“Don’t have to tell me twice. That man was weird as fuck.” Ben had the car started and peeled off in seconds.
I looked through the window, back at the house, then down at my shaking hands.
“Mira, what did he have on?” Shelia asked, still looking back at me.
“His chain. There was a—a dove on the end of it.”
“Okay? And?”
“And Melanie had the same kind of dove jewelry. It was her logo for the clothing line she was going to start.”
“Aw, shit!” Ben shouted. “Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”
“I think he did see Melanie after he got out.”
“And you think he did it?”
“I—I don’t know. I don’t know.” I pressed my hands to the sides of my head. “I need to think. I—mean there could be so many reasons they could have met. Maybe she heard he was out and wanted to apologize for what she’d done? In her journals she said that she was going to get a fake ID and leave. She also said Miley mentioned a name in a text, and I think it was his. I think he wanted to see them, but Melanie refused and bailed, and he got to the sister.”
“Or, maybe he actually found her and fucking killed her ass before she could flee and the sister got spooked and ran away,” Ben shouted.
“But he said Miley was her twin. It would make sense that her body was found with heroin in her system. Also my brother said someone turned Miley’s keys in for her. A man. What if it was him? I don’t know how it all comes together with Calvin, but I do know Melanie was shady as hell and she wanted to get away from Roland. She hated her life. She even talked about starting over—running off to California and making a new identity. Melanie was desperate to get away and Miley was an addict. Maybe it’s all just a cover-up.”
“That is a wild fucking theory,” Ben said.
“I know.” I sighed. “None of this is making any sense, but it’s hard to know what to believe at this point. He had the dove on his chain. He was around her before she died. I know it. I just don’t know what his part in this is.” I pressed my forehead to the back of Shelia’s headrest. “I have to ask Roland about this. I don’t think I have a choice anymore. If there is a possibility that Melanie is still out there and that she faked all of this, we have to find her. And if there is a chance Calvin knows something or did something, it will help us. It’ll prove that Roland is innocent after all and that she purposely set out to destroy his life as payback or something.”
“Right,” Shelia said. “But that doesn’t answer the question about her twin. If Melanie is out there somewhere, and if that was her sister’s body in the car that went over the cliff and into the water, how the hell could she have made her drive over that cliff at the exact time she needed it to happen?”
“I have no idea,” I mumbled, then shivered. “I really don’t know.”
I looked out of the window, watching as the cars passed by and the green trees blended together. “There has to be a reason for all of this.”
CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO
I couldn’t stay in the hotel another night. Roland was on his way home and I wanted to beat him there, so I caught the first flight I could and flew back, but not without thanking Shelia and Ben and sending them back home too.
During my flight back, I was anxious. I didn’t know what I was going to find out by talking to Roland, but after seeing that dove on the end of Calvin’s chain, I was almost positive Roland was innocent. If Calvin was right and Miley was the body they’d found, it meant Melanie was behind all of this. But what I couldn’t figure out was why Calvin would even tell us that if he was a part of it too? There were holes in this tragedy and I needed to plug them.
And there I was feeling sorry for Melanie for weeks, having bloody visions of her in my head, wanting so desperately to uncover her truth and find out what’d happened to her. All of that, and there could’ve been a possibility none of it was real—that she’d faked it all just to escape the shitty life she’d created.
There was no way she killed her sister though. No, if they found drugs in the body and it was Miley’s, that meant Miley must have relapsed, based off what I’d read and how vulnerable Miley was. But like Shelia said, that didn’t explain how Miley got into Melanie’s car. Did Melanie make her drive over that cliff? Was it even Miley behind the wheel? For all I knew, Melanie could have spiraled too and tried drugs like Miley did to numb her pain, especially if she was at her wits’ end. She never said she was against drugs in the journals, but Calvin did mention she wasn’t a fan of them when she was younger.