Page 6 of Memory of Murder (Colby Agency: The Next Generation #3)

Journal Entry

Thirty Years Ago

Sorry—this part is the present, but I had already begun by writing Thirty Years Ago when I realized I needed to explain, and it’s ink so…

Oh well. I didn’t have a diary or a journal back then—when I was young and in love and pregnant with you.

I was far too busy planning my wedding and working to worry about writing anything down.

Besides, who worries about the worst-possible situation actually happening at the most unlikely time?

Not me apparently. This I now deeply regret.

It’s the second biggest regret of my life.

It would have been so much easier if I’d kept a log of the details.

Oh well, hindsight is twenty-twenty, as they say.

Although it has been three decades since these events occurred, I realized just recently that it was necessary for me to put certain parts in writing.

I skip around a little, ensuring that I get the most relevant dates and information down.

With my recent cancer diagnosis, my time and energy are limited, and in truth, I can’t say that I won’t go to sleep tonight and not wake up.

If I am able to finish, I hope this journal makes it to you.

I know I don’t deserve your time or your attention, but this isn’t for me.

This is for you . I want you to know the truth so that whatever bad feelings about who you are and where you came from will be alleviated to some degree.

Also, no matter what you believe, I have always loved you.

I loved you before you were born, and I love you now.

Your father loved you as well. What happened was the sort of nightmare you might see in a movie or read in a book.

It was not something I ever dreamed would happen to us.

To this day I wonder how it could have happened without at least some sort of warning.

Anyway, I hope you won’t be put off or ignore this journal simply because you hate me. Or perhaps you feel nothing for or about me. Please know that I understand. If I were you I would hate me too. But please keep reading. I beg you to keep reading. Find the truth…for you .

I’m sure you’re likely wondering why now.

Why did I wait all this time to contact you in any way?

After all, you came to the prison several times, and I refused to see you.

That is my first and biggest regret in this life.

Once it was clear an appeal was not going to happen, I thought I was doing the right thing by staying out of your life and never allowing you to be part of mine.

It was the most difficult decision of my existence.

I wanted you to be free of me and the regret and pain I carried.

And the stigma, of course. I noticed you changed your name, and I’m glad.

You deserve to be free of any connection to the horror that was my final year of freedom.

I’m sure you’re laughing as you read. Why wouldn’t the murder be my biggest regret?

The answer is painfully simple. I did not murder anyone.

I swear this to you. I am innocent. I don’t expect you to believe me, which is why I have started this journal.

When it’s done I’m sending all that I have left along with the journal to the Colby Agency.

Another inmate told me that the Colby Agency are the best private investigators.

Not that she ever used them, but she knows people who know people.

I did a little research on the internet, and it seems to be true.

In the end, I’m counting on someone at the Colby Agency to find the truth.

You see, I don’t know who killed the love of my life.

Neil’s murder, I am confident, was committed by someone close to us.

I can tell you the people I believe did this, but I cannot prove anything.

My hope is that the Colby Agency can do what I and the police could not.

Actually, I’m praying they will. Again, not for me, but for you .

Anyway, here goes. Please, please keep reading.

May 5

Thirty Years Ago

I HAD JUST found out I was pregnant. I was so thrilled.

I can’t even find the words to describe how amazing it felt.

I couldn’t wait to tell Neil. He was going to be over the moon.

Although we had intended to wait until we were a little more settled—at least until after the wedding—to start a family, it didn’t matter.

This was amazing. And maybe under the circumstances we could forego the bigger wedding his mother had planned and just elope.

That would have actually been pretty perfect.

We had been looking at houses with our best friends, Eve Redford and Kevin Langston.

Eve and I had known each other since we were children.

She met Kevin at a sorority party sophomore year, and they have been a couple since.

It was nice that Kevin and Neil hit it off.

Eve and I couldn’t have been happy unless our future husbands were friends.

That’s the way best friends were supposed to be, you know.

We wanted to do things together…to be friends forever.

We had lost the third member of our bestie trio—Carin Carter.

She was one of us until she wasn’t. I don’t know what happened, but one day she just decided we couldn’t be friends anymore.

She had not spoken to me or to Eve in weeks.

We later learned she moved to Chicago and never looked back.

Which is all the more reason Eve and I understood we had to stick together.

We would never allow anything to come between us. Best friends forever.

Except something did…something unthinkable…something straight out of a horror movie. Something I never saw coming.

S IDE N OTE: Y OU SHOULD know that what I felt that long ago May all changed by August of that same year.

Eve Redford was not my friend after all.

I later wondered if who she really was is the reason Carin left.

I can’t be sure about that. But what I can say with absolute certainty is that Eve Redford was not who she appeared to be.

I imagine she is still that same deceitful person.

Did she murder my sweet Neil? I don’t know, but I believe she knows who did.

Whatever you do, be careful around her. Do not trust her under any circumstances.

I have no proof…no evidence whatsoever. But what I can say is that I know in my heart with utter certainty that someone close to me murdered my future husband—your father.

I just don’t know which of the three—Eve or Kevin or, maybe, Carin.

If I could have figured out the motive maybe I could have uncovered the truth.

I can only assume that the evil person who killed him did not want me to continue being happy.

There simply is no other explanation. Neil was the kindest, most honorable man I have ever known.

No one, and I mean no one, could have found a single thing bad in him that warranted harm, much less murder.

Obviously, the killer didn’t want the man I loved because he or she killed him.

She didn’t want the child I carried. Otherwise he or she would have taken you in under the guise of friendship.

I just don’t know. The one thing I know with absolute certainty is that you cannot trust those three or anyone close to them.

Bottom line: Do not trust anyone who was close to me. And please, please be careful.