The Girls On the Hill: A Psychological Thriller

by Grey, Alison Claire

  Still. Something had never set right with me about it all. It’s why I had come to reunion weekend, despite something screaming for me not to. It was as if I knew, I had to.

  There was a reason for all of this. And I needed to know what that reason was.

  Olivia’s death would haunt us forever if we didn’t figure out the truth.

  And that truth, I predicted, was tied up with The Brentmore. It always would be.

  Which is why I had to show up, one last time.

  For the girls on the hill.

  And for Olivia Barron.

  When I parked in front of the rental house, I noticed someone else was already there. My phone buzzed on the seat next to me.

  I picked it up and saw a text from Sheridan.

  Where are you??? We just got something delivered to us. I need y’all here NOW.

  A delivery?

  I’d only just arrived, and whatever it was I’d been dreading had already begun.

  Sixty-Six

  SHERIDAN

  I was the first to arrive at our rental house that Friday afternoon. I’d considered turning around so many times on the drive there from the Richmond airport. In my heart and deep in the marrow of my bones, I felt that something was definitely afoot— I knew I’d be leaving reunion weekend a different person than the one who arrived.

  I have no idea why. Besides the reunion being held at The Brentmore, there was nothing sinister going on. It was just a feeling.

  Mama had told me there was no such thing as coincidences.

  “It’s just God’s way of remaining anonymous,” she always said.

  Her words haunted me now.

  If there was no such thing as a coincidence, what did that mean for the rest of us?

  * * *

  I was rummaging through my carry-on looking for my anti-anxiety meds when I heard the knock on the door.

  I ran downstairs assuming it was one of the girls, but when I opened the door no one was there.

  There was just a thick yellow envelope on the ground. I looked around to see if it had been the postman or UPS, but I didn’t see anyone.

  I turned it over. I assumed it was for whoever owned the house, but when I looked at the address, I was surprised to find it wasn’t addressed at all. It just said one thing:

  To THE GIRLS ON THE HILL

  I tore it open, not sure what I’d find inside.

  As soon as I saw what it was, I ran inside to grab my phone.

  Wherever they were, they needed to get to the house as soon as possible.

  I didn’t want to deal with this on my own.

  Sixty-Seven

  HOLLIS

  I hadn’t been to Martha Jefferson since the last reunion.

  There’s something about pulling off that exit on the 81 and driving over the rolling hills of Staunton, waiting to see those white columned buildings rise from downtown. Every time I’m there, it doesn’t matter how long I’ve been away or how old I am, I’m 20 again and my memory is flooded with my time spent on those hills with my best friends.

  I was running late, so I decided not to stop by the rental house until after the panel was over. Might as well get the worst part over with was what I figured.

  We agreed to make that weekend one where it was just us. None of us had any desire to spend more time at The Brentmore than we had to, no matter who was there and how great the catering would probably be.

  Reunion weekends are slightly chaotic. I showed up to my panel slightly buzzed, feeling very anxious as I approached the entrance to the hotel, a place I hadn’t set foot near in 15 years.

  It just didn’t seem right to be there.

  Last time I’d been there, was the worst night of all our lives. Not only had our friend jumped to her death, but we’d had to deal with the aftermath of it, and even now there were plenty of people who doubted our story, despite it being the truth.

  Or what I thought was the truth.

  I’d been downstairs that night, arguing with Winston. Amanda had been right outside and as soon as it happened, she screamed the kind of scream that you hope to only hear once in your life, if ever.

  I brushed the memory away. I couldn’t think of that now.

  I needed to just focus on the panel. Get it over with.

  And get the fuck out of there.

  * * *

  Lawyers are an insufferable bunch. After many drinks and many attempts to act interested in all the humble-bragging surrounding me, I was ready to go.

  As I left the conference room, I could see Wendi Hughes across the room, speaking to someone in a way that made me feel bad for the guy on the other end. She was flailing her arms, clearly angry about something.

  Against my better judgement, I walked over to see what the commotion was about.

  As soon as she spotted me, she stopped speaking and the man she’d been talking to skittered away, looking grateful for the interruption.

  “Having fun, Hollis?” Wendi asked, her tone dripping with sarcasm.

  “A blast.” I sighed. “What was that about?”

  “Nothing, just an issue with my security team. New hotel, new staff, lots of problems. How was the panel?” Wendi smoothed down her sheath dress and looked over my shoulder, clearly already bored with me.

  “Why did you buy this place anyway?” I asked. “Seems like a strange investment. Especially with what happened here and the lawsuit and all that.”

  “That’s why it made sense,” Wendi replied, sounding annoyed. “The price was right, Jason and I needed to diversify our real estate portfolio, and it was a way of having closure with what happened… It shows we’ve moved on.”

  “I mean, easy for someone to say who wasn’t involved,” I couldn’t help saying. “You’ve got nothing really to move on from.”

  She stared at me a moment, her expression cold.

  “Was there something else you needed?” she asked. “I really need to go number two. You bring that out in me, I guess.”

  I laughed. God she was still such a crude bitch.

  “Nope,” I said, moving aside. “Happy reunion, Wendi!”

  But she ignored me and walked away quickly.

  My iPhone buzzed in my purse as I walked out the exit of The Brentmore and into the sunshine of a beautiful Virginia day.

  It was Amanda.

  “Hollis,” she sounded out of breath. “Where are you?”

  “Leaving the hotel,” I said. “What’s wrong?”

  “Come to the house,” Amanda said. “Quickly.”

  Before I could ask anything else, she’d hung up.

  Sixty-Eight

  BROOKE

  I hadn’t killed Olivia Barron.

  All these years, I’d relived the night on the rooftop of The Brentmore at least ten thousand times. I’d gone through every move, every word said. In the end I’d only wanted to push her to scare her, not to kill her. I hadn’t expected her to fall and when she had, I collapsed like a coward.

  If only I’d known she was still alive.

  I made the mistake of believing Wendi.

  “She’s fallen!” Wendi screamed. “Brooke! What did you do?”

  I couldn’t remember anything after that. I’d been shocked and horrified and I’d immediately vomited on myself and on the concrete of the rooftop.

  And while I’d been distracted, Wendi had finished the job.

  She’d reached down to help Olivia back up, pulled her up and then shoved her again.

  I’d been sure it was just my trauma convincing me of something that wasn’t true. Because I didn’t want to believe I’d ever have pushed Olivia Barron. I didn’t want her dead, I just wanted to stick up for Hollis, my great friend who Olivia had hurt.

  “Brooke, we have to say she jumped,” Wendi whispered in my ear. “To protect you. They’ll never believe it was an accident.”

  “But it was... I swear…” I was sobbing, my heart pounding. “I would never really want to hurt her. She was my friend.”

  “
But you did.” Wendi kept saying over and over and over again.

  “You did this, Brooke. You pushed Olivia Barron. You killed her.”

  * * *

  Over the years I would call Wendi and tell her I was going to come forward with the truth and she’d admonish me. She’d remind me of everything I would lose.

  Will. The boys.

  Hollis. Amanda. Sheridan.

  I’d go to prison, Wendi said. And Olivia was dead, nothing could bring her back, so why would I do that to myself?

  “I’d be forced to testify against you, Brooke,” Wendi would say, her voice sad. “I don’t want to do that. But in my position, I can’t perjure myself. So, go ahead confess if you feel like you must, but it would be so terrible for everyone. Remember how nasty the media was when it happened? It would be a circus.”

  I nodded. Every time.

  In therapy I’d talked to my therapist and I kept talking about my dreams and flashbacks about a night where I thought I’d done something terrible, but I was starting to remember it differently now.

  “Is it possible I’m just trying to heal trauma by lying to myself?” I’d asked. I never wanted to be too specific.

  “It’s possible,” my therapist would say. “Or maybe it’s your mind telling you what really happened. It’s hard to say, Brooke. Would you like to tell me more?”

  But I never did.

  I couldn’t.

  * * *

  And all this time I’d been right about Wendi and what happened that night. I’d never have known if not for a scratchy security tape and the anonymous person who sent it.

  I’d watched it with Amanda, Hollis, and Sheridan. We’d huddled together in the living room of the house we’d rented for that weekend and watched the clip over and over again. It was grainy from years of being stored wherever it had been stored, but it clearly showed the truth.

  I had shoved Olivia, yes. But she hadn’t fallen off the rooftop from it. She’d almost fallen over, but she’d caught herself on the ledge and had scrambled back up. She’d dropped to a knee, with both hands flat on the roof, almost as if she was testing to make sure she was really safe. I was sick by then on the ground, sobbing from being too drunk and too emotional.

  And then you see Wendi.

  She’d played the part of this mediator, but clear as day she’d turned on Olivia. It was why she was able to do it, it was so unexpected. Olivia had never had a chance.

  Wendi approached her with a hand extended to help her up, but as soon as Olivia took it and began to rise, Wendi shoved her as hard as she could. Olivia had stumbled and then fallen over, slipping off the edge and tumbling down to the sidewalk below.

  As soon as she did it, Wendi turned to see if I had seen it. I was still so distraught and out of it. She runs to me in the video, kneels next to me, and embraces me. That’s when she started to convince me it had been me that shoved Olivia off the building.

  It was so fast, the entire thing. How had I believed it so easily?

  Wendi convinced me I’d murdered someone.

  And all these years I’d felt indebted to her for protecting me. The guilt had eaten me alive.

  “Olivia.” I cried. “It’s still… it’s my fault. I shouldn’t have…”

  Amanda wrapped me in her arms. Sheridan rubbed my back.

  “No, Brooke,” Amanda said. “This isn’t your fault. Or if it is, it’s our fault too. We should have been with you. That’s on us, not you.”

  “I still pushed her,” I sobbed. “I still wanted to hurt her.”

  “Pushing someone in anger is not the same as pushing them to kill them,” Hollis said. Her voice was ice cold.

  “What can we do?” I asked. “Should we show this to the police?”

  “That’s not going to happen.”

  We both turned around and there was Wendi Hughes.

  And she’d brought back-up.

  Two large men with guns drawn walked swiftly over to us, shoving us out of the way.

  “What the fuck are you doing?” Hollis screamed. “You psychotic bitch!”

  “As if you didn’t want to do it yourself,” Wendi mocked. One of her goons took the DVD out of the player and handed it to her. “Can’t have this floating around. I destroyed the original tape, so we’re good there.”

  “How do you know someone doesn’t have another copy of it?” Amanda replied. “We didn’t send that to ourselves, Wendi. Someone knows what you did. What we all did.”

  “I’ve taken care of it.” Wendi smirked. “These types of obstacles happen, you know. When you’re powerful, people are always trying to take you down. I, unfortunately, had a bit of a mole problem among my security staff. He somehow found this old tape in the basement, knowing it was the reason I bought the damn place and he tried to use it as leverage against me to make some money. And then sent it to Brooke to scare me. Moron.”

  I shivered thinking about what must have happened to the man who had revealed the truth about that night.

  And suddenly, I was very scared.

  EPILOGUE: AMANDA

  What does justice look like in the end?

  Olivia Barron is still dead and the woman who killed her is still free.

  I’ll be the first to admit that when I learned Olivia died, a huge part of me had been relieved. And it took a long time for me to forgive myself for that. No matter what Olivia had done to us, she still hadn’t deserved to be pushed off a building by people she’d considered her friends.

  Her sisters.

  And clearly the secrets hadn’t died with her. Otherwise, the reunion weekend from hell wouldn’t have happened.

  For us, the girls on the hill, justice looks like closure. It looks like letting go of the past.

  Justice, in the end, is forgiveness.

  It’s accepting the past and your place in it.

  Even when it’s ugly.

  Not that any of us forgive Wendi.

  No, the forgiveness is for ourselves. For each other.

  We hadn’t been there for Brooke. For fifteen years she believed she’d murdered her friend. At the time, she believed it was for a greater good. She thought by pushing Olivia off that building, she was protecting us all.

  I have never been one to look back and wish for a better past. But for Brooke, I do. I wish more than anything that none of us had left her alone on the rooftop of The Brentmore Hotel on graduation night.

  Olivia would still be alive.

  But more importantly, Brooke would be free. Guilt is a prison, especially for women. We are conditioned to live within its confines, so we get used to it, even when it starts to eat us alive.

  That was the main thing I could never forgive Wendi for.

  And that’s why, even though everyone was set on moving on from reunion weekend, I had other plans.

  After the incident with Wendi and her thugs, we’d felt helpless. There was nothing we could do without proof, and Wendi had ensured that proof no longer existed.

  But in my own mind, I knew this couldn’t be the end of this story.

  No way.

  After all, Wendi and I know something that most people don’t.

  What good is power if you can’t wield it to change the trajectory of a life?

  What good is power without revenge?

  * * *

  Hollywood and DC aren’t so different.

  Both places exercise influence under the guise of making the world a more evolved place, and it’s all bullshit for the most part. Rich people shield themselves from scrutiny by pretending to be altruistic. No one in LA or DC does anything out of the goodness of their bleeding hearts.

  There’s always an agenda.

  In Hollywood, we’re just better looking when we push our narratives.

  But both towns are full of the best actors you’ll ever meet.

  And both cities have their fixers. The people who can make problems go away.

  The sort of people who can also bring skeletons out into the light if they need to.r />
  I knew that no court of law was going to convict Wendi Hughes of the murder of Olivia Barron from Brooke’s testimony alone. And if anything, if we pressed it further, Wendi could put the spotlight on us again. There were plenty of Internet trolls on true crime message boards who were already convinced we’d killed her. Wendi’s name wasn’t even on their radar.

  Who would believe us?

  And Wendi had our secrets. The ones we’d wanted buried with Olivia.

  No, you don’t fight someone like Wendi with American justice.

  You stoop to her level.

  And no one understood that better than I did.

  * * *

  I’m not here to pretend that I’m a good person. I’ve done things I’m not proud of. I’ve sold my soul dozens of times to get the things I thought I wanted. I’m selfish, I’m narcissistic, and I’m broken. You don’t end up in my position in life any other way. Your favorite movie star? The one with the girl-next-door charm and self-deprecating magnetism? The one you could imagine being friends with?

  She’s a liar.

  But it’s not her fault. She had to be. No one in Hollywood is interested in the truth. Especially from a woman.

  We play the game we’re forced to play. And we learn some things.

  Rufus Claremont has been in my life since my third movie, the one that launched me into the fame stratosphere. Some downhome, bible-thumping folks from my West Virginia past threatened to write a tell-all about me. It was packed full of lies, but with enough nuggets of truth to worry me. And through my own connections, I learned there was interest in New York from people eager to publish it.