Page 95 of The Engagement Party

Sierra scoffed. “Yeah, clearly.”

The way Sierra believed Mitch made Ruthie dig in. She’d watched horror and disbelief morph into wariness then switch to certainty on Sierra’s face. Ruthie didn’t trust much about this crowd, but she trusted Sierra and her judgment.

Mitch shifted his weight but didn’t move any closer to his college friends. “You were the one who planted this story and made Alex believe it.”

“It’s not a story,” Cassie insisted.

An uncomfortable silence stretched between them. Mitch stood there, almost daring Cassie to come up with another accusation. Ruthie wanted to jump in and say what she knew and tear down their allegations one by one, but she needed to act, as much as possible, as an objective observer. If they all survivedthis—and she wasn’t convinced the violence was over—someone had to stay clearheaded enough to tell the unbelievable story, including every nuance and every twist.

Mitch made a noise that sounded like resignation before he started talking. “I was perfectly lucid that night because I didn’t drink in college. I don’t drink now.”

This sounded like an unnecessary overreach. Even Ruthie didn’t buy it. Mitch risked destroying his credibility by insisting on a fact the people closest to him would know was false.

Cassie snorted. “What a lie.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Alex said. “We were there. We drank with you.”

“After years of being a fucking mess, I made a promise to my uncle before I went to college. Sobriety. No more hiding at the bottom of a bottle. No more lying about what I had been doing all night as I got lost in a haze of nothingness. I owed him and I wantedhim,a recovering alcoholic,to stay sober, so we pledged to support each other and never take a drink again.”

Alex shook his head then winced in what looked like pain. “Then you broke your promise because you drank with us all the time in college. You acted as designated driver a lot, sure, but—”

“No,youdrank. I pretended. Sometimes I got the drink and poured it out. Sometimes I switched your almost empty beer bottles with my full one. I always knew how many I’d had because I didn’t have any, and I always volunteered to drive so I’d have an excuse not to drink.”

They all stared at him. Ruthie couldn’t help it. She wondered if anyone could pull off that ruse for so many years... maybe?

“I had spent too much of my life as an outsider. People whispered about me, made judgments because of my mother. Accused me of things I didn’t do,” Mitch said in a softer tone. “I didn’t tell you the truth about my no-drinking pledge because for the first time in so long I had friends who accepted medespitewho my mother was. I didn’t divulge the truth about my sobriety because, honestly, I was immature and embarrassed. I was desperate to be part of a group. I didn’t want to come off as a loser, but mostly, I didn’t want to give you all a reason to do things without me and shut me out, so I adapted.”

Cassie shook her head. “That’s not possible.”

“We would have known.” Alex didn’t sound convinced.

“The pact is real,” Sierra said. “His uncle told me about it the first time I met him. Mitch told me, too. This isn’t a new thing he’s saying as a cover. He doesn’t drink. I’ve known him for years and know he doesn’t drink. And I’ve seen him do the fake drinking thing at business meetings. After so much practice, he’s damn convincing.”

“Now. He doesn’t drink now because of what he did to Emily.” Cassie’s gaze swept over the group. Every word carried her desperate need to convince them. “This proves nothing.”

“You underestimate how skilled I became at a young age at pretending to be someone I wasn’t,” Mitch said.

Cassie didn’t show any signs of letting go of the lie she’d carried and repeated for so long. Even with Mitch confronting her and breaking down her story, she refused to pivot. She fell back on that lawyer skill of being able to argue at full blast. “Like you’re pretending now?”

“Here are the facts, counselor.” Sierra returned to full Sierra mode. Protecting and not backing down. “His uncle was so proud of how Mitch had turned his life around and stopped drinking that he agreed to cosign a business loan for us to getstarted in landscaping. So believe me when I say Mitch’s sobriety is very real.”

“We were all out at the water that night. Alex was right about that, but he got the timing wrong. We had a cookout and partied with a bunch of other people. It got dark and you all were still drinking, but Emily worried about disappointing her parents by missing that brunch.”

“This doesn’t prove—”

Mitch didn’t let Cassie take over the conversation. “I drove us all back to campus then Jake and I went to get something to eat. Used the drive-through.”

Cassie shrugged. “Convenient.”

“Not for you.” Ruthie expected denial but the tenacity with which Cassie held on to the fiction was quite a sight.

“You all met up again. Jake and I didn’t. The dancing and drinking you saw wasn’t me.” Mitch confronted Cassie head-on. “Right? You know because you weren’t so out of it that night. You were pissed at Alex about all the drinking. I remember you yelling at him.”

“I’m not your alibi.”

“No, you’re Alex’s alibi.” Whatever doubts Sierra toyed with, even for a second, disappeared and she came out firing. “That’s what you told the police. You were home with Alex that night, which was a lie.”

“I was trying to save Mitch. I didn’t want to incriminate Mitch by talking about how he was acting around Emily and how he lost control.” Cassie sighed. “I wish I’d been there every second at that damn labyrinth because I would have stopped Mitch. Emily would be alive.”

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