I love her, Brooke thought, feeling the sting of tears in her eyes. I love this girl so much. I couldn’t have done this. There’s no way in hell I could’ve ever been mad enough to kill my best friend. It had to be Tryg.
Brooke spotted a photo strip of her and Maddie tacked to a cork board on Maddie’s wall. It was from a photo booth at Bellamy’s fair. As Brooke stepped closer to look at it, she spotted something through the window that surprised her. Jake.
He was standing on the street below, leaning against a black pickup truck. What is he doing here?
“Jake?” Brooke said as she hurried toward him from the front door. She’d slipped past Linda and her mom and all the other relatives and friends who had arrived while she was upstairs.
“Brooke,” he said, seemingly surprised she’d spotted him and decided to come out.
“What are you doing here?”
“I wanted to talk to you. I’m sorry about Maddie.”
“How did you even know where she lived?” Brooke wasn’t sure if she should be irritated or relieved to see him. If he’d wanted to talk to her, he’d had all morning to come by her house. Why wait until she got to Maddie’s?
“The news.”
“They gave out her home address?” That couldn’t be. Why would they do that?
Scratching the stubble on his chin, he said, “No. I . . . I followed you and your mom from your place.”
Brooke stared at him, stunned.
“Did you just say you followed us?” she asked, disturbed.
“You didn’t return my text this morning and I wanted to make sure you were okay,” he clarified. “You were super messed up last night when I left the party, saying all kinds of things you didn’t mean and I didn’t want it to end that way.”
Holy crap. That was so out of line, it was borderline creepy. If she hadn’t been so emotionally spent, she would’ve told him so, but right now she was desperate for information. Maybe he could give her some insight about what happened right before she passed out.
“Let’s sit and talk,” Jake urged and opened the driver’s side door to the truck he had been leaning against.
“Whose truck is this?” she asked.
“Mine. I have three cars.”
Of course he does. Why would someone own only a Ferrari? It was so impractical.
“I don’t even remember what happened last night,” Brooke said, making no move to get in. “What did I say to you?”
Jake appeared anxious to fill her in.
“After your fight with Maddie, I tried to get you to leave the party and you didn’t want to. You were trashed and I thought it would be better to just go back to my place. You said you wanted to stay with your friends and told me I should get out of your life forever.” There was pain in his eyes as he relayed her words back to her. “I didn’t want to create a scene like we did at your school, so I left.”
“What time was that?” Brooke asked.
“Around midnight maybe?”
“Did you see Maddie when you left?”
Jake shook his head. Brooke heaved a sigh, frustrated. She’d pinned her hopes on Jake being able to give her more information.
“I don’t want us to break up, okay? I know you were upset last night but—”
“Brooke?”
Brooke and Jake both turned to see her mother coming out of Maddie’s house.
“I have to go,” Brooke continued. “I appreciate your concern, but I need you to just leave me alone. This is a hard time for me and my mom and I can’t deal with this right now.”
As much as Brooke was attracted to Jake, he was making her already complicated life even more complex. Following her to Maddie’s? Wanting to talk about their relationship while at her dead friend’s house? She already felt like she was drowning and this was making her feel even more stressed. From what she could remember of the night before, she didn’t like his aloof attitude toward her friends. If things were different, maybe she could put energy into giving Jake the relationship he wanted from her, but at the moment, it just wasn’t in her.
“What do you mean ‘deal with this’? I’m here to support you.”
“I get it. But your presence just complicates things.”
“I don’t want to complicate things. I want to be everything you need.”
“I need time to work through this shit without pressure!” There. She’d said it. It would be one thing if Jake really was supportive, but he’d promised not to show up uninvited after their fight at school, and now he’d done it two more times. He just didn’t listen to what she wanted and her intuition was telling her to cut him loose.
“Maybe someday, after all this is over and I can figure my life out, we can, I don’t know, pick up where we left off,” she continued, trying to soften the blow. Brooke looked over and saw her mother coming closer.
“Don’t go. I love you.”
“You don’t even know me,” Brooke spat back. They’d just met two weeks ago! There was no way he could be in love with her already. As the thoughts rushed through her mind, so did the guilt. So much for not rejecting him. He’d just announced that he loved her and she’d countered with the first and most insensitive thing that came to her. Get a grip. This is the IED talking. Go back to being Brooke.
“I do! We get each other on a level that no one else does.”
Taking a breath, she calmed down a little and lowered her voice. “Jake. Leave me alone. Please. I don’t feel that way about you.” Why was she repeating herself? Why couldn’t he just accept that she had no time or interest in this drama? Again, with every thought, the anger built.
“Jake, hi.” Her mother approached them. “Brooke, honey, why did you leave like that?”
“I just needed to talk to Jake,” she said, hiding her frustration. “He heard on the news what happened.” Jake immediately put his arm around her in a consoling manner like they were closer than ever. It infuriated her.
“I think everyone’s still in shock,” Jake said.
“I am. It’s unbelievable,” her mother agreed.
“I just hope they catch the monster who did this and put him or her behind bars for a very long time.” Jake dug the tips of his fingers into Brooke’s shoulder as if to punctuate his words.
A chill shot up Brooke’s spine and she looked up at him, stunned. What did he mean by that? When he wouldn’t meet her gaze, Brooke flashed back to that weird look he’d given Tryg at the restaurant. It gave her the same uneasy feeling she’d had then. Did he know? Was he toying with her? Had he seen more than he was telling?
“I hope so too,” her mom said.
“Are you ready to go?” Brooke asked, subtly pulling away from Jake. She wanted to be as far away from him as she possibly could.
“Yeah. Did you want to say goodbye to Linda?”
Brooke nodded and began to walk with her mom toward the house. She threw one last poisonous stare at Jake. The way he waved back happily, like a child waving to Mickey Mouse at Disneyland, just confirmed what Brooke had already been thinking. There is something wrong with him. Her intuition was loud and clear. Stay far away from Jake.
Twenty
The Truth Comes Out
The uneasy feeling that came over Brooke as Jake watched her go back into Maddie’s house was difficult to shake. She didn’t remember breaking up with him, but it didn’t surprise her either. She was sure he said something that pissed her off enough to finally break ties. But of course, those ties weren’t broken. It seemed like once Jake was in your life, he’d find ways to stay.
She felt like it would be so much easier to make sense of everything if she could just remember the previous night. There had to be a way to bring back those memories she lost while she was intoxicated. Hypnosis maybe? She’d tried googling it when she got home, but there was nothing helpful online about it. Brooke picked up her phone and scrolled until she found Dr. Fenson’s office number. It was after 2:00 p.m. on a Saturday and she was sure no one would answer at Fenson’s off
ice, but it was worth a try. Brooke dialed and waited for an answer.
“You’ve reached the office of Dr. Fenson. Please leave a message and someone will return your call during business hours. If this is an emergency, please call 9-1-1.”
“Hi, Dr. Fenson,” Brooke said after the beep. “It’s Brooke Emerson. I really need to speak with you and was hoping maybe you could find time to see me on Monday. Please let me know. Thanks.” Monday felt like a long time away, but what else could she do? Dr. Fenson knew more about the medication than anyone, and if she could just help Brooke remember what happened, maybe she’d have something significant to take to the police. If she was in the room when the murder happened, maybe she woke up for a moment and saw something, or could recall who took her phone. She just wanted something that would assure her that she wasn’t responsible for Maddie’s death.
Brooke had just put her phone down when she received a text from Jake.
Jake: Please don’t ignore me, Brooke. I know this is a tough time for you but I can help.
Brooke sighed and let the phone fall onto the bed. No matter what she said, he wouldn’t listen. The best thing to do is just not respond, she thought. She wasn’t going to continue to interact with him just to keep him from feeling hurt. He’d already told her that he didn’t have any information to help her figure out what happened to Maddie. And that was the only thing she wanted to focus on right now. The phone rang. Brooke closed her eyes and dropped her head back. Really? The text had come in less than thirty seconds before. He was already calling her? Ready to tear into him, she picked up the phone and was surprised to see it wasn’t Jake calling. It was Dr. Fenson.
“Dr. Fenson?” Brooke answered.
“Brooke, hi. I’m here in the office getting some work done and I heard your message. Is everything all right?”
“No. It’s not. Maddie was murdered last night.” There was silence on the other end. “Dr. Fenson?”
“I’m sorry. Did you say she was murdered?”
“Yeah. At a party and I was there.”
“That’s horrible. Do you want to come see me today?”
“If I can,” Brooke said.
“Yes. By all means. I’ll be here until five.”
“I’m leaving now,” Brooke assured her and ended the call. Grabbing her purse and jacket, she rushed out.
“I don’t remember anything after the fight. Jake said he and I got into it and I broke it off with him,” Brooke explained to Dr. Fenson. There was an intensity in her therapist’s eyes that she’d never seen before. “Then I completely blacked out and have no memory of anything until the next morning when I woke up.”
“Let’s talk about what happened when you woke up.”
Brooke tensed. She knew she couldn’t tell Dr. Fenson any of that.
“Will I get those memories back? I didn’t take my pill the day of the party, so it’s possible, right?”
“Brooke, skipping one pill isn’t going to change anything. It takes weeks for the medication to leave your system. Memory loss is a side effect of drinking alcohol with those meds.”
“But I know there are ways. Like hypnosis and homeopathic drugs . . .”
“It’s not like amnesia where you might begin to recall things. You can’t form new memories during a blackout period. You’re not going to eventually remember anything more than you remember now. There’s no memory there to recall.”
Brooke sat back, disappointed. She inhaled long and deep, and then asked the question she really wanted to ask. “Is it possible that I could have killed her and just don’t remember?” There, she said it. Brooke looked up at Dr. Fenson expecting to see shock on her face but there wasn’t any. She couldn’t read at all what the woman was thinking. “With me being prone to rage and stuff?”
“Do you think you did it? If so, and you tell me, I can’t share it with anyone. Not even the police. There’s a thing called patient-therapist confidentiality. It allows you to speak freely to me if you know about a crime that’s already happened.”
Deciding it was better to be more noncommittal than she really felt, Brooke answered, “I don’t know. I think I could have.”
“If you did do it, how do you think it happened?”
“I think . . . maybe I was in the bedroom and she came in and we started arguing again and I stabbed her. And then I passed out.”
“Was her body in the room with you when you woke up?” Brooke nodded, relieved to finally be telling the truth. “What did you stab her with?”
“A knife. With a blade about that long.” Brooke held up her hands about seven inches apart, showing Dr. Fenson the size of the knife she’d found.
“Where did the knife come from?”
The question made Brooke pause. “I’m not sure. Maybe I went back downstairs and got it from the kitchen or something. Which means maybe she passed out on the bed and then I went down and got the knife and came back up.”
“So you think you stabbed her while she was passed out?”
Brooke considered this. It didn’t seem possible. “No, I never would’ve done that. We had to have been fighting.”
“So if Maddie’s awake and you’re arguing and you raise this knife you have to stab her . . . what would she have done?”
“She would’ve fought me. Pushed me. Tried to take the knife away. Maddie’s always been aggressive. Push her and she’ll push back.” Brooke thought about the karaoke bar and Maddie’s reaction when she pushed her from behind.
“Then why don’t you have defense wounds?”
“Defense wounds?” Brooke had never heard the term.
Dr. Fenson explained, “Bruises or scratches or bite marks?”
Brooke’s mind raced. She didn’t have any of those things.
“If I’m Maddie and you’re trying to kill me,” Dr. Fenson continued, “I’m going to fight for my life. Do you remember getting into a physical altercation with her?”
Brooke tried to think back to those early morning hours but nothing came. “So you think I couldn’t have killed her because I don’t have any of those things?” Brooke hoped Dr. Fenson would say there was no way she could be guilty.
“I don’t know if you did or you didn’t. I’m just trying to help you make sense of it. When someone is murdered, there’s almost always physical evidence. I’m sure the forensic team is going through all of that evidence now.”
“I lied to them. I lied about what time I left and I told them she was still alive. It looks bad, doesn’t it?”
Dr. Fenson leaned in. “Yes, it looks like you’re trying to hide your guilt. But it’s not too late to set the record straight and tell them the truth.”
Brooke’s stomached turned. The thought of admitting to that detective she’d deceived him made her feel light-headed.
“You’re not a bad person, Brooke. I know you cared a great deal for Maddie. How long will you be able to carry this secret before it eats you up?”
“I don’t know.” Brooke choked back a sob as tears began to run down her face. Dr. Fenson reached for a tissue box on the table and handed it to Brooke.
“Have you told your mother any of this yet?”
Brooke shook her head and muttered, “I lied to her too.” Telling her the truth was going to be just as hard as telling the detective.
“Your mother is going to love you no matter what. I think you should tell her what happened. You need support right now. I’m on your team. And knowing what I know about your mother, I believe she’ll stand by you no matter what.” Brooke felt some of the heaviness leave her body. Dr. Fenson was right. There was no way she could harbor this secret much longer.
The entire drive home, Brooke tried to find the right way to come clean to her mom. She’d been lying to her about so much lately, she wondered why her mother still believed a word she said. If Alex had lied to her mom as much as she had, her mother would’ve ended the relationship. I guess I’m lucky that parents can’t break up with their kids, she thought.
&nb
sp; “There are moments when you’ll want to lie because it’s easier than telling the truth,” her mother had told her four years ago, when Brooke had been caught covering up for a boy she had a crush on at school. He’d stolen a teacher’s purse from her desk and had shown it to Brooke at lunch. Brooke had liked the teacher, Mrs. Farretty, and had felt bad when she saw the woman so distressed. But she’d also liked Devon Michaels, the bad-boy eighth grader with mesmerizing blue eyes and a scar on his lip that made him look tough, and didn’t want to rat him out.
“But I don’t want the person who did it to get into trouble,” Brooke had said. “It’s not about me, it’s about him.”
“What about Mrs. Farretty? Don’t you think she deserves to get her purse back?”
“Yeah, but if I tell on who did it, he’s going to know I’m the one that told and then everyone will hate me at school.”
“But everyone will also know that you were strong enough to stand up and do the right thing. And because you’ve proven you have character, people won’t doubt what you tell them. If you lie to protect him, you’ll have to live with the fact that Mrs. Farretty needed your help and you let her down.”
Brooke turned onto her street, thinking about the day her mom went into the principal’s office with her to admit what she knew about Farretty’s stolen purse. She’d been so nervous, but her mother sat right next to her the entire time. Her mother had always been Team Brooke, but somewhere along the way, Brooke had decided to start taking the easy road. Getting fucked up with whatever booze she could get her hands on when things got tough at school or home, and lying to her mom when she knew she’d disapprove. She wasn’t sure when that happened, but there was one thing she was sure of—she liked herself better back then. While the rages from the IED were out of Brooke’s control, a lot wasn’t. Brooke knew she’d dodged accountability as often as she could since starting high school. That’s when I started drinking, she thought. And lying. Mostly so she could go to parties she wouldn’t otherwise be allowed to go to and get drunk.
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