“Wait, what-what does that even mean?”
“You broke my heart?” I repeat.
“No, I get that part…” He taps his cuffs on the table. “The part where you said you started the fire? And I should be sorry for bringing you back into my life… I know you now, and you wouldn’t have done something like that.”
I push my chair back and stand up. “I don’t even know me, Liam. I never will. What I do know is…someoneset you up to take the fall for Fallon.” I’m that someone. The someone who isclearly better at cleaning up messes than you. “In any case, you can spend the next fifteen years figuring out who it was.”
“Haley,” he barks. “Wait.”
Coming to terms with the truth is part of living with the truth. I have a lot to come to terms with still.
I retrieve my ID from the front desk and sign my name out on the log and turn to leave this place that I haven’t managed to stay away from.
The sun is hot for a fall day and blinds me as I walk toward the parking lot. “What are you doing here?” a familiar voice calls out from ahead. The yellow blurry blob in the sky covers most of Lara’s face. “Please don’t tell me you were here visiting my pathetic brother.”
“I was here visiting your pathetic brother,” I reply.
“After he set you up to take the fall for what he did?” she questions.
I chuckle and sing out the last note of sarcasm. “Oh, Lara, Larissa, whatever your name is…Liam might have set me up, but?—”
The sun slips behind a heavy cloud and thunder booms in the distance. I lose my train of thought and stare up at the sky.
“What are you looking at?” she asks.
“The thunderstorm rolling in,” I reply, squinting toward the darkening cloud.
“Oh, okay,” she says, laughing. “I think there would need to be at least one cloud in the sky for a storm to roll in. You had me going there for a minute.” She tries to laugh again, but it comes out as a choke. “What were you saying about Liam setting you up?”
When Liam saw my name and ad in the Newport newsletter, looking for a summer job, he saw an opportunity to collect payment from his sister. People already speculated that I had something to do with the fire but there was no evidence to proveone way or another even though my so-called psychotic history made me look like the perfect suspect then, and again, now. If that’s what he truly thought of me though, he should have been smart enough to realize what I’m capable of and what he’s not…executing a criminal plan without a trace of evidence or remorse.
“What about Liam?” I ask, pausing to shake the thoughts out of my head. “Oh, right…nothing. Although—” I hold up my index finger. “If I may…just a silly unsolicited parenting tip from a regular old nanny…those teenage years can be a real bitch.”
Madden won’t pay a consequence for her attempt to murder Fallon, but that just means she’ll be more careful the next time she wants to get rid of the person standing in her way. I know what happens when a daughter has no one left to blame but her mother.
“Watch your back, Lara. She’s coming for you.”
* * *