I stared at him, my legs starting to shake under the table. This was it. It was finally coming out. We were screwed.
“I know this has been weighing on you for years,” he said, his voice sympathetic but his eyes still fixed on mine. “You’ve probably wanted to share your story with somebody for a long time. I’m a pretty good listener.”
I knew what he was doing, and what he wanted me to say. I took a breath, thought about my conversation with Dallas the night before, what we’d agreed. It still didn’t seem right, but it was our only option. I remembered again what Skylar had said. If you go to jail, it will be like Crystal died for nothing.
I held the words close, focused on an image of Crystal’s face, how she would smile when she played the guitar, how much she loved us. Tears rose in my throat. I pushed them back down. I couldn’t cry now.
“I don’t know what happened,” I said. “Dani and I were out one night and when we came home, Courtney said she’d had a fight with Dad about her boyfriend but he wouldn’t be hurting us anymore.” I realized I’d slipped into using our real names, but it had felt more natural.
“What did you think she meant?”
“We didn’t ask.”
“You didn’t ask? What about when he didn’t come home for days?”
“He always took off after fights. We thought she’d just told him to leave us alone, or threatened to call the cops—she and Dad were always fighting.”
“Did you see anyone else at the house that night? Maybe this married man she was seeing?”
“No, no one.”
“Did you notice anything out of place when you got home? Any signs of a fight? Blood on your sister’s clothes?”
“No, nothing.”
“And she never told you anything else?”
“Nothing,” I said, holding his gaze.
“The woman who owned the ranch said Courtney showed up with a burn and that you had a nasty bruise. Said they heard shots the night before.”
“We’d been shooting rats—it was a week after Courtney and Dad fought. Walter came down, checked up on us. The sergeant came by the next day.”
The officer was watching me steadily. “Whose idea was it to run away?”
“Courtney’s. She said Dad probably wasn’t coming back this time and we should leave before we got sent to foster care again.”
“And you didn’t ask what that meant?”
“We didn’t care what happened to him,” I said. “He beat the crap out of us whenever he was home, especially Courtney. We were just happy he was gone.”
“Do you think Courtney could have killed him?”
I thought about that night, remembered her legs kicking out, how the gun had felt in my hands, the shocked look in Dad’s eyes.
“She hated him, hated what he did to all of us.”
“I need to talk to your sister.”
He was gone for a long time. I sat numb, thinking about Dani, thinking about Courtney, how young we all had been.
The officer finally came back and sat down.
“Your sister confirms your story. She says that neither of you knew what had happened to your father.”
I felt a surge of relief, forced myself to stay calm. “What’s going to happen now?”
He looked thoughtful, his eyes focused on the file he was holding. “We’ll never be able to truly close the case—Courtney’s gone and she can’t tell her side of the story—but there’s enough evidence to suggest that it was likely her and we won’t be pursuing this matter any further.” He flipped through the file, pulled out a few documents, glanced at them, then back up at me.
“You kids went through a lot.”
The tears I’d been fighting rolled hot down my cheeks. The sympathy in his face, the understanding, shattered the wall I’d built around me.
I thought about all the years we had lived in fear, how many beatings we had taken, everything that we had lived through in Cash Creek, and how it had felt like we were never going to be free of our past.
“You have no idea,” I said.
EPILOGUE
DALLAS