Hailey squeezed my hand as we stood in front of my house. “Are you sure about this?” she asked. She glanced back at her parents’ home and shuddered. We were going there after this, to help her deal with what had happened almost two weeks ago.
“Yes. I need to do it.” I pulled her toward the front door and unlocked it. What had happened the night my family died wasn’t my fault. I’d finally accepted that. For a long time before that night I’d tried to convince my mother to leave my father. I couldn’t have predicted the sequence of events or the outcome. None of us could have.
The cops eventually put everything together as to what had happened the night Hailey was found barely alive in Westgate. Philip Brady, the man Mom had been having an affair with, had attacked her in this house, and he panicked. He and his brother took Hailey to Westgate to kill her. They wanted it to look like a random attack. They never expected her to survive. The man I accidentally killed when he attacked Hailey while she was running? He was Philip’s brother.
Initially it didn’t make sense that Philip had waited so long to make sure there was nothing that could link him to my mother and Sarah. But then we learned that Philip had recently decided he wanted to go into politics, and so he needed to ensure all his skeletons stayed buried deep.
Chris’s death was quickly determined to be unrelated, the result of a steroid drug deal gone wrong. His alleged killer had been arrested early last week.
I opened the front door and stepped inside my house. The night Philip had attacked Hailey at her parents’, I’d been about to cross the street to my home when I heard her scream. Thinking that the person who’d put her in a coma and the person who had killed Chris was the same and was still running free, I’d called the cops. Fortunately, Hailey’s parents had left the spare key in the same place as when she and I were kids.
Now, as we entered the house I’d grown up in, I saw that a layer of dust covered the furniture. The air held a slight musty smell. But otherwise, the place looked no different than I remembered.
I inhaled deeply and started coughing. “Hmm. It’s a little dustier than I remembered.” Hailey’s parents had arranged for someone to clean every few months for the past five years. Her mother knew my mom would’ve appreciated it, even if she was dead. I had agreed to it, and the funds had come from my parents’ estate. I wasn’t sure why I hadn’t sold it right away—why I had waited until only recently to finally decide to put it on the market. Maybe deep down I had assumed no one would want to buy a house three people had died violently in. Or maybe deep down I just hadn’t been ready to let it go—to let go of the only home my sister had ever known.
Hailey chuckled, taking in the dusty state of the furniture and the house. “Just a little.”
“I guess I should hire someone to deal with it before I sell the place.” I pulled her into my arms and grinned. “Unless you want to delay our flight for another month. Then we can clean it ourselves.”
She made a face. “No heavy lifting for me for a while. Doctor’s orders.” Doctor’s orders also said we couldn’t have sex for a few more weeks while Hailey recovered from surgery. Not that I was counting the days or anything. “Are you sure you want to sell the place?” she asked.
I glanced around. The house had long since ceased being part of my existence. The happy memories associated with it were tainted. “Positive.” I squeezed her hand to let her know that she was my life.
Always had been.
Always would be.
Still holding on to Hailey, I walked into the kitchen. The blood from my mother’s murder had long since been scrubbed from the wall and the floor by the cleaning service. I closed my eyes against the image of the last time I’d seen her, lying on the floor in a pool of blood.
Hailey wrapped her arms around my waist and rested her head on my shoulder. I opened my eyes and kissed her temple. “Thank you,” I whispered.
She peered up at me. “You’re welcome.”
We climbed the stairs leading to the second floor. Hailey’s movements were slow and slightly unsteady. I kept my arm around her hips and let her set the pace.
In my room, I removed from my back jeans pocket the laminated photo that I had held on to for all these years and handed it to Hailey. “Do you remember this?”
She laughed at the picture Mom had taken while I attempted to help Hailey master the guitar. We had been sitting on my bed at the time. “I can’t believe you still have this.”
“It was the only thing I held on to from my previous life. I loved you, Hailey. Even though I walked away from Northbridge all those years ago, I couldn’t walk away from you completely. Every time I missed you, every time I was about to go onstage, I’d look at the picture. It was like you were with me.” I gently kissed her. “It was what kept me going.”