girl, everything they thought they knew dissolving to mud. But now they’ve been offered a second chance like manna from heaven. She should really go home, get some sleep. But she needs to reassure herself that this time, they got things exactly right. The case depends on it. Detective Holloway’s job depends on it too. She presses play.
The camera lens rests on a girl with the lean muscles of a swimmer and a feathery pixie cut. She sits all the way back in a wobbly metal chair, olive skin covered in denim and soft cotton. She tugs on a long-sleeved gray shirt, bunching the sleeves in her hands.
To the girl’s right sit her parents and a solemn-faced lawyer. Hollow circles line the woman’s eyes. The man shaved before they came here, but he missed a few spots.
Across from the Spanos family and their lawyer, Detective Holloway sits with AD Massey, their hands propped on a thin metal table, a new addition to the room. AD Massey pushes his rolling chair two inches forward, then two inches back, then two inches forward, then two inches back.
“You can start at the beginning, Aster,” Detective Holloway says gently. A small twitch in her jaw betrays how hard she’s working to keep her voice free from its characteristic edge.
The girl takes in a deep breath and scratches absently at the skin where her shirt’s neckline hits her collarbone. Her mother gives her leg a reassuring squeeze.
“I guess it started over Thanksgiving break, almost a year ago. Zoe was home from Brown, and things were weird with Caden. She wouldn’t talk to me about it, but I could see the hurt all over her face.
“That Saturday, Caden was hanging out with friends in the city—at least that’s what he told Zoe. She spent the afternoon visiting Mrs. Talbot at Windermere, which wasn’t unusual. They were really close. But when Zoe came home that night, she was in tears. She locked herself in her room and wouldn’t talk to me. The next morning, she went back to Brown.”
“We weren’t aware—” Joan Spanos starts to say, but AD Massey silences her with a raised hand.
“This is Miss Spanos’s statement,” he says. “We need to hear only from her.”
George Spanos takes his wife’s hand in his, and they both nod at the detectives across the table.
“What happened after Zoe returned to Brown?” Detective Holloway asks.
Aster sighs softly. “I snooped around her bedroom. She’d taken her computer, obviously, but I found some flash drives in her desk drawer. On one, there was a series of photos of Caden with this pretty girl I didn’t recognize, and also a bunch of emails that had been cut and pasted into a Word doc. The photos were all saved with Saturday’s date, and the most recent email was dated November twenty-eighth, Thanksgiving Day. So it was all really recent, and I figured that must have been what made Zoe cry.”
“Did you tell your sister what you’d found? Could she confirm your suspicion?” Detective Holloway asks.
“Not directly, no. Like I said, she wouldn’t talk to me about it, which is how I knew something was wrong in the first place. She must have pulled the photos and emails from Caden’s laptop while she was visiting Mrs. Talbot. If I hadn’t found the flash drive in her desk, none of this would have happened.” Aster’s chin quivers, and her voice catches. Her mom squeezes her leg again. “If I could go back, I’d never look in Zoe’s room. That’s what I wish, more than anything.”
From two seats over, there’s a loud choking sound, and George Spanos raises a tissue to cover his mouth. The lawyer busies himself with his notes.
“Over the next couple weeks, I tried to get Zoe to open up. Caden was hurting her, and she was just letting it happen. I never told her what I’d found because I knew that would shut the conversation down. I tried to get her to tell me herself, but she pretended like everything was fine.
“When Zoe came home for winter break, I thought maybe things would change. But Christmas came and went—nothing. If Zoe didn’t want to tell me, fine, but it was increasingly clear she wasn’t going to confront Caden. She always wanted to make everyone happy. And he was taking advantage of how good she was. That asshole!” Aster’s voice rises, and she drops her shirtsleeves to clench the arms of the chair in her fists.