And nothing would have to stand up to the scrutiny of a trial."
"Yes. Phillip couldn't live with the guilt at what he'd done. That's why he did it. Why he killed himself. I wish to God I had the guts to do the same! My children…my friends, I ruined everything!"
The kitchen door flew open. Buddy charged through, Cherry behind him, expression stricken.
"Enough!" he roared, face mottled with angry color.
Lilah cringed. Cherry rushed to her mother's side, drew her protectively into her arms.
Avery turned to the man she had once thought of as a second father. "It's too late, Buddy. How could you?"
"I never wanted you to know, Avery," he said, tone heavy with regret. "Your father didn't want you to know."
Avery trembled with anger. With betrayal. "How do you know what my father wanted? You used your friendship to force him to lie!"