“I thought…I thought ‘school’ meant Mortimer. The videos from the parking lot that night. The road rage?”
“Oh.” Luke makes a face. “From the parking lot that night? No. I handed you those discs. I watched you break them into pieces.”
I bring a hand to my face. “I thought you made copies.”
He throws up his hands. “Why would I do that?”
I am nearly overcome with relief. I am not going to prison. That night in the parking lot is behind me.
“How long…” I shake my head. “How long have you had that video from middle school?”
“I saw it when I first met Trinity last October,” says Luke. “She told me everything from the start.”
“You’ve known all that time? And you didn’t say anything?”
“We…” He glances at Trinity. “We needed to get the documentary off the ground first. If we were at odds with you and Finley from the get-go, I’m not sure it would’ve happened. So yeah, I tried to block it from my mind. But then, after we saw you planting the drugs in Trinity’s trunk…yeah, I dropped the thumb drive in the car when the cops pulled me over. Kind of another test, I guess. I wanted to see if you’d watch it and what you’d do. Turns out, you hardly even noticed it.” He shrugs. “Sooner or later, it was going to come out.”
“So the other day, when you kept telling me that Finley cut the brakes? Was that just another test to see if I’d come clean?”
Luke’s head tilts to the side. “Well…kind of. But I meant it, too. I mean, technically, it looked like you cut the brakes, best we could tell. But I figured Finley put you up to it. You worshipped him back then. And I know he’d have loved to knock me down a peg or two. You guys talked at the bike racks right before. It was his idea, right? He probably made it sound like a prank or something, right? Like, let’s play a joke on Luke—”
“No,” I say. It would be the easiest thing in the world to put this on Fin, who couldn’t defend himself. “Finley had nothing to do with it. It was all me, Luke. Something came over me, and I acted. It wasn’t planned. I just did it. And you want to know the worst part? I had nothing against you. You were a great brother. I didn’t want you to be hurt. I know how silly that sounds, but in a million years, I wouldn’t have wanted to hurt you.”
“Oh, I know that. Even when Trinity first showed me that video, even if you acted alone, I never thought you did it to hurt me.”
“No?”
“Of course not,” he says. “You did it to hurt Mom.”
That lands hard. Wow. I never…he’s right. He’s exactly right.
Those memories, the emotions, the guilt afterward, all flood back at once. I touch the bridge’s guardrail for balance. It will be a long time before I can fully process all of this.
“And you…have you always had that security video?” I ask Trinity. “Like, since you were a kid?”
“Yeah, my family had it since the accident,” she says. “It was part of our lawyers’ investigation. Once they realized the brakes had been intentionally cut, they subpoenaed the security cameras.”
Makes sense. At age twelve, I didn’t even know the schoolhadcameras.
“Then why not use it?” I ask.
“I couldn’t have told you at the time,” she says. “I was seven. I was clueless. But I know the answer to that question now.” The wind carries her hair into her face. She tucks it away. “It was my mother’s decision,” she says. “She saw the video, obviously. She didn’t want to destroy a young girl’s life. The way she saw it, she was guilty of DUI—not by much, but guilty no less. She felt okay pleading guilty tothatcharge. And the prosecutors said as long as she served some time in prison, they’d take that deal.”
Warm tears spill down my face. She spared me. The woman whose life I wrecked was worried about wrecking mine.
“I don’t…I don’t know what to say,” I whisper.
Trinity leans into me. “I don’t, either,” she says. “For so long, whether it was fair or not, no matter how young you were, whether you meant to or not, I…I looked at you as the person who ruined my mother’s life.” She takes a moment, clears her throat. “But last night, you saved mine.”
A harsh wind whips across me. I wipe the tears off my face and offer a sympathetic smile.
“Now’s not the time,” I say. “Let’s come up with the words later.”
71
Louise
—Investigation, Day 10—
