Page 148 of Take Your Breath Away

Detective Hardy: So, I wish you all the best. I hope, should our paths ever cross again, it’s under very different circumstances.

Andrew: Agreed.

One Week Later

Sixty-Three

Andrew

We gave returning to a normal life our best shot.

Jayne went back to her job, Tyler still had his, and I went back to seeing those people who were hoping to hire me that I never got to that day Matt took me into the woods and made me dig up Brie.

Each of us had something to get over. Tyler’s wrongful arrest and the memory of discovering that poor dead woman didn’t appear to be having any long-term traumatic effects, but Jayne and I were both worried about what might be going on under the surface. In many ways, he seemed like a different kid. He wasn’t getting into any more trouble, and had ended his friendship with Cam. He’d also picked up a second part-time job. Well, not a paying gig. He went to the people who maintain the nearby cemetery and said he wanted to do some volunteer work. Cutting grass, weeding, that kind of thing. Didn’t want any money for it.

Jayne didn’t want to smother him with concern the way his aunt had done after their father’s death, but she suggested he might want to talk to a counselor about what he went through, and he seemed open to the idea.

And Jayne’s pregnancy was going well. She was ever so slightly starting to show. No bleeding, and no morning sickness, at least so far. She’d been to see the doctor, who was pleased with her progress. An ultrasound was conducted, and I was in the room as the doctor rubbed that gadget across Jayne’s jellied abdomen and we looked at the blurry image on the screen of the baby that would one day join our household. The doctor wasn’t quite sure about the sex, and that was okay with us. We were happy to be surprised when the big day came.

And I’m coming to terms with Brie’s death. After six years, I know what happened. I can now, officially, mourn her passing.

So that’s the good news.

Jayne hadn’t been sleeping well. At first I thought it was the pregnancy, but it was clearly more than that. It was stress, and trauma. She was, of course, relieved that Tyler’d been released, that no charges had been filed. We even had a little celebration one night. Ordered in pizza, got a cake. But her mood darkened as the days passed. She tossed and turned in the night. I’d try to engage her in conversation and she’d say nothing, as though she hadn’t even heard me.

The truth was, I knew what had to be on her mind, but I didn’t want to press her. But when she spent time standing at the front window, as though expecting someone to arrive, I had a pretty good idea what she was thinking.

She was waiting for Detective Hardy.

Tyler had noticed that something was off with her, too. He went up to her a couple of days ago, put his arms around her as she watched the street.

“It’s not going to happen,” he told her. “They’re not coming back to get me.”

One night, after we had both gone to bed and the lights were off, I could sense that she was awake. I rolled over, saw her lying on her back, eyes open, staring at the ceiling. I had a feeling that she was finally ready to talk about it.

“I know you’re lying,” she said.

“Shh,” I said. “Don’t worry about it.”

“I know that everything you told Detective Hardy was bullshit.”

“Not everything,” I told her.

“I know Greg never confessed to you before he died.”

“Everything he told Isabel and me turned out to be true,” I said.

“Not that stuff. I’m talking about his so-called Candace DiCarlo confession.”

Of course she knew it was bullshit. She knew it was bullshit because she had killed Candace DiCarlo. Her rush to confess to Hardy, to spare her brother, had been genuine. Hardy, confident that Tyler was the killer, wouldn’t listen to a word she had to say.

But I knew, very soon, that Jayne’s admission was the real deal.

I knew, or at least strongly suspected, as much when I got to the police station and went to lock up her car before driving her home. When I opened the door I saw the blood on the brake pedal and the accelerator. There was even a little on the steering wheel. I found a rag tucked down between the seats and did my best to wipe it all away, and took the rag with me.

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.