Page 78 of Joey

“Yeah. Fiona Delgado.”

“No,” she says again, still shaking her head.

“Joey, I know—”

“No, Max. You didn’t kill her.”

“I did, Joey. I woke up and she was dead. With my handprints around her neck.”

“No!” she shouts now, pulling her hand from mine as she looks to her brothers. “Those weren’t Max’s handprints.” Her hand flies to her mouth and tremors wrack her body.

I lean forward, placing my hand on her back. “Joey, baby?”

“Those werehishandprints,” she whispers, her eyes wide as she looks first at her brothers, then at me. “Sal’s.”

Lorenzo and Dante lean forward. We stare at her.

“What are you talking about?” Dante asks softly.

“He killed that girl. The night of your graduation party. I saw him.”

“N-no,” I stammer, shaking my head.

“He did. I saw him. I saw him and some other guy talking about getting rid of the body.”

“You’re sure it was Fiona? You were only ten, Joey,” Dante says.

“I know what I saw, Dante!” Joey shrieks. “Dad promised me twenty bucks if I stayed out of the way of the party all night, so once you and your buddies were all too drunk to walk, I went to call in my debt. But when I got to his office, he was with some guy, and Fiona was dead on the floor. I recognized her pigtails. I knew it was her because I always hated her and the way she told me to get lost whenever I was talking to Max. But then she was dead…”

I lean forward, dropping my head into my hands. I feel like I’m about to throw up for at least the third time today. This is fucking unbelievable. For twelve long years, I’ve tortured myself with the memory of that morning. With the image of Fiona Delgado, naked and dead next to me. And I’ve wracked my brain almost every single day since then to piece together what happened because I don’t remember a single second of it. I always put it down to being so wasted on brandy and cocaine that I blacked out. And I haven’t touched either of them since. But of course I don’t remember. Because I didn’t fucking touch her.

“You’re sure about this, Joey?” Lorenzo asks.

“I just freaking told you I am.”

“What exactly did you hear Pop say?” Dante says.

“The other guy was asking what they were gonna do with her, and Dad said that he had the perfect plan for her. He called her a money-grubbing little whore, and I didn’t know what it meant at the time, but I remember how angry he sounded. It gave me goosebumps all over my skin.”

“Then what?”

“Then he saw me, and he was all sweet to me—the way he could be sometimes, you know? He said the silly girl in his office tried to hurt our family and that he was going to take care of it. He gave me my twenty bucks and told me to go back to bed.”

“Why didn’t you ever tell us, Joey?” Dante asks.

“I-I didn’t really know what it meant, and it wasn’t the first dead body I’d seen. He made me promise never to tell anyone and then…well, it wasn’t the worst thing he ever did.”

I dry heave, and Joey rubs my back.

Barely a day has passed when I haven’t thought about her and tried to remember what I did. Especially since Joey. I’ve smoldered with the desperate need to know what I did to that girl, so I could make sure I never repeated the same mistake again.

“B-but she was in my bed.” I stand up, my head spinning. “She was there with me.”

“Then he must have put her there because I assure you that she was dead when I walked out of his office.”

“No.” Running my hands through my hair, I shake my head. “No. He wouldn’t— He let me think—”

“He would, Max,” Lorenzo says, deadpan.