Page 69 of A Secret to Die For

“S-s-someone ran the car off the road.”

Now anger mixed with the shock. “Someone killed your parents?”

“I’m…I’m so scared. I’m not meant to talk about it, and I don’t want to put you in any danger.”

“You won’t, I promise. In the Marines, I was special forces, and I’m not meant to talk about that either, but understand that I can look after myself.”

“I’ve never told anyone the whole story, just…just pieces.”

“Whatever pieces you want to share, I’ll listen, and I won’t tell a soul. I want to make this better, princess.” He wiped my tears away with a thumb. “I don’t like seeing you cry.”

“I-I-I don’t even know where to start.”

“How about at the beginning?”

Charming gathered me against him, arms wrapped around me, and small miracles did happen because for once, his dick wasn’t hard. This was serious Garrett.

“In the beginning, I was a little like Marlie. I loved to play hide-and-seek. My parents were going out for dinner, and I was meant to stay with the babysitter. Vicky.” I made a face. “She mostly ignored me, and after Mom and Dad left, she always used to sneak her boyfriend over. I didn’t know what they were doing on the couch at the time—I was only nine years old—but of course I do now.”

Garrett shook his head in disgust. “Marlie stays with me sometimes, so I’d better get a lock installed on the bedroom door.”

I added “responsible” to his list of qualities.

“Well, Vicky didn’t care what I overheard, and I didn’t want to stay at home and listen to grunting. So when Mom forgot her scarf and went back to the bedroom for it, and Dad stepped into the kitchen to take a phone call, I snuck into the garage and hid under a blanket in the back of the car. I figured that if I stayed quiet until they got to the restaurant, they’d let me have dinner with them instead of taking me back home. But we never got to the restaurant. And now…now I’m not even sure that’s where they were going. There was… We ended up heading out of town, on deserted roads, and Mom and Dad were fighting. Until that month, they’d never fought. Never. Not in front of me, anyway. I think maybe they were meeting someone? But they never got there because a vehicle hit us from behind. Mom screamed, and I screamed, and I’ll never forget the horror on her face when she realised I was in the car. She just kept yelling at me to put my seat belt on. It all happened so fast. The headlights behind us, the jolts as the other vehicle hit us, my parents shouting at me and each other. Then Dad lost control, and we swerved off the road and hit a tree.”

“I’m so fucking sorry, Saralisa.”

“It got worse. So much worse.”

Garrett’s soft kisses soothed me, but nothing would ever take the hurt away completely. Talking, though, talking helped. It was strangely cathartic, putting my nightmares into words, knowing that nothing would go beyond this room. He was like a sponge, soaking up all my pain.

“I think Dad was already dead at that point, but Mom, she was still alive. She asked if I was okay, if I was hurt, and I could hear her moving around, trying to get free, but she was stuck. And she kept talking, telling me things I didn’t understand, random words and numbers mostly. I didn’t realise what was happening. I saw lights shining over us and thought help was coming, but Mom knew it wasn’t. She told me to hide again, hide and shush, and then he was there. I call him the monster, but he was human. I’ll never forget her last words. Burn them.” She’d said them desperately, angrily, and I’d never been sure whether they were aimed at me or the monster, or what exactly she meant. “And then he shot her.”

Garrett was holding me so tightly I could hardly breathe, or perhaps that was just the band of tension that had been suffocating me for years? The pillow was damp with tears. I gulped in air, trying to get some much-needed oxygen to my lungs.

“Tell me they found the person who did that. Tell me he got the death penalty.”

Garrett didn’t just sound angry, he sounded furious, and that fuelled me to keep talking. Because I was furious too. Furious that my family had been stolen from me, furious that I’d lost everything I loved, furious that I hadn’t even been able to speak about this for sixteen damn years.

“They didn’t. They didn’t because the police thought it was an accident.”

“How the hell could they think that? Couldn’t they find evidence of an impact? A gunshot? What about you? You were a witness.”

“When I say I’ve never told anyone, I mean anyone.”

He cursed under his breath. “The cops should have brought in a trained interviewer. Someone used to speaking with kids.”

“I still wouldn’t have talked. He told me I’d die if I did.”

“He?”

“The monster.”

“He spoke to you?”

“Not that night, not in the car. I was stuck there for hours. The doors wouldn’t open, and even if they had, where would I have gone? We were in a freaking forest. A man found us in daylight.” A kind man. He’d told me everything would be okay—a lie—and stayed with me until the fire service cut me out of the wreckage. The creaking, the groaning, the ear-splitting screech of tearing metal…it all stayed with me. “They took me to the hospital, and I guess the monster realised his mistake. If he’d seen me in the car, he’d have killed me too; I’m absolutely certain of that.” The sea was blue, the sun rose in the mornings, and assassins tidied up loose ends. “He came to the hospital the next day and tried to suffocate me with a pillow before he got interrupted.”

My tone had turned matter-of-fact now. The more I talked, the easier it got. Now I was narrating my own life, a tale I’d had the misfortune to live, a memoir. Orphan: The Saralisa Story. But as I became calmer, Garrett became more agitated. He rolled out of bed and began pacing.

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