She failed to respond, but that didn’t keep him from placing copies of the other three letters in front of her. “Maybe these will help jog your memory.”
She will pay the price.
This is your last chance.
You were warned.
Lily started shaking her head, and I was sure her skin had paled even more, to a ghostly shade of white. “Stop it, Hayle. I don’t have any idea why you think I wrote these.”
“I’ll tell you why,” he said calmly, before setting one more piece of paper before her.
Thea deserves the truth.
The message had been typed onto a plain white sheet of paper, just like the originals. But, other than for dramatic effect, what was the point?
Lily must have thought the same thing, because she looked from the paper to Hayle, a blank look on her face. If she planned to protest again, he didn’t give her the opportunity. Instead, he shuffled the papers until She will pay the price sat right next to This is your last chance and You were warned.
“See anything odd about these?”
With an exasperated sigh, she said, “Hayle, I don’t know what’s going on or why you’re showing me these notes.”
“The funny thing about old typewriters is that most of them have quirks. Something to make them identifiable.” Pointing to the word “warned,” he said, “Look at the a. See how it prints slightly lower than the other letters?” Not giving her a chance to respond, he pointed out the same defect in the next two notes. “And here, here, and here.”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
Though she was sticking with her innocent act, I detected a wobble to her voice, and hope sprang. Oh, god. Hayle had figured it out. He’d found proof that Lily was responsible for the threatening letters.
He pointed to the same defect in Thea and then said, “I typed this with your old typewriter I found in your attic. You threatened Amber, and if what you told Thea is the truth, you poisoned her.”
Lily’s mouth gaped open, and then she burst into tears.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Hayle
My gut twisted with regret all rolled up in pity and a healthy dose of resolve. In spite of everything, I hated making my mother cry. But her response was as good as an admission of guilt, and that made me guilty by association.
Because Thea had been right all along, and I’d chosen to discount her allegations against Mom due to misplaced feelings of loyalty. I seemed to have a problem with that. First my father, and now my mother. Neither one deserved the half-blind allegiance I’d offered them for all of these years.
It was one thing to understand that they were flawed and choose to stand by them anyway. It was another to realize that they’d never been the people I’d thought they were.
I snuck a glance at Thea and found her watching me instead of the woman breaking down in front of us. Her confused gaze seemed to ask why I hadn’t told her about the typewriter, which was a reasonable question.
The answer was, I still hadn’t been confident of my mother’s guilt, even after discovering the incriminating piece of evidence. Maybe that made me naïve. Or, hell, maybe it made me as witless as Thea had accused me of being.
I’d needed to hang on to my last piece of hope that my whole world wasn’t imploding, even as I acknowledged that there was a light at the end of the tunnel I didn’t fully understand. All I knew was that the light was Thea…and my brothers.
They’d managed to create their own bubble of happiness, and the insecurities I’d lived with for my entire life told me that I wasn’t welcome there. Except, I was tired of being that insecure little kid. I’d mastered my stutter, and I could do the same with my feelings of inadequacy.
It was time to grow up, starting with confronting my mother’s mental problems head-on.
Forcing my attention back to the woman in question, I said, “Tell us what happened with Amber.”
She wiped at her face with the sleeve of her shirt. “Someone must have stolen my typewriter. And set me up. That’s what happened.”
A burst of anger rolled through me. I was so tired of the deception. “Stop lying,” I said harsher and louder than I’d intended, garnering the attention of our chaperone.
Thea reached under the table to squeeze my thigh and whispered, “It’s okay,” finally breaking her silence. Honestly, I was impressed