“I don’t care what you believe.” Ethan’s gaze flicks down to the empty sugar packet. He folds it in half. “I assume you want to know why I told you not to trust anything Tom says. Now you have an answer.”
Ethan sets his other hand on the table. He’s holding a cigarette lighter. He drops it on the table. Gives it a spin. I think of all the boys in my classes. Their restless hands, always tapping, drumming pencils against the desk, taking apart pens and putting them back together like they’re puzzles.
Another piece clicks into place in my brain.
I say: “?‘I know it wasn’t him. Connect the dots.’?”
Ethan’s fingers go still around his lighter. He looks up at me.
“I know it was you,” I say. “You’ve been sending those letters to Tom.”
Ethan traces the rim of his mug with a finger. “How do you know about them?”
“I saw them in his desk.” My nerves are thrumming with anticipation. “You send him pictures of all the girls, and not just Juliana and Susan. You don’t think the deaths are a coincidence.”
Ethan meets my gaze. “And you do?”
I glance at Ginny. Her brow is furrowed, eyes focused on me. I’ve been waiting for a moment like this for years—waiting for someone to tell me Jen didn’t want to die. Waiting for the missing piece to prove her death was wrapped up in the others and that she didn’t kill herself out of survivor’s guilt.
“I don’t know,” I say. I’m not sure which of them I’m speaking to. My stomach sinks when I see the look of pity on Ginny’s face.
I turn my eyes to Ethan. “What do you mean by ‘connect the dots’? What dots?”
“Well,” he says, “you can start by tying the car crash to the murders.”
The force in Ginny’s voice startles me. “That’s just ridiculous. How could the crash have anything to do with the murders? It was an accident.”
Ethan blinks at her. “Do you want to hear this or not?”
I give Ginny a pleading look. She clamps her mouth shut, jaw moving as she chews the inside of her cheek.
Ethan’s eyes flick from her to me. “Do you know the details of the crash?”
“Bethany was speeding, and she lost control of the car,” I say.
“She was going seventy in a fifty zone,” Ethan says. “So technically, she was speeding. But have you ever driven on Osprey Road?”
“Yes. People drive like lunatics on it.”
“Exactly. So in relative terms, Bethany wasn’t even going that fast.” Ethan wraps his hands around his mug. “Cell phone records show she wasn’t texting. Tox screen showed she hadn’t been drinking or doing drugs.”
Next to me, Ginny pipes up: “Still waiting for you to explain what this has to do with the murders.”
“Before the crash, Bethany and Colleen stopped at 7-Eleven,” Ethan says. “A bunch of people saw two guys in a pickup truck catcall them in the parking lot. Bethany shouted something at them, and they shouted back, and when Bethany turned out of the lot, the truck followed them.”
“Who are these people?” I ask. “The ones who saw what happened?”
“They were friends of mine,” Ethan says. At the look on my face, he adds: “Despite what you might have heard, I did have friends.”
I think of the type of guys who hang out in the 7-Eleven parking lot. Potheads. “So you think some mysterious truck ran Bethany off the road?”
“You make it sound like I came up with the idea,” Ethan says. “You really have no idea what it was like in the months after everything happened, do you?”
I swallow. “What do you mean?”
“I’m not the only one who was skeptical about the accident and the murders,” Ethan says. “You were probably too young to be paying attention, but plenty of people were talking. Five girls, who all knew each other, gone in a matter of a month? It was too wild to believe.”
I was too young, maybe, but also consumed by grief. All I remember from those days is mourning Jen and worrying about Tom’s job. Jen and Tom. Tom and Jen.
Two dots.
“Wouldn’t there have been tire marks from the truck?” I say.
He cracks a knuckle. “No. It was raining.”
“But tons of people in Sunnybrook drive pickup trucks,” I say. “The odds are almost zero that it was the same truck that you saw outside the Berrys’ house.”
“And what are the odds that five girls from the same school, all friends, would die within a month of each other?” Ethan shoots back.
Ginny makes a small sound in her throat, as if reminding us she’s still sitting here. “Sorry. But this sounds like a crackpot conspiracy theory.”
“I get that it’s hard to believe the crash wasn’t an accident,” Ethan says, staring back at Ginny. “But think about it this way—isn’t it weird that Tom Carlino was the first on the scene in all three cases?”
A sharp pain hits me in the stomach. I have to force out the words: “Do you realize what you’re accusing him of?”
“Of being involved in all five deaths and orchestrating a grand plot to cover it up?” Ethan shakes his head. “No, I don’t really believe that’s what happened.”
“Then why send the letters?” I say. “Why taunt him when you have no idea what really happened or whether he’s involved?”
Ethan stares at me for a moment. Something in his face softens; I wonder if he’s seeing her. My sister. It makes my blood drain to my feet.
He shakes his head, as if he’s composing himself. “The only thing I know for sure is that he’s the best chance at finding the truth. He just has to want to.”
I think of what Mrs. Ruiz said to me on the phone: At some point, you have to choose to live in the light. Is that why Tom refuses to talk about the murders—because he can’t bear fumbling around for answers in the dark?
Or is he just afraid of what he’ll find in there?
When we’re back in the car and my heartbeat slows down, I turn to Ginny. Her fingers are drumming the steering wheel.
“I don’t trust him,” Ginny says, letting her words hang in the air for a bit. “I don’t think he’s reliable. He was obsessed with your sister, and he obviously has a vendetta against your stepdad.”
My throat goes tight. “What he said about Tom threatening him—I need you to know he would never do that.”
“You don’t have to convince me.”
A funny feeling settles over me. She’s never even met Tom. She must sense my confusion, because she takes a deep breath.
“When I was a kid, I was in the car with my dad one night. He’d been drinking, and your stepdad pulled him over.” She picks at a raw cuticle, avoiding my eyes. “He drove us both to the station, and I was embarrassed and crying, like I’d done something wrong.
“My mom couldn’t get someone to cover her at the hospital, so we had to wait at the station for a couple hours. Your stepdad…he let me hang out in his office. He brought me some food from the vending machine and showed me all this stuff, like how he filed police reports.” Ginny looks at me. “I didn’t realize until my mom picked us up that Tom did that so I didn’t have to sit in the lobby with people staring at me.”
That sounds like the Tom I know. The man who’s always nearby to put a calming hand on my mom’s shoulder when she’s going apeshit on my brother or me. The man I’ve always felt cared about me more than my own father, a virtual stranger who calls me on my birthday and Christmas for molasses-slow conversations of people who have nothing to say to each other.
“So I don’t trust Ethan at all,” Ginny says, interrupting my thoughts. “I think all that stuff about Tom not taking him seriously is a lie. He must have had a convincing reason not to believe Ethan.”
My throat tightens. “The shooting…His job—”
Ginny cuts me off, shaking her head. “I don’t think your stepdad is the type of person to let a killer walk free just to save his own job.”
Her words have a calming effect on me. The debris clouding my thoughts starts to settle, and another possibility emerges, one where the police and Tom aren’t hiding anything.