“Why do you do this for a living?” I had asked, not at all prepared for the answer.
It was because of his sister’s murder.
His sister, Allison.
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
I click on the first article that pops up: Allison’s obituary. My eyes flicker over the blocks of text, skimming past the funeral details and the requests for donations in lieu of flowers and the sugarcoated description of her passing—vague, innocuous words likeunexpectedlyandpeacefullyandin her sleep—until I hit the very last line.
Allison is survived by her husband, Benjamin, her parents, Robert and Rosemary, and her younger brother, Waylon.
I navigate back to the results and click on another article—a wedding announcement—and swallow as the headline loads: BENJAMIN DRAKE & ALLISON SPENCER. There’s a picture of the two of them together—that same one he had proudly displayed in his office, on the hull of a sailboat, her giant, oval-shaped diamond reflecting the glare of the sun above—and it makes my stomach squeeze. I never knew her maiden name; I had never even thought to ask. We never talked about her. She was the one topic that was always off-limits, before and after our marriage, like if we just ignored her existence entirely, it would absolve us both of any wrongdoing. Any guilt.
I had learned that from my parents, I suppose.
I can’t help but notice how perfect they look together in this picture: young, vibrant, happy. The way we once were, too.
It’s not a common name, Waylon, but I have to be sure. I have to be absolutely positive. So I keep scrolling, skimming past quotes from Allison’s parents and ceremony details until I reach a family picture at the very bottom—and there it is. Theretheyare. All of them, together.
Ben, Allison, Waylon, their parents. One big, happy family.
I drop my phone in my lap. This confirms it: Waylon and Allison Spencer. They’re siblings. Waylon is Allison’s brother. He was there, at her memorial, huddled in that room that I refused to step inside. Accepting condolences alongside Ben, his brother-in-law. Walking into the backyard as we embraced, unknowingly stumbling into something incriminating and wrong.
“What happened to her?”I had asked, embarrassed at the aspect of me never once wondering what Waylon’s story was. We all have one, I suppose. A story. A series of events that twist our lives along some uncharted path. A sequence of births and deaths, beginnings and endings. Love and loss. Joy and pain.
“That’s the question,” he had said. “The one case I’ve been working on since I was twenty-three years old.”
Except Allison’s death wasn’t a mystery. It wasn’t some cold case that garnered national attention; her parents weren’t at TrueCrimeCon, selling their souls for eyes. It was a dismally drab death, the way most of them actually are. Allison overdosed. They found the pills in her stomach, the empty prescription bottle in her limp, lifeless hand. Her name on the label. Ben had found her like that, sprawled across the bathroom floor with saucers for pupils and blue-gray skin.
At least, that’s what he said.
I pick my phone up again and dial Waylon’s number, too jittery to care about the way we left things. Maybe I had misunderstood what he was saying. Maybe—after seeing myself on that laptop screen, after talking to that man on the porch, after uncovering the similaritiesbetween Margaret’s death and Mason’s disappearance and planting myself at the center of them both—maybe I had only heard what I had wanted to hear.
“Nobody broke into your house, Isabelle. I know it, you know it, the cops know it. There was no intruder.”
Maybe I had already come to my own conclusion at that point: That I was responsible. That I did something wrong, something terrible. Something I couldn’t remember. But just like with Margaret, maybe I was wrong. Just like with Margaret, maybe I wasn’t searching for answers, not really. Maybe I alreadyhadmy answers—that I was to blame—and I was just searching for proof.
Any scrap of proof that confirmed what I already believed: That I was a bad mother. That I failed my son, just like I had failed my sister.
“Isabelle?”
Waylon answers slowly, curiously, like he’s wondering if I really meant to call. Like he thinks I dialed the wrong number and he’s afraid to hear my voice on the other side of the line. I glance at the clock in my car—it’s still early, well before rush hour—and realize that I might have woken him up.
“Waylon,” I say, trying to calm the tremor in my throat. “What you said to me yesterday—”
“I know, I’m sorry,” he interrupts, his voice breathy and hoarse. I picture him lying in a cold motel room, bed-head hair sticking out in all directions as he fumbles for the lamp in the dark. “I feel terrible about it. I was too harsh—”
“Do you think I hurt Mason?” I cut him off. “Do you think I killed my son?”
“What?” The sharp intake of air, the change in tone, tells me everything I need to know. It’s like my words were a bucket of ice water thrown across his face, startling him awake. “Isabelle, no. Why would you think that?”
I exhale, relief flowing through me.
“I know who you are,” I say. “You’re Allison’s brother. Allison Spencer. Allison Drake.”
The line is silent. I can hear him breathing, thinking, wondering what to say next.
“I’m not mad,” I continue. “I just… I need to know what you’re doing here. And what you think you know about Ben.”