Page 105 of The Sleeping Girls

“Because you and she were more than friends, weren’t you?” Ellie asked. “You carved your and her initials in the tree behind her house.”

His face crumpled with shame.

Mrs. Jones gasped, clutching her chest in shock.

Artie released a tortured sob. “I didn’t know she was my half sister when we slept together,” he protested. “I didn’t know.”

Mrs. Jones shook her head in denial. “Good God, Artie. What did you do?”

“Dad and I argued in the car and I tried to get him to turn around,” Artie said in a trembling voice. “I didn’t mean for us to crash. I just wanted him to stop and make it all go away.”

Mrs. Jones stumbled backward, clenching the kitchen chair for support.

Ellie saw Derrick slowly easing down the hall toward them.

“What happened after that?” Ellie asked.

Jones sobbed out loud. “I was upset about losing Dad, and then Anna Marie’s mother caught me outside her house one night at the treehouse.” Tears clogged his voice. “She begged me to get tested to be a donor.”

Mrs. Jones looked faint. “Please tell me you didn’t kill Mary.”

“I didn’t mean to,” he shouted. “She was going to tell Anna Marie and then she’d know what we’d done, and I had to stop her and I… pushed her and she hit her head on a rock…”

Anguish and desperation laced his voice. He loved Anna Marie, but what a shock to learn they’d had an incestual relationship. Compassion for the teenage boy mushroomed inside Ellie. Yet his shock and pain didn’t justify taking lives.

“So you buried Mrs. Landrum in the woods beneath the treehouse where you used to meet Anna Marie.”

He jerked his gaze to Ellie’s. “I… didn’t know what else to do,” he shouted. “If I’d told the police, everything would have come out.”

And the shame and humiliation would have been unbearable. “What about Anna Marie?” Ellie asked. “It sounds like she didn’t know either, that she was just as innocent and in the dark as you.”

“She was, and she loved me,” he said, his voice thick.

“How did we not know about you and her?” his mother asked in a shaky voice.

“We wanted to keep it quiet,” he said. “We used to meet in the basement at school after hours.”

“When I thought you were at study hall,” she said as if just realizing how blind she’d been to her son’s actions.

“But Anna Marie discovered you were half siblings?”

His head bobbed up and down. “She called me, upset, and asked me to come over,” he mumbled.

“Then what happened?” Ellie asked.

“Her father had told her she needed a donor and about my dad and me. She freaked out and started to scream while we were talking and I… felt sick inside and I… I only wanted her to be quiet.”

“So you grabbed the pillow and pressed it over her face,” Ellie filled in. “Just to shush her so you could talk.”

He looked lost in the memory, the gun bobbing up and down. “She had to be quiet… so no one would know… but then…”

“She fought you,” Ellie supplied.

He nodded, expression dazed as if he was reliving the moment. “I… loved her… I didn’t mean to kill her. I didn’t.”

“But you framed Darnell for it? How did you do that?”

“I didn’t plan to frame him. I heard footsteps and climbed out the window and he ran in. I thought he saw me but when I looked back, he was standing beside Anna Marie’s bed with the pillow. I hid outside and I heard his father come in shouting.”

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