is heard in my reply. “If you need to ask, I clearly did a shit job of showing it back in the day.”
“Not then. Now. Do you love your girl now as you did back then?”
Grayson looks shocked when I shake my head. He has no reason to fret. “I love her more. She’s so brave, Grayson. So fucking strong.” I give my tired eyes a quick scrub before continuing, “But it’s not the time to show her that. Julian only broke off their engagement three days ago. Her heart is broken, so it isn’t right for me to pretend she is not hurting.” I also don’t think I am up to the task. I’m not myself. Not in the slightest.
My eyes float up from my clenched fists when Grayson asks, “So friends can’t help friends when they’re hurting? Friends can’t admit when they were wrong and underhandedly beg for forgiveness?”
Even knowing part of his comment resonates with his guilt over what happened to Melody, I won’t call him out on it—today. He didn’t technically knock me out the night Melody was raped, that was Tobias, but even if he had, what happened wasn’t his fault. It wasn’t even mine. It was Madden’s. It’s just going to take me more than three days to realize that.
Taking my silence as an inability to formulate a comeback to his question, Grayson jumps back into our conversation. “If you can’t tell her how you feel, be her friend then. If that involves getting hot and heavy under a blanket while watching corny 90s movies, so be it. That’s what friends do, right?”
I shake my head while grumbling, “I’m never getting drunk with you again. Your lips are looser than your vagina.”
“Va-gin-a,” he parrots, talking like Jackie Chan when he attempts to impersonate Chris Rock.
After knocking his foot against mine, he heads for the door. “Call me when you need me.”
“Don’t you mean if?”
He cranks his neck back to face me, smiling. “Nah, punk. I said ‘when’ for a reason.” He drops his eyes to the pocket of my jeans. “And read that damn letter before you put it through the wash.”
I don’t argue that I’ve read Julian’s letter.
I’m not a fan of lying.
“What?” I ask Melody when her eyes float to mine for the fourth time the past two minutes. She came out of her meeting with the lead prosecutor from Saugerties with a spring in her step and a smile I was certain I wouldn’t see for months.
I keep forgetting she’s had seven years to handle the emotions bombarding me, so she’s got a better grasp on things than I do. I should feed off her positivity, but with every unexpected smile reminding me about how many I missed because of my brother, it’s a little difficult.
Nichole Aimes, ADA for this division of the New York District Attorney’s Office, is confident Madden will face time for his crime. The evidence Grayson gathered from both Melody’s ranch and mine is pretty condemning. Melody kept the clothes she was wearing when she was assaulted, and both the condom found in the sink in my bathroom and my bottle of cologne have trace matters that match Madden.
The urge to beat the living shit out of someone slammed into me hard and fast when Melody testified that the condom must have split as the underwear she hid in her childhood bedroom had semen residue in them. There was enough DNA to make it seem as if Madden didn’t use protection.
My anger only subsided when I realized why Melody kept the evidence. If she truly believed Joey had raped her, she wouldn’t have kept proof of his assault. He was dead, so justice would have never been sought. She preserved the evidence because she knew deep down inside that Joey would have never hurt her like that. He loved her like a sister and was as protective of her as I am.
Phillipa is still seeking answers on what truly happened to Joey the night of his death. She emailed me an update the morning following Castro’s arrest, but with everything going on, I’ve not had the chance to sit down and digest it all. I haven’t even had the time to ask Melody if she knew Julian had paid Rimi Castro 1.5 million dollars in cash for a pre-kidnap ransom.
With photographic evidence of Melody’s movements and a threatening letter, Julian paid the amount requested, utterly oblivious that his eagerness to protect Melody placed her in more danger.