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Brian takes a seat on the mattress beside me. His hair is still wet from his shower. Beads of water drip from his locks, slithering down his neck. His hands shake, so he places them firmly on his thighs and rubs them up and down the length of his femur. The bedside lamp provides a golden glow but not enough to fully light the room. It leaves his face in the shadows.

“What do you mean Charles is dead?” I ask, staring straight at the tube television set on the dresser in front of the bed. There’s nothing on the screen. I should be looking at Brian for a tell of another of his lies, but I don’t need to. I’ll hear it in his voice. He’s never been good at lying.

“I mean he’s dead.”

“How?” I ask. Apparently, I’m going to have to pull every single detail out of him. We used to never keep anything from one another, but now it seems we keep everything.

He lowers his head. “Eddie killed him.”

My breathing immediately changes. It’s deeper, coming from my gut rather than just my lungs.

“What? How? What happened?” The words come out sharp.

Brian sighs heavily. “We were at the Boar’s Nest, Eddie and I, and then Charles showed up. He kept to himself, but Eddie couldn’t take his eyes off of him.”

“Why didn’t you leave then?”

“I tried to convince Eddie to leave with me. I didn’t want any more trouble, but he wanted to stay and have a good time. Then, he started pounding shots, and the more he drank, the less he paid any mind to Charles. So, I thought everything was fine.”

“But it wasn’t, was it?” I say.

Brian shakes his head. “No. At some point, Eddie said he had to use the bathroom. It was shortly after Charles left. But he never came back. I went to check on him, thinking he got sick, but he was gone. Figured Eddie headed home, so I closed out and decided to do the same.” Brian lets out a deep breath and rubs the back of his neck.

“Then what?”

“When I was crossing through the park, I heard a muffled cry, so I followed the sound of it, and I found Eddie. He was curled up beside a tree, covered in blood, sobbing—and a few feet from him, Charles was lying in the snow, bloodied and beaten.” Brian chokes back tears.

“Did you call the police?”

He whips his head in my direction, but I don’t look at him. I just keep staring at the black screen. “Of course not.”

“Jesus, Brian. Don’t give me ‘Of course not.’ Why wouldn’t you?”

“You think I’m going to call the cops on Eddie?”

“He killed a man.”

“Yeah, because he was convinced Charles had something to do with his daughter’s disappearance.”

“Charles would have never been involved if it weren’t for you and your anonymous tip.” I narrow my eyes.

A look of surprise stretches across his face, but he doesn’t argue, so I know it’s true. He called it in just so they’d stop looking. Charles was an easy target. There was already the question of her shoe prints being in his yard. Plus, no one in town cared about him. So, of course others went along with it, echoing Brian’s anonymous lie. The Grove wanted justice for Emma, and they didn’t care where they got it.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers. “I just wanted to protect us.” His voice cracks and he hangs his head in shame.

“You’ve done everything but.”

“That’s not true, Laura. I am protecting us.”

“Where’s Charles now? I mean, his body,” I ask.

“I took care of it.”

“What do you mean you took care of it? How?”

“You know how.”

I massage my temples with my pointer and middle fingers, rubbing them in small circles. I don’t have a headache yet, but I will by the end of this conversation.

“And what about Eddie?”

“I got him cleaned up, walked him home, and told him to not tell anyone about what happened, not even Susan or Lucas,” Brian says. “I said if anyone asks, he and I walked home together at twelve thirty a.m.”

“You should have never phoned in that tip.”

“And you should have never planted Emma’s bicycle.”

“Don’t you dare put this on me. You’re the one that refused to call the police about Emma,” I spit. “I still ask myself every day why I went along with what we did. Why I let my love and loyalty to you blind me to what we were doing, silence me from asking questions. So don’t you start to question me in all of this. Why are we even in this mess? Why didn’t you call for help?”

“I told you I couldn’t. I need time.”

“Time’s up, Brian. If you don’t tell me everything—I mean every single fucking detail about what happened to Emma Harper—I’ll go to the police myself. I don’t care what happens to us. I can’t live like this anymore.” I turn my head to face him.

He lets out a deep breath and cranes his neck, meeting my gaze.

“You really wanna know, Laura?”

“No. I don’t want to. I have to. And if you had anything to do with Christie Roberts’s disappearance, I want to know that too.”

Brian lowers his chin, accepting defeat. “Fine,” he says, taking a deep breath, but this time he exhales the truth.

I sit there silently listening to my husband as he tells me what happened to Emma Harper and everything that occurred as a result of what we did. By the time he’s finished speaking, I hate him and I hate myself, but I don’t blame him... because I would have done the exact same thing.