The Girl from Widow Hills - Megan Miranda Page 0,43

But I could already see the headline. The hook. The man who saved me had come back looking for me twenty years later. And now he was dead outside my house. I could already see the fingers flying across the keyboard, matching the speed of the rumors. The Girl from Widow Hills. Moving backward in time, from the ten-year anniversary, to the five-year, to the original event.

A part two: Where are they now? From hero to victim. From victim to witness. A reshuffling of roles. As if, all along, we were in a tragedy—it had just taken us a few extra decades to get there.

The detective left, and I was still staring at the closed door when Bennett shifted behind me.

He was holding his phone out in front of him, like he was following a map. Though he’d obviously just performed a quick Google search, seen all he needed to know. As his hand dropped to the side, I saw my photo from years earlier, smiling at me from upside down.

I couldn’t read his expression. “I wasn’t trying to hide it,” I said. “I just tried to move on. The things people say, Bennett. The letters they would send. It’s a thing that happened to me, and I don’t even remember it. I mean something to them. I can’t be who they want me to be. I don’t want to.”

“I’m not judging you,” he said. And yet something had closed off. A door we’d just pushed through swinging back. “It’s just, I’ve known you for over two years. We know each other pretty well, Liv. Were you ever planning on telling me?”

All I could feel now was the space between us. A rift opening up.

“We don’t really know that much about each other,” I said, and his face shifted, like I’d hurt him. I’d been wrong about him—there was plenty on the surface that was easy to read if I watched closely.

Maybe it wasn’t for his lack of trying—he’d invited me to his family home, after all. Maybe he’d been able to read into me more than I’d thought, and understood that he had to move slowly, handle with care. But he wasn’t being honest here, either. “Come on, I didn’t even know about your girlfriend until yesterday.”

“It’s a little different, not bringing up the ex who dumped you. And, like, not telling someone you were famous and changed your name. Seems like something pretty important.”

The truth was, I hadn’t considered telling him. Or anyone. It was a thing I had fought to keep behind me for so long, it had never occurred to me to let it out voluntarily.

“I guess that’s my answer, then,” he said.

“I’ve never told anyone, Bennett.” Couldn’t he understand? It wasn’t a lack of trust in him specifically. It was everyone. It was survival.

“No one? No boyfriend? No college roommate?”

I shook my head. Nothing had ever lasted long enough that it would need to come up. And that was probably why I didn’t go to Charlotte with Bennett for Thanksgiving last year, volunteering instead to remain as the hospital’s on-call contact throughout the holidays. Preferring a makeshift dinner with a group of people who had stayed behind. Joining the open-to-all potluck organized by Sydney Britton; having pie with Rick after, watching a football game on his couch.

“No one,” I reiterated.

He frowned. “Don’t you think that’s a little messed up?”

Oh, didn’t I. As if I needed him to say it, to see it. Of course, I couldn’t really escape the fallout. Change your name, change your address—none of it could ever change what had happened. It had screwed up my life back then. And it was screwing it up now, just in a different way: twisting myself to fit the confines of a safe and quiet life.

“You have no idea,” I said, my teeth gritted together. “You have no idea what it’s like. We had to move from Kentucky to Ohio in the middle of high school after the ten-year anniversary, it got so bad. You should see what it did to my mom, the things it pushed her to.” I shook my head. There was a faint tremor in my fingers, but my voice kept dropping, going steady somehow, even as I was falling apart. “I moved away from her, all alone, to start over here.” How to explain the feeling of panic, deep in my gut; waking up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat, my heart racing, sheets thrown back—like