Later, when I left the house to head to Isabel’s, I had borrowed Jayne’s phone so that I could return Norman’s. But there was actually something I wanted to check.
The app that Jayne used to track Tyler worked both ways. It recorded Jayne’s location history, and a quick review of the app revealed Jayne had been to the DiCarlo house between the time Tyler first arrived and the time he went back. She’d probably been worried about him, had been checking to make sure he was really at Whistler’s and wasn’t just skipping school to get into mischief.
When she discovered he’d fled work and ridden his bike across town, she must have wondered where he’d gone.
So she decided to find out for herself.
And met Candace DiCarlo.
I’d thought that maybe, just maybe, there was a way to save her from this. I already knew by that time that Greg had hired a hit man to kill Brie. Was there a way to pin DiCarlo’s murder on him, too? Or at least cast enough suspicion his way to have Tyler freed?
So I went to the crime scene that day.
Before I got out of my truck I donned those gloves and picked up the cigarette butt Greg had let fall down by my feet when he talked to me through the driver’s-door window that morning when he came by the house to see me.
I distracted that cop who was guarding the scene long enough to flick that butt — rich with Greg’s DNA — off the bottom of my thumb with my middle finger onto the driveway by the Volvo wagon. My nervous habit finally had a practical application. I prayed that the guys in the hazmat suits would find it.
Evidently, they did.
When Isabel and I arrived at the deserted mall, I tucked that bloody rag — loaded with, presumably, DiCarlo’s DNA — under the seat of Greg’s pickup truck.
I knew what Hardy was referring to when she said they had been able to connect my former best friend to the scene.
Sometimes, long shots pay off. There were a hundred ways it could have gone wrong, but we’d won the lottery. The thing was, when I left those woods with Matt’s gun, I had in my head that I would kill Greg. As the afternoon progressed, and it became clear to me what had happened with Candace DiCarlo, a plan began to take shape that would make it even more important that Greg died. I would concoct a confession from him that he’d never be able to retract. If I ended up getting charged and going to jail, so be it. At least I’d have been able to save Jayne and Tyler.
And Greg did die. It just didn’t happen the way I thought it would.
Jayne would know my story to Hardy was a total fabrication, but I was naïve enough to think maybe she’d see that things had worked out in the best possible way. That she’d relax, move on.
And so there she was, standing at the window every day, waiting for Detective Hardy to come and take her away.
In bed, staring at the ceiling, she whispered, “You made it up. Everything you told Hardy about what Greg supposedly said to you, you invented it.”
I whispered, “Hardy’s happy. She’s satisfied. Isabel backed up my story. It worked. It’s over. Case closed.”
“Not for me. I have to live with this. I tried to do the right thing. I told her I’d done it. She didn’t believe me, but she’d believe me now.”
“You can’t tell her. Not now. If you did, you could go to prison. For making up that confession, I could go to prison, too. And for planting evidence.” I explained to her what I had done with the cigarette butt and the bloody rag. “And what about Tyler? And our child?”
Jayne thought about that. Weighing everything.
Her voice breaking, she said, “I didn’t mean for it to happen. She came to the door, didn’t know who I was, and I... I forced my way in. It was... I want to say it was an accident, but I pushed her. I thought — I believed when I got there that it really was Brie, with some new identity, and I told her I knew who she was and she was not going to ruin our lives, that she had to leave us the fuck alone, and—”
“Stop,” I said, encircling her with my arms. She was shaking. “I don’t need to know.”
“And she started screaming at me to get out of her house, that I had no idea what I was talking about, and she came at me, and I shoved her back, even harder, and she hit her head on the counter, and then—”
I kept holding on to her, hoping that if I did it tightly enough she would stop trembling.
“I couldn’t believe she was dead. I tried to wake her up, and then... then I guess I just panicked and I got out of there, and I had no idea Tyler was going to go back there, that someone would see him, but no one ever saw me, and—”
“Shh, shh,” I said, and, slowly, her trembling eased and she turned and put her arms around me.
I wasn’t going to judge her. I’d killed one man and watched him die. And I had been prepared to kill another.
But just as Tyler had been given a second chance when he came to live with us, this was our second chance.
We had to accept the things that we had done, accept that there was no way we could undo them, and accept that any attempts to set things right would only bring about greater heartache.
This was as good as it was going to get.
“We’re going to be okay,” I whispered into her ear. “Everything’s going to be fine. We’re going to have a baby.”
Jayne looked at me, and, even in the midnight light, I could make out a tear running down her cheek. I wiped it away with my thumb.
Acknowledgments
I had help. Lots of help.
The folks at Harper Collins, in the United Kingdom, the United States, and Canada have had my back every step of the way.
Once again, HarperCollins editors Jennifer Brehl (New York) and Kate Mills (London) worked their magic to whip this book into shape. As always, I am in their debt.
Over in the UK, I am also supported immensely by Charlie Redmayne, Lisa Milton, Claire Brett, Joe Thomas, Alvar Jover, Georgina Green, Rebecca Fortuin, Anna Derkacz, Rebecca Jamieson, Angie Dobbs, and Halema Begum.
In the U.S., I am grateful to Liate Stehlik, Nate Lanman, Pam Barricklow, Ryan Shepherd, Bianca Flores, Jennifer Hart, David Palmer, and Dave Cole.
In Canada, a big thank you to Leo McDonald, Lauren Morocco, Cory Beatty and Sandra Leef.
And I’d be nowhere without my terrific agent, Helen Heller.
Finally, the biggest shoutout goes to booksellers and readers. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Until next time.
P.S. I set this book in 2022, and the storyline suggests that the COVID-19 pandemic is more or less behind us by that time. But as I was writing the novel, we were still in the thick of it. Let’s hope my prognostication is on the money. I have my moments of being uncharacteristically optimistic.