Page 11 of What They'll Say About Us

"The truth won't bring Paige back." He turned to me. "Don't do this, Tessa. Don't drag my sister's life through your spotlight. Don't use her to grow your business. That's the last thing she'd want, especially from you."

Clearly, Ray was not one of my fans, either. But it hadn't always been that way. We'd been friendly back in the day, at least during the time that Paige and I had been friendly.

"If you go forward," Ray said. "You'll be sorry."

"Shut up, Ray," Alina ordered. "Don't listen to him, Tessa. His opinion doesn't matter. You have to do this. You have to."

I stared at Paige's two siblings, shocked that they were on completely different pages.

Before I could say a word, the manager came over. "Why don't you all take this conversation somewhere else?"

It wasn't a request, and I quickly got to my feet, following Morgan out of the café, with Alina and Ray behind us. When we got to the sidewalk, I turned to face them, seeing anger in both their eyes but for different reasons. "I'm going to look into what happened to Paige," I said, raising a hand as Ray opened his mouth. "Your sister asked me to, and I want to help."

"You want to ride my sister's death to the top of your podcast charts," he retorted.

It was a cruel statement, and I wished I could throw it back in his face, but he wasn't entirely wrong. That wasn't my motivation, but it might be the result, depending on what we found out and how far our investigation went.

"This is a mistake," Ray said. "If you won't stop, I'll make you stop, Tessa."

As he strode away, Alina said, "Ignore him. Ray can't stop you or me. And if my mom can finally get some closure, she'll be happy I pursued this."

"I hope so," I said. "But the truth might force her to grieve all over again."

Alina's jaw hardened. "If my suspicions are right, then we'll get justice for Paige, and that will be worth it. I'll call you later."

As Alina walked away, I looked at Morgan. "Well, that was something."

"Something," Morgan echoed. "Those two are quite the pair. Almost like good cop, bad cop. Who do you believe? Who do you follow?"

"Right now, I'm going with Alina. But Ray's reaction gives me a lot to think about. Maybe his reasons for not wanting this case reopened aren't only about protecting the family from more pain."

"We definitely need to look into him." Morgan gave me a thoughtful look. "What did you think about those texts your boyfriend exchanged with Paige?"

"It kind of ties in with what I mentioned about her flirting with him. But he didn't seem to be responding in a positive way to her. And he didn't text her back the night she died, which must mean something."

"Why did you break up?"

"So many reasons. But the biggest one was that I was going to New York after graduation, and he was staying in Chicago. For a long time, that felt like a heartbreaking decision, but honestly, we were fighting so much in those last few months, it felt like a relief to leave."

"What were you fighting about?"

"I don't actually remember. I was stressed out before and after Paige died. I had a lot of big feelings, and I didn't handle them well. I certainly wasn't being a good girlfriend. Liam also seemed to grow distant, and he was often short with me, too. We were out of sync."

"You're going to have to talk to him, Tessa."

"Yes," I said with a sigh. "But not right this second. I'm hungry. Let's get breakfast somewhere else and then go back to the hotel."

Chapter Four

After getting back to the hotel, I went through the list of people Alina had compiled as witnesses and suspects. I realized I was about to take a long and complicated trip through my past because I knew ninety percent of the people she'd named. And the ten percent I didn't know were tied to the people I did know.

I let out a sigh as I looked across the table at Morgan, who was working on her laptop. "I can't believe anyone on this list killed Paige. Most of the people on here were college students. Whatever disagreements we had were petty, juvenile stuff."

"Maybe, maybe not. You know as well as I do that murderers can be young, look completely innocent, and be socially acceptable."

"But I knew these people."

"Well, it's still possible Paige's death was an accident. It's not unbelievable to think a college girl got drunk, wandered off a path, and fell into the lake, hitting her head, making her unable to save herself."