by David Bell
Blake placed his hand on Sam’s arm, and she went along as he guided her toward the back door of the Barn. But before they went inside, I spoke and Blake stopped and looked back.
“Did you know the truth about this, Blake? Did you know Sam did this?”
“I had my suspicions. Sam wasn’t answering her phone during the time when all of that supposedly happened. When we talked about all of these things, about Jennifer’s death, she was evasive. And cold, really. And . . . her hand. Her nails on her right hand . . . They looked like . . . They looked like she’d been changing a tire. They were all broken and chipped. And she’d been chewing them again. Her hands never look like that. But I found out for sure that day I came over to get your computer. I wanted to see what was on there. I wanted to know how bad it was.”
“You’re willing to cover for Sam, knowing she did this.”
“I am,” Blake said. “That’s what you do for people you love.”
“But you’ll go to jail. The accident. The murder.”
“Maybe we won’t come back,” Blake said. “We’re getting married. We’re going on a trip. Sam has money from her parents. They’re going to cut us off, but we can make it on our own somewhere. That’s why we’re still getting married today. I think it’s clear there’s no need to tell the police about this. We all understand why Sam did what she did. Let’s just move on and have a wedding. The cops won’t know who Lily Rose is unless you tell them.”
I reached into my pocket and brought out my phone.
“You can’t do that,” Blake said, leaning forward. “We’re friends. We’ve been friends longer than you’ve been friends with anybody. Longer than you’ve known Amanda.”
I dialed 911.
“I’m going to do the right thing at the right time, Blake.”
“Are you serious?” he asked.
When the dispatcher came on the line, and I told her where I was and to notify Detective Rountree, Blake didn’t hesitate. He let go of Sam’s hand and went inside the Barn, saying as he went, “My keys are inside.”
CHAPTER NINETY-THREE
Once Blake went inside to get his keys, Sam turned and stared at us.
“You’re ruining our wedding,” she said. “Why can’t you just leave us alone? We want the chance to have what you have. We want to have a perfect life too.”
“A perfect life?” Amanda said.
“The baby, the house. Everything you do and share on social media, it’s so perfect. We were going to lose that if Jennifer shared the truth about the accident. Even just my parents finding out has ruined so much. But it’s not the end for us. After all, Aaron already went to jail for the crime. And those letters . . . they’re long gone. Burned. Gone. Who will they believe now?”
“I told the cops everything I know,” I said.
Sam waved me away, a dismissal.
“Our life isn’t perfect, Sam,” I said. “Far from it. That seems pretty obvious.”
“Well, it sure as hell looks that way.”
Blake came back and took Samantha by the hand, and the two of them moved off behind the Barn, where a few cars were parked, including a black SUV that belonged to Sam. They dashed away, leaving Amanda and me standing in their wake.
“Are we just going to stand here and watch them go?” Amanda asked.
“No,” I said.
I took a step forward, but then I heard the sirens.
I looked back and saw the police coming up the long driveway. . . .
Blake drove the SUV around the far side of the Barn and then reemerged, heading down the driveway. In the direction of the police.
Amanda and I watched from a distance.
She reached out and grabbed my hand, her nails digging into my flesh.
I wanted to shout, to tell Blake to stop. But he seemed to be speeding up as they approached the cops.
The police cars skidded to a stop, angling across the driveway and blocking the way.
Then Blake slammed on the brakes, making the tires squeal.
He backed the SUV up fifty feet, and then paused.
“My God, Ryan, do you see that?” Amanda asked.
“I do. He’s going to ram them.”
“No, Ryan. He can’t. . . .”
But it looked like he was going to do it. Like he was going to slam his foot down on the accelerator and fire forward, either plowing through the cops or hoping they would move out of the way.
Or maybe causing a fiery crash.
Was that how this would end? Another car accident?
And I felt powerless to do or say anything. Blake wasn’t my friend. He wasn’t anything to me anymore.
But did I want to watch him die? And take others down with him?
For a suspended moment, the vehicles faced each other, cops on one side and Blake and Sam on the other. No one made a move.
Through the windshield I saw Sam waving her arms around, urging Blake to do something. She seemed to be pleading.
Then the driver’s-side window of the SUV came down, and Blake’s arm came out. Sam was shaking her head. The sleeve of his suit and the crisp white cuff. Something metallic dangled from his fingers. He dropped the keys onto the driveway. And his hands came out the window in surrender.
Two cops emerged from their vehicles, hands near their weapons. They moved slowly toward Sam’s car, like soldiers on patrol, and then ordered the two of them to step outside.
One cop went to each side of the SUV, and when Blake and Sam came out, the cops took them and moved them up against the car. It took me back to my own experience outside their duplex when the cops pushed me up against the siding and searched me.
Except it hadn’t happened to me in my wedding suit.
The cops patted them down and placed cuffs on them. For attempting to flee the scene . . . and then everything that they would now be able to prove.
Despite my desire to be done with Blake forever, I felt bad for them. Embarrassed.
Although I shouldn’t have. They’d both done horrible things and had finally been caught.
That was when Amanda let go of my hand and nudged me.
“Are you seeing this, Ryan?”
I thought she meant the arrest. How could I not? But then I followed her gaze and saw what she meant.
The wedding guests, who had been sitting inside patiently waiting for the ceremony to start, had come out of the Barn, and they stood fanned out across the lawn. They all gawked at the spectacle happening before them.
And most of them, almost all of them, held their phones up before their faces, filming and taking photos of Blake and Sam being led over to and then placed into the back of a police cruiser in their wedding clothes. A cop placing his hand on Sam’s perfectly styled hair to make sure she didn’t hit her head as he maneuvered her in.
No one stepped forward to offer help. No one said anything.
They filmed and photographed. And looked happy to be doing it.
CHAPTER NINETY-FOUR
It took hours to untangle things with the police.
Both Amanda and I had to go in and meet with Rountree and a team of assorted detectives and attorneys we’d never met before. We told our stories separately, over and over again.
I’d just been through the whole routine the day before in the wake of Aaron Knicely’s arrest, and being back in the police station so soon and having to again talk for so long made me tired.
Very tired.
In the back of my mind, I worried about Amanda. Not that I didn’t think she could handle herself and stand up to anything anyone threw her way. I knew she could. I knew she could probably better than I could.
I hated to think of the strain brought on her by my friends, by people I’d brought into our lives. And I knew she didn’t want to be away from Henry that long. Neither one of us did.
&nb
sp; In the early evening, Rountree came to me and said I could go. When I asked about Amanda, she told me to sit in the lobby and wait. She also told me that Dawn Steiner had been questioned thoroughly that morning. She was going to face charges of an undetermined severity.
“But her father is sick,” Rountree said. “Her whole story checks out. The baby, the adoptive parents. We’ll see.”
It took another thirty minutes for Amanda to emerge, looking tired but none the worse for wear. I stood up and hugged her as hard as I could. We were free to go home.
We were still going to have legal problems to resolve.
The police were discussing whether to charge me with tampering with a crime scene for taking the phone. They might charge Amanda for hacking into Jennifer’s Facebook account.
We’d deal with it as best we could.
And we’d deal with it as we began to repair the fractures the past days had brought to our marriage. That was the most essential piece of all.
Amanda went to pick Henry up—and give her parents a CliffsNotes version of the day’s events. I swung by our favorite Thai restaurant and got us carryout. I beat them home, but when I saw Amanda pull into our driveway, I nearly cried with relief. And I ran outside to get Henry out of the car and bring him inside.
We ate in stunned but happy silence. I think we both stared at Henry as much as we looked at our food. I couldn’t believe we were home and safe. The three of us.
When we were finished eating, I took Henry upstairs, changed him, and slipped his squirming body into his pajamas. I held him for a while, rocking in the rocker in the nursery, but spending the day with his hovering, smothering grandparents must have worn him out. He nodded off with ease and didn’t budge when I placed him in his crib.
I’d be lying if I said I didn’t stare at him a little longer than usual that night. If I said that seeing his face, safe and sound in our house, didn’t feel sweeter that night than it ever had.
I must have been so lost in my thoughts that I didn’t hear Amanda’s voice the first time she called my name. I don’t know how many times she called before she shook me from my stupor.
But it sounded like something was wrong.
There was an urgency in her voice, almost a panic, that made me run.
Down the stairs and into the living room, where she sat on the couch, her phone in her hand.
“What is it?” I asked. “What?”
Amanda looked . . . scared?
No. She looked stunned.
She held her phone out to me, so I walked over and took it from her.
Her Twitter account was on the screen, and it took me a moment to figure out what I was looking at.
Then I understood.
Photos. And videos. Of Blake and Samantha being arrested in their wedding clothes. The scene that had played out before us just hours earlier.
I looked to the side, and sure enough, I saw the hashtags.
Trending. Nationally.
#weddingarrest
#brideandgroomjail
I couldn’t even look at it.
It had to have been started by people who knew them. And then it spread.
I couldn’t look.
“That’s sick,” I said.
“It is.”
“Do you know what I want to do?” I asked.
“I think I do. And I’m willing to do it if you are.”
I went and sat by her on the couch. I handed her phone back and slid mine out of my pocket. I took a deep breath.
“Are you ready?” I asked.
“I am.” She paused. “Are you?”
“I am. Really.”
We sat side by side and used our thumbs. Our opposable thumbs, which could be used for so much more.
It took only minutes, but we deleted all of our social media accounts.
Questions for Discussion
Ryan and Blake were close friends in college, but their friendship has cooled now that Ryan is married and has a child. Is it typical for friendships to change in this way as people move from college and into their mid- to late twenties?
Despite the cooling of their friendship, Ryan feels loyalty to Blake because of the things they went through together in college. Do you understand why Ryan still feels this loyalty to Blake?
Ryan has a seemingly perfect life. And yet he feels it is defined by his part in the accident. Do you understand why Ryan wants to keep his role hidden from everyone in his life? Would people understand that he made a youthful mistake?
Even though she had a career and even made more money than Ryan did, Amanda feels insecure about her place in the world and in her marriage after Henry is born and she stops working for a time. Is it to be expected that she would feel this way?
Ryan spends a great deal of time on social media and seems unable to stop measuring his life by what he shares there. Do you understand how someone can be consumed by their social media feeds? Do you think this is a problem in our society? If so, how?
Everything that happens in the book grows out of the lies Blake told in college. Has it been your experience that one lie only leads to more and more lying?
Blake admits that he has always harbored resentment for Ryan because Ryan was always seen as the golden boy and Blake as the screwup. Do you understand why this would lead Blake to attempt to tarnish Ryan’s sterling reputation?
Amanda admits to being hurt by the lies that Ryan told her. Do you think the two of them will be able to repair their relationship and move on?
Do you understand why Samantha and Blake are together? What does each get out of the relationship?
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thanks to the IT department at Western Kentucky University for fielding my calls and answering my questions about hacking and phishing. Hey, I swear I’m not the one sending all the weird e-mails to everyone.
Special thanks to Ann-Marie Nieves and all the wonderful folks at Get Red PR.
Massive thanks once again to all the great people at Berkley/Penguin. Thanks to Eileen Carey for the great cover design. Special thanks to Jin Yu and Bridget O’Toole for their marketing wisdom. Special thanks to Loren Jaggers for his publicity wizardry. Superspecial thanks to my editor, Danielle Perez, for her continued brilliance.
And superspecial thanks to my wonderful agent, Laney Katz Becker, for her continued guidance and knowledge.
Major thanks to all my family and friends.
And more thanks than I can express to Molly McCaffrey for everything
Photo by Glen Rose Photography
David Bell is a USA Today bestselling, award-winning author whose work has been translated into multiple foreign languages. He’s currently a professor of English at Western Kentucky University in Bowling Green, Kentucky, where he directs the MFA program. He received an MA in creative writing from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, and a PhD in American literature and creative writing from the University of Cincinnati. His previous novels include Layover, Somebody’s Daughter, Bring Her Home, Since She Went Away, Somebody I Used to Know, The Forgotten Girl, and Cemetery Girl.
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