Page 116 of The One

I stilled after shaking my head. “You lied to them?”

“I just didn’t tell them everything.”

“Why?”

He held his hands together, his thumbs upward, a lion tattoo on one. It was so precisely done; I could even see the whiskers.

“I knew you and your family would see the police report. I didn’t want you all to know what she had really been like in that moment.”

My stomach sank.

Cocaine.

I had never suspected it. Was I naive? Ignorant? Or had it been obvious and I just hadn’t wanted to see it?

“High, you mean?” I clarified.

“High as fuck and out of control.”

His head dropped enough to show me more of the blackness of his hair. I swore it had thickened since high school, had even gotten curlier. His beard, too, had completely filled in, the open, splotchy patches no longer present.

“I didn’t mention the almost accident to the police either. I didn’t want it on record that she had been all over me.”

When he glanced up, the whites of his eyes were turning a slight shade of red.

“The whole time I spoke to them, all I could think about was you. What it would feel like to read those things about your sister. I didn’t want to shit all over the memory of her. Not when you and your family would be grieving for the rest of your lives.So, I honored her in the only way I knew how, and that was by giving the police enough, but not giving them the whole story.”

“What if a witness had seen her on your shoulders and the almost accident that happened? What if they’d reported it?”

He shrugged. “I would have come up with something.”

“And her bag? The divers weren’t able to recover it, it was lost at sea. But you told the police you threw it overboard out of anger. Was that true?”

His exhale was loud and emotional. “I threw it because there was coke inside. I knew the police would search it and find the blow, along with the dirty mirror and the powdered bill she’d stuck up her nose, and I couldn’t let that happen. Lainey …” He quieted while he gazed into my eyes, the silence building before he said, “Again, I was just trying to protect her memory and you and your family from knowing that part of the truth. A truth that I was sure would only hurt all of you.”

My head fell back, my throat open to the wind.

I’d come up with so many reasons. He had thrown it because he couldn’t stand the sight of one more thing of hers. He had thrown it because there was something inside that would incriminate him. He had thrown it because he couldn’t throw her—she’d angered him that badly.

But protecting her? And us?

I’d never considered that.

“I have to admit something that isn’t easy.”

“None of this has been easy, Lainey.”

I waited, begging my heart to calm down, which was a laughable request because I knew it wouldn’t. “There were so many times I wanted to reach out and talk to you about what had happened. I found your Instagram account. It’s the only social media I could locate, unless the rest is under a pseudonym.”

“Instagram is all I have.”

I nodded. “I was going to message you on there, but the account looked dead. You never posted a single photo.”

“Is that really the reason you didn’t reach out? Because the account looked dead?”

“No.”

“I didn’t think so.”