“Mr. Ford has a long history of violence,” the reporter went on. Spencer peered over her coffee mug. A YouTube video showed a fuzzy image of Billy and a guy in a Phillies cap fighting in a Wawa parking lot. Even after the guy fell to the ground, Billy kept on kicking him. Spencer put her hand to her mouth, picturing Billy doing the same thing to Ali.
“And these images, found in Mr. Ford’s car, have never been seen before.”
A blurry Polaroid photo materialized. Spencer leaned forward, her eyes widening. It was a shot of the inside of a barn—her family’s barn, which had been ruined in the fire Billy set several weeks ago, presumably to destroy evidence tying him to Ali’s and Ian’s murders. In the picture, four girls sat on the round rug in the center of the room, their heads bowed. A fifth girl stood above them, her arms in the air. The next photo was of the same scene, except the standing girl had moved a few inches to the left. In the following shot, one of the girls who had been sitting had stood up and moved toward the window. Spencer recognized the girl’s dirty blond hair and rolled-up field hockey skirt. She gasped. She was looking at her younger self. These photos were from the night Ali went missing. Billy had been standing outside the barn, watching them.
And they’d never known.
Someone let out a small, dry cough behind her. Spencer whirled around. Mrs. Hastings sat at the kitchen table, staring blankly into a mug of Earl Grey tea. She was wearing a pair of gray Lululemon yoga pants with a tiny hole in the knee, dirty white socks, and an oversize Ralph Lauren polo. Her hair was stringy, and there were toast crumbs on her left cheek. Normally, Spencer’s mom didn’t even let the family dogs see her unless she looked absolutely pristine.
“Mom?” Spencer said tentatively, wondering if her mother had seen the Polaroids, too. Mrs. Hastings turned her head slowly, as though she were moving underwater. “Hi, Spence,” she said tonelessly. Then she turned back to her tea, staring miserably at the bag steeping at the bottom of the cup.
Spencer bit off the tip of her French-manicured pinkie. On top of everything else, her mom was acting like a zombie…and it was all her fault. If only she hadn’t blurted out the horrible secret Billy-as-A had told her about her family: that her dad had had an affair with Ali’s mother, and that Ali was Spencer’s half sister. If only Billy hadn’t convinced Spencer that her mom knew about the affair and killed Ali to punish her husband. Spencer had confronted her mother, only to discover that her mother hadn’t known—or done—anything. After that, Mrs. Hastings kicked Spencer’s dad out of the house, and then more or less gave up on life entirely.
The familiar click-click-click of heels on the mahogany hall floors rang through the air. Spencer’s sister, Melissa, blustered into the room, surrounded by a cloud of Miss Dior. She wore a pale blue Kate Spade sweater dress and gray kitten heels, and her dark blond hair was pulled back in a gray headband. There was a silver clipboard under her arm and a Montblanc pen behind her right ear.
“Hey, Mom!” Melissa called brightly, giving her a kiss on the forehead. Then she appraised Spencer, setting her mouth in a straight line. “Hey, Spence,” she said coolly.
Spencer slumped into the nearest chair. The benevolent, I’m-glad-you’re-alive feelings she and her sister had shared the night Jenna was murdered had lasted exactly twenty-four hours. Now, things were back to status quo, with Melissa blaming Spencer for their family’s ruin, snubbing Spencer every chance she got, and taking on all the home responsibilities like the prissy brownnoser she’d always been.
Melissa lifted the clipboard. “I’m going to Fresh Fields for groceries. Want anything special?” She spoke to Mrs. Hastings in an overly loud voice, as if she were ninety years old and deaf.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Mrs. Hastings said morosely. She stared into her open palms as if they contained great wisdom. “It doesn’t really matter, does it? We eat the food, and then it’s gone, and then we’re hungry again.” At that, she stood up, sighed loudly, and shuffled up the stairs to her bedroom.
Melissa’s lip twitched. The clipboard knocked against her hip. She glanced over at Spencer, her eyes narrowing. Look what you’ve done, her expression screamed.
Spencer stared out the long line of windows that faced the backyard. Sheets of pale blue ice glistened on the back walkway. Pointed icicles hung from the singed trees. The family’s old barn was a heap of black wood and ash, ruined from the fire. The windmill was still in pieces, the word LIAR scrawled on the base.
Tears rushed to Spencer’s eyes. Whenever she looked at her backyard, she had to resist the urge to run upstairs, curl up under her bed, and shut the door. Things had been great between Spencer and her parents before she exposed the affair—for once. But Spencer now felt the same way she did when she first tasted homemade cappuccino ice cream from the Creamery in Hollis—after just one lick, she had to eat the whole cone. After a taste of what a decent, loving family was like, she couldn’t go back to dysfunction and neglect.
The television continued to blare, a picture of Ali filling the screen. Melissa paused to listen for a moment as the reporter walked through the timeline of the murder.
Spencer bit down on her lip. She and Melissa hadn’t discussed the fact that Ali was their half sister. Now that Spencer knew that she and Ali were related, it changed everything. For a long time, Spencer had kind of hated Ali—she’d controlled her every move, stockpiled her every secret. But none of that mattered now. Spencer just wished she could go back in time to save Ali from Billy that horrible night.
The station cut to a studio shot of pundits sitting around a high, bistro-style table, discussing Billy’s fate. “You can’t trust anyone anymore,” exclaimed an olive-skinned woman in a cherry-red power suit. “No child is safe.”
“Now, wait a second.” A black man with a goatee waved his hands to stop them. “Maybe we should give Mr. Ford a chance. A man is innocent until proven guilty, right?”
Melissa scooped up her black patent leather Gucci hobo bag from the island. “I don’t know why they’re wasting their time discussing this,” she spat acidly. “He deserves to rot in hell.”
Spencer gave her sister an uneasy look. That was another strange development in the Hastings household—Melissa had become unequivocally, almost fanatically confident that Billy was the murderer. Every time the news brought up an inconsistency in the case, Melissa grew enraged.
“He’ll go to jail,” Spencer said reassuringly. “Everyone knows he did it.”
“Good.” Melissa turned away, plucked the Mercedes car keys out of the ceramic bowl by the phone, buttoned the checkered Marc Jacobs jacket she’d bought at Saks the week before—apparently she wasn’t too distraught over their broken home to shop—and slammed the door.
As the pundits continued to squabble, Spencer walked to the front window and watched as her sister backed out of the driveway. There was a disquieting smile on Melissa’s lips that sent a shiver up Spencer’s backbone.
For some reason, Melissa almost looked…relieved.
2 THE SECRETS NOW BURIED
Aria Montgomery and her boyfriend, Noel Kahn, huddled close as they walked from the Rosewood Day student parking lot to the lobby entrance. A rush of warm air greeted them as they swept inside the school, but when Aria noticed the display near the auditorium, her blood froze. On a long table across the room was a large photo of Jenna Cavanaugh.